seen from Japan
seen from United States
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seen from Malaysia
seen from Türkiye
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Spain
seen from United States
seen from United States
concept of a full stranger things rewrite but will goes to the backrooms instead of the upside down and by the very end of the series, theyve figured out that the backrooms are a sentient being in itself and they have to defeat it by all remembering who they truly are and its all a metaphor for will's childhood trauma with his dad:
going to gaslight myself into believing this is canon because what do you mean this is what we could've had but didn't 😭💙💛
("Signals" Byler Signal Tower by aka cricket)
the thing we grow into - rewrite series masterlist
steve harrington x fem!reader
status: COMPLETED
summary: you have been jonathan byers’ closest friend since childhood, making the byers family feel like your own. when will disappears, you are pulled into the growing mystery surrounding hawkins, determined to help find him no matter the cost. The last person you expect to rely on is steve harrington — the same boy you've spent years resenting for how he treated jonathan. but as the dangers facing hawkins grow and loyalties begin to shift, hatred slowly gives way to understanding, and something far more complicated begins to form between them.
warnings: slow slow slow burn, 'strangers' to enemies to lovers, potential smut much further down the track, cursing, average stranger things violence, angst (will add more warnings when necessary)
note: I have been reading @snoopyracing and @angelicblondie 's series that follow along with the entire stranger things plot lines and have become OBSESSED with their work, to the point where I would like to give it a go myself. so I am rewriting a reader insert into the entirety of stranger things plot! big shout out to both of them and everyone who has done this. I hope I do it justice and you all enjoy <3 and message me if you’d like to be added to the taglist
AO3 link
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season one:
chapter one: the vanishing of will byers
chapter two: the weirdo on maple street
chapter three: holly, jolly
chapter four: the body
chapter five: the flea and the acrobat
chapter six: the monster
chapter seven: the bathtub
chapter eight: the upside down
season two:
chapter one: madmax
chapter two: trick or treat, freak
chapter three: the pollywog
chapter four: will the wise
chapter five: dig dug
chapter six: the spy
chapter seven: the lost sister
chapter eight: the mind flayer (part one)
chapter eight: the mind flayer (part two)
chapter nine: the gate
season three:
chapter one: suzie, do you copy?
chapter two: the mall rats
chapter three: the case of the missing lifeguard
chapter four: the sauna test
chapter five: the flayed
chapter six: e pluribus unum
chapter seven: the bite
chapter eight: the battle of starcourt
chapter nine: the epilogue
season four:
chapter one: the hellfire club
chapter two: vecna's curse
chapter three: the monster and the superhero
chapter four: dear billy
chapter five: the nina project
chapter six: the dive
chapter seven: the massacre at hawkins lab
chapter eight: papa
chapter nine: the piggyback
chapter ten: the epilogue
season five:
chapter zero: the prologue
chapter one: the crawl
chapter two: the vanishing of holly wheeler
chapter three: the turnbow trap
chapter four: the sorcerer
chapter five: shock jock
chapter six: escape from camazotz
chapter seven: the bridge
chapter eight: the rightside up
chapter nine: the final epilogue
Welcome to Hell masterlist
a steve harrington x fem!hopper!reader stranger things rewrite - season 1 - 5
synopsis: y/n hopper has had a rough life, the loss of her sister, a dead beat mother and now an alcoholic father. when william byers goes missing and her and the kids she babysits start to uncover things her life finds meaning; friends, love and family.
warnings!: slow burner, enemies to lovers, ex’s to lovers, grief, death, violence, gore, smut, near death experiences, alcohol, smoking, reader is hopper’s daughter but there is no mention of being biologically related so she could be adopted, suicidal thoughts… more to be added.
particular warnings will be at the start of each chapter!
authors note: i hope you all enjoy this, ive planned a lot of it and am very excited! this is a slow burner, so you’ll have to wait awhile for anything real to happen but i think it’ll be worth the wait :)
if you want to be added to the tag list please comment on the most recently posted chapter, it just makes it easier for me to find!
———
SEASON ONE.
chapter one - the vanishing of will byers
summary: you bump into your irritating ex boyfriend and his clan of idiots, finds out will byers is missing, babysit dustin who ends up being the bane of your existence and find a little girl in the woods. overall, a casual day for you.
chapter two - the weirdo on maple street
summary: you watch your ex flirt with nancy wheeler, find out something very interesting about the little girl from the woods and have an uncomfortable dinner with the wheeler’s and the kids. your ex boyfriend calls you and you can’t help but have a conversation with him.
chapter three - holly, jolly
summary: you find out about steve and nancy having sex with ends in a blowout between you and him, but when your dad comes home with news on will none of that seems important.
chapter four - the body
summary: the kids have news on will, you bond with el, mike asks too many personal questions and you find out someone else has gone missing. you and steve have a heart to heart but it leaves you feeling even worse.
chapter five - the flea and the acrobat
summary: will’s funeral commences but the kids tell you he’s still alive, you just can’t get to him yet. you have a conversation with your old science teacher and dustin notices something’s wrong with the compasses. a fight breaks out between mike and lucas and you lose el. steve drops you home and is the kindest he’s been in months, your mom calls leaving you in despair.
chapter six - the monster
summary: you and the boys visit lucas, but he’s not up for joining you in the hunt for el. steve has some nasty things to say to jonathon and you’re not impressed. in better news, you find el safe and uninjured. now you just have to find will.
chapter seven - the bathtub
summary: lucas warns you about the ‘bad men’ and all of you meet up, el throws a van with her mind and the kids finally make up. your dad shows up saves you and all of you are finally reunited. el can find will in the bathtub so you head to the school and set up; giving her an option to leave. you find out will is alive and joyce and your dad take off to find him. nancy, you and jonathon have a plan of your own.
chapter eight - the upside down
summary: after setting up and waiting for the demogorgon, steve decides to turn up. after the fight, you head to the hospital and get to see will; but find out el didn’t make it. steve and you talk and you decide to think with your head rather than your heart.
