Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s something about the way the cold in this weather makes him numb and takes his mind off things. 

Steve Harrington knows three things, at this rate. It’s much better for him to take walks after him and his dad fought. Second, is that he needs to get used to walking in the dark. And third, his mother is not, in fact, going to stay for Christmas this year. Just like this year, and the year before it. And the year before that. 

For the moment, he finds himself walking out in the snow painted woods outside his house, finding the crunch of snow and dead leaves underfoot to be much more of a comfort than the warmth of the house, or the knowledge that his dad was likely still inside sitting at the kitchen table. It’s disconcerting to think that for now, being out in the open was more of a comfort than being inside his own home- more often than not empty and quiet and his. Practically. It’s still filled with the traces of his parents, decorated sparingly by baby pictures he finds difficult to call himself and whatever is most fashionable to have sitting on the living room table at the time. Then again, not much of his house felt like home right now. 
What with Barb having gone missing from his pool deck, with the implication of there being one of those things out here? It makes him flex his hand for the bat he’d left down by the basement door, and even if he couldn’t feel his fingers, he could still feel the wood across his palm like it was still that night in the Byer’s. He wondered, perhaps, if the footsteps he left in the snow would lead it to him. Or if he’d be able to see anything else weird other than lights flickering if it came too close, or if he’d even be able to hear it with the ringing in his ears. 

He has to stare around in a squint just to make sure the figures of the trees don’t form into something else. He has some internal thought to call Nancy for a ride before thinking of her dad; he knows her dad was stubborn and mean sometimes, so he probably wouldn’t care that Steve didn’t even want to be in his own house. 
So instead, Steve walks, looping along the edge of the street and pretending the trees don’t form figures in his mind. It’s dark, dark in the way that the clouds were almost orange and the sky beyond it looked just a little red in the deep black. He can’t make out any stars between them, not at this time, the moon behind him dragging his shadow across the muddled snow. 

He can see the footprints there; a path he’d walked before, the gametrails that all branch off where in the summer they’d be wreathed in leaves and wildflowers. Here and there, the snow mounded up across dead leaf piles left from the fall, twisted sticks and logs. 

Somebody else’s footprints. 

The sight is something that prompts Steve’s heart to jump in his chest, has him straightening his back and glancing around quickly. It’s cold here, and the prints look old, and it takes all of him to tell himself that those are boots- not weird paws or clawed feet. Those belong to somebody, probably somebody else who lives around here. 

He should go back. He should go back and do the homework he was apparently so shitty at, go sneak back into his room, go to sleep. Or rather, try to sleep, with the thoughts of that monster on his mind. 

All of him feels he’d wake to see it at the end of his bed, or standing in his door, that it would gut him- or worse, be killing Nancy. Hell, even Jonathan. Even if the guy is a pain in his ass, he wouldn’t wish dying to whatever the hell that thing was on anyone. 

At that thought, Steve turns to make his way back to the house. No. Nope, he isn’t going to stay out here just to freak himself out. With a quick turn on his heel, Steve shoves his hands into the pockets of his blue and red jacket, wincing at the sting of the bruise forming about his eye, and starts marching back like he wasn’t scared, like he’d intended to turn around there all along.

That’s when he hears it.

A faint sound, like a branch snapping, the crackling of leaves that hadn’t completely turned to mush in the snow.

In an instant, Steve whips his head back towards the sound. 

Ten feet away, there’s a little kid. 

It looks to be a boy- no, a girl with the shortest hair he’s ever seen, gone all ratty and stuck up. She’s wearing a big brown coat, something far too large for her, beneath it a stained pink dress and boots, again far too big for her. Pale as a ghost, wide eyed, she stares like a deer in the headlights. There’s a large scrape on her knee that stuck out like a sore thumb, all reddened.

Steve, for the life of him, finds he almost can’t move. Even with the space between them, the brief moment being startled has the hair on the back of his neck stood on end, staring right back at her. 

She squints at him, seems to inch back just a touch like she wanted the dark of those woods to swallow her up. But she doesn’t go. No, instead she squints at him again, seeming to look him up and down before stepping forward.

“Can I have your jacket?” 

Her voice is hoarse and quiet, so tiny he almost didn’t register she’d spoken. 
His heart sank. She was so small, and it was so damn cold, and who knew what was out here. 

“Are you okay?” The words come tumbling out his mouth before he even realizes. “...my jacket? Do you even… where do you even live?”

“It is fine. I need it.” The girl starts again heavily. She holds out her hand then expectantly, and in any other circumstances Steve might’ve laughed. A random kid is trying to steal his jacket in the woods behind his house. She’s almost shivery, looks like she might keel over, and he isn’t sure what gave her the guts to go for it. A part of him wants to know.
But he can’t laugh now. No, he doesn’t like how she was shivering, he doesn’t like the weird stilt in her voice, and he doesn’t like how wrong this all feels. Steve pulls a face then, pursing his lips a touch as he glances back towards the house out the corner of his eye.
“I have a coat that would fit you at home. I can... I can go get it. You just gotta tell me some stuff first, okay?"
It isn’t a lie necessarily- at the same time, he doesn’t want to go home without his coat, doesn’t want to get in trouble for it. Should he be honest about that?
Sure. Sure, why not, maybe this forest kid would understand.
"I'll... it won't be good if I go home without my jacket. I'll get in trouble.”

"Okay." With a note of hesitance, she gives a nod, crossing her arms over herself.  "I will stay here."

"Why?" Steve blanches, because for the life of him he couldn't fathom why this kid wants to just stay out here. It’s freezing, freezing , and getting dark. "Look. I don't wanna sound weird or anything, but there's... creepy things out here. That kill people. Okay? You shouldn't be out here." 

Steve finds himself crossing his arms, almost hugging himself- a weird mimicry of what she does, oddly enough, even if it’s entirely subconscious. He takes another slow, hesitant step back, sucking in a breath.
"It's dangerous. And- yeah, shit, that's creepy. I'm sorry. I'll go get your coat. Just... you have somewhere to go, right? Somewhere not freezing?"

“No. I live here,” the girl insists, staring at him like that prospect is the most obvious thing in the world. “I know what lives here. I am fine.” 

Again, Steve finds himself thinking that in any other circumstance, he would've laughed out loud. Truly. The straight response that she just lived out here is unfathomable, especially with how he had lived growing up. 

People can’t just live out in the woods. No, that’s something people did forever ago in his history classes that he hardly pays attention to, and even then, they had somewhere to go.
She doesn’t have anywhere to go, does she?
"That's not fine." Steve retorts, like he knows it for a fact. He almost sounds like he's scolding her almost, leaning forward just a touch before he leans back and steps away, reaching up to rub at the non bruising side of his face. "For real. Where are you gonna go?"

“Where I want.” The girl repeats insistently, but she seems to falter after a moment as she tries to steady her chattering jaw. She moves then, arms still crossed, stepping forward like she intends to follow him. “Show me the jacket.” 

For all her insistence, Steve looses a puff of breath, ducking his head and crossing his arms perhaps a little more stubbornly

"Fine. Okay," he breathes, less than pleased with her insistence to not say anything, but he supposes- well, she doesn’t have to say anything at all if she didn't have to. He probably shouldn't even have been asking in the first place. 
With that, he takes a few backwards steps before nodding back towards the house. 
"It's just a little ways that way," he starts as he begins to walk, waiting a moment to make sure she's following. "We have to go through the side door, okay? My dad's in a bad mood."

As he goes, she begins to follow, marked with a most unbothered expression as she looks down to follow his tracks. “I do not mind.”

“He will, though,” Steve insists warily.
He can’t lead her to his own house without that warning at least. As he walks, he keeps glancing over his shoulder just to make sure she’s okay, to make sure the second set of footsteps aren’t just a trick of his mind. 
“I’m gonna go in the back way. You should make sure no one can see you, just in case. Okay?”

As they walk, he beelines through the woods, knowing exactly where he was going as a large house loomed out from the trees. Between them there is only the sound of their footsteps, her feet following to step where he did and avoid branches and leaves. There are a few lights on inside, but he picks his way around the edge of the darkened snow covered yard, around the slope towards a garage where he kicks up the rug and used a key to get inside.

