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I SEE FIRE

🕊️ A Stranger Things AU Fanfic from Misha’s Masterlist Library. 📚 Full Fanfic Saga & Infodump File here 📕 Book One: all chapters here

BOOK ONE: Chapter 45 -> (extended chapter) 🕊️ Hawkins -> The Games -> The Past {flashback} 🏹 Day 6 of the Games

Steve Harrington x OC!fem!reader hometown strangers to friends to lovers. ultra dark, heavy angst and hurt/comfort. alternate universe -> upside down apocalypse. high suspense, dystopian game-of-survival plot with morbidly dry humor sprinkled along the way. eventual plot-driven angsty smut (...but with hella plot). 18+

A fever dream multi-crossover au inspired by The Hunger Games and The Purge universes, merged with Stranger Things. 🏹

🏹 SUMMARY: Darkness had cloaked everyone and everything, everywhere. A new sort of darkness that shouldn’t come as a suspense, but does anyway. Back in Hawkins, the entire town has now been fully evacuated into its 4 respective shelters — designed and maintained specifically for the next “doomsday” that takes over. When a new gate as opened. When the sky bleeds with red veins again. When unknown creatures from the underworld have a new opening in the ground to plague and slaughter however they see fit. Lockdown is in full blown effect. No one is to leave their stations. Which means all that Eddie, Nancy and the kids can do… is stay out inside their own private quarters of the doomsday shelter, along with your own family in theirs.

Meanwhile, Steve and Ro devise their own plan in the hush of another day lived while Hopper watches from the Capitol. And, sure… Michael Jackson might have a little something to do with the name of their sting operation…

And that might also trigger a bittersweet memory it brings back full circle, involving a little birdie above — watching over them, along with you.

🌿 AUTHOR’S NOTE: I might’ve wanted to post a chapter early for you angels because i’m just so anxious to be back… and had time to format this on my flight yesterday. 🥹

HURRAY FOR SUPERNATURAL DOOMSDAY VIBES && ANOTHER DAY W

Xx, Misha

🏹 OVERALL SERIES WARNINGS: This is my darkest fanfic series. Strong language, mature themes all around. Explores PTSD and severe trauma, past s*xual and physical abuse, graphic descriptions of violence, dystopian setting. Heavy angst/hurt/comfort (yes, there will be a hard-earned happy ending). General THG series setting + angst, plus grim themes and gore in the vein of The Purge.

Chapter Forty-Five Crescendo

2:02 A.M. • HAWKINS [DAY 6 of the Games]

By two in the morning, Hawkins had been sorted into concrete.

Not comfort. Not safety in the way anybody used to mean it. Just concrete.

The evacuation shelters all sat in four different corners of town like ugly little promises: blocky, windowless, thick-walled, low-roofed structures built after the first earthquakes chewed through Hawkins and spit it back out differently. They were not pretty. They were not homey. Nobody would’ve mistaken any of them for anything other than what they were — wartime architecture. The kind of emergency buildings constructed fast and hard by men who had all stopped asking whether or not the world could be fixed and moved on… to asking how many living bodies could fit inside a room before panic started to smell like sweat.

They were cinderblock and poured concrete and reinforced steel and grimy fluorescent lights that buzzed overhead like caged, dying insects. They had industrial generators, ration shelves, communal washrooms, cot storages, sealed basement levels, hand-crank radios, military hooks on the blank walls for things that shouldn’t have needed hanging… and enough locks on every door to make the whole place feel less like shelter and more like a prison built by people trying very hard to call it mercy.

Every surviving city in America had them now.

That was the part that never got said plainly enough.

Not just Hawkins. Not just Indiana.

All fifty states had been carved down into what remained. Twelve surviving cities per state, twelve districts where the living still clung on, and everything else — every other town, every other county, every half-collapsed stretch of map that hadn’t held — had either gone dark, gone feral, gone crawling with infected, or gone so empty that even scavengers stopped bothering.

That was just the world now.

Overseas, things were worse… or maybe just different enough to make any comparison useless. Here, at least, people had language for the madness. Procedures. Sirens. Evac routes. Buses. Lockdown zones. Peacekeepers with clipboards and rifles pretending order still meant something.

And tonight, all four Hawkins shelters were full.

Absolutely fucking full.

The homeless had all been brought in too — swept up from the shelters (and places people pretended not to see them during daylight hours) and bused in with everybody else because when another gate threatened to open, nobody got left to the curb. At least not in Hawkins.

Not yet anyway.

The hospital stayed under hard lockdown behind its own walls and gates. The nursing home too. Those buildings had been retrofitted after the second disaster — steel barriers, reinforced windows and doors, fallback generators, emergency basement wards, all of it already designed for the possibility that one night the sky would turn wrong and the whole town would have to hold its breath again.

So Karen and Ted Wheeler were still there. Sue and Charles Sinclair too. Claudia Henderson was at the nursing home, undoubtedly still moving like a woman who’d rather die than let anybody under her watch suffer alone, even while she worried sick about her own son.

No one was going anywhere.

No one was calling anybody, either.

Any signal was dead or near enough to it. Whatever meager lines of official communication still existed were being swallowed up by authorized military traffic and approved dispatch only. Hawkins Hospital would not be accepting or offering any sort of personal phone calls. Neither would the nursing home. That left walkie-talkies for the rest of Hawkins, and only if you had one. Only if your batteries held. Only if the walls weren’t too thick.

Only if the storm outside and the red rot in the sky didn’t decide otherwise.

Inside Shelter II (though almost nobody called it that out loud) Eddie Munson sat cross-legged on the cold floor beside two suitcases and one overstuffed duffel, watching the little television with one eye and Nancy Wheeler with the other.

The private room that they’d been given was generous only by apocalyptic standards.

Six cots. Thin mattresses. Scratchy wool blankets. Two dented metal chairs. One folding table bolted to the wall. One industrial TV mounted high in the corner, playing the Games on low volume because nobody here needed the sound up enough to feel any more sick about it than they already were. The walls were painted that institutional shade of beige that always looked one bad cough away from giving up. There was a vent in the ceiling breathing out stale warm air — and every so often, the floor trembled faintly beneath all of them from some convoy or generator or God-knows-what moving throughout the levels below.

Still, private was private.

Outside this room, the shelter was packed to the gills with bodies and noise and fear and communal restlessness. Out there, people were now sleeping shoulder to shoulder on rows of army cots under fluorescent lights, clutching duffel bags to their chests while pretending not to hear babies fussing three aisles down or old men coughing through the night or combat boots passing in the hall every damn minute. Out there, it smelled like wet clothes, canned soup, stress sweat and disinfectant.

In here, at least…the kids were asleep.

All five of them.

It had taken work.

A little bribery. A lot of lying by omission. …and one very deliberate teaspoon of children’s Benadryl each — because Eddie and Nancy had exchanged one long look and silently agreed… that if these kids did not get some goddamn sleep, they were all going to lose their minds before sunrise.

So now Dustin, Mike, Lucas, Will and Erica were out cold.

Their cots had been shoved together until they formed one long ridiculous little raft of blankets and limbs. Erica slept in the middle with her stuffed pony tucked under her chin, Lucas curled on one side of her like a guard dog in sneakers. Will was on her other side, turned inward and still sleeping a little tense even in rest, like his body didn’t trust peace on principle anymore. Mike had drifted towards Will in his sleep the way he always seemed to when fear had already worn itself raw before bedtime, one arm flung halfway over the blanket line between them. Dustin bookended the whole thing, mouth open a little, unruly curls mashed flat on one side — dead to the world in the most twelve-year-old way possible.

Every one of them had gone down hard.

Every one of them looked too young.

Nancy was on her third inventory check in twenty minutes.

Eddie didn’t stop her.

He just watched her move around the room in her socks, hair pulled back and face pale with exhaustion, kneeling by the giant duffel again while the television threw shifting blue-grey light across one side of her. She’d already checked the suitcases twice and the duffel at least three times, but now she was doing it again with the grim focus of someone who knew that the only alternative was sitting still and thinking too much.

The first suitcase held clothes. Layers. Socks. Undergarments. Spare shoes. The practical shit that mattered when life had been reduced to transit, ugly weather and waiting.

The second held more of the same, plus toiletries, a travel-sized first aid kit, batteries, two flashlights, backup walkies, rain ponchos, spare cigarettes for Eddie, and enough canned soup and crackers to make them feel slightly less at the mercy of whatever the shelter chose to ration tomorrow.

The duffel was what mattered.

That one had the papers.

Birth certificates. Citizenship documents. Social Security cards. Passports for Nancy and Mike, for Lucas and Erica too. Nothing for Dustin. Nothing for Will. Nothing for Eddie, because poverty and trailer parks and Uncle Wayne never having the extra money had a way of making “international travel” sound like a joke somebody richer told at parties when life was mundane.

