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Nobody had really thought about what they were going to do after getting out of the tunnels.
At the time, it had been pure instinct alone. The Demodogs; the big risk, adrenaline and blood pumping into all the right places to get all five of them out and away. Steve, hoisting them all up one by one as fast as he could manage—which was fast, considering he could barely stand.
It caught up to him, though. After they all stood around the rotten hole in the soil, looking down at where they might have just died, smoke in the air, the kids stony and silent and lightly wheezing at his side, he felt it all at once. The adrenaline oozing out of clogged pores in slick, cool sweat on his skin, his body’s own salt disturbing the wounds that lick warm blood over his flesh like varnish to wood.
Dustin is speaking. Asking him a question, Steve thinks. It’s a little hard to answer when it feels like Billy Hargrove disengaged his frontal lobe with Joyce Byers’ crockery.
And then when he finally finds his voice—or what he thinks is his voice—Steve Harrington finds himself bracing his hands on his knees. Little hands reach out to take his shirt, tug at him, try to stop him from toppling back into the scorched-out tunnels. The kids, a part of him nags—he has to take care of the kids. Get them home.
Steve takes one step towards the car, doubles over, throws up a considerable amount of blood, and collapses in a pretty pathetic heap on the soiled earth of the dying pumpkin patch.
Phil Callahan has made a large variety of strange arrests in his time working as a cop for Hawkins, Indiana. Daylight skinny-dippers; a small group of old ladies who’d attempted to rob the corner shop with their umbrellas, a guy who’d stolen a total of eighteen gnomes from his suburban neighborhood. Callahan had been there, done that, laughed about it and then gone home and sat on his single bed and stared at the wall for a long, long time.
But pulling over Max Mayfield driving her brother’s Camaro at the ripe age of thirteen was pretty goddamn insane. Sure, kids will be kids and kids will be crazy.
It goes like this:
He’s pulled over in the bushes on the long stretch of road dumb teenagers like to pretend they’re street racers on. His lights are off, it’s nearly the end of his shift and he’s got a bag of lukewarm fries from the diner a few streets over. It’s not a great night for Callahan, but he’s had worse. At least he knows that in forty-two minutes he can drive back to the station, clock out, go home and open the whiskey bottle he’s been daydreaming about since he clocked in at eight in the goddamn morning.
Then Billy Hargrove’s 1979 Chevrolet Camaro skids past him. Not going particularly fast, but it’s swerving from side to side and shit, Callahan is going to have to work overtime again to do the paperwork for a drunk driver.
Billy fucking Hargrove.
Kicking the engine to life, Callahan had pushed the car out of the ditch and made quick work of hitting the sirens, red-blue-red-blue-red-blue lighting up the dim road he then thundered down.
He’d stared mournfully at his fries—they’d rolled out of his lap and fallen in a heap in the passenger footwell. In that split second, Callahan had then almost nosedived straight into the bumper of the Camaro.
That had been the first sign that something was wrong. Callahan had pulled Billy Hargrove over before, everyone down at the station had. He liked to give them a proper ride first, speed up and wreak havoc with his engine roaring like a rabid lion, wheels screeching around every scanty corner of Hawkins. Usually to impress whatever big-haired lady was lapping it all up next to him, hand on his thigh.
Billy never just rolled over at the first sign of a police cruiser.
Nonetheless, Callahan had slowly rolled his car up behind the trunk, made sure he had his gun in case the kid had snapped and decided to make good on a new career of serial killing, and got out into the close air of the evening. Hips swinging, hat a little too the side, trying to out-swagger the kid he was relentlessly about to be smooth-talked by.
It wasn’t Billy Hargrove in the car. No.
Max Mayfield, all burning red hair and sharp, foxy eyes, furrowed brows.
“Oh,” Callahan had said, and realized just how unlikely it was that he would be paid for the extra hours this is going to take to handle.
Lucas Sinclair had beamed at him anxiously from the passenger seat, leaning up against the window as casually as he could. “Hey, officer. How can we help you on this fine evening?”
“Shut up, Lucas!” Mike Wheeler had hissed from the back, head resting against the head of the seat in front.
“You kids do know that this is illegal, right? I-L-E-E-G-A-L,” Callahan had tried his best to sass them after the shock began to cool into rightful indignation.
Dustin Henderson had peeked from between the two front seats, gummy-grinning at him. “That’s actually not how you spell that. It’s got two ‘L’s and only one ‘E’, Officer,”
“Sure, yeah, okay. Didn’t know I was talking to the Spelling Bee. Buzz off, kid, I ask the questions here,” Callahan had also ignored the way the boy had mumbled something or another about how he didn’t ask any question in the first place.
Max Mayfield had stayed uncharacteristically silent behind the wheel. Glowering at him. Daring him to speak.
Callahan had swallowed, broke eye contact, and leaned on the car’s roof. “Okay. I’m gonna need one of you to try and make up a reaaaal good explanation for why this is happening. And no funny business. You’re all going down anyway, so pick what you say real carefully, you devious little shits,”
Four faces had gone pensieve with thought. Because nobody wants to explain to a cop why they were driving around at the odd hours of the night in a car that wasn’t theirs without a license. Obviously.
Thankfully, they didn’t need one.
What Callahan had previously, wrongfully assumed to be a blanket over the laps of Mike Wheeler and Dustin Henderson was, in fact, not a blanket. It was a body. A body that moved sluggishly, the owner groaning and moaning in desperate pain after raising an arm up a few inches.
“What the fuck?” Callahan had said, abandoning professionalism for the sake of wondering he’d have to charge four preteens with grand theft auto and battery. Things got worse, though, when the body was gently pawed at by Dustin, like it was some mewling cat.
“Hey,” Dustin had said, petting away at a good set of hair soaked with what was undoubtedly blood. “Hey, nope, Steve, no moving. Moving is bad,”
“No,” Callahan had said, hands dragging down his face. “ No. No. That is not goddamn Steve Harrington in the back of your car.”