The girl stands back, arms still wrapped tight around herself as she tilts her head up to stare at the house. "I will wait here."
All of her screams of some unspoken wariness, like she has a deep set fear over something about the house- the lights, the shape of it, the way that there were people inside. 

He can practically hear the internal battle she has going on. By the look on her face, how she seems to furrow her brow and set her jaw. It’s the first step in his completely blank list of ‘how to convince a forest kid to stay the night in the middle of winter instead of staying outside’, even though smart kids don’t go inside with strangers. 
It’s weird to think he’s a stranger. Everyone knows of him. Most people actually know him, really.

“Are you sure?” He asks back to where she stands, quietly working the door open so as to not alert anyone. “Jesus. How do you even stay out here when it’s this cold- okay. Fine. I’m gonna go look for it. Sorry if it’s not pink but uhm… if I take too long or you need something, this door is unlocked.”

He turns back towards the door then to push it open, kicking the snow off his shoes a little bit as he makes to step inside. As he goes to shut the door, her little voice picks up again.
“...I will go inside.”
It sounds like the most regretful, most hesitant thing he’s ever heard come out of anyone. But she says it. And when he turns back, she’s already practically standing behind him with how quick she moved. 

He can’t help but feel relieved, really. The kid definitely didn’t seem to have anywhere to stay, and he couldn’t imagine having to sleep out there himself. Much less alone, by the looks of it. So he steps aside and holds the door open for her as she makes her way in, following as they leave the cold behind them.

Chapter Text

“You can just hang out if you want. I’m just gonna look for it.”
The first view the kid has probably makes the basement feel massive. Steve remembers being a little kid her size coming through that door, being afraid of it for years before it had become his little hiding place, before the time between his parents returning spread further and further apart, and he claimed it all for himself. It’s changed since then. 

The stairs are right in front of them, off to the left there is a worn out couch that’s been moved from upstairs, a treadmill and the weight rack in the far corner. To the left, the small hallway that tails off into the bathroom and the laundry room- finished, but still so stale and dark feeling.  It probably doesn’t feel like the homiest place to wait for a jacket, even if it’s marginally warmer than outside.
As the kid shuffles in, Steve lightly closes the door behind her. He doesn’t lock it. As much as he really wants to, considering what could be out there, he doesn’t. He’d told her he wouldn’t, after all.
“So, what’s your name?” Steve asks. He steps away from her then, leaving her there to huddle on the doormat as he picked his way over to the heap of boxes under the stairs.
Steve is much too aware of her staring and the heavy silence that settles between them for a moment before she flips that question right back on him. 

“What is your name?”

Right. Right, he’s a stranger. 

“Steve.” He offers back with a shrug, glancing up to her. The lights down here are weak, but warm, making the shadows of her face turn her into an only gaunter figure. All the same, the warmth makes the bruising on his face throb probably just as much as the huge scrape on her knee. Feeling the awkwardness of the moment rising again, he looses another puff of breath, gesturing down the hall from where he’s hunched, pulling boxes out.
“There’s a bathroom over there if you need it. And a closet with blankets and stuff. We don’t really use them, anyway.”
Hesitantly, he finds himself glancing up again to watch as she quickly patters off down the hall at his suggestion, acutely aware of the thunk of the misfit door as she finds her way to where she needs to go. 

This is weird. Almost as weird as fighting a flesh monster in Jonathan fucking Byer’s house. It seems his life is spiraling at this point, what with that, this kid, his parents going all the way off to England this time- probably until the spring, because his dad would do something stupid and his mother would demand they go to Switzerland or something for Christmas and anywhere else romantic after that. Like it would rekindle anything . Like when they come back, his grades won’t still be slipping, like he’ll suddenly have a chance to get a shot at college. Thank god Nancy pities him for that enough to help him study.

With the kid gone, he lets his shoulders slump and turns his attention back towards the boxes. Years of stuff he’d grown out of, things gone out of use, had all been piled under there. One after another he starts pulling boxes out of the corner under the stairs. He can hear the clatter of some, the thud of others; full of decorations or old toys, a mess of hand-me-down items, plates and bowls and pretty things and paintings and photo boxes he had never been particularly interested in. 

Steve can hear her footsteps as she returns, the clunk of those way too big boots on the concrete floor of the basement, and she pipes up again pointedly. 

“What happened to your face?” 

It’s a little hypocritical considering all her scrapes and bruises, but Steve shrugs again, not glancing back as he pulls open the first box. “My dad was in a bad mood, I did something stupid.” He pushes the box aside when he realizes it’s full of old yellow glass plates. 

“Oh,” the girl starts, voice sounding from where she had previously been standing by the door. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He shakes his head, offering her a faint smile in reassurance. “Him and my mom are going away for work stuff tomorrow, so they’ll be gone for a long time anyway. It just happens sometimes.”

“I am Eleven.” Out of the blue, she offers it. A weird name to match a frankly weird kid, Steve finds himself glancing up to pull a face. 

“Eleven? Really? Who- who even named you that?” 

The girl- Eleven, simply shrugs as he goes to sit cross legged and keep perusing through boxes, pushing aside those that proved unhelpful. As it seems to be a habit for her, she changed the subject.

“Your… parents leave your house for a long time?” She seems frankly confused at the prospect, but for it, Steve shrugs again. It’s weird having anyone ask these kinds of questions of him. No one has prior, because the people who -at the time- needed to know just knew that. Tommy and Carol. It was an unspoken thing that they just knew, so he isn’t sure he had the words to articulate it.
“Yeah. It’s fine, I know how to take care of myself. Do your parents leave you out in the woods a lot?” Steve starts back without hesitance, making his way arms deep in an old box he’d had from when he was probably ten. Coats and jackets and sweaters he’d all grown out of, and yeah they looked old- but it was clothes. She doesn’t seem to care anyway, all things considered. “Sorry these aren’t pink.”
“I do what I feel like doing,” Eleven insists, repeating the same little philosophy she’d offered him since the beginning. Nevertheless, she shuffles over to stand sort of beside him, still keeping her distance. “Pink does not matter.” 

Steve can’t let go of that. It feels weird, feels wrong- maybe he should’ve realized that earlier, but little kids needed parents. And to not be out in the woods at almost midnight.
“Why?”
The question settles over the pair of them as she crouches to comb through the heap of 70s sweaters and coats, old and a little musty, but she truly doesn’t seem to mind. Slowly, she plops down cross legged just across from him, with the pile of clothes between them, her focus keeping on organizing what she wants. 

“Do you… have parents?” Steve continues pensively. God, that’s probably mean sounding, and all things considered he doesn’t mean it like that. 

For a moment, she stays quiet again. Steve is almost convinced she just isn’t going to answer, she does what she wants after all, instead building a set of clothes for herself out of old jeans worn at the knees, a sweater and an old red jacket of his, wool knit socks from forever ago. As she takes her finds into account and bundles them up, she shakes her head ‘no’. 

Oh. 

In the worst way, that’s easier to process than her being out there alone. She doesn’t have parents; she does what she wants. Kinda like he does, even if he has parents, most of the time it feels like he doesn’t. And so, he does what he wants. 
Steve finds himself sitting there a moment, sort of at a loss, before slowly standing to push some of the boxes aside to make it look like it had before, eventually making his way to stand in the hall. 

He calls out, lightly, considering his parents were still upstairs, but earnest, "Are you hungry?"

That seems to catch her attention, her head picking up quickly and eagerly. “Yes.” She agrees shortly, nodding quickly at the idea. With that, she gathers the clothes up in her arms and turns to scurry back off towards the bathroom to change. 

“Okay! Okay, okay, I’ll be right back- I’ll grab something. Don’t run off, ‘kay?” Steve calls back as she goes, and jesus he doesn’t like how excited she got about that either. 

What the hell has he gotten himself into now?

Steve stands then, giving a bit of a stretch as he abandons his boots at the bottom of the stairs and starts up in his socks. Leaving Eleven to have the basement to herself for the moment, he slowly pushes the door out to peer around for his dad. 
With baited breath, he half expects to see him sat at the kitchen table still. But no, thank god, its quiet downstairs for now. The under-cabinet lights are still on, lighting the kitchen warm and dim as the basement below. The big windows have the curtains drawn, but he can still see that the sliding glass window is uncovered. 
It’s black outside. He feels if he stares too long, he’ll see that gnarled monster stood there. Worse, he might see Barb there; Nancy had told him what became of her. She was dead. She’d died in his pool, in some version of hell that looked like his house. 