That thought moved through the room without either of them naming it.

Wayne.

Just his shadow was enough to make both of them go a little quiet in their own heads. Eddie’s uncle lived and died stubborn as rust. He had refused to leave his shop during Purge night, convinced he could hold the line against a world that had already gone rabid.

The world had won.

Neither Nancy nor Eddie touched that grief out loud now. Not here. Not with the kids asleep three feet away… and all the rest of the night piled on top of them already.

Underneath the papers, tucked in a zippered pocket inside another zippered pocket, was the cash stash.

A thick ugly stack of it.

Steve’s money. Or what had once been Steve’s accessible money, anyway.

The cash came from the college fund his parents had left him — the one account he’d actually been able to access when he turned eighteen. College had become a laughable concept by then, the kind of thing you talked about like old amusement parks or airports, but the money itself had still mattered. He’d drained it into cash before the banks could get any more creative about what “available funds” meant during national collapse — and that cash had been stretched and hidden and moved and re-hidden and used to keep half the people in this room alive.

The rest of the Harrington fortune was a worse kind of joke.

It existed.

Technically.

Business accounts. Family holdings. Credit lines. Investment bullshit. All of it locked behind age thresholds and legal freezes and “trust stipulations” that would only release the larger sums when Steve hit whatever age the lawyers had set. Twenty-one or maybe twenty-five, Nancy wasn’t even sure anymore because the whole thing felt too obscene to think about in a world where tomorrow wasn’t promised and grocery shelves could go bare by noon.

Still, the safety deposit box key was in there too.

And with it, all the old Harrington banking information. Ethan’s cards. Mary’s cards. Numbers. Routing details. The stale skeleton of wealth, waiting for a future that might never arrive.

Nancy checked it all anyway.

Again.

Eddie finally rubbed a hand over his face and said under his breath, “If you check that bag one more time it’s gonna file for a restraining order.”

Nancy didn’t look up. “You joke now, but when we realize all these passports somehow vanished into thin air? I’m the one who’ll have to hear about it.”

“From who.”

She paused.

Then, because this was Hawkins and not Hell’s VIP lounge — because dry humor still lived even here — she muttered, “You, probably.”

That got the faintest ghost of a grin out of him.

“There she is,” he murmured softly. “Miss Wheeler. Queen of optimism.”

Nancy snorted once, then she exhaled through her nose, sitting back on her heels.

For a minute neither of them said anything.

The TV murmured on.

Onscreen, nothing much was happening now. The arena had sunk into that eerie late-night stillness where everybody alive was sleeping, hiding, or pretending to. Steve and Ro were still bundled together high in the tree, half swallowed by darkness and sleeping bag. You were nowhere visible at all — just the occasional useless camera angle on empty branches where all the commentators insisted you were hidden, somewhere up there. Foxface was a fox-shaped mound beneath her leaves, next to the waterfall where the long wind of the arena’s creek began. Thresh was now nothing but a dark, giant shape in the grasslands. The Careers and Syl rotated their miserable night watch around the Cornucopia like they were guarding a kingdom instead of hoarded fruit and stolen hardware.

They’d already watched the wholesome pocket of peace between Steve and his “shadow,” after they’d all gotten settled in. And honestly? The timing of that moment had come right when they needed it. Because it’d helped keep them distracted with something hopeful before winding down for the night.

Outside the room, boots now passed in the hall.

Not hurried. Just constant.

A reminder.

Eddie leaned back against the wall behind him, lit by the TV’s shifting blue and the weak yellow lamp in the corner, watching Nancy zip the bag shut.

“…you know,” he said after a while, quiet enough not to wake the kids, “I still can’t get over the fact that we got one of the nice rooms.”

Nancy looked up at that, tired enough to dryly smile without really meaning to do so. “Nice is a strong word.”

“It’s got a lamp and a door.” He spread one hand. “That’s luxury, baby.”

Her eyes flicked toward the sleeping kids. “Hopper made sure of it.”

He sighed quietly. “Yeah.”

…Larry Kline would get the public credit for it, of course. He always did. But everybody who mattered knew the real reason that this particular cluster of people had ended up in one of the shelter’s sealed private rooms instead of on communal cots under fluorescent misery: Hopper had pushed for it. Kline had nodded and claimed leadership afterward because that was the mayor’s spiritual gift.

This building — the same one Parker and Anjelica were somewhere inside of right now, tucked away in a different section for the sake of optics and “family conflict prevention” (or whatever bullshit phrase City Hall had used, referring to the families belonging to whichever two teenagers were drawn as tributes during the Reaping) — was one of the “better ones.” Better ventilation. Better hall patrol, better family-sized rooms. Better emergency access.

The absurdity of being grateful for a superior evacuation bunker was not lost on either of them.

Nancy sat down at last, folding herself onto the floor opposite Eddie with the duffel between them like a tiny altar. For another while, the only sound in the room was the TV, the vent, and the storm growling through the walls beyond human reach.

Then Nancy’s face changed.

It happened fast.

One second? She was staring at the arena feed without really seeing it. The next second, her eyes widened and she went terrifyingly still.

Eddie caught it instantly. “What.”

She was already reaching for the walkie on the table.

“What,” he repeated, sharper now.

Nancy fumbled with the volume wheel, pressed the side button, got nothing but useless static, and whispered with sudden urgency, “Mr. Burdock.”

Eddie blinked.

Then it hit him too.

“Oh, shit.”

“Mom and Dad were supposed to figure out the medication,” Nancy hissed, already trying again with the walkie, even though all of the cinderblock walls around them might as well have been a tomb. “They were supposed to talk to Jonathan, remember? We—we had it all written down, Eddie, they were gonna see what they could get from the hospital stock, and if Dad couldn’t—”

Only static.

Nancy pressed harder like force alone might summon signal.

Nothing.

Eddie got up on one knee, reaching automatically for his own walkie, trying that one too. Same dead hiss of static.

“Come on,” he muttered. “Come on, you piece of shit.”

Nothing.

Nancy’s shoulders sank.

Not dramatically, just enough for him to see how hard this all landed with her.

Jonathan. Joyce. Burdock. Somewhere in some other section of this town… likely in some other assigned shelter building entirely by now — trapped in whatever arrangement the evacuation had shoved them all into. No phone lines. No signal. No way to let them know whether or not your grandfather’s gotten any help at all after the whole town got swallowed into lockdown.

Nancy stared at the useless walkie like it had personally betrayed her.

Eddie set his down with more patience than he felt.

They both just sat there for a few minutes, defeated by something as simple and ordinary as distance.

Finally Nancy said, very quietly, “He needed that medicine tonight.”

“I know,” Eddie murmurs solemnly.

Her throat worked. “I should’ve thought of it sooner.”

At that Eddie’s head snapped up. “No.”

Nancy didn’t argue with him right away, which somehow meant that she was actually listening.

“Wheeler.” His voice stayed low, but it sharpened. “None of this is on you.”

“I had the list. I had the names, I had the dosage, I had—”

“And then the damn town got evacuated because the sky started bleeding.” He looked at her hard. “That is not your fault.”

Nancy pressed her lips together.

He knew she wanted to fight him on it anyway. Nancy Wheeler had a bad habit of trying to take responsibility for disasters that would’ve flattened older and meaner people than her. But maybe exhaustion had gotten there first… because after a second, she just nodded once and looked away.

Onscreen, Caesar Flickerman was still jabbering on like late-night horror had somehow become cocktail chatter.

Nancy made a face at him.

Then, because thinking about Burdock meant thinking about something even uglier, Eddie found himself saying, “I still don’t get it.”

She looked over at him. “What.”

“Why the hell his own family ain’t doing any of this.”

That one sat there.

Because yeah.

Yeah.

It wasn’t like either of them knew you well enough to map and dissect the whole Everdeen family tree in their sleep. But they knew enough. Knew there was Parker. Knew there was Anjelica. Knew there was a bakery still running and an old man with bad lungs… somehow not being cared for by the people technically closest to him in your absence.

Nancy frowned down at the duffel.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

And that was the worst answer because it was honest.

Eddie scrubbed a hand over his jaw, his eyes drifting to the TV again without really seeing it. Somewhere in that same building, Parker and Anjelica were both probably hunkered down in their own assigned room… under the same concrete roof. Safe. Sheltered. Accounted for.

…and meanwhile, Jonathan Byers, who didn’t belong to that family by blood at all, was the one helping your grandfather breathe.

It wasn’t right.

It wasn’t even close to right.

But the shape of that wrongness felt worlds bigger than either of them had the energy to unpack tonight. Instead, it sat there instead… heavy and mean and unresolved, another brick in a wall of things this world had no business asking eighteen and twenty-one-year-olds to carry.