Lucas looked at him sheepishly. Max’s brow creased. “We’re trying to take him to the hospital,” The boy had said, fingers threading together in nervous little knots. “Max is the only one out of us who knows how to drive. Sort of,” Flinching when the redhead glared at him, Lucas chuckled, a nervous little bubble bursting out of his mouth. “I mean. Very well. She’s super good at it! Which is why… she’s driving,”
“You couldn’t call an ambulance?” Callahan had whined from between his fingers.
“Uh,” Dustin Henderson blinked, then smiled. “The Byers’ phone doesn’t work,”
“Of course it doesn’t. Great. All of you out of the car, now,” Callahan had pointedly opened the door on Max’s side, gesturing for her to move.
Steve Harrington had then tried to rise like the living dead on the backseat, before howling and clutching his head—which had looked no less like someone had taken to it with a cheese grater. “Every— yody shu’up! Shu’up. Ohhhh’mmhm goh,”
Callahan had to resist the urge to vocally agree with that sentiment, and had then moved to pull the door closest to Steve’s feet open. “Feet first Harrington, c’mon. Upsie daisies,”
It took a lot in Callahan to not panic in that moment, upon reflection. It’s not everyday you have precious cargo like a Harrington looking so thoroughly battered. Last time that had been the fight with Jonathan Byers—but this was different. This was far worse. And though Callahan hadn’t known it just yet, the night was about to end very differently than he’d envisioned.
Because Steve Harrington crawled out of the backseat, stumbled, clutched his knees and horror-movie hurled blood all over Callahan’s boots.
And things went from a minor concern to oh, fuck .
Callahan has to take this kid to a hospital.
Which led him to now. Now was Callahan in Billy Hargrove’s Camaro, definitely speeding and definitely at risk of some kind of suspension. Lucas Sinclair is sat beside him in the passenger seat looking petrified, Max, Dustin and Mike squished in the back with Steve returned back to his previous blanket-position.
Oh Jesus. Steve Harrington was going to die in the backseat of a Camaro throwing up blood like Callahan’s worst goddamn nightmares and the Chief wasn’t picking up so Flo had to try and talk him off a ledge while he had four screaming children and one kid bleeding all over the place—
Callahan took a breath. Then another. Then ran another red light because he could hear Steve’s wet coughing, see the blood dribbling down his chin from the rear view mirror.
“I can’—I can’ see,” Steve declares as Callahan pushes fifty, narrowly missing a lamppost. “ Can’t.”
“What?” Callahan responds, shrieking as he swerves around a late-night drunken cyclist. “ What?”
“ Ohhh my god, one of his pupils is bigger than the other!” Mike shouts from the backseat, grubby hands moving Steve’s head back and forth. “Drive faster!”
Though usually he’d be ashamed to admit it, Callahan listens to the kid and puts his foot down harder, Hawkins becoming a blur of warm porch lights and the quick ascent and descent of passing cars. “I’m gonna lose my job, I’m going to be homeless and unemployed and I’m going to die,” Becomes the mantra he mumbles repetitively under his breath as they push seventy miles an hour on a road that can’t be prepared for more than forty.
Lucas looks at him, wordlessly bewildered. Then, after a pause of awkward eye contact, reaches to pat him on the arm in some form of support.
Callahan could cry, he thinks. “Thanks,” Is what he says instead. The Sinclairs raised their boy good, at least. That’s one takeaway from the evening that might end with him in prison for manslaughter, or something.
They’re a short stretch away from the hospital when things go from bad to worse.
“He won’t!” Max argues from the backseat after Callahan tells her that Steve needs to stay awake.
There’s the sound of smacking, and then Dustin relents, too. “His eyes are rolling up into his head, Officer!” And then Callahan is reminded that he’s in a car with four thirteen year olds, not police officers. “Is he going to die?”
Phil Callahan turns his head away from the road to find himself faced with three terrified looking children. His stomach turns. “No—no, he’s gonna be fine. You—,” The trauma training he vaguely remembers starts to flood back now, now that he needs it, in bits and pieces. Keep them focused on something. “What happened? So I can tell the guys at the hospital so they can help him real quick,”
Glancing to Lucas, who’s suddenly a lot more uncomfortable in his chair, Callahan starts to get a real bad feeling.
“My brother,” Max pipes up from the backseat, voice a lot smaller without her faux-bravado. “Billy tried to hurt Lucas,”
“Right,” Callahan looks back to Lucas in his peripheral, flicking his eyes between him and the road. “Okay, well that’s not okay. We—we’ll sort that out after this, okay? Cool. Cool. How does that—?” What does that have to do with Steve, he wonders, doesn’t finish.
Because then he nods his head up to the rear view mirror again. Sees Steve sprawled out across the kids, the kids who were so worried they must’ve packed him into a car, him, a six foot something athlete. He would’ve been heavy. But they got him in the car, tried to drive him themselves.
God, Hawkins needs a neighborhood watch or something. Where were these kids parents? Where were the adults around to stop shit like this from happening?
Then Callahan— Phil, Phil glances back to Steve. Sees the way his hand, bloodied knuckles and all, is curled around the small wrist of Dustin. His other resting on Mike. The way he’s positioned his body to try and have less weight on Max.
Something has gone wrong here. Someone has screwed up, if kids are having to risk their lives for kids.
“Steve stopped him,” Lucas says, quiet and careful. Worried to speak out of turn, as if Callahan would turn on him, too. “Steve stopped Billy,”
And now Steve had blood coming out of his ears, couldn’t see and probably couldn’t hear either. Jesus Christ. Billy fucking Hargrove. Attempted child beater, near-successful murderer.