Shaking it off, shivering practically, Steve turns to the fridge and the stovetop. There’s a pan of lasagna still left out, a fork. Might as well just take the whole thing, after all. Apples, out on the counter in a bowl he touched only in the morning before school on weekdays until he filled it himself again. He finds himself turning back towards the cupboard for just a moment. She’d probably want dessert too. He reaches up to tuck the cupboard open and snag the box of cookies, bumping it back shut with his elbow as he stacks everything precariously to make his way back down into the basement. 

He’s quiet all the way back down the stairs too, and from the top between the railing he can see her by the boxes. 
Eleven is going through them, the boxes with baby clothes are full of stuff for a little boy. Little aspects of family that he doesn’t remember much anymore: tiny shoes and onesies and Halloween costumes. Photos in black and white of old relatives, a man in an army helmet with a gun signed ‘Otis’ on the back. Even so, past the age of maybe seven, there aren’t a lot of photos of Steve with his family- much less with his parents. And after the age of twelve maybe, the only photos there are with them all were from weddings, at holidays.

It appears that in his time upstairs, she’d changed and also dumped a handful of blankets on that worn out couch, though soon enough the movement of him walking catches her eye, and she snaps her head up. She says nothing about the pictures when he makes his way down and plops the lasagna platter in front of her, seeming to much more favor the food. Quickly, she takes it by the handles and scoots it over, giving a start when he crouches to leave the fork within sight. 

Eleven, for the life of her, seems a little surprised by what he’d brought down, as he walks around to sit and lean against the wall. Leaving the apples between them, he cracks open the box of cookies.
"What's that?" 
He cracks a bit of a grin for it- it’s lasagna, and lasagna is amazing. 
"Lasagna," he hums, "I don't really know what you like, so... or what you need. What do you eat, anyway?"

“I will eat food,” she shrugs, taking up the fork in some indication that she knew what to do with it before shamelessly leaning to start scarfing it down. 

It’s a little scary. Unnerving. He doesn’t know how to put it, but he isn’t used to seeing somebody that hungry. 

"You don't have favorites?" 
As he asks it, Steve quickly comes to the realization that he’s staring. Yeah no, it would be weird to watch the kid eat, so instead he turns to try and shut the nearest box, mucking around inside to make it look like no one had gone through it at all.

"I like Eggos," she admits around a mouthful of lasagna,  "But, I like this too. It is good." She doesn’t stop, hardly pausing to take a breath, but at least she’s eating. At least she likes it- kids are picky sometimes, aren't they?

Considering that thought, Steve finds a relieved little smile coming to his face. Nevertheless, he occupies himself with cleaning everything else up, offering a little laugh. 
"Waffles? I can get some tomorrow, maybe. If you want," he offers with a faint shrug. Maybe, for a moment, he realizes it has the implication that she would stay. She should, of course- it’s cold, she seems alone, and it’s frightening to know a kid could be alone out in those woods. It’s weirdly nice to have somebody to talk to though, even if he hardly knows her at all. For that, he leans back against the wall with a soft hum, turning back to the half open box of cookies. He can’t deal with the quiet.
"I have an idea, alright? You can ask me a question, any question, and I gotta answer it. But then I get to ask you a question, and you have to answer that. Does that sound fair?"

Steve’s proposal earns him a stark stare, and he swore he could hear the gears clicking in her head. But, she huffs, squares her shoulders and nods from over her lasagna. 

“Okay.” She pauses, sitting back a bit more to think before she poses her question, “Why were you in the woods?” 

Starting off strong, maybe. But then again, he’s curious about the same thing for her. 
“I was out in the woods because I didn’t want to stay in the house, and I was probably gonna do something stupid if I didn’t walk away,” he admits with an audible sigh. It was an easy enough question. And he’s had enough of fighting, lately. “Why’s your hair so short?”

The mention of her hair has Eleven putting down her fork and reaching up to run her fingers through it. It had definitely been shaved at some point, but it’s starting to grow out a little, not quite shaggy, on the edge of curling here and there where the rest was stiff and straight.

“Papa has it short. I want it long.”

Now that throws him for a loop. He’d once had his head shaved when he was really little as a kid because of lice, sure, but it had felt wrong, just like it has throughout the rest of this encounter. And in the most basic terms, he’s never seen a little girl with hair this short- it’s probably deemed weird (well no, he does find it a little weird). His own hair is longer than hers, and for a moment he reaches up to rest his hand atop his head at the horrid thought that he'd hate to have it so short. 

"Oh. It's easy," Steve offers lamely instead, focusing on picking a cookie out the tin. "It's... yeah. You just have to wash it right."

Papa. That was weird too... she'd sounded so indifferent mentioning parents before. He'd have to ask that next. "Okay, your turn."

By now, she almost finished with the rest of the lasagna. It’s shocking how quick a kid like her ate so much so fast, and even then she was reaching for the cookie tin. 
“Why are you helping me?”

It’s honestly a little difficult to think of good questions despite the near hundreds of internal ones he felt he had. But no, Steve dwells on it, holding out the cookie tray when she reaches for it. 

"Because-" he starts, and really? Steve doesn’t have an answer. He doesn’t have an answer for this, like he didn't have an answer for why he ran into Byer's house, or why despite everything having been quiet for so long he felt he needed to keep a bat by his bed or in the trunk of his car. Why he felt just fine pretending Tommy and Carol didn't hate him. "Because I would've wanted somebody to help me. And it's supposed to be like, fifteen degrees out tonight anyway." 

He sets the tin down between them now. "Who's Papa? Is he your dad?"

In an instant a stark look of fear passes her face, something quickly followed up by a brief anger articulated by the deep furrow in her brow, the downward turn of her lips in her gaunt face. It’s such a quick thing it almost stands the hair on the back of Steve’s neck on end, and he watches as she wraps her hand around the cookie so tight it nearly crumbles in her hand. 

“I do not say that.” She starts sharply then, continuing instead to pick at the crumbs of her cookie and eat those instead, “My turn. Do you go to school? What is it like?” 

As much as Steve is staring, Eleven’s gaze drops to the concrete on the floor and the weird plastic grooves in the cookie box to hold them all upright. He’s only a little bit miffed by it- at least he thinks so. At the same time, it sort of scares him. It scares him in the way that Nancy talks about the things she’s afraid of in ways he’d never thought about- that he’d never had to before. It scares him like some of the topics they talked about in social studies or English that he ignored because it was so much easier to just talk about things that didn’t. It scares him like that monster does. 

He can’t get it out of his damn head. 

What if this Papa is like his dad? Or some creep or- entirely made up? Or dead?  When the hell did he start worrying like this? 

“Oh. Uhm- yeah! Yeah I do. It’s okay I guess, I think the only really fun thing is basketball. And friends.” 

That much was true- really it was. That was all he really got out of it anyway. 

“Do you have any friends?”

For the tenseness in her shoulders, that question seems to ease her a little bit. That angry expression softens, and she reaches out for another cookie with a little more vigor. 

“Yes. Three. Do you have friends?” There’s something so reverent in the way she says ‘friends’ that sticks out like a sore thumb. It makes his chest hurt. With a little sigh, Steve reaches forward to snag the empty baking pan and set it up on the stairs to grab it later. She probably won’t be satisfied with his answer by the look on her face, but he shrugs, plucks up another cookie, and offers her a faint smile. 

“Well, I have my girlfriend, Nancy. She’s pretty awesome. And… a couple of people on my basketball team, but I’m not as close with them. So, uhm… do you not go to school then?”

“My friend Mike- his sister is Nancy. I saw her.” Eleven announces suddenly, and she seems almost startled at the revelation. Her head whips right back up to him, eyes going wide, huge with instantaneous guilt and regret and genuine fear. Steve himself hardly has to time to process it before she’s speaking quickly again, almost pleading. “Do not tell them I am here- please!? Do not-” 

Steve himself finds a bit of a shock sinking in him. Was- does she know Nancy? His Nancy is the only Nancy he knows with a little brother named Mike, and Mike is the only kid he knows with an older sister named Nancy. Shit. Holy shit?
“Holy shit .”  Steve starts, sitting up a bit. Mike- he knows Mike, and honestly? The kid is a little shit, a total twerp, and more often than not Nancy complains about him. But she knows him. She kinda knows Nancy .