Eventually Nancy rubbed both hands over her face and let them fall. “We can worry about it in the morning,” she whispered.

“If there’s a morning.”

She gave him a tired look.

He winced. “That came out darker than intended.”

“It usually does.”

“Yeah, well.” He glanced toward the sleeping kids. “Charming’s not really my brand.”

At that, something in her softened just enough to breathe again.

The room settled.

The storm kept battering the outside of the world. Boots kept moving in the hall. Somewhere farther down the corridor, someone coughed hard enough to sound half-folded in grief.

Eddie watched Nancy’s hand drift up to her necklace.

The little bullet pendant Robin had made her. The one Nancy never took off. Her fingers pinched it absentmindedly now, thumb rubbing over the metal in that same unconscious pattern he’d seen a hundred times before and never once interrupted.

He didn’t say Robin’s name.

Didn’t have to.

It was there anyway. In the room. In Nancy’s hand. In the eerie shape of the silence between them. In the absence of the laughter she brought everyone.

Eddie’s gaze slid past her to the kids…

First Erica — tiny and fierce, even asleep. Then Lucas, one arm still thrown protectively over her blanket. Then Mike and Will both tangled in the middle, Mike’s shoulder pressed toward the latter like instinct. And then Dustin.

Dustin always got him hardest.

Maybe because that kid felt everything at full volume. Maybe because he pretended not to, right up until he absolutely couldn’t anymore. And maybe because Eddie still couldn’t shake the image of him breaking apart inside the hallway back at Steve’s house, trying to get into Robin’s room like grief itself might claw the door open if he threw his body at it hard enough.

Dustin looked impossibly younger while asleep.

That was the insult of it.

All of them did.

Eddie kept staring.

And because the room was too dark and too late… and too full of things he’d been shoving down for too long — the words came out before he could stop them.

“They’re just kids.”

Nancy’s eyes lifted.

He gestured uselessly toward the cots. “All of them. They’re just…” His voice thinned out for a second, then came back rougher. “They’re all just— kids, Nance.”

She didn’t interrupt.

Didn’t rush to soothe him or fix it or throw some neat little line over the top of it like a bandage.

She just let Eddie talk.

So he did.

“It’s bad enough,” he said, staring at Dustin now, “that the world went to shit when they were what—nine? Ten? And then Will gets taken. Then all the rest of it. The monsters. The gates. The fucking Purge.” His mouth twisted. “And now this—” He gestured at the TV, then all around. “And this—?”

He scrubbed his hands over his knees, then he kept going because stopping suddenly felt impossible. “They don’t even get to just miss Robin like normal. They don’t get the truth. They don’t get any truth. They just get—pieces.” His face screwed up before he could stop it. “And every time they look at Steve now, every single damn time, they know something happened. They know he ain’t the same. He doesn’t laugh right anymore. Doesn’t smile right—doesn’t ever bring her up, because—”

His voice cracked.

That did it.

He looked away hard, teeth gritted, hand coming up fast over his mouth like he could physically shove the rest of it back inside. “Nah...” Eddie shook his head once, furious at himself already. “Sorry. Fuck. Sorry.”

Nancy was crying by then.

Not loudly. Just silent tears slipping down her cheeks while she watched him unravel one thread at a time.

Eddie dragged a hand down his face, trying to force it back together. “I just… I miss her so fucking much.”

And there it was.

The thing at the center of all of it.

Robin.

He bowed his head and said it again, rawer this time… because once wasn’t enough. “I miss her so fucking much...”

Nancy moved before she said anything.

One second, she was sitting across from him. The next she was beside him on the floor, arms wrapping around him in one fierce, wordless motion that said far more than speech could’ve managed anyway.

Eddie went rigid for half a heartbeat as he let her hold him.

Then he broke.

Just one awful, muffled sob into his own palm as he threw an arm around her back and let her hold the pieces without trying to explain them.

Nancy clung tighter.

She nodded against his shoulder like he could somehow feel the agreement in her spine. Because she missed Robin so fucking much, too… in ways that were both different and identical. In the kind of way grief always was.

So they just stayed there.

On the floor of a concrete room in the middle of the night, under statewide evacuation and military lockdown — and the relentless hum of a world gone bad, holding each other while five exhausted kids slept a few feet away and the television kept murmuring about death like it was sport.

Eventually Eddie pulled back first.

Only because if he didn’t, he was afraid he’d go under entirely.

He wiped at his face hard enough to redden it, gave one wet sniff he clearly wished could’ve been edited out of existence, and tried for a grin that came out crooked and damp around the edges.

Nancy looked at him like he hung the moon anyway.

He barked a tiny laugh at that, squeezing her knee. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what.”

“Look at me like I’m some Victorian widow.”

That startled a little laugh out of her.

“Too late,” she whispered tearfully.

“Jesus,” he muttered, swiping his nose with his shirt sleeve.

He looked over at the TV again, more for something to aim his face at than because he cared about whatever the fuck Claudius was currently saying… Then he glanced back at Nancy and his expression shifted.

Not happier exactly.

Just sly. Tearful and sly.

And because Eddie Munson would rather die than to let his own grief spiral unpunctured if he could help it, he drawled, “You know what Buckley woulda done right now.”

Nancy blinked. “What?”

He pointed one finger toward the ceiling like Robin herself was there waiting to be called as witness.

“She would’ve found a way to get herself written into the evacuation protocol by pretending to be deathly allergic to concrete.”

Nancy stared at him.

He kept going, more animated now despite the tear tracks still drying on his face. “No, seriously. She’d be like, ‘Hi, excuse me, I’m not medically sure this bunker is structurally compatible with my aura.’ Then proceed to sing hymns, then quote Cher, just to throw them all off some more.”

Nancy made a strangled little noise.

Eddie sat up straighter, committing to the bit with all the reckless devotion of a man saving both their lives one stupid image at a time.

“And then when nobody took her seriously—which, rude—she’d have started claiming the cinderblock was making her gay-er. Because it reminded her of conversion camps.”

At that Nancy’s hand flew up over her eyes.

“Oh my God—”

“And then,” Eddie whispered, leaning closer as if sharing state secrets, “she would absolutely accuse the military of hate-criming her with geometry.”

Nancy folded in on herself with a muffled, disbelieving laugh, her shoulders shaking while she tried desperately not to wake the kids.

Eddie saw the crack — and shoved the knife deeper in the gentlest possible direction. “She’d call it a homophobic triangle. And somehow tie it into some unorthodox parallel with the holy trinity.”

That did it.

Nancy had to bury her face in his shoulder to keep the sound in. Her laughter came out wet and helpless and utterly broken in the middle, which somehow felt exactly right.

Eddie was laughing too now. Quietly. Miserably. Real.

“God—” Nancy whispered into her hand when she could breathe again. “She would.”

“She’d be such an asshole about it.”

“She’d get into a fight with the security guards.”

“She would flirt with the guards, as long as they had a vagina.”

Nancy made another small dying sound.

“And then,” Eddie said, because now he was in too deep to stop, “if anyone told her to stand down, she’d say, ‘what?—like you all don’t need to get laid?! C’mon now!’—then proceed to guess everyone’s kinks.”

Nancy’s forehead dropped to his shoulder again.

They both laughed there together in the dark, like two friends doing CPR on themselves with memory.

Not because it was okay.

Not because anything had gotten better.

Just because for thirty shaky seconds, saying Robin out loud through a joke hurt differently than saying her name through tears and loss, and sometimes differently was the only mercy you got.

When it finally faded, they were both still smiling a little.

A little wrecked. A little red-eyed. But smiling.

Onscreen, the Games kept going without asking whether anybody watching needed a break.

In the cots behind them, the kids slept on.

Outside of their room, boots kept pacing the hall and the storm kept throwing itself at the world like it still had something to prove.

And there on the floor — between the packed bags and the filthy beige walls and the low blue-grey light of the mounted television — Eddie and Nancy sat shoulder to shoulder in the middle of everything they both couldn’t fix, quietly snickering over the imagined specter of Robin Buckley hate-criming a bunker back with gay pride.

For one tiny, stolen minute…

It was enough.

DAY 6 • The Games

Steve whistles up to the sky, just after sunup.

There was a time he used to whistle his favorite tunes — all nonchalant and breezy, almost carelessly. A time when life was but a dream and golden boys whistled under their breath while steering the wheel of their sweet ride, radio cranked on high, revving the engine like the world was all theirs for the taking and nothing in it bites back.

He can’t remember the last time he whistled.

He can’t remember the last time he whistled at all until now.

This one is measured. Cupped. Hidden inside both hands, breathed out low and tribal from the branch where he sits straddled high above the forest floor, one combat boot hooked tight, one knee bent, shoulders tense beneath the windbreaker he’d shrugged back on before dawn.