IN BETWEEN.
the return
summary: hopper has a surprise for you hidden in his cabin and you’re thrilled with what it is. your life just got a whole lot more complicated.
movie blues
summary: you and steve bump into one another and try to be ‘friends’, you come to the conclusion that you’re not sure you can be his friend.
SEASON TWO.
chapter nine - mad max
summary: you meet the new kid, billy hargrove, avoid steve like your life depends on it and get invited to tina’s ‘halloween bash’.
chapter ten - trick or treat, freak
summary: you go tina’s ‘halloween bash’ and make some drunken mistakes, you and steve are back to not getting along and your dad for the first time ever acts soft after you’ve annoyed him.
chapter eleven - the pollywog
summary: you’re too hungover to deal with el and hopper’s arguing and gym class. you have an altercation with billy and learn just how awfully he takes rejection and then you bump into a very worried joyce byers.
chapter twelve - will the wise
summary: will’s having the worst time of his life, you stick around with joyce to take care of him. he draws what he’s seeing and your dad decides to take off on his own when he discovers what the drawings are; typical men.
chapter thirteen - dig dug
summary: will tells you some worrying news about your dad and you decide to go out and look for him on your own, but that ends up with you bumping into steve and dustin and being dragged into dustin’s problem.
chapter fourteen - the spy
summary: you, dustin and steve have to go out and look for dart and he decides to give dustin some relationship advice. you’re joined by max and lucas and steve decides to use himself as bait to catch dart; it doesn’t go to plan.
chapter fifteen - the mind flayer
summary: you, steve and the kids bump into nancy and jonathon and end up finding everyone else; including your alive dad. someone didn’t make it. back at the byers’ house, steve cleans up your wound and you have some realisations. the lot of you work out a way to communicate with will and there’s a special visitor.
chapter sixteen - the gate
more to be added
𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞
╰┈➤ˎˊ˗ 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮, 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐞 (𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝)
(pregnancy series 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵➶︎) (navigation)
You spend twenty minutes trying to convince yourself the test is wrong.
Steve spends about thirty seconds convincing you this might be the happiest he’s ever been.
tags: steve harrington x reader, established relationship, accidental pregnancy, dad!steve harrington, soft steve harrington, men crying turns me on, hurt/comfort..?, domestic fluff, post vecna trauma, steve harrington cries first because obviously he does, reader spiraling, steve immediately ready to devote his entire life to this baby, fear of loss, fear of happiness, they love each other so bad it’s embarrassing, “what if he’s upset” meanwhile steve is actively crying from happiness, reader cries over leftovers because hormones are evil, steve would buy her the entire restaurant actually, heavy on the feelings!
warnings: unplanned pregnancy, pregnancy test, nausea/morning sickness, vomiting, crying, anxiety/panic, references to hospitals/monsters/upside down trauma, language (lmk if i missed anything)
from jules- i fully believe steve harrington would start crying within thirty seconds of finding out he’s going to be a dad and nobody will ever convince me otherwise. this is basically just steve loving you so much he short-circuits about it repeatedly lol anyways first chapter yay
cases that never sat right with me: the lo mein incident of 1989 😟
wc: 6.4k
For almost a week, Steve convinces himself you’re probably just getting sick.
The exhaustion is the first thing he notices, mostly because you’ve always been terrible at admitting when you’re tired. You’ve always been the kind of person who insists you’re “not tired” right up until the exact moment you fall asleep on top of him, but lately it’s different. Lately you’ve been drifting off everywhere.
Halfway through movies with your face tucked into his shoulder while he absently plays with your hair, your breathing starts evening out before the opening credits are even over. Normally you’d still be arguing with him by then about his objectively terrible taste in horror movies, mocking the fact that someone who worked at Family Video somehow still thinks bad slasher films qualify as “cinema.”
Instead, you stay curled sideways against him with one of his sweatshirts bunched beneath your cheek while the television murmurs quietly in the background, Steve’s hand resting loosely around your ankle like he keeps expecting you to wake up and complain about the movie eventually.
Except you don’t.
And it definitely doesn’t end there.
Once, he finds you asleep at the kitchen table with your head resting against folded arms beside a cup of coffee that’s gone cold enough for condensation to collect around the bottom. Another night, he walks into the bedroom to find you sitting upright against the headboard with your glasses still on and an open book sliding dangerously close to falling off your lap.
“You know normal people usually sleep lying down, right?” Steve asks quietly, trying not to laugh as he slides the book onto the nightstand and nudges your glasses up before they fall crooked off your face.
You blink sleepily up at him while his thumb brushes lightly beneath your eye.
“That feels judgmental,” you mumble before immediately falling back asleep again.
Steve just shakes his head softly to himself, tugging the blankets higher over you before climbing into bed beside you a few minutes later, the same automatic way he always does after nightmares neither of you talks about anymore.
Normally, you’d stay awake long enough to complain about him stealing all the blankets while actively cocooning yourself in them five minutes later, or putting cold feet on him on purpose. Instead, the second his arm settles around your waist, you melt against his chest with a quiet sigh, already half asleep again before he even finishes telling you goodnight.
Steve notices that too, even if he can’t explain why it leaves him lying awake a little longer afterward.
Then there was the cologne.