How the hell does she know him?

Steve finds himself staring, balking at Eleven for a good long moment. She probably has a million reasons why she doesn’t want anyone knowing where she was. She probably feels like she could get in trouble- or worse, would , even if he doesn’t believe Nancy could hurt her for a second. 

"I- I mean yeah, sure! Why? Why shouldn't I tell them, how do you know him?" 

“He is nice. But- I will get Mike in trouble. It is very bad,” she starts, before giving a faint mumble, “I do what I want.” 

He was able to pick up on this and that, to piece everything together as the cookie remained now forgotten in his hand as he stared after her. He kept trying to find words, gaping like a fish. 

"You- yeah! You know what, that's... relatable , I guess. Shit." He loses a big breath, slowly nodding as he brought his knees up a little bit. He could understand that way more than he liked to admit right now, but he quickly shakes his head. That Papa guy sounds like trouble, especially with how afraid she looks just thinking about him. And if telling either of them means she’d encounter this ‘Papa’ again? Her name was fucking Eleven for christ’s sake, and that could mean a million things.

No. He won’t say anything. 

"Honestly, I think you should stay. Because it's gonna be freezing and... I don't like the sound of that Papa guy you mentioned." Steve admits with a little more insistence, "I won't tell anyone. I promise, okay? You just- Shit, uhm- can you just tell me what's going on?"

“I can not tell you,” Eleven insists again, and she falls dead quiet as she reaches up to rub the sides of her face with her far too pale and knobby hands. “I do not want to talk about it.” 

Steve honestly feels a little frustrated. He’s sure he looks it too, brow furrowed and mouth kinda open, hands splayed out helplessly (save the one holding the cookie). He wasn't exactly pleased to not know what was going on, because clearly there was something going on, something way bigger than him, and he had no idea what to say to get her to tell him. 

"...For now. Just for now," he decides quietly, staring across at her with an almost resigned look. "You can stay though. If you want, my parents are gonna be gone, and I guess you don't really want them to see you. And I'm gonna be at school on Monday. And I don't mind."

“If you are going to school- I will… explore,” she notes, before peering up the stairs.  “Your parents are gone tomorrow? I can go upstairs?”

It does make him pause, that idea. Her being alone here. But, maybe it could mean she stays. Maybe it could mean she doen’t get into any trouble. He nods slowly, features falling into that hint of resignation again. “Well yeah. You can sleep up there too, nobody wants to sleep in the basement. Plus- the TV is up there if you get bored. But you just gotta stay down here for tonight, because my dad.”

Once more, Eleven nods, glancing back to the couch. “I will stay. I will explore tomorrow.” She stands then, picking up the plastic lining of the cookie tin to give him a stare that nearly strikes through his soul before she turns to make her way to sit on the couch. 

“…okay. Just promise me you won’t go back to the Papa guy, alright? I really don’t like the sound of him,” Steve insists worriedly.

She responds ever simply, propped there on the edge of the couch, pulling at the blankets she’d heaped there to get comfortable. “I would not go back. Never.” 

It’s the most certain thing she’s said or admitted all night, honestly. She doesn’t look up- focused on the cookies, which at the moment are the last thing on his mind. He stands, gathering up the empty cookie box tin then, making his way to stand there at the bottom of the stairs. 

“Are you gonna be alright?” 

Eleven peers over the couch then, pulling a blanket about her shoulders with a serious and determined nod, like she’d come to some unspoken conclusion somewhere in the middle of their truth or truth conversation. 

“I will be okay.” 

Steve opens his mouth like he knew what to say, and despite it all found silence coming out. For that, he turns, ducks his head, and picks the empty lasagna tin off the stairs where he’d put it. 
There he leaves her, to sit and dwell and try to sleep in a far too big basement in a far too big house, internally hoping his dad was already asleep. He leaves the basement door unlocked, he turns off the upstairs lights, and makes his way upstairs to his bedroom fighting some distant ache of dread in his stomach. 

He doesn’t sleep well that night. Of course, he hasn’t got much sleep the past week or so after the Byers, but it’s been hard for him to sleep knowing all this, crawling up into his bed with the knowledge there was some poor kid he’d just left down there, even if it’ll be far safer in the basement than up here. 

She knows Mike. She knows about Nancy. And he hadn’t known about her at all. 

Chapter Text

Steve hadn’t expected for Eleven to come up from the basement the next morning. He hadn’t expected her to even be there, but she does. In the absence of his parents, with the house to himself, he makes pancakes to make up for not having any waffles to give her. Awkwardness aside, he shows her how to put the toppings on. Butter, syrup, powdered sugar and whipped cream, all things that Eleven seemed to adore. Perhaps a little bit too much, considering he ran out of whipped cream in about three days. 

The time he doesn’t spend at practice, he spends at home. Doing homework, figuring out how to make food he doesn’t just eat to eat , but food that Eleven likes. So far, that seemed to be Eggo waffles specifically, mac n’ cheese with bacon bits, anything with potatoes (which for him was a fairly limited selection between baked and fried with eggs), and Baskin-Robbins strawberry ice cream.
It’s a little scary how fast she got through almost a pint before he had to snatch it from her. 

He’s learned a handful of other things about her. She hadn’t seen movies before, so he’s quick to introduce her to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Superman, Cheech and Chong , and Enter the Dragon . Fortunately, she seems pretty fond of Reading Rainbow, The Smurfs and Inspector Gadget when he’s gone. She watches a lot of TV, especially with the snow settling in.
Eleven is gone sometimes when he gets home, but she always comes back eventually, usually before 10 at night. If she isn’t back, he waits up for her by the back sliding door. And when he goes out for travel games, she waits up for him in kind, usually fallen asleep on the couch if he gets back late or even early in the morning. She seems to like drawing when Steve is doing his homework. Sometimes she leans over to try and read whatever he’s reading or writing, or just to pop over his shoulder. Other than that, she seems well entertained with colored pencils he hadn’t touched since middle school- drawing all manner of things, including some creepy renditions of his own monster. 

It leads him to ask what it was, and Eleven very pointedly turns back to look at him. “I said I know what lives in the forest.”

He turns back towards the bat at the door, gave a nod, a wary; “Me too,” before leaving it at that and going back to the mind melting language arts assignment he’s stuck in. 

She stares at him, stares back at the bat, and turns back to her page without a word. 

After that, he gets only more reluctant to leave her alone at the house as it keeps getting darker even earlier, as the snow piles up. She moves up into the guest room that no one had ever used, dragged all the blankets up there with her, and eventually he takes the box of clothes she liked up there too. 
Eleven keeps saying she’s going to leave. And then she stays another day, because the snow is getting too deep, she wants more socks, she wants to try whatever he was making for her the next day, she’d waited too late for him to come back from his basketball games, or she just ‘slept in’. 

Steve doesn’t mind. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t tell anyone, and waits for her to say something else that would give him a hint of where the hell she came from.
He likes the company. He enjoys her just being around, how considerably less lonely it feels having Eleven around. And yeah, she is a weird kid. But she has so many questions, and even if he doesn’t have answers to everything, he likes those too. 

“Why is there Thanksgiving?”
“Why do you go other places for basket-ball?”
“Why is Mr.Lee so angry on the movie?”
“What does a whale look like?”
“Where are the waffles?”
“How did you know how to drive?”
“What is your oldest friend?”
“What is a ‘date’?” 
“Where do your parents live?”
“Why are your teachers mean?”
“How do you make friends?”
“Can I make a pancake?”
“Do you have a ‘pet’?”
“Where do you get a pet?”
“Why do you make your hair big?-” (He’d promptly sprayed the top of her head with his trusty Farrah Fawcett and sent her running off down the stairs so she would stop standing in the bathroom.)

Those are only a few of what she bombards him with on the daily, but certainly the most memorable. It’s after their improvised Thanksgiving that he poses his own question- he has very few for her himself that aren’t things she refuses to talk about. 