Four notes.

The birdcall.

Soft enough to keep from carrying wrong. Precise enough for the mockingjays to catch.

And they do.

Of course they do.

The little bastards take it and run with it immediately, flinging the sound out over the trees and through the pale gray morning like it belongs to them now. One bird catches it. Then another. Then another. Carry, carry, carry, carrying. The whole arena passes it on through feathers and beaks until your call is no longer his, but the woods’ chant.

Steve sits very still after that.

Below him, a few feet down where the tree forks thick and steady, Ro is still asleep inside the sleeping bag, all but swallowed by it. Just a shape beneath faded fabric, tiny and lithe, one arm tucked under his cheek, close-cropped head of hair half-buried, breathing deep and even in the fragile kind of peace that only children can sometimes manage in the middle of hell.

Pan lets his shadow sleep.

He keeps one hand braced against the bark and stares out into the waking distance while the breeze lifts through his greasy locks of hair and cools the sweat at the back of his neck. The sky is lighter than it was ten minutes ago, but not by much. No direct sun yet. Just gray pressed over a sunrise pallet of color, along with a thousand wet-green leaves moving softly overhead.

It should feel calmer than it does.

But it doesn’t.

Because now there’s waiting involved and Steve Harrington, for all his many talents, has never been especially good at waiting whenever somebody’s life might be hanging inside it.

29…

30…

31…

He counts down two minutes in his head because that’s what makes sense. Because that’s long enough for the birdcall to travel, according to Ro... Long enough, maybe, for you to hear it and answer. If you’re close enough… and alive enough…and awake enough and not being hunted by anything with too many teeth.

He tells himself that.

Close enough. Awake enough. Alive enough.

Not dead.

He does not let the fourth one settle cleanly in his mind, because the second it tries, something ugly clenches behind his ribs.

You made it through the night.

You had to have.

You had to.

Steve thinks about you now… up in whatever tree or shadow or godforsaken crevice you’d found for yourself, wrapped in cold, bones throbbing, stubborn enough to live through spite alone if you had to. He thinks about the way that you’ve kept moving for days now, all alone, after escaping from the Careers. He thinks about how somehow, some way, you got away from them — after saving his life. He thinks about the fact that he still doesn’t know what shelter you found. If you found shelter at all. If you were warm. If you slept. If you—

…95…

…96…

…97…

Nothing comes back.

No birdcall echoes his own.

The first two minutes pass anyway.

Steve swallows.

The sound is tiny, but in the quiet up here it feels embarrassingly loud as he feels dread weighing in on him. He exhales through his nose… then glances down at his left wrist like maybe the ink there might have something useful to say. The minimalist robin inked into his skin, just over the veins, looks exactly the same as it always does. Dark. Still. Permanent.

Only it isn’t still.

Not really.

The flesh around it feels wrong. Tight. Hot. That faint, ugly throb he’s come to know too well whenever grief decides to move through him like weather.

His jaw flexes.

For one awful second, a thought worms its way in… sideways and mean…

Did you miss it?

Did you sleep through a cannon? Did she already cross over? Did Robin already get her before I could?

Steve’s stomach turns so hard he almost feels it in his teeth. “Don’t you start with me too, Buckley,” he mutters under his breath, voice rough and low and aimed squarely at the tattoo. “Not with her.”

The breeze catches the leaves of the olive branch, wrapped around his other wrist. He watches them ruffle lightly, tapping against his skin, shaking…

Then he cups his hands again and sends the four notes out harder.

The mockingjays snatch it up at once.

This time he doesn’t just wait. He listens like a man braced for impact. Every single muscle in his back pulled taut. Every line of him sharpened toward the horizon. The cameras, if they’re on him, can do whatever the hell they want with that. He doesn’t care. Not now. Not even a little.

He counts again.

One minute.

Nothing.

He counts more.

Another thirty seconds.

Still nothing.

The breeze shifts again, colder over the back of his neck. Somewhere below, something rustles in the underbrush. Farther out, a bird shrills once and cuts off. Steve feels his chest start to squeeze in that dangerous, humiliating way that means panic is trying to crawl up through his sternum and wear his face.

Forty-five seconds into the second minute… he hears it.

Your answer.

Four notes.

Not close. Not yet. But there.

The mockingjays catch it like sparks taking. One far-off voice. Then three. Then five trills. Then an entire little ghost choir threading your response back toward him through the trees until it’s all around the canopy — all around his head, close enough to touch if sound were a thing with a body.

Steve’s head jerks up.

For one split second he just stares.

Then the relief hits him so fast it almost makes him stupid.

His mouth opens on a breathless laugh he doesn’t mean to let out. His whole face changes without his permission. No cynicism. No guarded hard line of his mouth. No coldness. Just pure, bright, involuntary relief breaking across his features like sunrise getting in through cracks.

You’re alive.

Somewhere out there, you’re alive.

He doesn’t even know he’s smiling. Doesn’t know that whatever camera has him now is probably getting the cleanest, most unguarded look the country’s seen from Steve Harrington since the Hunger Games started… Greasy hair, all wind-tossed. Doe eyes gone wide. Shoulders finally dropping. Beautiful in the most ruined, human way that beauty sometimes survives everything and makes you resent it for staying.

“Wendy Bird,” comes a small, sleepy whisper from below.

Steve looks down.

Ro is awake now… propped up inside the sleeping bag with the top bunched around his chest, eyes still puffy with sleep but smiling so widely it makes his whole face light up. There’s still a crease on one cheek from where the fabric was pressed to it.

Steve’s smile lingers.

“Morning, man.”

“Morning,” Ro whispers back, then grins bigger. “She’s okay.”

Steve nods once. He can’t trust his voice for a second — which is ridiculous, and stupid, and deeply annoying. So instead he slips carefully back down the trunk, branch to branch, until he’s beside Ro again on the wide fork of three limbs that held them through the night.

He drops into a crouch first, then settles in beside him.

“Alright,” he lightly drawls, rubbing one hand over the back of his neck before his expression shifts. Something boyish starts creeping into it now. A little sly. A little smarter. A little crooked. “So, ally. I’ve been thinking.”

Ro straightens immediately, still half zipped into the sleeping bag. “Yeah?”

Steve glances out through the leaves like he’s checking the perimeter… but really he’s just giving himself one extra second to line up the thought right.

Then he looks back at Ro and says, low and conspiring:

“Operation: Smooth Criminal.”

Ro blinks once.

Then twice.

Then his little brows lift.

Steve’s grin deepens. “Hear me out.”

Ro nods so fast he nearly bonks his own chin. “Okay.”

Steve hooks an arm loosely over one bent knee and starts laying it out piece by piece — not talking down to him, not overexplaining, just giving it to him straight the same way he would one of the boys back home if the boys back home were nine and trapped inside a televised death pit.

“So. We know the Careers are still hoarding half the damn world inside’a that Cornucopia, right?”

Ro nods again. “And Syl’s still guarding it.”

“Right. Which means they’re not hunting... Not really. They’re not scrambling. They’re not doing any of the grueling stuff the rest of us gotta do just to keep breathing.” He tilts his head. “And that kinda seems like bullshit to me.”

Ro’s eyes get rounder.

Steve leans in slightly. “What happens if they don’t have all that anymore?”

Ro opens his mouth, then shuts it.

Steve lets him think.

“What happens,” he repeats, “if suddenly Tommy and Marvel and Carol don’t have a giant pile of apples and god knows what else… sitting all pretty under that fat golden horn?”

Ro pinches his brows. “Then… they’d have to go look for food.”

Steve points at him. “Exactly.”

Ro starts blinking faster. You can practically see the gears turning.

“They’d have to hunt.”

“Mm-hm.”

“They’d have to get out in the woods.”

“Now you’re talking.”

Ro sits up even straighter inside the sleeping bag. “But…but they don’t need to. Because they do have all that.”

Steve’s grin goes sharp. “Exactly.”

The realization lands all at once.

Ro’s mouth actually falls open.

Steve lowers his voice even farther. “You said there are landmines around it, right?”

Ro nods eagerly now. “Around the whole outside.”

“So.” Steve spreads his hands once. “What if somebody put an arrow exactly where it needed to go and the whole damn thing went kaboom.”

Ro gasps.

Not loudly, but gleefully.

Steve’s grin breaks wider. “Yeah?”

“Holy crap.”

That startles a laugh right out of Steve before he can help it. Short and quiet, but thick. “Yeah, holy crap.”

Ro is full-on beaming now. “We could blow it up.”

“We could blow it up.”

“With your bow.”

“With my bow.”

“And then they wouldn’t have all the food anymore.”