Not even the strong one that burns your nose. Just the stupid, expensive cologne Steve only wears when he’s trying to impress people at work or Robin starts bullying him for “smelling like a rich teenage boy.”
Usually, you love it. The scent clings to half the clothes hanging in your closet, warm and familiar enough that most of your closet smells more like Steve than it does you now.
But one morning, he leans down to kiss your cheek while you’re standing in the kitchen, and the second the smell hits you, your stomach twists so violently it makes you jerk back on instinct.
Steve pulls back slightly, his hand still resting loosely against your waist as confusion flickers across his face. “What?”
“Nothing,” you say too fast, pressing your hand lightly against your mouth as another sharp wave of nausea rolls through you. “Just—give me a second.”
Concern settles into his expression almost instantly after that, replacing the sleepy amusement he’d been wearing seconds earlier. He watches you turn toward the sink and take a slow breath through your mouth like you’re trying very hard not to be sick right there in the kitchen.
“Hey,” he says more carefully now, brows pulling together as he steps closer again. “Are you okay?”
Before you can answer, another wave of nausea crashes into you hard enough to make your stomach lurch painfully. Your hand clamps tighter over your mouth as you turn abruptly away from him.
“Oh—shit.”
Steve barely has time to step aside before you’re hurrying down the hall toward the bathroom, your shoulder clipping the wall hard enough to rattle a picture frame on your way past, nearly tripping over the stupid, loose floorboard by the bathroom Robin keeps saying one of you is eventually going to die on.
“Baby?” he calls, his voice sharpening with concern as you disappear down the hallway.
You don’t answer before collapsing to your knees in front of the toilet, the cold tile digging painfully into your skin as your stomach finally gives up on you completely. Steve is beside you within seconds, one hand already gathering your hair back from your face while the other rubs instinctively between your shoulder blades with the kind of familiarity that only comes from years of loving someone through every ugly human moment imaginable — panic attacks, food poisoning, nightmares, and one memorably horrific stomach bug the kids still dramatically refers to as “the exorcist incident.”
By Thursday night, he’s almost convinced you’re coming down with the flu.
So when he finds the leftovers shoved in the back of the fridge later that night, he doesn’t think twice about eating them.
It’s not like you’ve been eating anything other than pickle flavored chips and the occasional glass of orange juice that accompanies it.
The apartment smells faintly like rain drifting through the cracked kitchen window mixed with garlic and soy sauce from the takeout carton balanced loosely in Steve’s hand. The tiny television near the living room hums softly in the background while pale blue light flickers across the dark apartment, Steve flipping lazily through channels with the remote between bites.
One of Dustin’s science magazines still sits crooked on the coffee table despite the fact you called him twice to come get it before Steve started using it as a coaster.
He’s barefoot, dressed in gray sweatpants and an old Hawkins High swim team shirt so worn thin the collar hangs crooked against one shoulder. Every few bites, his eyes drift automatically toward the hallway, attention catching on the muffled sound of the shower still running. Steve’s always hovered a little whenever you’re sick, the same instinct that once had him sleeping curled awkwardly into a plastic hospital chair for three nights after the upside-down vines left half your nervous system “temporarily inflamed,” according to the doctors neither of you ever really learned how to trust again.
The digital clock on the microwave glows 1:07 in soft green numbers, later than either of you should still be awake, honestly.
By the time the water shuts off down the hallway, Steve’s already scraped the last bite from the bottom of the first container without thinking much about it.
Steve tosses the empty container beside the sink and wipes his thumb absently against his sweatpants after licking sauce from it, already reaching for the second carton when the sink shuts off down the hall. A few minutes later, the bathroom door opens, warm yellow light briefly stretching across the apartment floor before disappearing again.
You wander into the kitchen still wrapped in steam from the shower, one of Steve’s old basketball shirts hanging loose around your thighs, the faded Hawkins High logo nearly worn away after years of being stolen back and forth between the two of you. Damp hair clings cold against the back of your neck while you rub sleepily at one eye, still looking soft with exhaustion and leftover heat from the shower.
“Baby, oh my god, that smells so good,” you mumble automatically as you drift farther into the kitchen. “I was literally thinking about my lo mein in the shower—”
The words catch halfway out of your mouth.
Your eyes land on the empty takeout container sitting beside Steve on the counter before flicking toward the second carton still balanced loosely in his hand.
You go completely still for a second, staring at it while cold water trails slowly from the ends of your hair down your legs. The television continues murmuring softly in the background, absurdly normal against the awful sinking feeling beginning to spread through your chest.
Steve’s still halfway through another bite when he finally looks up and assesses your face properly.
He also then goes still.
The fork lowers slowly while his expression shifts from distracted confusion into growing concern with each pressing second, his eyes moving quickly between you and the takeout containers as he tries to piece together what exactly he did wrong.
“Baby,” Steve says cautiously, already sounding like he can tell he’s in trouble even if he has absolutely no idea in reality.
“Did you finish… both of them?” you ask softly, your voice trembling enough now that Steve’s eyes widen slightly.
He glances down at the takeout container in his hand like he’s still trying to figure out what exactly the problem is before looking back up at you again. “Uh… yeah?”
For a second, neither of you say anything.
Your eyes burn almost immediately, and you can’t stop the tears from welling up.
The reaction hits so fast it genuinely catches you off guard, a sharp rush of emotion swelling hard in your chest while you stare at the empty takeout containers like Steve personally betrayed you and them.
It’s ridiculous.
You know it is.
They’re leftovers. Leftovers should not feel devastating enough to cry over, and yet your vision blurs anyway before you can stop it, your face crumpling hard enough that Steve straightens almost instantly across from you.