Phil nods, slowly. Tries his best to smile at Lucas, who’s eyes are wet, who’s shaking, trying his best not to cry in front of his friends, in front of a policeman. “Okay. Do you know if Billy hit his head, or something?”
They round a corner too sharply, Steve rouses from the depths of his unconscious state to cry out in pain when they mount the curb, jostling him. Dustin is sobbing, Phil notices, only because now the kid is hiccuping uncontrollably.
“He hit him with a plate first,” Lucas says, voice tight and hands fidgety.
“With a plate?” Phil coughs, and tries to quell his surprise. “Okay. That’s okay. This is okay. We’re okay,”
“Ah’m, mhm. Dyin’?” Steve helpfully moans from the back, hiking up Dustin’s sobbing into complete hysteria.
Phil grips the steering wheel harder, swings it harshly as they turn into the hospital. “ No. Nobody’s dying, everyone is fine, stay awake, Harrington, I’ll arrest you!”
“Y’ rest me?”
“Yeah,” Phil looks in the mirror at the incredulous expression on Steve’s battered face. “I will, I can do that. I’m a goddamn cop,” It doesn’t feel entirely true. Right now, Callahan feels like Phil. Feels pretty useless, pretty fucking terrified. Phil feels like he’s playing dress-up in his uniform, feels like an imposter here in a town where the useless cops like him can’t stop people like Billy Hargrove from shit like this.
But Phil can drive someone to a hospital.
“I lost count at twenty,” Lucas whispers as Phil turns off the ignition and fumbles while taking his seatbelt off.
“What?” He says when he’s halfway out the car door, poking his head back in for just a second because out of all the kids in the car, Lucas Sinclair is sensible and knows what stuff is important. Knows what stuff counts.
Lucas swallows, trying to get his own seat belt off. “Twenty punches. I lost count after that. All to his head,”
“You’re a good kid,” Phil Callahan says before closing the car door, tripping over himself to open the door closest to Steve.
It’s an uphill battle, trying to fish Steve’s limp, heavy-limbed body out of the Camaro without hurting him or making anything worse, Phil abandoning his hat in the car park for the sake of trying a bridal-carry.
It’s exhausting, and Phil wonders how on earth four thirteen year olds managed to get him in the vehicle in the first place when he feels like he might put out his back any minute. But Steve no longer complains, though he hadn’t much before—his head lulls backwards as Phil jogs through the lot with his four tailing children, the whites of his eyes flickering as they get through the front doors.
“Help!” Phil cries out, finding himself immediately echoed by a furious Max and a stern Lucas when they don’t immediately pull attention. “He needs help!”
And Steve knows just how to pull a crowd, always has. The Harringtons have that in common, if nothing else. They draw attention, jealousy, awe, hatred. Phil had always assumed that Steve was just a sprout off of his dad, who was cruel and nasty and quick to pay a few thousand to the police department every time he’d drink and drive with a new mistress.
But when Steve starts seizing in Phil’s arms, he looks at him. Really looks. Looks at a kid who’s probably bleeding in his brain because he stepped in the way of Billy fucking Hargrove, stepped in the line of fire so he beat on him instead of a child.
Phil doesn’t know many people who would do that. Any of the Harringtons would’ve been the last on his list. And yet here they are.
Nurses and staff rush to greet them, shout orders at Phil who just relents, voice raw with his own frantic spew of information recounted from Lucas. Times, symptoms, tidbits of things seen and experienced from the short journey they’d all taken. It’s hard not to scream at them, tell them to hurry up and ask him this later, not while Steve’s limbs splay out and convulse, while his eyes are in the back of his head and the kids gather behind Phil like he’s some sort of shield. Like he can protect them from this if he’s not driven fast enough, if Steve’s going to die after all of this anyway.
And then Steve’s body gives in. Eases and goes still.
For a second, Phil worries that he’s just died. But there’s a gentle rise and fall of his chest, like a canary’s song, stops Phil from falling off the edge of the ineffable, vehement stress he’s feeling right now.
He focuses on wrangling Dustin away from following the doctor that wheels Steve away on a cot; takes the children that seem to have latched onto him to a nearby corridor. Sits them down on the stupid little plastic, waiting room chairs.
And breathes.
After a long stretch of letting air back into his lungs, Phil takes the walkie off of his belt and puts it up against his mouth. “Chief?”
There’s only silence, the crackle of the police radio like a drill against his temple.
“Chief,” Phil repeats. The feedback crackles again.
“Not right now, Callahan,” He says, in the way that Phil knows when he’s about to close his channel off.
Phil takes a breath. Debates the likelihood of becoming a stripper if he’s about to get fired. “Chief! Don’t you dare turn your goddamn walkie off on me, man, I need you. So fucking listen to me, please, for once,”
The receiver crackles. “…” Hopper sighs. “What is it?”
“Chief,” Phil tilts his body, giving the miserable audience he has a once-over. “I got four kids here, another going into surgery. Wheeler, Mayfield, Henderson, Sinclair and Harrington. Picked ‘em up on the road to Merrill’s pumpkin patch—,”
“You what? Jesus fucking Christ. Stay put. Stay with them. We’re coming now.”
The receiver clicks. The kids stare owlishly back at him when Phil lifts his head, and finally lets himself slump back in the chair.
He’s done it. Not sure what, but something feels accomplished.
“Right. Any of you kids want vending machine candy? I got some change,”
Max Mayfield doesn’t tell people this a lot, but she spends most of her time feeling afraid.
Afraid people will know that she’s scared. Afraid of being made fun of, being left alone forever. Afraid of her stepdad, afraid of what he could do to her mom. Afraid of Billy, always, afraid of what he could do to her, what he could do and has done to her friends. Afraid her friends will see through her, see her anger and her fear and not want to be her friend anymore.
Max spent a lot of her night scared that Steve Harrington was going to die.