He had just gotten back from Nancy’s house. She’d invited him over, and Mrs.Wheeler had the utmost pity for him. Mr.Wheeler… not so much, but he seemed more keen on asking Steve about how basketball was going, how well he was doing as a point guard, if he was thinking about college. Gag. Mike looked absolutely miserable sat there at the table, food half in his mouth like it had lost all taste- it didn’t escape Steve that it was probably something to do with Eleven. What exactly, he wasn’t sure, but it still stuck out.
Outside all that, it was time to spend with Nancy outside studying- something that feels rare despite it being the holidays. They’d sat up in her room for almost way too long before he managed out the excuse that it had started snowing again and he wanted to get home before he had to deal with ice on the road. 
He’d left with leftovers, driving back in the snow, and arrived when it was dark. 

Eleven is sitting up reading one of the ‘Encyclopedia of the World’ books he’d had when he was younger, and the A-Team is playing late. She picks up her head as he makes his way in the front door and locks it, leftovers tucked under his arm.

“You are late.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sorry, I know. Nancy’s family is really intense about family holidays and stuff.” Steve shrugs, kicking off his shoes by the door. He makes his way in then, flicking on the kitchen lights as he sets the leftovers up on the counter. “D’you wanna try some of this? It’s genuine mom made Thanksgiving dinner.”

“What is in it?” Eleven chimes. She hops right up, making her way over to lean over the counter’s edge. It was quite the arrangement- a considerable stack of tupperware. Stuffing, turkey, green beans- enough for him alone for a few days, and he couldn’t have said no to that- perhaps even less so considering Eleven.

“All the good stuff we talked about! I definitely couldn’t have made it right, so…”

“Can I have some?”

“Yeah! Yeah, of course.” Steve agrees breezily, reaching to pop open the turkey dish. He turns, pulling a plate out of the cupboard, and by the time he’s looking back she’s got the green beans open with her nose scrunched at them. 

“What is that? It smells bad.”

“Hey. Don’t diss Mrs.Wheeler’s green beans, give it a try!” Steve snorts, pushing the plate forward to dump some of those green beans on it. She turns, brow knitting, nose scrunching, lips curling. 

“Why?”

“Becaaauuuse- the rolls are better after you eat everything else?”

“Rolls?”

“Yeah.” Steve chimes, pulling at the wad of aluminum foil. “You gotta have turkey too. And stuffing, that’s the good stuff.”

Eleven tilts her head then, nodding in a serious agreement. “It is stuffing.” 

Well, at least she got it somewhat. “Exactly,” he agrees, tilting a bit more of it out- still somehow warm, but then again, Pyrex was like magic. After that comes a hefty helping of turkey, as he pushes the plate over to her. “If I had any potatoes- if I could make good potatoes, I would. That’s usually the next best part outside turkey and rolls.”

Eleven reaches out then hesitantly, picking up a piece of green bean to stick in her mouth. She seems pretty damn uncertain about this all, but manages to chew, tilting her head a bit to the side in thought before going for another.

“Not so bad, right?”

“I do not know,” she remarks, reaching for the next piece she could get her hands on, snagging a piece of turkey. “This is good!”

There was that, at least. Steve turns to pull out a fork for her then, leaving it there on the table. “If you want more, the rest is yours. Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Yes, Happy Thanksgiving,” Eleven agrees, and she smiles. 

That in itself feels like such a rare thing that it has Steve smiling all the same, and for it he pats his hands on the counter. 

“When you’re done- do you want to decorate the Christmas tree? By then Thanksgiving will officially be over, so we might as well.”

That idea has Eleven perking up curiously. She had already asked about a million and one questions about everything, and about nine of those had included Christmas. She reaches for another piece of turkey with her fork now, watching as he makes his way around to put away the dishes from breakfast. 

“What is Christmas?” she asks, “It is… a holiday. What is it like?”

"What's Christmas?" Steve starts for a moment, before realizing that- well, he’d explained Thanksgiving, but not Christmas. He didn't believe in Santa anymore, but there was no use in spoiling that for her if she didn't know. "You just- it's like when you... when you set up the Christmas tree and leave out cookies and good old Santa Claus stops by and leaves gifts? If you're good."

"I still do not… know. Who is ‘Santa Claus’? How does he know if I am bad?" 
She frowned a bit at the thought, putting her fork down. She didn’t really believe him, that much was clear, and it didn’t help that she was staring straight up at him in that really intense way only she seemed to have.
"Oh. Is it a joke?" 

"No! No, no, it's not a joke. It's uh... he's an old guy with a beard and he's got like... a red winter suit and he's got a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer." No yeah, this sounded so stupid in retrospect. Of course it didn't make sense to her. "He just knows. That's just how it goes."

Eleven continues to stare at him a moment before she furrows her brow a little deeper, lips settling in an awkward line, head tilting dubiously to the side. Yeah no, she doesn’t believe him at all. 
Reluctantly, Steve leans his elbows on the counter and sighs, rubbing his hands over his face. "Sorry. That sounds weird, doesn't it?"

Steve takes the opportunity to peer out from behind his fingers as El slumps her shoulders and holds up her hands, seeming bewildered and miffed more than anything. "Yes! It is really weird! I do not like being made dumb.”

“I'm not!" Steve protests quickly, throwing up the hands he'd hid his face in helplessly. "I'm not- okay. Well, Santa isn't an actual thing, but we still do it. Christmas. And even if there's not a fat guy in red with flying reindeer who comes into your house, people usually give each other presents and stuff. And we decorate. That's nice and all- sorry, I'm just like, I guess I'm surprised. I've never met anybody who didn't know what Christmas was."

He didn’t intend to be mean, but he grimaces when he catches how her expression had gone far less than amused. Finally she seemed to settle and accept that he wasn’t, in fact, trying to make a joke out of her. 

"So.. Christmas is.. big?" The expression she takes seemed far more disappointed, like she’s having some big deep thought. "The Santa part is not real.. So what is it actually?" She’s curious, clearly still wanting to learn, even if the topic had gotten off to a rough start. "Presents… decoration?" 

"People sing songs. And we go out and make snow angels and snowmen and stuff- we get time off school, and we hang up Christmas lights and put up a tree and put out mistletoe. And there's movies and all... and you can make cookies, and go look at everyone else's Christmas lights. Put up a Christmas tree. That's a lot of fun." Seeing her so curious, Steve offered her a smile as she kept listening and chowing down on her food.

"I can help you," Eleven proposes with a nod, perking her head up to smile in kind. 

Steve's expression softens for her suggestion, and he's quick to nod. 
"Yeah. Yeah! I'd like that. It's better to have someone to decorate with anyway. I’m gonna go get the boxes from downstairs, okay?" 

Eagerly, Eleven nods, and he pulls away to make his way down into the basement to fetch the Christmas decorations. 
Steve is well aware that his family has too many Christmas decorations, things from all over -Germany and Italy and England, things passed down from his grandpa, from his mom’s side of the family. When it wasn’t just himself, he remembers the house being so colorful and warm and bright- practically the only time it felt lived in, even if in retrospect those moments still held the lingering feeling of a magazine set. At that time, he’d still had nannies- young women who were all entirely enthusiastic to help put ornaments up with him when he was little. 

It’s funny to think how excited he was to take that place with Eleven. 

A few trips at a time, he comes up with boxes: two of ornaments, one of lights and garlands, all piled in the big living space in view of the kitchen. Inbetween those trips, Eleven is clearly enjoying her impromptu Thanksgiving dinner, every so often turning back to wave at him as he moves up and down. 

By the time he switches the television to the holiday music channel and cracks open the light box, Eleven hops up from her chair to crouch right beside him, reaching out to take up a tangled string of lights. Bing Crosby’s voice rang overhead, breaking up the silence of the house without a worry in the world.
“How do you make a snowman?” She asks, watching Steve closely as he pulls out a wad of tangled lights- he swore he’d organized them when he’d put them in, but that was the inevitability of Christmas lights. Steve hums, peering up and sitting back on the floor to start untangling.

Outside, it’s dark, and blessedly quiet. It’s near instinct for him to look up at those big windows now, out to where his pool was- now covered and blanketed with a thick helping of snow. Eleven moves to sit beside him, taking up her own ball as she begins to untangle it. 

This is nice. This is good , as uncanny as the circumstances were. A week ago, Eleven would hardly even look at him, much less talk to him, at least before her cascade of questions came. 

"Snowballs. You have to roll 'em up pretty big. Then you can put sticks and carrots on 'em and make 'em look like a dude." He finds himself fond of the thought as he tries to untangle the lights in his hand. 