“And then,” Steve says, winking, “they get to struggle with the rest of us.”

Ro bounces once in place inside the bag, absolutely lit up. “And then it goes kaboom.”

“Now we’re talkin’.”

For one precious second, the two of them just look at each other like a pair of little criminals already midway through the plan.

Then Steve’s face shifts again, sobering a little.

“But,” he says slowly. “There’s one thing...”

Ro stills. “What?”

Steve props both his forearms on his knees. “How do we let the others know before we go off script?”

Ro furrows up at that.

Steve keeps going, tone gentle and serious now. “You, me, Hannah, Jack, Wendy Bird. Our alliance—our whole party, if you will.”

That makes something twinkle inside of Ro’s eyes.

Their whole party.

“Original plan was find each other,” Steve goes on. “Reunite. Keep moving.” He shrugs one shoulder. “If we peel off and go pull some stupid hero shit at the Cornucopia, then how do we make sure she doesn’t think something bad happened? How do we tell Ren not to come looking?”

Ro thinks.

Really thinks…

Steve says nothing while he does. The breeze moves through the branches. Somewhere higher up, a bird chatters and falls quiet. Down below, the forest keeps breathing around them.

Ro’s mouth twists to one side. Then the other. He starts absently picking at one loose thread near the sleeping bag zipper and squints into space like the answer might be written there… all while Steve just watches him with a kind of helpless fondness that would embarrass him under better circumstances.

Finally Ro says, “We didn’t make a call for that exact thing.”

Steve nods. “Okay.”

“But.” Ro brightens a little. “There is one for if the plan gets weird.”

Steve’s brows lift. “The plan gets weird?”

Ro nods with complete seriousness. “That’s not what Wendy Bird called it— but that’s basically what she meant.”

That almost gets Steve smiling again. “Go on.”

His shadow shifts closer and starts explaining with his hands — little motions cutting through the air between them. “If something changed too much, or if one of us had to stop moving or stay hidden longer than we were supposed to, we were gonna use the ‘alive’ call first.” He whistles four soft ghost notes against his palm. “Then after that, a second one.”

“What kind of second one?”

Ro demonstrates: three short notes, then one held longer.

Steve listens intently.

“That means stay put,” Ro explains. “It means don’t come looking yet. Don’t move unless you really have to. Wait for the next all-clear.”

Steve thinks it through.

“…and she’ll know it?”

Ro nods instantly. “Yeah. Because she’s the one who taught it.”

That actually settles in Steve’s chest cleaner than he expects.

Not perfect. Not foolproof. But real. Plausible. Something built before he was ever part of the equation, which somehow makes it easier to trust.

“So we hit her with the four-note first,” he says slowly, “then the hold call.”

Ro nods. “Twice. So she knows it wasn’t an accident.”

“And if she answers?”

Ro’s smile comes back. “Then we know she heard.”

Steve leans back a little, impressed despite himself. “That’s… actually really good.”

Ro looks delighted by that praise in a way that makes his whole baby face go bright. “You think so?”

“I know so.” He sits with it one more second, then nods decisively. “Alright. Good. Then that’s what we do.”

The little shadow beams ear to ear.

Steve points at him. “See? This is why I keep you around.”

Ro laughs under his breath. “Because I’m awesome?”

“That too.”

The kid actually puffs up.

Then Steve reaches over and taps the side of the sleeping bag. “So. We hit the snares, see if we got breakfast slash supper slash whatever the hell meal schedule counts out here. We keep moving. We stay on route till we find the best place to send the signal. Then today or tomorrow…” He grins again, all crooked trouble now. “Operation Smooth Criminal.”

Ro immediately whisper-chants, “As he came into the window—”

Steve swings his head his way on reflex. “Was a sound of a crescendo—”

Ro clap-whispers, barely containing himself. “He came into her apartment—”

Steve joins right in. “He left bloodstains on the carpet—”

They’re both grinning like idiots now.

Quietly, because they have to be. But totally in it.

By the time they hit the first Annie, are you okay, Ro is wriggling in place and Steve is doing the little percussive hoo! under his breath so perfectly that Ro nearly falls over laughing.

“Stop,” the boy wheezes.

“You stop.”

“You did it just like him!”

Steve tips his chin with all the arrogance in the world. “Yeah, I know.”

Ro snickers into both hands.

Steve reaches up for the packs still hanging from the branch above them and starts getting them down while Ro keeps muttering, “Annie, are you okay…?” like he physically cannot let it go.

Steve slides the small knapsack strap over Ro’s head, settling it against his back — then shoulders his own pack and gives the boy’s fuzzy hair a quick, absent rub.

“Alright, partner.” He narrows his eyes theatrically. “We doing this?”

Ro mirrors him instantly, chin tipped up, eyes narrowed just as hard and sly. “Hell yeah.”

Steve’s eyes go wide. He slaps a big hand over Ro’s mouth so fast it startles another laugh out of both of them.

“Nope,” he hisses. “Absolutely not. I did not hear that.”

Ro giggles against his palm.

“No children cussed in the making of this program,” Steve informs all of the invisible cameras with a quick suspicious look around the canopy, like he is definitely not already too late by about ten whole seconds. “Boy, what would your mama say…”

Ro is full-on shaking with laughter now.

Then Steve pulls him into a quick, tight bear hug before he can think too hard about why he needs it.

It’s instinctive. Fierce. Automatic.

One second? He’s teasing him. The next, he’s got the kid snugly against his chest, one arm wrapped around his back, the other braced broad and warm over his tiny shoulders. Ro settles into it immediately, still laughing softly at first, then just breathing.

….Steve closes his eyes.

Just for a second.

Because there it is again. That thing he doesn’t know how to name, because all he knows is it hurts and helps at the exact same time. This kind of touch doesn’t rot him from the inside. It doesn’t make his skin crawl. It doesn’t turn him to stone. There is nothing in it except protection and boyhood… and that old, automatic instinct in him that has always reached for the kids first, even before he had words for why.

Dustin. Mike. Lucas. Will. Erica.

Every single one of them goes through him in a rush.

He misses them so bad it feels like grief with razors for claws.

Ro, perceptive little thing that he is, says nothing at all. He just stays there… lets Steve hold him… let’s the quiet sit. After a while he sighs softly, then tilts his chin up against Steve’s chest and asks, gentle as anything…

“What’s your best friend’s name?”

Steve blinks down at him.

“The one you told me about yesterday,” Ro clarifies, eyes on his hero. “The one who used to bring you Ren’s cookies.”

The answer hits quick and deep before it’s even spoken.

Steve’s smile that time is smaller. Sadder. But no less real.

“Robin,” he says.

Then he eases his left wrist between them and shows him the robin tattoo.

Ro looks at it like it’s precious.

“I got this for her,” Steve murmurs.

Ro lifts his eyes back to his face. “Where is she now?”

Steve lets himself sit in that for one full beat.

Lets the ache come. Lets the memory come. Lets Robin’s laugh, all sharp and bright and impossible… flicker through him like light under a door.

Then he looks at Ro.

And the sorrow in his face eases just enough for something warmer to make room beside it. Not gone. Never gone. Just… lit different now.

“Watching over us,” he says.

And that’s the truth.

2 YEARS AGO • Hawkins

“—I’m just saying,” Robin Buckley said from the passenger seat with the kind of righteous conviction usually reserved for war crimes and cafeteria pizza, “that if Cyndi Lauper looked into my eyes and told me girls just wanna have fun, I would believe her over every man in America.”

Steve snorted, one hand loose on the wheel of his BMW, other hand tapping out the beat against the leather. “That’s because every man in America is out to get something or someone these days.”

“Correct.”

“And because,” he added, grinning as he flicked a glance at her, “girls do just wanna have fun.”

Robin turned slowly to stare at him.

Then she squinted.

Then she pointed at him like he’d just confessed to a felony.

“See?” she said. “That. That’s exactly why you like it so much.”

Steve barked a laugh. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means you’re such a closeted little girliepop it’s honestly embarrassing.”

He made a face. “First of all, rude.”

“Second of all?”

“I am not a girliepop.”

Robin let out a single incredulous sound that was basically a cackle getting strangled to death. “Steve. Harrington. You’re a tragically straight white male, who was given too much spice and everything nice when being birthed.”

“Oh. So I’m a Powerpuff Girl.”

“A Powerpuff Girliepop.”

He rolled his eyes and took the next turn easily, tires whispering over damp pavement while late-afternoon Hawkins drifted by outside…all in uneasy little pieces. Boarded shop windows. Utility crews, still patching lines from the last electrical surge. Flyers taped up onto tall telephone poles, warning people to report “unusual atmospheric distortion” and “wildlife exhibiting heightened aggression.” The world had gone to shit, sure — but not fully yet. Not in the way it would later. Right now… it was all still holding itself together with duct tape and denial and whatever money people like the Harringtons had left to throw at normalcy.