Not that she really knew him. Max had only met him earlier in the day, watched him swing his bat and think damn, he’s totally crazy. Crazy cool, but also really, really crazy. Max was afraid, then, afraid that she was going to die and be eaten by things from another dimension. But Steve had gone and fought them off, then when they were hiding from them and one tried to get her, and she was too scared to move—
Steve had pushed her out the way. Fought it off. Saved her.
And when they’d all walked down the old train tracks to get back to the Byers’ house, Max wasn’t scared. Even though there were creatures in the woods, flesh-eating monsters. Max wasn’t scared because Steve was crazy and cool and saved her and would do it again, she just knew he would.
It made her feel all sorts of ways. Max didn’t like trusting people. Because Max was scared. But Steve seemed sort of stupid, too stupid to trick her or make her feel weird and wrong and afraid. Steve made Max feel safe and watched out for, Steve had saved her life without even knowing her name and he sort of felt like the best person ever.
Which was why Max felt like the worst person alive, in turn. Sat in the hospital waiting to hear if her stepbrother killed him, all because of her. Her, her, her, her, her. Max was so afraid.
Max was afraid when she heard Billy’s Camaro pull up to the Byers’. Steve had looked at her and knew, knew she was scared and he went outside and lied for her, got himself pushed to the dirt and still chased after her stepbrother.
Max was afraid Lucas wouldn’t like her anymore. Afraid that Billy scared him away forever, made him feel wrong and terrible and scared, too. And it wasn’t the same kind of scared Max was, because Billy hated Lucas for something he couldn’t control. Max couldn’t ever know what that felt like, nor could she pretend to.
But then Lucas reached under the arm of his hospital seat and took Max’s hand. Lucas saw that she was afraid, and didn’t leave her alone. Lucas was threading their fingers together and smiling at her like this wasn’t all her fault.
“I’m sorry,” Max whispers, quietly.
Lucas frowns, gently. “Are you kidding? You were awesome. You saved us,”
It wasn’t true. It didn’t feel true. Max had sedated Billy because she was so afraid of him killing Steve. Scared because Billy was hitting him and hitting him again and again and again and again until Steve stopped moving, so hard that Steve wouldn’t wake up for ages and ages and Max was afraid that she would never feel safe ever again.
Max stepped forwards with that needle because she knew everyone else was afraid, too. And Max had been afraid of Billy for what felt like her whole life.
She had to stand up for them. Had to stand up for Steve the way that he had stood up for her. So she’d moved into the line of fire, stood between her friends and a real monster, just like Steve had done with the demodog.
That didn’t make her brave. Max was playing pretend, like she always did. And she was so afraid, was scared that Billy would see through her threats and laugh at her, make her feel small.
But Billy was unconscious on Ms Byers’ floor, now.
Wordlessly, Max leans and rests her head on Lucas’ shoulder. Fishes out a piece of candy the police officer had bought from the vending machine, pops it in her mouth and tries to close her eyes and imagine herself disappearing.
“A brain bleed?” Dustin hears Joyce Byers echo the nurse, her face creased with worry.
The nurse nods. “It’s a minor one,” She looks at Hopper, who’s beyond agitated, pacing. “But still a cause for concern. They’ve stemmed it and he’s in recovery now. But he’s still going to be unconscious for a while—and he’ll have to stay here for a couple days at the very least. He’s lucky to not have permanent damage,”
Dustin’s stomach squeezes at the idea of Steve having permanent damage. It sounds bad, he knows it is. Because Dustin knows lots of things, learns them and stores them in his brain because sometimes they’re helpful, especially when the world is kinda ending. Sometimes people find them annoying. Sometimes Dustin knows his mom wants him to stop talking and be more normal, but she listens anyway because she loves him and he really loves her.
Dustin wants to see his mom. He looks at the others, their hard expressions and stiff postures and stays quiet. He doesn’t want to be the loser who cries for his mom. He already lost the girl, he needs to keep his pride, like Steve did.
Oh, man, Dustin is so worried about Steve. He’s so cool but he’s also really kinda stupid and Dustin is worried that Billy might have knocked more of his brains out and he needs those brains.
“Have you called his parents?” Hopper says gruffly to Officer Callahan, who’s still refusing to leave them and go home.
The officer looks sort of angry at that question. Dustin wonders if it’s a stupid question to ask. Dustin asks a lot of stupid questions sometimes, and then people look at him like that.
“Yeah, Chief,” Callahan grumbles. “They send their regards from Hawai’i,”
Joyce folds her arms at that. “They aren’t coming back to town? Even though their son has a bleeding brain?”
“Yeah, I asked a similar question and got hung up on,” Callahan snipes.
Dustin feels a bit sick. He knows that if his brain was bleeding, Dustin’s mom would come to get him and hug him even if he was on the other side of the planet.
“Fucking cunts,” Hopper says under his breath, and Dustin knows his eyes go really wide because his mom said nobody is allowed to use that word, not even adults. Joyce seems to know this rule too, because she lightly smacks the Chief on the arm, gesturing to where Dustin is sitting, attentively listening to their conversation. “Sorry,” The man says to him.
“It’s ok,” Dustin says as cheerily as he can, like he hasn’t just been crying for a really long time. “Did it work? Are Will and El okay?”
Hopper makes a face, and Dustin remembers he’s not supposed to talk about Will and El and Upside Down stuff. Officer Callahan sits up. “Your boy, Joyce?”
Joyce wafts her hand dismissively. “Nightmares, from… everything, you know? Dustin’s mom brought us his old nightlight,”
“Yeah. I wanted to know if it worked,” Dustin says, because he’s not great at lying but Joyce did it first so he can agree with her. He nods so hard his neck hurts, just a little.
Callahan stares at the two of them blankly, but then seems to just give up. “Okay. Speaking of your mom, kid, should I give her a call?”