A helpless little sound catches in your throat as your lip trembles, your eyes flicking between Steve and the empty takeout containers again like you genuinely can’t believe this is happening and the perpetrator being your own boyfriend.
Steve straightens so fast the barstool legs screech across the kitchen tile, the fork clattering from his hand as the confusion flashes abruptly into panic across his face.
“Wait— baby, I didn’t know—”
“It’s only the two of us in the house,” you choke out, your voice cracking embarrassingly hard halfway through the sentence as tears spill helplessly down your cheeks. “How did you not know they were mine? I assumed i didn’t need to write my name considering you didn’t order lo mein in the first place! And why would you eat both?”
The second the words leave your mouth, mortification crashes over you almost as hard as the tears which are only falling faster now.
Because now you sound insane on top of everything else.
Steve just stares at you for a second, looking completely thrown, like he genuinely cannot fathom how this situation escalated into you sobbing in the middle of the kitchen over leftover lo mein.
“I didn’t know,” he says quickly, the words tripping over each other as he pushes away from the counter. “Baby, I swear to god, if I knew they were yours, I wouldn’t’ve touched them. I thought they were old or something, I don’t know, I just— wasn’t thinking.”
Another strangled sob slips out of you before you can stop it.
The sound wipes what little composure Steve still had clean off his face.
“Oh my god, no, no—” he says immediately, already crossing the kitchen in two quick steps. One hand settles instinctively against your damp waist while the other cups your cheek, his thumb swiping clumsily beneath your eye like he can somehow stop the tears faster than they’re falling. “C’mere, baby.”
A miserable sound slips out of you somewhere between a sob and an embarrassed laugh, and Steve’s expression somehow manages to panic even harder.
“Why are you crying harder?” he asks helplessly, both hands now tightening instinctively at your waist like he’s trying to physically hold the situation together. He looks genuinely devastated that he’s somehow making this worse instead of better. “Baby, I’ll go get you more right now, okay? I’ll buy six containers. I’ll buy the whole restaurant if I have to.”
You only end up crying harder at how desperate he is to make you feel better, which seems to completely short-circuit the last of Steve’s remaining common sense.
Twenty minutes later, he comes back through the apartment door carrying three containers of lo mein in a wrinkled takeout bag, hair messy from the wind and looking slightly out of breath like he absolutely broke several traffic laws getting there and back.
But you already fell asleep on the couch.
By the time your period is four days late, the possibility has been sitting quietly in the back of your mind long enough that it’s becoming impossible to ignore completely.
You still don’t actually think you’re pregnant.
Not really.
Even if you and Steve have never exactly been careful in the way normal responsible adults probably should be.
Mostly, you convince yourself your body’s just being weird. Stress. Exhaustion. Too many sleepless nights and not enough real food lately. But the possibility lingers anyway, quiet and stubborn enough that on your way home from work one evening, you catch yourself pulling into the pharmacy parking lot before you’ve fully decided you’re actually going inside.
The whole thing feels strangely embarrassing considering you literally live with your boyfriend and split grocery lists.
You spend way too long pretending to look at other things first, wandering slowly through aisles you don’t care about while your pulse beats a little too hard beneath your ribs. By the time you finally drift toward the pregnancy tests, your arms are folded tightly across your chest like that somehow disguises what aisle you’re standing in.
The fluorescent lights overhead buzz obnoxiously while you stare at shelves lined with bright pink and blue boxes screaming things like early detection and results in minutes.
You stand there for another full minute pretending to compare brands even though your eyes have long since stopped focusing on anything except the same handful of repeating words.
Early detection.
Results in minutes.
Pregnant.
Your gaze keeps snagging helplessly on that last one, over and over again, like maybe eventually it’ll stop sounding quite so life-altering.
Eventually, you grab three boxes at random and shove them into your basket before you can talk yourself out of it completely.
By the time you finally make it to the register, the boxes feel impossibly conspicuous sitting in your basket no matter how casually you try to stand there. You avoid looking directly at the cashier through the entire transaction, irrationally convinced she’s about two seconds away from grabbing the intercom and announcing your reproductive situation to the entire store.
You don’t realize how tightly you’ve been gripping the pharmacy bag until you finally loosen your hold on it in the parking lot and see the faint red marks pressed into your palm afterward.
Steve’s already home by the time you step into the apartment, standing at the stove with the sleeves of his sweatshirt shoved messily up to his elbows while something crackles loudly in a pan. The apartment smells like garlic, butter, and whatever overly ambitious dinner he apparently decided to attempt tonight, quiet music drifting from the little radio near the sink.
He looks up the second he hears your keys hit the counter near the door.
Something in his expression immediately softens when he sees you, the distracted focus he’d been wearing moments earlier melting away almost instantly.
“There’s my girl,” he says in that warm, familiar tone that still somehow invokes a soft rosy hue to your cheeks after all these years. He abandons the spatula long enough to walk over and press a quick kiss to your forehead, both hands settling briefly against your waist before he leans back enough to get a better look at you.
He frowns, his eyes flickering over your face.
“Jesus, sweetheart,” he murmurs softly, his brows furrowing in concern. “You look exhausted.” He pulls you close, cradling you in his arms, and kisses your temple before releasing you to glance back at your face.
“Yeah… something like that,” you mutter quietly while biting the inside of your cheek.
You’ve never kept anything from Steve, especially something as enormous as this. You can practically taste the confession on your tongue.
“What’d you buy?” Steve asks, tone light and easy like he’s trying not to push too hard now that he’s clearly noticed something’s off. He turns back toward the stove a second later to stir whatever’s sizzling in the pan.