Which was exactly why Steve was currently driving his stupidly expensive BMW through town on a Saturday afternoon — arguing with his best friend in the world about Cyndi Lauper.

He kind of loved that for them.

Robin, meanwhile, was far from finished.

“You love it,” she pressed. “You love the song because secretly, deep down, in the glittering pink chamber where your soul should be… you are one of the girls.”

Steve scoffed so hard it was almost artistic. “You’re insane.”

“You know what? No. I take it back.” She shook her head solemnly. “You are worse than one of the girls.”

“Shut up.”

“You are a boob guy who also likes bangers sung by women. Which makes you—”

“A normal red-blooded All-American teenager?”

“A Caucasian tragedy.”

He grinned despite himself… all teeth and dimples and teenage arrogance. The kind of grin that would’ve made half Hawkins High’s female students feel personally chosen. “Listen, Buckley, I can’t help it if I appreciate great art and also boobs.”

Robin gagged theatrically, slumping down deeper in her seat. “You’re such a cliché.”

“And yet,” Steve drawled, smug as hell, “you keep choosing to spend all your free time with me.”

“That’s because my life is bleak and God is punishing me.”

“Psh.” He smirked at the stoplight up ahead. “Kiddin’ me? He saved your ass the second you got partnered up with me in lab freshman year.”

Robin rolled her eyes, but she was lazily grinning at the windshield, because honestly? Yeah. That tracked and she couldn’t deny it.

She dragged her hand down her face, then turned to stare out the windshield again, lips twitching. She’d been living with him and his parents long enough now that this was just… them. No ceremony to it. No weirdness. No walking on eggshells. She’d moved in earlier that year after things at home finally snapped past the point of “manageable” and into something uglier, and the Harringtons — being exactly the kind of rich people who solved things quietly — had simply made space.

Steve had not hesitated for one second.

His parents hadn’t either.

So now? Robin Buckley left half-empty soda cans in his room, stole his fries, wore his sweaters, insulted him with devotion, and occupied the passenger seat of his Beamer like she’d been born there.

It worked.

It really, really worked.

Which was also why Steve knew exactly where to stick the knife next.

He drummed the wheel once more. Casually. Too casually.

“So,” he said, like he was discussing weather patterns, “when are you gonna talk to Vickie?”

Robin made a sound that did not belong to any known species.

Steve’s grin widened immediately. “Well?”

“Nope,” she said at once, shaking her head and putting both hands over her ears. “Nope. No. We are not. We’re not doing this. I reject this topic. I reject this line of questioning. I reject this nation.”

He talked right over her. “I’m serious, Robin!”

“La la la la la—”

“She likes you.”

“She likes everyone.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“She likes mathletes and heteronormativity and thick tampons.”

Steve nearly choked. “What—?”

“She likes normal things, Steve.”

“Okay, wow. First of all, rude to mathletes—second, can we circle back to the tampon comment?”

Robin turned to him with a flushed face and wild eyes. “I am not discussing my giant humiliating crush on a girl who smells like strawberries and writes in those stupid little blue gel pens.”

Steve had to bite the inside of his cheek so as not to grin too hard.

Too late.

Robin caught it instantly and pointed at him again. “Don’t.”

“What?”

“Don’t do that face.”

“What face?”

“That face where you’re about to become disgusting.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “I am not about to become disgusting.”

“You absolutely are.”

He looked at her. Dead serious now…gravely sincere.

“Okay but hear me out.”

Robin recoiled. “Oh God.”

“No, no, listen. At some point you’re gonna have to stop pining from, like, the shadows.”

“I’m not pining from the shadows—”

“You are disgustingly pining.”

She groaned and thunked the back of her head against the seat.

“And then,” Steve went on, full-send now, “once the vibe is right and she’s all googly-eyed and you know it’s happening—”

Robin was already shaking her head. “Don’t do it.”

“—you’re gonna grab her by the face—”

“Dingus—”

“—and then smother your face into her boobies and growl into those tits like a dog.”

Robin let out a shriek so loud Steve almost swerved.

“What the actual hell is wrong with you?” she squawked, kicking at the dash with one sneaker, laughter betraying her. “You perverted fuck!”

Steve was laughing so hard now he had tears in his eyes. “I’m just saying—”

“You’re done saying!”

“Confidence, Robin. Women like confidence.”

“Not whatever sexually deranged werewolf thing that was.”

He wiped under one eye, still grinning. “You don’t know that.”

“Oh I know that.”

“Do you?”

“Yes!”

“You’re just saying that ‘cause it’s me,” he insisted, undeterred. “But if Vickie did that shit to you? I’m willing to bet you’d be into it.”

Robin made a face, helplessly whimpering. “Don’t make me visualize that…”

“SEE?!”

She groaned into her palms like a tragic heroine.

Steve nodded, satisfied. “I rest my case.”

“There is no case,” Robin muffled into her palms.

“There is. It’s just still under investigation.” He jutted his chin at her, taking a left on Cherry Lane. “You’ve never even kissed her. Anything’s possible.”

Robin made another furious little noise and folded both arms over her chest, glaring out the windshield like she hoped the road itself would kill her. “She might not wanna kiss another chickie,” she pouted.

Steve was still smiling when he softened a little.

He loved this girl. Christ, he loved her.

Not in the way that people meant when they got weird about it. Just in the bone-deep, unthinking, ride-or-die way that had happened before either of them seemed to realize that was what it was. Robin knew things about him that nobody else did. She knew what he sounded like when he was trying not to cry. She knew he still slept with one foot out from underneath the blankets because he claimed he’d “burn alive otherwise.” She knew whenever he was bluffing confidence and when it was the real thing, and Steve knew too much about her to ever be casual with it. He knew every flinch, every sarcastic little deflection, every crack in her armor.

So after a beat, he nudged her knee with the back of his hand.

“Hey.”

Robin looked over.

He was still grinning, but softer now.

“You know I’m kidding. Mostly.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Mostly is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.”

“Fair.”

Another beat.

Then Steve added, even more gently, “You don’t gotta tell anybody anything before you’re ready.”

Robin’s face changed in that tiny way his always did when he accidentally hit something real. Not dramatic. Just… genuine.

“I know,” she murmured softly.

“And I’m not gonna rush you.”

“I know.”

“And for the record,” he said, turning his eyes back to the road, “I think she’d be lucky. The luckiest, actually.”

Robin blinked once.

Twice.

Then she blushed down at her lap.

Then immediately ruined the sincerity on purpose.

“Oh my God,” she drawled, hand to chest. “You do have a pink glitter soul.”

He groaned. “Can we not?”

“You are such loverboy.”

“God—I try and be sweet for one second—”

They were still sniping at each other when he turned toward the library.

The building sat there in the grayish afternoon like every other public building in town now…half-familiar, half-fortified. Extra floodlights. Emergency notices taped inside the glass. A sheriff’s department flyer warning the citizens not to remain out past mandatory curfew unless travel was “essential.” The world was changing faster than anyone wanted to admit, but the library steps were still the library steps — and Nancy Wheeler still came down them looking like Steve had gladly lost a private war.

He parked at the curb.

Robin unclicked her seatbelt and slid into the backseat with a look so sly that it deserved arrest. “Alright, loverboy. Showtime.”

Steve didn’t bother answering.

He was already watching the top of the steps.

And then there she was.

Nancy in a cream sweater that made her look prissy in the sort of way she really wasn’t. Pencil skirt. Pale tights. Penny loafers. Hair all down and loose in brunette waves. Books hugged against her chest. Blue eyes scanning the lot before they landed on him… and then she smiled.

That was it.

Gone.

Done.

Steve was out of the car before he even consciously decided to be. From the backseat, Robin stuck her head between the front seats, smugly whispering to herself, “He’s actually pathetic.”

Then Robin lifted her chin, lightly hollering: “pretend there’s romcom music in the background!”

Nancy, halfway down the steps now, heard enough of it to laugh.

Steve met her at the bottom. “There’s the starring lady.”

“Hi,” she beamed, already blushing.

He flashed her a dashing grin. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes…”

She hummed teasingly, sauntering down the steps. “You’re late.”

“I’m three minutes early, Wheeler.”

Nancy pretended to think about it. “Still late.”

He shook his head, grinning like an idiot. “You’re impossible.”

“And yet.”

“And yet,” he echoed.

Then he just scooped her up.

One arm under her knees, one around her back, spinning her clean off the ground while she laughed like a girl in a movie and clutched at his shoulders and books and dignity all at once.

“Steve!”

He spun her anyway.

Set her down.