Dustin glances at Lucas, Max and Mike. The first two are dozing on one another’s shoulders, he realizes. Mike is angrily staring off into space. “Yeah,” He mumbles, picking at his trousers where a little bit of Steve’s blood has stained the material. “Please,”
“I’ll call Mrs Wheeler and the Sinclairs, too. And the station, get people on the way to pick up Hargrove,” Callahan stands, only to stiffen when the Chief claps him on the shoulder.
Hopper squeezes his arm. “You did good, Phil,”
Callahan seems a bit sheepish. “Thanks. Uh, see you guys in a bit,” And he walks off to find a pay phone, Dustin thinks. Thinks about how he wishes phones could just be carried around like walkie-talkies can. That’d be cool.
“They’re okay,” Hopper says, as soon as Callahan is out of earshot. “El closed the gate, she’s resting with Will at the Byers’ house,” It seems to put Mike’s angry, square shoulders to ease—and Dustin feels a tiny bit better, too. “Nancy and Jonathan are watching them while we’re here,”
Then Joyce takes the seat Callahan had sat in, putting herself by Dustin and leaning in a little. “Hey, kiddo,” She says in the way moms do when they want to have a conversation that’s not super easy to have. “I know you guys went to the tunnels. And you were really brave and you really, really helped okay? But you can’t do something like that ever again without an adult. It was so dangerous,”
“We had Steve,” Dustin says, willing himself not to cry.
Joyce’s face crumples, just a little bit. “Steve is a kid too, Dustin. He needs someone to look after him too.”
“Are you going to?” He says, indignant.
She frowns. “What?”
“Are you going to look after him? Since his parents aren’t coming home when he can leave the hospital nobody’s gonna be at his house. Just him,” Dustin chews at his nails, one leg bouncing as he taps his foot. Tries to focus on the conversation, not the urge to cry. Then he stands, practically jumping up. “I’m going to the vending machine,”
“Dustin—,” Joyce starts, seeming upset. Dustin feels bad, but he’s upset too.
“What?” Dustin snaps, scrunching up his face.
Joyce holds out a couple pennies. “For the vending machine,”
Tentatively, he takes them. And says thank you, because his mom raised a polite boy and he really likes Ms Byers, she’s his favorite out of all of the moms of his friends and she’s always been nice to him and listens to him when he talks. And he talks a lot. Dustin’s mom says that one day someone will like him and love him for his talking, maybe fall in love with his voice or his thoughts. Maybe a good listener or someone just as chatty as him.
Dustin’s mom also said don’t talk to strangers.
But there’s a boy, an older boy, leaning against the vending machine. He’s got big, dark fluffy hair and round, brown eyes that glare at the contents, trying to pick something, probably. His shirt has some scrawled words on it, a band, maybe, as well as goth stuff like skulls and crosses.
And he’s got makeup on. The black stuff girls put on their eyes.
The older boy looks like someone Dustin’s mom would cross the street to avoid. But Dustin is friendly and polite, so he goes to the vending machine anyway because he’s also hungry and he eats things when he’s sad.
“What are you in for?” The older boy says, like they’re in prison. It’s a joke, Dustin thinks. The older boy is smiling pretty wide.
Dustin blinks at him. “Steve Harrington’s brain is bleeding,”
The older boy seems to know Steve, because his face looks all funny and surprised. “Oh, shit? Is he gonna be, like… okay?”
“Yeah, I hope so. The nurse said he would,” Dustin plays with the pennies in his palm.
Head tilting, the older boy looks him up and down, squinting. “And you’re his…? Brother? Cousin?”
“He’s my friend,” Dustin says stubbornly.
The older boy scoffs. “You need better friends then,”
Dustin feels a little bad for the older boy, because it’s not his fault that Dustin doesn’t feel great right now, but it sets him off. It’s stupid and embarrassing but he bursts into tears and starts crying, crying really hard in front of the vending machine. “Steve is a good friend, he’s my best friend now and he saved me and then he saved my friends and Billy was gonna kill us and we were really scared and then Steve fought him and lost really bad because Billy used a plate which is so not fair, because who uses a plate in a fist fight, and then Steve almost died in the car and I’m so, so scared that he’s gonna have no brain functionality at all after this!”
The older boy glances left, then right, as if expecting something to explode. “Uh,” He brings up his hand and scratches his neck. “I’m—sorry. That was a shit thing to say. I hope Harrington’s, like… fine. And stuff. Billy Hargrove’s a major asshole, so… it’s cool. That he saved you guys?”
Dustin nods fervently. “He’s so cool,”
With a tentative nod, the older boy sticks out a neon-blue cast that’s wrapped around his arm. “Wanna sign it?” It’s a distraction, and Dustin knows that, because the older boy might be kinda freaked out by some kid shouting and crying at him. But when the older boy offers a marker pen, Dustin takes it.
The cast only has one other name on it, big block letters that spell WAYNE. Dustin scribbles his name beneath it, so the older boy’s other friends have space to sign it to.
The older boy smiles, a bit awkward. “Dustin. S’cool name. Uh,” He shows him his candy bar. “I’ve gotta get back to my uncle. He gets kinda hangry. But tell Harrington get well soon from me,”
And then he starts walking away. Dustin cups his mouth and quickly asks, “From who?”
“Munson!” Is what the older boy yells back, waving with his cast-arm and jogging around the corner, back to the waiting room.
Dustin stands there for a bit, sort of feeling like he’s just witnessed some kind of hurricane. Nonetheless, he manages to punch in the numbers for his favorite kind of chocolate bar, chowing down on it before returning to the group.
When he gets there, he finds his mom animatedly fussing over his friends, straightening Lucas’ collar and patting Max’s arm and checking Mike for bruises—and then she spots him. She melts a bit, eyes watering, lip quivering. Then she opens her arms.