"How does balled up snow look like a man?" she continues, leaning to peer into the box curiously in between her attempts to untangle her own mound of lights. 

"You gotta make 'em pretty big!" Steve chimes as he pulls out another garland and a big spool of velvety looking ribbon, leaving it on the floor there as she starts untangling the lights. 
Seeming to realize what he meant, she straightens her shoulders. "Oh! That makes more sense." 

Steve snorts, nodding. “Yeah. I can show you tomorrow, okay?” He chimes, peering around to grab at something, before sighing,  "Shit, I think the tree's downstairs." 

Less than pleased with himself, Steve leaves his pile on the ground, turning back for a moment as he starts for the stairs. "I'll be right back okay? Good luck with that." He gestures to the tangle of lights with a little grin as she starts untangling it, making his way off downstairs- leaving the door open there.

He spends a good ten minutes down there digging around for the bag with the plastic Christmas tree his dad had ordered two years back and hadn’t ever touched since. It takes him some time down there, audibly coming through the boxes and moving some things that had been in the way. He lets out a triumphant little cheer to himself when he spotted it, dragging it out from the mound it’d been buried from helping Eleven find better winter clothes that first night. Steve quickly tosses it over his shoulder and makes his way upstairs to the sound of Frank Sinatra’s Christmas Waltz .
Picking his way over, Steve didn’t even notice the now untangled mess of lights for a moment. Instead, he dumped the bag beside the boxes and leaned to unzip it, only to glance up, before giving a start as his eyes widen. 

"...Holy shit. Holy shit, how the hell did you even?-" He starts, entirely confused as he glances over to her, before he gives another start. "Oh my god is your nose bleeding? Are you okay?"

Eleven seems entirely unaffected by this, glancing down like she could see the blood out her nose (she most certainly couldn’t) before making to wipe her nose off on her sleeve. Steve practically jumps to stop her from doing that, reaching out. 

“Hey! Hey woah, let me get you a tissue or something, jesus.” He backpeddles then as she lets her arm slump, staring just a moment. “Jesus,” he parrots again, “I need you to like… untangle my shoelaces sometime or something.”

Eleven breaks into a little giggle for that, shaking her head as he patters back and leans into the kitchen to get her a paper towel. As her giggling fades, she absently seems to tilt her head and shoulders to and fro to the music.
“It is okay, it happens sometimes. Where is your tree?”

Steve’s baffled. A little confused honestly, worried he’d lost time down there in the basement- he raises a hand to absentmindedly rub the side of his face. It’s weird- then again, she’s weird, and he knew folks who got nosebleeds anyway, mostly wrestling kids and one other person who he didn’t talk to who apparently got bad migraines. 

“Let me know if that happens again. I should just get you some tissues or something to have with you just in case,” Steve starts lamely for a moment, standing there over the boxes and bag, before glancing down and crouching to unzip it. “Yeah. Sorry it’s not the real thing but , it’s still pretty good.” He opens it a bit to let her see inside- it looks like a tree had been cut down to the bottom like pieces of cake. 

Eleven pushes aside the string of lights from her lap, off onto where she’d assumedly left Steve’s now untangled pile of lights, leaning in and looking- well, entirely underwhelmed. 

"It is.. not real?" She frowns a bit, before glancing up at him, "Why? Why not a real tree?"

Steve drops to crouch beside the bag containing the thing, pulling out the base part with a little snort for the look on her face.  
“Yeah, apparently that’s the cool thing to do. That way the needles don’t fall off and make a mess everywhere- I think my folks got this a couple years ago?” 
He straightens out the base of it, before picking out the next smallest piece and sticking it on top. “I mean, if it really bothers you we can get a real one. Or I can. I haven’t done that in a while.”

She’s quick to shake her head ‘no’, shoulders slumping a touch. Instead, she sits back to lean on her hands as he puts the tree together. “No. The fake tree is okay. How do you make it pretty?”

Even as she speaks, she turns back to one of the ornament boxes, pulling the red flaps open. 

"You gotta get some tinsel and stuff. And lights, and wrap 'em all around from top to bottom. Or bottom to top, technically," He hums, offering her an almost excited smile. 
"And that box has the ornaments, so we hang them up after. You gotta be careful though, because a lot of those are super old or super expensive or have something to do with my grandparents." 
He continued to stack the pieces, spreading out the branches purposefully. 
"Then a star goes on top. Or an angel. I dunno, it depends."

"Everyone does this? Is it just for being pretty?" Eleven stands then, pulling out a garland of greenery, and then a spool of tinsel- white and gold.

“Most people do. Sometimes people who do Hanukkah put a menorah up in the window, but I don’t know where ours went.” Steve admits. “That’s a little less complicated. The tree’s just to look pretty. But then usually technically the story is that Santa sticks all the presents under it. If you get presents for people you can put them there too.” 

"Who chooses when?"

“No one really! Usually it’s after Thanksgiving, but it’s kinda just… when you feel like it. I like it a lot so I do it as soon as I can, but some people wait until Christmas Eve, that's the night before Christmas.” 

Once the tree is put together, he carries it over to the corner by the window, plopping it down on the legs with a shrug.
For some odd reason, Steve finds himself both pleased and relaxed explaining it all- he likes it, she has good questions, and it isn’t like he usually has anyone around to talk about this sort of thing. She doesn’t seem so tense, so wary of him anymore. She’s even just smiling, to herself, about anything, about her own questions. 

It struck Steve just how happy that thought made him. She’s so different from just a week ago. 

“Why are there presents?” Eleven chimes, following after him with the spool of tinsel in one hand, one of the strings of lights in the other. “And why is there ‘Christmas Eve’?”

Steve is quick to return and pick up the box of ornaments, gesturing for her to grab the box of other lights and garlands as he sets it down. 

"Christmas Eve... usually people have family over, y'know, people they care about. Like Thanksgiving, actually. And sometimes there's a huge dinner with chicken and fruitcake and jello whatever- honestly I’m more of a fudge person, that’s my favorite." He shrugs a bit, and by the way he's talking about it, he's not exactly certain all this is true. Instead, he tries to distract himself by spreading out the branches and fake needles more, glancing over as Eleven soon follows suit, mimicking step by step. "Everyone goes to church the next day- people know if you don’t, it's a small town. But uh- that’s the whole story of Jesus being born. It’s like it’s his birthday, but he’s not here so we give each other presents." 

As she starts spreading out the branches, he reaches up to get the top ones, clearly enjoying himself.

“Oh. Just another big dinner. But with presents?” She continues, turning back to start leaning and draping the tinsel here and there- vague ideas she’d seen from television, maybe, though each instance she does it she glances up as if waiting to see if she’d done it right.  

"Pretty much." Steve muses, and he truly seems to agree, taking up the tinsel where she stopped winding them to wrap them around the rest of the tree up to the top, the lights soon to follow as she left them. He’s careful then as he turns to pick up an ornament, looping a hook around the top loop before hanging it past the second branch, taking great care to make sure it wouldn't fall. 

“Oh,” Eleven hums to herself, turning her attention back to the tree. "I think any dinner should have people you care about.”

"I think so too. I guess it's just extra special because sometimes family that's moved away comes. Like grandmas and grandpas. Aunts and uncles and cousins and stuff. Or you go there to where they live with them.”

"I do not have that family. Aunts, uncles, cousins," Eleven remarks quietly, turning to watch how Steve hung the ornament. 

She turns, pulling out a little ornament shaped like a tiny house- a birdhouse, it appears to dawn on her, and for it she smiled, holding it up to see the tiny red bird there hidden under the snowy eaves. 

“I haven’t seen mine in a long time. So- I bet you do, you just haven’t seen them.” Steve offers, passing her a hook- which she loops on carefully, hooking the ornament far enough on the branch so it wouldn’t fall. She even let her hands hover a moment, just to be sure of it. 

“Yes. Maybe.”

There’s a brief moment where Steve finds himself worriedly watching to make sure she doesn't drop anything, but a soft smile marks his face when she gets it up there and looks so damn proud . 

"Having fun?" he chimes, that smile almost audible as he reaches down for another ornament- glass on the bottom, with what looked like little penguins ice skating, sculpted there on top. A big penguin with a green scarf and a little hat, and a little penguin with a red scarf and white earmuffs all caught in the instant of spinning around on the ice. He hung it on a flat part of the tree, practically sitting it on the branches. "We still got a lot more to go."