Kissed her full on the mouth before she could finish pretending to complain about it. And God, she kissed him back — smiling into it while half-laughing, all warmth, sweetness and the sharp little spark that was always underneath. When he pulled away, she was pink-cheeked and bright-eyed and looking at him like he’d hung the moon and maybe polished it too.

He took her books automatically.

“What a gentlemannn,” she murmured flirtatiously.

“I knowww.”

“Self-awareness is so attractive.”

“That’s what I’ve heard.”

She smoothed her hair back, still smiling up at him while they started toward the car. “Did Robin survive the ride over?”

“Barely. She said I have a pink glitter soul.”

Nancy laughed outright. “She’s right.”

“Oh, come on.”

Robin’s head appeared out the back window. “I made sure not to get anyyyy crumbs or germs on your passenger princess seat, Nancy.”

Nancy pressed a hand dramatically to her heart. “Thank you so much... I was deeply concerned.”

“You should be. I have gas today.”

“Meow.”

Steve opened the passenger door for Nancy with a flourish that made Robin gag audibly from the backseat. Of course, Nancy slipped in anyway, all grace and amusement, buckling up while Steve rounded the hood.

By the time he started the car again, Robin was already craning forward to show Nancy some little bag of drugstore treasures.

“I found this black polish—” Robin was saying, rifling through it, “which was originally for Eddie, but then there were sheet masks and then there was this terrifyingly hot pink one that said ‘glow’ and I blacked out.”

Nancy twisted in her seat, instantly interested. “Wait, let me see.”

“And—?!” Robin excitedly bounced, reaching into another bag. “I found those itsy-bitsy bite-sized bath bombs you were telling me about—”

“The cupcake scented ones?!”

“YES!”

Steve glanced over, grinning to himself as Nancy all but unbuckled herself to get a better look. “You two need a minute?” he asked.

Nancy was already leaning over the console toward him, blue eyes wide and playful. “Can I please go sit in the back?”

He stared at her.

Then at Robin.

Then back at her.

“Unbelievable.”

She batted her lashes. “Pleeeease?”

He legit made a great pathetic production of it, sighing like the most put-upon young man alive while she laughed and immediately kissed him again, fast and sweet and full of victory, before scrambling into the backseat with Robin.

He helped her balance as she slipped over the center console, trailing her to the back while refusing to let her remove her lips from his as she got settled.

From the back, Robin dryly muttered, “Sickening.”

“You love us,” Nancy said after peeling away from Steve’s face.

“I tolerate you because God loves a challenge.”

Steve nodded mock solemnly, pecking one last kiss onto Nancy’s lips before he slouched back down in his seat and threw the car in drive. “And to that we say amen.”

The ride to the barber shop became exactly what it always became with the three of them: noise. Layered, lived-in, effortless noise.

Nancy and Robin were now instantly into full girl-talk over the nail polish and sheet masks and whether cucumber-anything had ever actually improved a single person’s skin or lifestyle. Steve participated from the driver’s seat like some unwilling but deeply invested moderator, throwing in commentary from the rearview mirror and grinning at the way his best friend and his best girl got along like they’d been accidentally issued from the same factory.

And something in him — quiet, private and probably embarrassingly sincere — felt full watching it.

It should have been enough.

Maybe it was.

Maybe that was what sixteen was. Enough without asking too hard what that meant. Enough to tell yourself that this was it… look no further, you found it.

They were maybe five minutes out from the local barber shop when the topic changed, abruptly and beautifully, to Eddie’s hair.

“I’m telling you,” Robin said, “he chickened out and just got a trim.”

“No way,” Nancy argued from beside her now, one leg tucked under her. “He got a mohawk.”

Steve barked a laugh. “You are both wrong.”

Robin leaned forward between the seats. “Okay, Oracle. What’d he get?”

He shrugged, cool as ever. “Buzzcut.”

Both girls reacted like he’d confessed to murder.

“Absolutely not,” Nancy gasped at once.

“Not in this lifetime,” Robin agreed.

Steve grinned and took the next turn. “You guys are cowards. I’m telling you, he buzzed it.”

“He would literally rather die,” Robin stated.

“That’s probably blasphemy in his book,” Nancy added.

Steve shrugged again, but he was smiling too much for anyone to trust him. The actual reason he said it had less to do with honesty and more to do with how funny it was making them both.

By the time he pulled up outside the barber shop, they were all still debating it like political analysts.

Then the conversation shifted to Eddie’s birthday.

“Twenty,” Robin said with open delight. “Ancient.”

“Practically dust,” Steve sagely agreed.

Nancy made a face. “You two are so mean.”

“He’s not gonna want kindness,” Robin snickered. “He’s gonna want chaos.”

“He’s gonna get both,” Steve smirked.

“Good.”

“Especially considering he sang the entirety of Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” Steve added, feigning a grimace, “during my last birthday.”

Robin groaned. “He sang the whole song.”

“While intoxicated,” Nancy added, remembering it.

“On Budlight Strawberitas,” Robin snickered.

Steve threw his head back. “Jesus—those damn Budlight Strawberitas…”

They started comparing gifts.

Robin had, yes, bought Eddie black nail polish and eyeliner…plus apparently some extra nonsense for herself (because she had the impulse control of a raccoon in a pharmacy). Nancy had gotten him a new pack of guitar strings and a little notebook because she once caught him scribbling song lyrics on a receipt and decided that was depressing enough to intervene. Steve had found an old cue case for Pool and restored it just enough to look intentional instead of tragic, along with a gift certificate to a nicer men’s clothing store so that they could go find him some fresh wardrobe.

“And then,” Robin said, “after all of that, he is absolutely still going to pretend the haircut was Uncle Wayne’s idea.”

“Wasn’t it?” Nancy asked through chuckles.

Steve snorted. “That man has been trying to get him shorn like a sheep since freshman year. So yeah.”

Robin threw up air quotes. “Twas a ‘birthday haircut.’ Which means, ‘hey kid, time to lose the ‘do before I make you shoo.’ Direct quote.” She crossed her heart. “Scout’s honor.”

“Uh-huh,” Steve deadpanned.

Nancy hummed amusedly, leaning back in her seat. “Honestly, just having a kid-free night to drink some beer, play pool, maybe swim in the actual pool… Perfect birthday.”

Steve smirked warmly. “He knows where to have a good time.”

Robin titled her head. “Anyone else feel kinda guilty not telling the kids?”

That earned a little wince from Steve. “Sorta, yeah.”

But Nancy just puffed a laugh. “It’s one night. They’ll live. Also, they’re all still playing DnD at ours right now.”

“That campaign’s still going?!” Robin reeled.

Steve just sighed, shrugging. “You know how they get. Lost in their own little world of not-so-make-believe anymore.”

Robin’s expression softened. “Yeah,” she quietly agreed, nodding. “Least the game hasn’t lost its sense of whimsy for them, despite everything.”

Nancy nodded down at her lap, twiddling her fingers.

Then she grinned broadly, glancing up at them impishly. “I’m still betting their cult leader got a Mohawk.”

Robin’s head swiveled. “I’m telling you—he pussied out!”

“Eds got a trim,” Steve agreed with a chuckle, unwrapping a Bopper before he passed some back to them. “Unless Wayne tipped off the barber to shave his whole head.”

They were all still laughing when the barber shop door opened.

And then all three of them went dead fucking silent.

Eddie Munson stepped out… looking like somebody’s deeply suspicious idea of a movie star.

The long wild mane was gone.

Not shaved, not buzzed (Jesus, Steve had only been kidding) but cut. Close enough to show the shape of his face, but long enough on top to still look like him, just… cleaned up. Styled, even. Dark hair pushed back, his cheekbones suddenly illegal. He still had on baggy jeans and an old, holey white t-shirt of his that looked one wash away from spiritual collapse, and yet somehow that only made it worse. Like someone had taken in a delinquent and accidentally revealed he had a jawline.

Steve just stared.

In the backseat, Nancy and Robin stared.

Meanwhile, Eddie strolled over towards the Beamer with the self-satisfaction of a man who knew exactly what he’d done. He opened the passenger door, slid in, buckled up, tucked a cigarette between his lips, and said, “Oh shit. I get to be passenger princess today…?”

Nobody answered.

He looked over at Steve.

Then over his shoulder at Nancy.

Then Robin.

All three of them were still gaping.

He blinked. “What?”

Robin exploded first. “What?” she echoed. “The hell do you mean what.”

Nancy was next. “Eddie...”

Steve finally found his voice and it came out weirdly breathless. “Holy shhhit, man.”

Eddie grinned like a complete asshole. “That good, huh?”

“Shut up,” Robin clucked, leaning forward so fast she nearly headbutted the seat. “You look like James Dean if he got electrocuted and survived.”

“Thank you.”

“That was not a compliment.”