Your fingers tighten instinctively around the pharmacy bag, the plastic crinkling loudly in the quiet apartment.
You lift the bag slightly without slowing down, trying very hard to look more relaxed than you feel as you continue drifting backward toward the hallway before he can get too good a look through the thin plastic.
“Nothing exciting. I just—” Your try to clear your throat nonchalantly. “I just really have to pee, so don’t make fun of me if I run.”
Steve glances back over his shoulder from the stove, clearly caught off guard from the random comment before a quiet laugh slips out of him.
“Wasn’t really on my list of things to mock you for tonight, honey.”
“Yup,” you nod quickly, the word coming out with an aggressively emphasized pop of the P that only makes Steve look more confused.
Steve shakes his head to himself with another quiet laugh as you disappear down the hallway, though you can still feel his eyes following you right up until the bathroom door clicks shut behind you.
The bathroom almost feels silent compared to the thoughts ricocheting throughout your mind.
For a second, you just stand there staring at yourself in the mirror while your pulse beats unevenly against your throat. The pharmacy bag hangs awkwardly from your wrist, crinkling softly when your grip loosens a single centimeter.
This is seriously getting ridiculous.
Your period is barely late. Plenty of people are late sometimes. Stress does weird things to your body.
Robin was literally a week late once and made Steve drive her to the emergency room at two in the morning because she convinced herself she had a “vaginal blockage.”
She did not have a vaginal blockage.
Turns out she was just severely stressed and apparently hadn’t consumed a vitamin in six months.
Still, your hands aren’t completely steady when you pull one of the boxes from the bag.
A few minutes later, you’re sitting on the closed toilet lid with the test resting across your palm while your knee bounces restlessly beneath the fluorescent bathroom lights. The other two tests sit face down on the counter while the fan hums softly overhead, loud enough now that it almost makes the entire room feel unsettlingly detached from the rest of the apartment.
At first, you genuinely think you’re seeing it wrong.
You just sit there staring at the tiny result window while Steve moves around the kitchen somewhere down the hall, cabinet doors opening and shutting beneath the quiet crackle of something still cooking on the stove. The bathroom fan only becomes louder overhead, loud enough now that it almost drowns out the sound of your heart slamming against your ribcage.
For one suspended second, you keep waiting for the second line to disappear now that you’re looking at it properly.
It doesn’t.
Instead, when you tilt the test slightly beneath the harsh bathroom light, the second pink line only becomes clearer.
Darker.
Unmistakable.
Immediately, your gaze snaps toward the two other positive tests now faced up and instructions spread open across the counter before dropping back to the test in your hand again like maybe you somehow misunderstood what two lines meant in the last thirty seconds.
Positive.
Positive.
Positive.
Your gaze drops back to the test still shaking faintly in your hand.
It says the same thing.
The harsh bathroom light suddenly feels too bright, every sound in the room collapsing inward beneath the violent pounding of your pulse while your vision starts blurring around the edges.
Positive.
The word smears slightly beneath the sudden sting of tears.
Your knees go strangely weak beneath you, sudden and disorienting enough that you finally understand how people faint over things like this.
“Oh fuck,” you whimper instinctively, the sound barely making it out of your throat even though the lines are already dark enough that there’s no possible way you’re reading them wrong.
Your gaze locks helplessly onto the three photos framed on the opposing wall. You and Steve at Scoops Ahoy. A Polaroid of you and Steve on a double date with Robin and Vickie. All the kids the summer before the Byers moved to California.
Your breathing starts turning uneven all at once, panic curling hard through your veins now that there’s no real room left for denial anymore.
Because this can’t actually be happening—
There has to be some logical explanation for this, right? Maybe it’s defective?
Except the second line is still there when you blink a few times and look down again.
The realization finally crashes hard enough that the tears only spill faster down your cheeks before you even fully register your crying. One hand flies up over your mouth as a broken sob leaves your chest, your shoulders curling inward while the plastic test trembles helplessly in your grip.
You’re pregnant.
The thought feels too enormous to properly hold onto, too life-changing to settle cleanly into your head all at once. You keep staring at the second line like maybe if you blink enough times it’ll quietly disappear and everything will slide back into place before this moment ever happened.
But it doesn’t.
The line stays there.
If anything, it only looks darker now beneath the obnoxious bathroom light while tears continue blurring your vision.
And suddenly the room feels too small for the amount of emotion crashing through you all at once. Fear. Shock. Panic. Something dreadful buried painfully beneath all of it that you can’t even bring yourself to look at yet.
Another sob catches painfully in your throat.
There’s a baby inside you right now.
And almost immediately, your mind reaches for every terrible thing that could possibly happen.
Because nothing remotely good ever happens in Hawkins.
How are you supposed to bring a life into a world that’s spent years taking it all of it away from you?
Another shaky sob catches painfully in your throat as you start to hyperventilate in between gasps. You bend farther forward on the toilet lid, one hand pressing hard against your constricting chest while tears blur your vision badly enough that the test becomes a blob of pink and white. The bathroom suddenly feels too hot, too bright, your pulse pounding so hard it makes your entire body feel unsteady.
And then, completely against your will, you hear Steve’s voice in the back of your mind from that day in the stolen RV years ago.
All sunburned skin and tired eyes and quiet honesty while he laughed softly about wanting “six little nuggets” someday like it was the most natural thing in the world to admit out loud. Even amidst the persistent threat of Vecna and loss looming over everybody in that RV.
But, despite it all, Steve was still planning a future with you while knowing there was absolutely no guarantee whatsoever.
Things definitely weren’t simpler then, but they were easier to swallow. Max wasn’t in a coma, Eddie was alive, El was alive.