Eleven doesn’t hesitate to nod then, turning back to him with a far more enthusiastic grin. 

“Yes.” 

There’s a moment where she picks up another ornament- a black and white photo of his family, him as only a baby, tiny in his mother’s arms, one of the few photos he had of his family where his dad was actually smiling- one of the few where they were all together. She seems to stare at it a moment, taking in the sight as her fingers flicker over the image and the clay holly frame. He turns away as she hangs it.

They go along like that, one at a time. There are plenty of ornaments between them. Colorful ones, ones that looked like stained glass windows, others that looked like little animals, skis, or fat men in red and white. He takes to putting ornaments up where she can’t reach, making sure everything is spread out with much precision and care. Reds, mostly. Whites and golds and blues all spread across the false green of the tree until they're both turned back to the box staring at a little felt tree that'd slipped up to the bottom. 

Stood there on either side of the box, Eleven speaks up first. 

“You should hang it last. It is your tree.”
Briefly, Steve leans in and plucks it up- he could hardly remember where they’d got it, if it was an heirloom or not, but it always ended up slipping to the bottom for how little it was. There are beads sewn into it like the very ornaments how they’d hung up, and he could recall how time after time, he had hung this final ornament up alone.

"Nah. You go for it, it's your first tree, and I've decorated tons anyway," Steve hums. "You can put the star on if you want, too. I can get you a chair?"

He passes it over to her, and for a moment she just holds it- reaching to look at it and touch it with just as much reverence as she seems to have for everything else, glancing up then. She looks so much more like a kid, her ratty hair growing out a little curly at the ends now. She looks alive, and happy, thrilled even. 

“Yes, I think I need a chair,” Eleven agrees readily, turning to tuck the little tree beside the penguins. That’s all the time Steve needs to make his way to the kitchen and back to fetch one of the sturdy chairs, plopping it there at the bottom of the tree just as she takes up the sparkly golden star. She takes a moment to shake her hand off when the glitter rubs off onto her hands so easily, and he laughs again- quiet, just a small thing, but it has her smiling all the same. 

“This is so sticky!”

“That’s glitter. I swear, you could throw that thing in a lake and it would still come out as sparkly.”

That has Eleven breaking into a little laugh once more, her head picking up as he offers her a hand to get up on the chair. Still pleased, she takes his hand and clambers up, reaching to plop the star on top of the tree. She doesn’t seem to mind him reaching out to make sure she doesn’t fall, making sure the star was sat just so before taking his hand to hop down again.

“That is perfect.”

Steve pulls the chair away then, leaning against it for a moment to take in their work with a sideways grin. “You can say that again.”

Following behind him, Eleven sits herself in that very same chair and leans back, eyes glimmering, entirely alight as the Christmas lights cast away the darkness from the windows and the half drawn curtains that led outside. 

Thank god, Steve thinks, that they’d only ever had yellow Christmas lights and not rainbow ones. He doesn’t think he could see Christmas quite the same if that wasn’t the case. 

“That is perfect ,” Eleven repeats easily, tucking her legs up a bit as she leans her head back against the chair again with a determined nod. She’s still swaying a bit to the Christmas music, as ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ chitters on from the TV some ways behind them.

“When is Christmas?”

“Ooh- a while. A long time. But we- there’s still enough time to show you Christmas stuff. I promise.” 

There’s suddenly an inkling in him. His gut sinks, just a touch, at the idea that this kid could technically just up and vanish in the middle of the night if she pleased. How in the hell can he convince her to stay? Should he, even? What else can he do?-

“Okay.” Eleven’s voice interrupts his thoughts as she leans her head back to look up at him. “Can you show me how to make a snowman tomorrow?”

And just like that, all those worries vanish. Maybe, in some weird way, they would have an odd, tiny, merry little Christmas.

In an instant, Steve’s expression softened from that worry as he reaches over to pat the top of her head. 

“Yeah. Absolutely, we can make a snowman tomorrow.”

Chapter Text

“You already put up Christmas decorations?”
Despite sounding so incredulous, Nancy smiles as she glances over at him. They’re out in her front yard shoveling, because if there’s one thing he wants to do, it’s to at least come across as decent to her dad. And Nancy, for the life of her, can’t let him do that alone. 

Steve finds himself ducking his head a bit with a little laugh, turning to toss his shovel full of snow to the side, off into where her yard would be green at any other time of the year. It’s snowing, faintly, but it feels that every time they turn back they  have more work to do. 

“Yeah. Why, is that a bad idea? Too festive for you, Miss Wheeler?” He remarks with a smirk, and Nancy snorts, rolls her eyes, and smiles. 

“No! No. I’m just surprised. I didn’t take you as the festive type.”

“Ouch.” That earns him another roll of her eyes and a smile from her. 

“Sorry! Sorry. Still.” 

“Looks like I’ll have to prove you wrong and help you guys out.” Steve insists, glancing back to the house inside- three days later, and he couldn’t believe they hadn’t decorated much yet outside the menorah in the window. Still smiling to himself, he turns to continue shoveling at his half of the driveway, keenly aware of Nancy out the corner of his eye.

Even with her nose and cheeks snow bitten, Nancy is beautiful. She’s bundled up in her purple coat and knitted hat, and she’s practically swallowed up in it- the top of her head and dark hair smattered with snowflakes that quickly vanished against her. 

It was so hard to feel lonely knowing he got to be with Nancy Wheeler. 

Even moreso, knowing that the house wouldn’t be empty- at least not for long when he went back. Ellie would be there probably, or she would be making a snowman in the yard where he’d shown her no one would see her from the road- just like she wanted. Or she’d be inhaling any leftover whipped cream and waffles. 

“So,” Nancy starts, snapping him out of his haze “Any calls from your parents yet?” 

“Nope,” he admits, popping the ‘p’. “At least this time I got that they were going to England. I’ve got a gut feeling my mom’s gonna make him run around the rest of Europe to make up for Atlanta.” 

“Fun,” she sighs with an equal lack of enthusiasm, forcing her shovel under where some of the snow had gotten stuck. “Do you want to come over for Christmas, then? I know my mom’ll be all over that.”

He breaks into a laugh, glancing over again. “You’re sure your dad won’t be all over me about freeloading again?”

“Honestly? I’d be surprised if he didn’t fall asleep after Mike and Holly open their presents.” 

That’s one thing Steve can’t get over. Nancy’s dad is a bit of an asshole. Nowhere near like his own dad, of course- in fact, he’d prefer if his dad was actually there to sit around and stare at the TV when he wasn’t at work. It’d be better than him running off to cheat. He’d even say better than harassing him about his grades and schoolwork, but it seemed even Mr.Wheeler did that from his armchair. 

There are some things all dads do, he supposes. 

For a moment, he thinks of Eleven. He leaves her alone a lot, and of course he doesn’t tell anyone about her. Who knows who might tell ‘Papa’ where she’d gone; that’s a risk he isn’t willing to take on her behalf. He’d promised to show her Christmas.
“Sure! Yeah, I don’t wanna take any Christmas breakfast away from you all.”

“No? Oh come on Steve, you haven’t tried my mom’s cinnamon rolls,” Nancy insists in a singsong. “They’re amazing .” 

Steve laughs again, leaning back for a moment. “I really can’t turn that down. That really does sound amazing. Maybe uhh- are you guys going to the Christmas morning church service or the Christmas Eve one?”

“Considering how it’s been so far, the later Christmas morning one. That way the egg casserole is done by the time we get back.”

“I can meet you guys there, then. Maybe I’ll bring coffee to save you from falling asleep, because I know I sure as hell might.”

“Oh come on Steve! I don’t fall asleep that easily,” she muses, sighing as they get back to shoveling down the driveway. Like this, it felt ten times longer. “Have you been able to sleep at all, lately? You look tired.”

“Like you don’t either?”

She straightens a bit, shifting in a manner so that she almost looks like she could plop her hand on her hip as he keeps shoveling. 

“What?” Steve repeats, only pausing after he throws his next shovelful off to the side. He can’t stop to look at her, not even if he wants to, because he can feel the implications of what she’s asking; he can feel it practically burning behind his ears and at the back of his neck. 