Not caring about what his friends think anymore, Dustin drops his chocolate bar and dives in for a hug, squeezing his eyes shut tight and breathing in her flowery perfume. While she holds him, Dustin starts to cry again. Mostly because he’s really, really happy she’s here, and also really, really sad that Steve doesn’t have a mom who’ll come and hug him when he’s sad.
“Are you hurt? Did he hurt you?” Sue Sinclair says as she takes her son’s face into her hands, gently pressing in the crevices of it, every inch of skin familiar and doted upon by her.
Lucas scrunches his nose, hyper aware of Max beside him, yet also knowing that his mom needs this. Needs this routine, needs to check on him every five minutes to soothe her soul. “It’s okay, mom. I’m okay. Steve stopped him before he did anything to me. And then Max took care of him,”
He says it with pride, because he is proud. Max stood up to him and it was badass, she saved them all and she might just be the most amazing girl in the whole world. Lucas feels her eyes on him, so he squeezes her hand.
“That wonderful boy,” His mom says, biting her lip. “We have to send him flowers. We have to buy him flowers—Charlie, write it down, Lucas, do you think he likes carnations? Oh, but what if he’s got allergies… maybe chocolate?”
His dad is giving him a look, a warm expression. A small smile. Charles Sinclair—Charlie, to friends, sees his son holding hands with a girl and feels better, even minisculely, about the horrors of the situation. Lucas knows it, can read his dad like a book because they’re just similar like that.
But his comments about Max just turn his mom’s attention to his girlfriend (woah) instead. The woman clicks her tongue and fusses because that’s what she does, what she has to do—but something is nice about this. About her fussing over Max.
“Did he hurt you, Max?” Sue says, and though Lucas knows they’ve never spoken before, his mom speaks like they’re old friends.
Max, a little bewildered, shakes her head. It’s like she can’t find her voice around his parents—Lucas supposes it is a bit early on to meet the family.
Lucas’ mom puts a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Has he ever hurt you, Max?”
Beside him, Lucas hears Max swallow—she does that when she’s upset, and all his hairs stand on end because if Max doesn’t like his mom he might fall into a pit of despair. But then Max leans a little into his mom’s hand, looks up. Her eyes are wet when she shakes her head.
Lucas’ mom sighs, letting out a breath she was no doubt holding before she gives Max’s shoulder a good squeeze. “Well—well, Max, if you ever feel that he might, or you, you just need a break, Erica has a mattress, a pullout, under her bed and there will always be a place for you at our house,”
The grip Max has on Lucas’ hand tightens, hard enough to hurt. Erica at his mom’s side is nodding ferociously, face dead-set into a glare of passion.
Ms Henderson swans over in her nice woolen cardigan, lightly petting Max on the head in a motion Lucas thinks only that woman could ever get away with. “The same goes for my house, Maxine, any friend of Dusty’s is welcome to use our pullout. And we can have pizza for dinner, and I can make you a milkshake or a banana split, anything you like.” Her hands fidget nervously at her middle. “You should all come over again, like you used to. A sleepover after all of this stress,”
Mike’s mom has been uncharacteristically quiet where she stands by Joyce’s shoulder, fluttering like some sort of butterfly. Lucas looks at her, trying to understand why she almost looks guilty. He falls short. “You know you boys—and girl, are always welcome at the Wheeler house. Even if you’ll sleep in separate rooms—,”
“ Mom,” Mike groans, dragging a hand down his face.
Lucas laughs, catching Joyce’s eye as he does—and she seems to relax. Like seeing their usual antics puts her at ease. He feels a tiny bit bad, thinking about how Will hadn’t been normal to her for a while. Thinks about having loads and loads of sleepovers just to make Joyce feel better, feel more normal again.
And then a nurse appears, hands folded around a chart, staring down the very varied occupants of the corridor. “Family of Steve Harrington?”
The Chief stands. The woman gives him a look—and after a short standoff, relents. “One child at a time, please. He’s heavily concussed and his anesthesia is wearing off.”
Hopper looks them all over, one by one.
To his absolute surprise, Lucas finds the Chief’s finger pointing right at him. “Sinclair, let’s go.”
After slowly detaching from Max and seeing Erica immediately begin to chat away with her instead, Lucas stumbles to keep up with the Chief, taking quick-paced steps to stay at his elbow. He’s never really been sure what to make of the Chief, just that he’s a good guy, deep down, even if he’s kinda scary sometimes. Lucas thinks that Hopper is the only cop he likes—though Callahan seemed okay, if a little neurotic.
“Why me?” Lucas can’t help but ask as they follow the nurse to Steve’s room.
The Chief raises his eyebrows at him. “Henderson is so obsessed with Harrington I’ve heard enough about the kid to write his biography. He won’t be capable of being calm or quiet enough to not make a severe concussion worse. Mike doesn’t do soft and fluffy, he does teen angst and shouting lectures. Mayfield seems like she needs a minute. From what I heard from Callahan,” Hopper slaps him on the back. “You were a real help back there. You’re a good kid. Good head on your shoulders. And I know Harrington and you probably have a lot to talk about,”
Right. Billy. Everything. Lucas feels his insides shrivel up and die. “I didn’t ask him to do that,” He says softly.
“Yeah,” Hopper puts a hand on his shoulder as they walk. “I think even if you asked him not to do that, I get the feeling he would’ve done it anyway. He’s made himself into something of a babysitter,”
Lucas wants to argue, wants to say he’s not a baby. Wants to say he could’ve handled Billy on his own. Could’ve taken it. But honestly, he’s grateful. Not that Steve got hurt—grateful that Steve stepped in the way of something that could’ve gone really, really bad. Because if Billy had hurt Lucas, he doesn’t think Max would’ve been able to look at him ever again. And deep down, even though Lucas hates himself for even thinking it, things might’ve not been the same between them if he had.
Steve saved him. Max saved them. Lucas hopes that by being as calm as he could in the car, he saved him too.