The memory hits hard enough to crack something open inside you completely.
What if he’s upset? What if he doesn’t want that with you anymore? What if he—
Outside the bathroom, the crackling sound from the stove suddenly stops.
Steve’s humming cuts off with it because after all these years he knows the difference between your grieving crying, your exhausted crying, your post-nightmare crying, and the kind that still sends immediate panic through him before he’s even fully thinking yet.
“Baby?” he calls a second later, concern already creeping into his voice.
You briefly consider throwing the pregnancy test directly out the bathroom window and pretending none of this ever happened.
You squeeze your eyes shut hard, trying desperately to pull yourself together before Steve sees how badly you’re crying, but the second you drag in another breath it breaks apart into another helpless sob anyway.
Outside the bathroom, the apartment goes suddenly quiet.
The low hum of the stove fan cuts off. The music near the sink disappears with it. You didn’t even register Steve making his way down the hallways until his voice was closer.
“Hey,” Steve says softly from the other side of the door, confusion and concern tangled together beneath the gentle knock that follows a second later. “What’s wrong, lover?”
Another sob escapes before you can stop it, shaky enough to completely give you away.
You hear Steve exhale quietly through the door.
The sound somehow makes your panic rise.
You know your only feeding into his anxiety and a part of you almost feels guilty.
There’s only a brief second of silence before the handle rattles gently.
“Sweetheart? Why is the door locked—are you okay?” Steve says carefully, his voice softer now, edged tight with worry in a way that makes it painfully obvious he’s already imagining the worst. “I’m coming in, okay?”
You try to answer him, but another shaky breath catches painfully in the back of your throat and collapses into a sob before any actual words can make it out. All you manage is the smallest nod before remembering a second too late that he can’t even see you through the door.
Your hand flies up instinctively to wipe hard beneath your eyes anyway, desperately trying to pull yourself together before Steve walks in and sees the pregnancy test still trembling in your hand.
After a few seconds, the bathroom door swings open, and the handle hits the wall.
Steve steps inside quickly, tossing the bobby pin he used to open the locked door somewhere on the counter—concern already written all over his face, sweatshirt sleeves still shoved messily up his forearms from cooking dinner. The faint smell of garlic and something slightly burned follows him into the room.
His eyes land on you curled forward on the toilet lid, one hand clamped shakily over your mouth while sobs break unevenly through your chest.
Whatever remaining calm he walked in with disappears on the spot.
“Whoa— hey, hey,” he says quickly, shutting the door behind him before crossing the tiny bathroom so fast he nearly slips on the bath mat. “Baby, what happened?”
He drops down in front of you so fast his knees slam hard against the tile, but he barely reacts to the impact. Both hands reach for you instinctively, one settling warm against your thigh while the other carefully cups around your cheek as he tries to guide you upright enough to properly look at him.
“Hey,” he says again, softer now. His fingers tremble slightly while he brushes damp strands of hair back away from your face. “Talk to me, sweetheart. Are you hurt? Did you have another flashback? What happened?”
You shake your head hard, but another sob slips out before you can force a word out.
Steve’s breath hitched, a sharp catch in his throat, before he forced it down with a swallow.
His hands keep moving restlessly between your face, your arms, your shoulders like if he checks carefully enough he’ll finally figure out what’s hurting you and how to fix it.
“Fuck baby, you’re scaring me,” he blurts out, his voice cracking around the words while his gaze flicks frantically over you again like he’s expecting to suddenly find some injury he somehow missed.
His voice cuts off mid-sentence as his gaze finally lands on the test still shaking faintly in your hand.
Confusion flickers briefly across his face at first before turning into something unreadable.
Then he goes completely still.
For one suspended second, he just stares at it without reacting, still breathing slightly hard from hurrying down the hallway while the bathroom fan hums along with your unsteady whimpers.
And then you watch the realization hit him.
The panic slowly drains from his expression, replaced by something else entirely—something stunned and so openly hopeful it almost hurts to look at.
He keeps staring at the test for another second like he’s afraid blinking might somehow change what he’s seeing.
Then his eyes finally lift back to yours, wide and helpless and already shining slightly around the edges.
"Oh," he exhales softly, his shoulders easing as the tension drains from his body.
And somehow that quiet little sound is what finally destroys the last of your composure completely.
A painful sob breaks hard out of your chest as your fingers tighten around the piece of stupid plastic, tears slipping helplessly down your cheeks while panic burns hot beneath your skin now that he’s finally seen it too.
“I’m so sorry,” you blurt out suddenly, the apology falling out through pathetic attempts at breathing before you can stop it. “I’m so sorry.”
Steve’s demeanor immediately crumples into confused concern, his brows pulling together hard enough that it almost makes you cry harder.
“Things were finally starting to feel normal again,” you choke out shakily which only cracks into a sob.
The second you say it out loud, you realize how stupid it sounds. Nothing about your lives has ever really been normal. Not after funerals and hospitals and inner dimensional monsters. Not after spending years learning how quickly normal could be taken from you.
For a second, Steve just stares at you—mouth agape—genuinely unable to process the words that just came out of your mouth.
Then his eyes turns almost unbearably gentle.
“Baby— what?” He sounds genuinely horrified that you think this is something you need forgiveness for. “What are you apologizing for?”
He scoops your face into his hands so suddenly it catches you off guard, both palms warm against your cheeks while his eyes search frantically across your face like he’s still trying to understand how this conversation somehow turned into you apologizing.
“Hey, hey, no,” he says softly, shifting even closer until his knees slide awkwardly against the tile with a sharp squeak. “Why are you apologizing?”
And then, completely unbelievably, he starts smiling.
Not a small smile either.