“It sure sounded like one.”

Nancy was still openly staring. “I genuinely did not think you’d actually do it.”

“Neither did I,” Steve muttered.

Eddie threw his head back against the seat smugly. “Call it growth.”

Steve narrowed his eyes. “You are absolutely gonna cry later.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You are one hundred percent gonna sob into your birthday cake.”

“Oh my God,” Eddie gasped, turning to him with offended delight. “You guys actually made me a birthday cake?”

Steve made the mistake of glancing over while starting up the car again.

That was all Eddie needed.

He lunged halfway across the console like some overgrown gremlin, aiming an exaggerated kiss at Steve’s face while Steve recoiled in horror, shoving at his shoulder and nearly laughing himself into the steering wheel.

“Ew— no— what the fuck, man!”

“C’monnnnn, birthday boy smooches—pucker up—”

They tussled like grown toddlers.

From the backseat, Robin crowed, “Gaaaaaay!”

Nancy burst into helpless, bright laughter, clutching the front seat.

Steve pointed at Robin without looking at her. “I can’t control who likes me.”

“Yeah, man,” Eddie drawled, still sprawled halfway toward him. “My straight ass would go Brokeback Mountain for this guy immediately.”

Nancy made the most offended delighted sound and leaned forward to wrap both her arms around Steve from behind his seat. “I’m sorry—but I won’t be sharing him.”

Steve grinned and held her wrists to his chest like a smug bastard.

Eddie rolled his eyes so hard it was practically athletic. “Lame.”

Robin was loving every second. Mouth hanging open in glee, conducting the nonsense with both hands. “This is better than television...” Then, because she apparently believed in escalation as a life philosophy, she swiveled back toward Eddie and said, “So tell me, birthday boy, have you yet received any birthday blowjobs from any ladies around town?”

Nancy made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a snort.

Steve’s shoulders were already shaking. “Gahhhhdayum.”

Eddie, to his credit, did not miss a beat.

“Your honor,” he said, sitting up straighter, “I plead the fifth.”

“Oh my God,” Robin wheezed. “That means yes.”

“That means maybe.”

“That means trailer-park Marlboro Barbie.”

Nancy collapsed against the seat laughing. “No!”

“Twice!” Eddie chirped primly.

Robin’s eyes flashed, newly elated. “Did she eat your ass the second time?”

Steve was gone. Fully gone. Bent over the wheel, openly cackling.

Eddie pointed at Robin accusingly. “You are a menace.”

“And you,” she said, prim as church, “are a man of the people.”

He leaned back with a put-upon sigh. “I am trying to be a better person.”

Steve managed, “Bullshit.”

Nancy nodded fervently. “Absolute bullshit.”

Robin held up one finger. “No, no, wait. Let him speak. Maybe this is the year Edward Munson becomes not physically… but emotionally… a virgin for his truest love.”

That landed.

Hard.

Because Eddie, who had weathered smoothly the blowjob interrogation with all the grace of a trench goblin, now went visibly red.

Nancy saw it first.

She gasped.

“No,” she said, turning feral instantly. “Wait. Chrissy?”

Eddie slumped down in his seat. “Oh my God.”

Robin pointed at him in triumph. “Chrissy Cunningham!”

Nancy was practically glowing. “Eddie!”

Steve twisted enough in his seat to look fully at him. “Dude—just ask her out already!”

“She’s with Jason.”

“He’s a shithead,” Steve argued, but he was grinning widely. “She’d dump his ass in two seconds if you asked.”

“They’re gonna get marrieeeeeddd,” Robin trilled, pinching Eddie’s forearm.

He covered half his face with his t-shirt. “You guys are making a whole lot of assumptions...”

“You have been in love with that girl since freshman year,” Steve shot back.

“That is slander.”

“That is a public record.”

Robin clutched her chest. “He wants a golden retriever girlfriend.”

Nancy leaned forward instantly, dreamy and vicious. “He does.”

“I do not.”

“You so do,” she insisted, already lost in the vision. “Oh my God, Eddie—you need a sweet girl.”

“I hook up with nice girls.”

Robin and Steve both made disgusted noises.

“No,” Nancy corrected, “you hook up with girls who smoke through their own heartbreak and wear leather pants over g-strings.”

“That is a valid demographic.”

“You need someone sweet.”

“Someone stable,” Robin added.

“Someone who would make you soup when you’re sick,” Nancy crooned.

Steve joined in at once, because of course he did. “Someone who’d tell you to stop being dramatic and then still tuck you in like a Mama’s boy.”

“Someone who’d kiss your stupid face and make you take care of yourself,” Robin grinned.

Eddie pulled the shirt farther over his mouth. “I hate every single one of you.”

Nancy was still going, because once she latched onto romance as a concept she became impossible. “She’d look soooo pretty in your trailer, wearing your boxers while pregnant.”

Steve lost it again.

Robin had actual tears in her eyes now from laughing.

And Eddie, poor bastard, was now hot red from throat to hairline, trying to act offended and failing because the grin kept breaking through.

“Please spare me public disgrace,” he muttered into his shirt, even though he had stars in his eyes now.”

But Nancy was on a roll, squeezing Steve’s shoulders excitedly, eyes wide. “Can’t you see it?!”

“I can,” Steve laughed, voice cracking. “That’s what freaks me out.”

Robin sighed lackadaisically. “Larry Kline will be thrilled.”

Eddie guffawed. “Larry Kline would have me hanged.”

She just gasped enthusiastically. “The gallows. Excellent choice of wedding venue.”

“Totally on brand,” Steve snickered gleefully.

Nancy squealed. “Can I be the flower girl?!”

Eddie howled exactly once into his shirt then sat up.

“Alright, alright, alright,” he said finally, throwing both hands up. “Jesus Christ —have mercy.” He sat up, cranking the radio up louder with the authority of a man reclaiming narrative. “I’m the birthday boy,” he announced. “I am baby. We do what I say today.”

Everyone immediately started fake-apologizing over each other.

“Sorry, Eddie.”

“Our bad, babe.”

“Forgive us, ancient one.”

He accepted all of it with grave dignity while the radio host yammered over the intro track, bright as brass, “—and now, Michael Jackson’s newest hit, Smooth Criminal—”

Eddie’s whole body lit up.

“Oh, hell yes.”

Steve let out a bark of laughter. “That is such bullshit. You’ve been listening to this for two weeks straight.”

Robin leaned forward, scandalized. “Your Walkman should be dead.”

Eddie ignored them both and was already nodding along as he hit that iconic OW! right in time with Michael Jackson, while Steve began tapping the wheel to the beat.

From the backseat, Nancy now tucked herself into the middle… and watched all three of them with a smile so vibrant and fond it probably should’ve come with its own soundtrack.

And then the opening hit.

Robin lifted both hands and started conducting instantly. “Give it to me, boys —with feeling.”

Eddie turned in his seat, locked eyes with Steve — and started mouthing the whole first verse with such absurd commitment that Steve cracked before the second line, chiming right in.

🎶 As he came into the window…

🎶 …was the sound of a crescendo.

They were in it.

Gone.

Just two idiot teenage boys singing Michael Jackson at each other inside a BMW while the world outside kept pretending it wasn’t fraying at the seams. They looked strangely sexy doing it… despite how unabashedly over-the-top it was.

🎶 She ran underneath the table…

🎶 He could see she was unable…

Steve drummed the wheel while Eddie pounded the dash, serenading each other while Robin conducted like she was leading the Philharmonic. Nancy laughed once, falling harder for Steve as she watched them… then she gave up and joined in too.

🎶 So she ran into the bedroom…

🎶 She was struck down, it was her doom.

By the time they hit —

🎶 Annie, are you okay? 🎶

— Eddie was in full blown performance mode, pointing at invisible cameras and enunciating every word like his life depended on it with his feet up on the dash while Steve was shimmying and singing at the same time, shoulders all loose, iconic hair falling in his eyes, voice louder now.

🎼 Are you okay, Annie?!

🎼 ANNIE, ARE YOU OKAY?

🎼 WILL YA TELL US? THAT YOU’RE OKAY?

Robin, delighted beyond reason, swung her hands at both of them in time as the signature percussion banged! between the lyrics.

Nancy finally gave in completely and sang with them, bright and beaming in the backseat like the happiest girl in Hawkins.

And then it swelled…

You’ve been hit by—BANG BANG!

All four of them together now.

You’ve been struck by—BANG!

The car was alive with it… Steve grinning over the wheel, Eddie slapping the dash, Robin conducting them like God had personally appointed her, Nancy leaning in between the seats while singing with all her heart.

A smooth criminal.

And for one sharp, stupid, golden minute, they were just kids again.

END OF CHAPTER [hope ur sobbing too, bc i am.]

⚕️

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