“Hey,” Is the first thing a very groggy-looking, beaten-looking, bandaged-looking Steve has to say to him. Lucas sort of wants to laugh, but the guy looks so tired that it’s hard to find it in him to do so. Instead, he clambers over a little to perch by the side of the hospital bed, wary of all the machines and wires Steve is attached to.
Hopper stands nearby, hands on his hips. “Hey, kid. Good sleep?”
“Not really,” Steve croaks, blinking a few times every couple of seconds. Lucas remembers the nurse saying something about anesthetic. “Kept being woken up by kids screaming at me,”
Gruffly, Hopper laughs, comes over and awkwardly pats Steve’s arm. A part of Lucas thinks that the Chief doesn’t like hospitals, for all the pacing he’s been doing. He thinks about the time his parents spoke about Hopper’s dead daughter, and it makes sense. “I have to get back to El,” The man says, eventually. “But I’m coming back tomorrow. It looks like you’re gonna be staying with me or Joyce until you’re okay to be on your own,”
Steve looks like he’s about to protest, but Hopper raises a hand and he goes quiet. “No arguing. Bad for your brain. I’ll give you two the room,” And with a fleeting pat on his back, the Chief leaves Lucas and Steve alone.
There’s a pause for silence. It consists of the two of them just looking at each other, taking everything in. Steve breaks first. “Are you okay?” He says, and a part of Lucas wants to smack him around, if he weren’t so scared more brain would leak out of his ears.
“Am I okay?” Lucas stares at him with his best facial expression for conveying shocked-at-stupidity, tilting his head to the side.
“Hey,” Steve says, smiling weakly. “I care, okay? Don’t be mean to the head patient,”
“You’re always a head patient, Steve. Now you’re just even more of a head patient. Billy coulda killed you,” Lucas finds his voice is worse for wear than he’d expected, and thinks that if he cries on Steve Harrington , he might just die of embarrassment.
Steve’s expression stays soft. Maybe moving his face hurts. Usually he’d have a bitchy look by now, Lucas muses. But then he says, “Yeah, but he definitely would’ve killed you,” And Lucas has to fight not to cry, because it’s so annoying that he’s misjudged Steve Harrington, so aggravating that he is actually a good guy now and not just a monster-fighting bat-wielding badass.
“Come here,” Steve says, sleepily raising his arms out. Without much more hesitance, Lucas slumps against his shoulder, carefully closing the hug. He’s too mindful of his injury to squeeze as much as he’d like, and the embrace is sort of awkward, but it’s nice. It feels like closure. It feels like there’s no guilt between them, just a nice understanding, a gratitude. Some things are better left unsaid.
Which is a sentiment that Dustin has always ignored, because he’s hovering in the doorway like a bumblebee.
“Can I please come in now? Please?”
Rolling his eyes, Lucas turns to him. Steve beckons him over, the guy barreling into them both, forcing Lucas to take as much of his friend’s weight as he could to spare Steve—who just wheezes, laughs, and rubs his hands on both of their heads. “You two are such massive losers,”
“You’re a bigger loser,” Mike snipes, Max raising her eyebrows at him.
“Says you, Wheeler. You practically started pacing earlier,” She says, shooting Steve a look that says that’s your retribution. Steve smiles as thankfully as he can muster.
“Alright, alright,” Lucas says, grinning at them all. “We all suck, we’re all losers,” Max shoots him the look. “But Mike especially,”
There’s a chorus of outcry—but it’s numb to Lucas’ ears. He just feels warm and content watching his friends argue and tease like they hadn’t just gone through something terrible together again, like monsters like the Demogorgon or Demodogs or Billy Hargrove and people like him didn’t exist.
It felt good. It felt safe. And maybe it felt even better when Max came over and held Lucas’ hand like she never wanted to let go.
“Don’t forget to give him that letter, alright? I’ll never hear the goddamn end of it,” Hopper grumbles as Mike climbs out of his police cruiser, rolling his eyes at the reminder.
“Yeah, I know. You’ve both said it a thousand times,” Which he only says when he’s a reasonable distance away, too far for Hopper to throw him off the nearest cliff face. “Letter from El. Noted, got it, good bye,”
Hopper smacks his hand on the side of the car door. “Tell Joyce I said hi,”
Mike scoffs. “Tell her yourself, old man,” And then opens the door to the Byers’ before he can hear the undoubtedly crude response.
Upon walking into the familiar living room—now free of flayed-Will’s frantic drawings and the Demodog in the fridge—Mike almost trips on another bag full of what is undoubtedly Steve-related presents.
Ever since his hospital stay, Steve had become the messiah to the Party’s moms. He was always over for dinners, barbecues, tea and biscuits.
Ma Henderson would send baked goods without fail every day, either delivered by herself with a warm hug or her very eager to visit son. Sue Sinclair sends a bouquet of flowers for Steve to put in a vase in the Byers’ house without fail every few days, usually with some assortment of chocolate, too. His own mom sends casseroles and pies and lasagnas with Mike when comes over to visit Will.
But Mike can see his mom’s Tupperware in the bag, so that means Nancy’s here already. Ew. Quietly, he tiptoes further into the house, leaning against the wall by Jonathan’s room.
“And you’re sure you haven’t had any seizures, any problems with your hearing, sight?” Comes his sister’s voice, nagging away. Mike resists the urge to gag.
Steve sighs. “No, Nance, I said I’d tell you if I did.”
“Yeah, and we don’t believe you,” Jonathan chuckles, dryly. And it’s so weird. They all sound way too buddy-buddy for his liking, they should hate each other after all the drama with his sister. But Steve’s been staying at the Byers’ since his parents are away and he can’t be on his own in case his brain bleeds some more or something, so he’s sleeping on a pullout in Jonathan’s room.
So. Weird.
“Well if you’re offering up another head massage, Jon, maybe I am in serious amounts of pain. On death’s door, actually,” Steve quips, to Nancy’s amusement.