It spreads across his face all at once, huge and helpless and so overwhelmed with emotion it almost looks painful. His eyes start glossing over instantly while a shaky laugh slips out of him before he can stop it.
“You think this is bad?” he says breathlessly, sounding almost stunned by the idea. Another shaky laugh slips out of him before he can stop it. “Baby, you seriously think I’m upset right now?”
You stare at him through blurred vision, completely overwhelmed by the fact that he somehow looks happier than you’ve seen him in months while you’re quite literally falling apart on the bathroom floor.
“Oh, c’mere,” Steve whispers as he pulls you into his arms, his voice cracking this time as his thumbs brush helplessly beneath your eyes trying to catch tears faster than they’re falling. “No, no, sweetheart, don’t cry, it’s okay.”
And then his own composure finally breaks too.
A laugh catches halfway into something shakier, while tears spill suddenly over onto his cheeks. Steve resting his forehead against yours, like the force of the emotion hit him all at once, and he genuinely doesn’t know what to do with it.
“You’re sitting here apologizing to me,” he says again, sounding completely dumbfounded, while his gaze flicks helplessly between you and the test still trembling in your hand. “Baby, after everything we’ve survived? You really think I’m gonna look at this and see something bad?”
“Steve…”
“No, I’m serious.” His smile trembles visibly at the edges as he leans forward again, pressing another kiss to your forehead, then your tear-stained cheek, then the corner of your mouth, like he physically can’t stop touching you now that he knows. “I love you so much. Do you hear me? So fucking much.”
You finally build the courage to look at him properly through the blur of your tears, and it nearly undoes you all over again.
Because you’ve never seen Steve look at anything the way he’s looking at you right now.
Not with this much open love.
Not with this much hope.
He’s still kneeling there on the bathroom floor, you in his arms, with tears clinging to his lashes and his hands warm against your face, staring at you like someone just handed him every dream he stopped letting himself want too badly years ago.
And suddenly, Steve Harrington looks younger.
Not like the seventeen-year-old boy who used to show up bruised on your porch, pretending everything hurt less than it did.
Not like the version of him that kept throwing himself in front of monsters, Russians, nightmares, anything dangerous enough to hurt the people he loved first.
Somewhere along the way, Steve became someone who spent years protecting children that weren’t even his before he ever really let himself imagine having one of his own.
He still looks like Steve. Your Steve. Still warm embraces and messy hair and lips pressed devastatingly gentle as he smiles against your skin like happiness physically hurts to hold inside himself.
But now you can suddenly see every version of him at once.
Every terrible thing he overcame.
Every soft thing he kept anyway.
And for the first time in years, he doesn’t look like someone bracing for happiness to be taken away from him.
“I love you,” he says again, his voice trembling with emotion. “And I love this baby already. I don’t even know how that’s possible yet, but I do.”
His eyes flick back down toward the test, another completely awestruck smile breaking across his face like the reality of it keeps blindsiding him every time he looks at it.
Steve presses the back of his hand against his mouth, shoulders shaking once beneath a soft, breathless laugh.
The sound breaks out of him like the unadulterated joy physically overflowed before he could hold it in any longer, and before you can even react he’s leaning forward again, pressing another trembling kiss against your forehead.
“You’re pregnant?” he repeats softly, still sounding completely awestruck by the words even while saying them out loud, like some part of him genuinely still can’t believe this is real.
“I think so,” you whisper shakily, which immediately makes Steve laugh harder because somehow the answer is still so painfully you.
One hand flies up over his mouth like he physically can’t contain the smile breaking across his face, while the other stays anchored against your cheek, a gentle promise, an unspoken vow.
“We’re having a baby,” he says, and the words visibly wreck him halfway through, another breathless laugh breaking out of him while his entire expression crumples with overwhelming happiness.
And almost instantly your thoughts lurch forward without your permission.
Steve half asleep on the couch with a baby tucked against his chest while cartoons flicker quietly across the dark living room, one hand spread protectively over their tiny back even in his sleep.
Steve in a hospital room crying openly before the nurse has even fully laid the baby onto your chest, laughing helplessly through tears because of course he would cry first.
Steve standing barefoot in the middle of a driveway years from now, both hands hovering nervously beside a bicycle while a tiny furious voice shrieks at him to stop helping.
The images arrive one after another so quickly it almost hurts.
And for the first time since this started, terror isn’t the only thing blooming inside your chest anymore.
For a second, Steve just sits there still looking completely overwhelmed by it all, his gaze dropping briefly between you and the test still clutched in your hand while he shakes his head once like the reality of this is hitting him faster than he can keep up with.
Then his eyes lift back to yours.
And the way he looks at you makes you fall in love with him all over again.
Like you’ve just handed him every single thing he stopped letting himself want too badly years ago.
Then suddenly he’s kissing you.
Hard and messy and emotional, both hands still cupping your face while he smiles helplessly against your mouth like he physically can’t contain how happy he is right now. The kiss breaks apart almost immediately because Steve keeps tearfully laughing through it, forehead knocking clumsily against yours while another disbelieving breath slips out between both your mouths.
“I can’t believe this is actually happening,” he laughs softly through tears, forehead still resting against yours while another shaky breath escapes him. “Jesus Christ.”
And somehow the sight of him this happy hurts almost as much as it heals.
Because all at once you realize Steve has probably been quietly dreaming about moments like this for years without ever fully expecting them to become real.
Not after everything.
Not after Hawkins taught all of you how quickly good things could disappear.
The happier he looks, the harder you cry, which somehow only makes Steve cry harder. Somehow his smile grows impossibly bigger every time he glances back at you like your tears aren’t scaring him anymore now that he understands what they mean.