Jonathan just groans. “Oh, you’re so aggrieved,”
“Jokes on you, Jon, I don’t know what that word means,”
The light tinkle of his sister’s giggling rings through the air. “He’s a wounded soldier, Jonathan. You can’t deny his wishes,”
“Yeah, he’s such a tragic hero,” Jonathan laughs, and there’s a shuffle in the room, undoubtedly him giving into Steve’s demands. Once again Mike thinks, ew. They’re all so weird.
Nancy laughs again. “Oh, please, you should hear my house. Mike and my mom don’t shut up about you, Steve. It’s all, oh poor little Steven this from my mom, oh badass monster killer Steve that from my brother . If I didn’t know any better I’d think you’re some kind of role model to him,”
“I’ve never said that!” Mike shouts, face flushed as he points accusingly at her, jumping into the doorway.
The three of them shift away from each other on the bed, looking various amounts of surprised and amused, maybe even a little bemused. “No need to be embarrassed, Mike. I’m a great role model,”
“ You almost flunked school and that was with my sister’s help, sucker,” Mike finds himself snapping, storming over and whipping out the small, messily-folded piece of paper from his pocket.
Steve looks vaguely confused. “And this is…?”
“It’s from El, asshole. She made me help her write it, it’s… for you. Since she can’t really see a lot of people,” Mike mumbles, folding his arms across his chest when Steve goes oh, and takes it.
“That’s very sweet of you to help, Mike,” Nancy says, grinning at him. If they were at home he would totally shove her right now.
Mike screws up his face. “Yeah, okay, Nancy, have fun with your two boyfriends or whatever. I came here for Will, not Steve,” And to prove his point, he storms off and flies straight into Will’s room, across the hall.
“Hey bud,” Joyce says, seeming a bit weary. “I hope you’re doing good today. Did you sleep well?” And when she says that she means, did you have nightmares? Or I hope you didn’t dream about Bob getting torn apart. And Mike always has to lie, because he does usually dream about that.
“Yeah,” He says, as politely as he can because he likes Joyce a lot. He remembers being a kid and wishing she was his mom. She smiles, sadly, and pats him on the back as she leaves Will alone on his bed, quietly says goodbye and closes the door behind her.
Will turns and beams at him. Part of Mike opens up, like a trapdoor in a mystery novella, a key to a better segment of himself, something more caring, more empathetic, more everything because it’s Will, and he’s got him back again. “Hey, Mike,”
“Hey Will,” And Mike feels his face stretch into a huge smile, feeling himself angle towards his best friend like a flower to the sun.
And maybe they spend their evening planning a D&D campaign that just might have a character that acts as the Party’s protector during their transgressions. Maybe that character likes his hair a lot, too much. Maybe that character wields a magic bat, wins all sorts of damsels on his travels and yet still always comes back to the Party because he has a duty to protect them.
That’s their business, not Nancy’s. Mike does not look up to Steve. Steve is an idiot.
Their D&D character Sir Stefan is totally separate.
Somewhere a little way away, Eleven sits with her legs crossed as she carefully ties a blindfold over her eyes. She doesn’t like to spy, but she wants to see this, needs to see it.
Nancy, Jonathan and Steve are listening to music together, all orbiting each other in the way they’ve been doing recently. Eleven thinks they work better together than in the sad pairs they have been divided into. Thinks they are all very good friends.
But that is not what she is trying to see. No, Eleven wants to see Steve read her letter. She really, really hopes that he likes it.
He seems happy. He is holding it in his hands carefully, like it is fragile, like he cares too much to let his fingers dent the paper. Eleven chose her nicest paper to write it on. It has small flowers in the corners because Hopper bought it for her, and Hopper knows Eleven never got to have pretty things before. Eleven likes to give her friends pretty things too, so she wrote Steve a pretty letter on pretty paper and used all the pretty words Mike could think of to make her message.
“ Do you want me to read it to you?” Jonathan asks Steve, who is squinting at the pretty paper. Eleven feels a bit bad, but Mike did say it has been hard for Steve to read lately. Will told him so. Will notices things like that, he is very wise.
Steve pats Jonathan’s thigh once before carefully giving him the letter. “If you could. I don’t wanna miss anything,”
Eleven’s heart swells, and she feels like smiling. Steve is nice, and it is nice that he wants to read her letter very properly. It is also good, because she and Mike chose words very carefully. Jonathan reads a lot of books, so he will read her letter to him very well. And if he misses anything, Nancy will help, because Nancy is also very clever.
Jonathan begins to read.
Eleven looks at her letter over his shoulder, and smiles at Steve.
“ Dear Steve.
Thank you very much. I heard about what you did. All of my friends have told me very much about you. Also about the things that you do for them. Dustin says you helped him look for Dart. And told him about your hair secrets. I would like to know your hair secrets too, if that is okay. Lucas said you fought Billy and that you were very brave. You also fought the Demodogs. To me I also think you are very brave. Mike says you are brave too, but I think it makes him angry to say it. I think he is jealous. I have to write that I am joking, because Mike is helping me with this letter. Thank you for saving Mike, too. He is very important to me. So are all of my friends. They are very lucky that you were there. I hope your head is feeling better. I am sorry that you were hurt. I wish I could have helped you. I think that you should stay over at Hopper’s cabin like he says you can. I want to be your friend. We both protect our friends, so we have that in common.
I hope to see you at the Snow Ball.
Thank you for reading my letter. I hope my handwriting is okay. Mike helped me with the words I could not write. It took me a long time to write it. I hope you like my letter.
Eleven.”
Steve traces the drawings Eleven made for him there, drawings of him with his bat and their friends. He smiles, and looks up—and it’s almost like he’s smiling at her.
Eleven thinks Steve Harrington is a very good friend. She hopes that her letter helped him understand that he has many people who want to protect him, too.