Your smile wobbles beneath another wave of tears.
“I’m happy,” you admit shakily. “I think I am. I’m just… really scared.”
Saying both out loud suddenly makes you slightly anxious for his response.
Every single worry melts at once as Steve looks at you like the answer is the easiest thing in the world, like it’s the easiest thing he’s ever known about another person.
“Jesus, baby, you already take care of everybody without even thinking about it,” he says softly. “You practically raised half those kids with me. Baby, seriously… you’re gonna be so amazing. I’m literally sobbing just thinking about it.”
Every emotion on Steve’s face is completely unguarded now, bright eyes and trembling smiles and happiness so overwhelming he doesn’t even try to hide it anymore.
Not after the Upside Down or Vecna or years spent surviving things that should have destroyed people your age.
You’ve never seen him look at the future like this before.
Like he finally believes he’s allowed to have one.
Carefully, Steve takes the pregnancy test from your trembling fingers, holding it almost delicately while his eyes drop back toward the second pink line.
Another smile slowly spreads across his face, not the huge disbelieving grin from before, but something softer now. Something deeper. More intimate.
His thumb brushes absently along the edge of the plastic while he hiccups through his own tears, staring at the test like the reality of it still keeps hitting him fresh every time he looks at it.
“Oh my god,” he whispers softly for what must be the hundredth time, sounding completely overwhelmed by the words themselves. “I’m so fucking lucky.”
And somehow his words hurt in a different way because Steve still says things like that sometimes, like some part of him never fully realized loving him was always the easiest part.
There’s so much emotion on his face now, disbelief and love and overwhelming happiness tangled together so openly it almost feels too intimate to look at directly.
One of his hands slips carefully from your cheek down to your waist before settling against your stomach through the thin fabric of your shirt. The touch is so gentle it invokes another half sob, half laugh, his palm resting there almost cautiously at first, like some part of him is still afraid this moment could disappear if he moves too quickly.
His fingers slowly spread against your stomach while his gaze drops downward again, completely captivated by the reality of what’s beneath his hand.
Then his thumb brushes softly beneath the fabric, absentminded and reverent in a way that nearly makes you crumble all over again, and you physically watch the realization entirely move across his face once more beneath the tears still shining in his eyes.
Like every time he touches you, the reality of it settles deeper into him.
“Hi, baby,” he says softly before he can stop himself, pressing a gentle kiss to your skin.
The words settle over you with a kind of quiet finality that almost makes your heart swell.
Because Steve doesn’t say it carefully or like he’s trying to make you laugh through the panic. He says it instinctively, the same absentminded way he talks to you when he’s half asleep or worried or too full of affection to think before speaking.
Like the baby is already real to him.
Like loving them is already the easiest thing in the world.
And watching that realization move across his face in real time feels almost indescribable, something so open and sincere it makes your cheeks hurt from smiling.
Somewhere beneath all the fear still clawing through you, something gentler finally begins unfolding beside it. Not enough to erase the panic entirely, not enough to stop your hands from shaking or your heart from racing too fast, but enough to exist alongside it anyway.
Hope.
✩⋆⁺⋆ ☾⋆✩ hounds of love ✩⋆⁺⋆☾⋆✩
★ summary: your life changed on a sun-bleached san diego afternoon, the kind of day when the air tastes like salt and freedom. another screaming match, another fight. this one is not like the others, before you know it, you're abandoning the life you've made, moving halfway across the states, to hawkins, indiana. refusing to leave your sister behind. your beloved little sister, max, the girl who showed up every day with fire in her eyes, the one who looked to you for protection from the cruel game fate was playing. the future that once seemed to be in your grasp slipped through like water, a new journey just on the horizon.
hawkins was a midwestern dream dressed in sunlight, the picturesque promise of suburbia. but this town was not as it seemed. through the turmoils, it showed you your biggest lesson; home is never a place, it's the people who make it home. a found family stitched together by trauma and laughter.
steve harrington entered your life like an unexpected storm rolling in over the sea. a gentle fog rolling in over the restless waters.
somewhere in the chaos, somewhere between the weight of responsibility and the steady rhythm of survival, you found pieces of yourself you thought you had left back in california. in the quiet moments that followed, in the rare breath of peace between the horrors that haunted your nightmares, you discovered that love can bloom even where the dark tries its hardest to swallow the light.
★ pairing: steve harrington x mayfield!reader, slight fwb eddie munson x reader
★ warnings: 18+ mdni, eventual graphic smut, slow burn, friends to lovers, cursing, violence, graphic fight scenes, parental abuse, fem reader, bisexual reader, bisexual eddie munson, homophobia, drug & alcohol usage, canon character death, & a general stranger things content warnings
★ notes: see post here! & fyi i will be doing a taglist for the series!
COMING SOON!!
★ PART I
★ PART II
★ PART III
episode two: the vanishing of holly wheeler
“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.
Summary: youre a makeshift emt and nancy deems you her emotional support animal, steve and jonathan are two bros sitting in a hot tub five feet apart ‘cause theyre not gay, dustin may actually be trying to kill you, and you regretfully inform joyce that robin buckley is a liar (snitch)
Rating: mature, swearing and graphic descriptions of blood/gore
Warnings: graphic gore/blood, traumatic injuries, swearing, fem!reader, use of y/n, trauma lol
Words: 7.2k
Before you swing in: hello ! lots of things happened in my personal life that made this chapter almost too daunting to write lol. but we move on ! we survive ! heres chapter 2, i apologize for the wait and truly love you all so so so dearly <3 wish i could provide a happier chapter but … enjoy !
–
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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