“Hey,” Nancy starts, reaching out to take his arm for a moment. It has Steve faltering, has him straining to look at her. 

“What?” He starts again. 

And then she gets that look. The big eyed one with her head tilted just a bit down, lips curled down into a frown, the guilty look she got. 

“We haven’t… talked about what happened that night.”

Which night she means, he can’t fathom. Does she mean when Barb went missing? When she’d just up and vanished off his back porch and tainted their first moment together, really together without having to worry about anything else? Almost getting him screwed because of the cops showing up?
Or was it pulling up to the Byer’s house, getting a gun pointed at him, running into that thing . Everything with Jonathan. Everything with the lights and everything that made him unable to look at rainbow Christmas lights without squinting and feeling the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The same shitshow that had him only ever walking outside his own house with a bat in his hand or the trunk of his car. 

By the look on Nancy’s face, it’s clear enough she’s reading exactly how he’s unsure where she’s going with this. She pauses for a moment, peering back towards her warmly lit house, propping her shovel just in front of her with a bit of a frown. 

“We can’t just not talk about it.”

“Can’t we?” Steve retorts quickly, turning to her properly. 

“No! No Steve.” Nancy sucks in a breath, “It’s all been a lot. It’s been so much and we’ve just gone on and I haven’t- even- we haven’t even talked about it, I haven’t even gotten the chance to say sorry. I get why you were mad- I mean, I pointed a gun at you.”

Steve can feel the lump welling up in his throat before he even realizes it, and he finds himself glancing away. 

“I’m sorry. I am. I should’ve- I should’ve told you what was going on, or something! Or at least- I don’t know. Jesus.” Nancy falters, ducking her head in kind. 

That… hurts. It aches. Why should she be apologizing when he was the one who’d gone and blown everything out of proportion, when he’d made a total idiot of her in front of everyone . Slut. He’d called her a slut, even if he hadn’t had the words in his own mouth. 

“You shouldn’t be sorry. Why the hell’re you sorry? You were out there fighting monsters. Like literal horror movie shit monsters, and I didn’t even… bother to ask? If you were okay or what you were doing? And I just thought… yeah.” He shakes his head, leaning against his shovel for a moment before straightening up again. “ I’m sorry. I am. This is all screwed up and I got mad over you just- being you. And actually helping people.”

“I’m sorry too,” Nancy insists. “I should’ve-” She falters, “I’m sorry. I love you Steve, I’m sorry I scared you like that.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen,” Steve agrees, reaching over to pat her hand where she’d rested it. “There. We can call that even, cool?” 

With all the guilt, the wariness in his gut, Steve drops his shovel and holds his arm out to her, and Nancy starts shaking her head as she shuffles over. Bundled up in their winter gear, Steve wraps his arms close around her to quell whatever she had on her mind. He pulls her close, tucking his head atop hers with a little nod. 
“Hey. I love you too,” he murmurs, turning to lean his head against hers, offering a little peck to her forehead as he rubs her arm. 

Nancy sighs, leaning into him all the same. 

“It’s over.” He offers. “We just… have to be careful. And we can just go back to normal, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

“You said Nancy is your… girlfriend?” 

Eleven asks him this as he’s sat at the kitchen counter with her. He’s practically nose deep in a well used paperback copy of The Tempest , the pages all yellowed and filled with annotations that hardly helped him. Steve finds himself rereading the same line over and over again, so her question is a welcome distraction. 

“Hm? Yeah.”

Propped across from him, Eleven has her arms and hands out flat on the table, all over her drawings. Thankfully none of them appeared to be macabre this time, mostly just flowers and penguins, a rendition of the snowman they’d made outside. Her expression is nearly stern as she watches him, clearly awaiting his answer. Or rather, elaboration.

“She is my girlfriend.”

“Why? What does that mean?” 

“Uhh…” Slowly, Steve shuts the book, if anything a little thankful for the opportunity to ignore his reading assignment. Damn winter break homework. “We liked each other so much that we started to love each other. So we promised to stay together. One day, I hope we get married.”

Eleven’s gaze falls to her drawings, to the abstract collection of flowers there. She seems to be thinking, perhaps considering the thought of it: love, or marriage. Reading is still a difficult thing for her- has been for a while, and he isn’t exactly sure how to help her with his own reading ability being pretty terrible. But given the look on her face, she must’ve heard or read about it somewhere. 

“Why d’you ask?” Steve asks again, pulling his book to fiddle with the yellowing pages. 

“I see a lot on the television,” she remarks, leaning against the back of her chair. “There is a lot of… romance,” Eleven murmurs, a bit more confident after she says it out loud. 

Huh. So the kid watches soap operas. 

“That’s not really the same,” he admits with a little smile- borderline amused. “It’s… not so dramatic and all. It’s more about- feelings. And what you want to do someday together. Love.”

Steve means that sincerely. He could feel it in his chest, really, the thought of what that means. He loves Nancy. He does, he loves her and the way she’s so particular about things, how she notices things no one else does. Sure, she annoys him sometimes; she has a tendency to not explain things or overdramatize them even, but he’s sure she has to put up with a lot of shit he doesn’t notice either. 

“How do you know that you love someone?” Eleven asks, just as sincerely, still watching him closely as he squirms to relax in his chair. 

That’s a really big question that Steve isn’t sure he has the answers to.

“Uhm- you can love people in different ways. But you know, it’s like… you don’t want ‘em to get hurt. Or you wanna spend all your time with somebody you love. Well, maybe not parents, right?” He gives her a little smile, something that earns a soft laugh- tiny and short, entirely knowing. 

“That is true.” 

“Right? Like… I love Nancy because she’s my girlfriend, and we wanna spend the rest of our lives together. Because we can keep an eye out for each other and make sure we stay safe and that we do smart things and to just… be together.” Some things, he knows he can't explain to her, but Steve hopes that much is clear. He props his elbow on the countertop then, bringing his chin to rest in his open palm. “Or like grandpas. I loved my grandpa because uh… he knew everything about me. He was there since I was little, he took care of me and he showed me all these things I didn’t know about the world. That’s family. And then friends- friends too, but they’re a little different. Sometimes you only know friends for so long. Or friends become your girlfriend- or your boyfriend,” he nods to her, “Or you just keep knowing each other forever. And you… love ‘em. You can love a lot of people.”

“So love is not just for boyfriends and girlfriends?”

“No,” Steve muses knowingly. “It’s for brothers and sisters and grandpas and best friends too.”

“How do you make best friends?” Eleven persists then, picking up one of the colored pencils to turn to an empty page. Steve, as much as he doesn’t want to do nothing, finds himself leaning forward on his elbows to watch her draw instead. 

“Best friends are people you know forever. Or- for a really long time. Best friends know all your problems and help you deal with them,” Steve suggests with a shrug. “I don’t know. My only best friend right now is Nancy.”

“Did you know Nancy forever?” she hums, tilting her head a bit as she starts scribbling out the figure of a somebody- not a monster, but a somebody. 

Steve musters out a sigh then. “No. No, we just know each other’s problems the best now.” 

“Oh,” she remarks, tilting her head back just a little bit at the thought. Her brow pinches then as she leans back towards her paper. “Is she from school?”

“Yep. We went to middle school together and we started dating in the fall.” 

Eleven nods very seriously for that, as if noting it to herself. “What is school like?”

Right. She doesn’t go to school.

“Well.” Steve hums, picking up his book and plopping it on the table. The warped paperback makes an audible ‘pop’ against the countertop, and it almost makes her jump for a moment as she glances up. 

“Oh-”

“Sorry! Sorry. It’s alright. You gotta learn reading and writing and cursive and typing. Cursive is a pain in the ass . And then math, history. Science. I hate chemistry because it’s just more math, and I hate math. Language arts is my least favorite though.” He taps the cover of the paperback, prompting El to reach forward and take it. “We read stories, which is fun, but then we have to figure out what the stories mean- like there’s second meanings and stuff.”

“That sounds very hard.” Eleven agrees, pulling the book to herself across the counter. She picks it up, thumbs through the pages, and instantly pulls a face with the sheer wall of text that hit her, the lack of pictures- severely unlike her ‘Big Book of Everything’ illustrated encyclopedia she’d found from somewhere upstairs. “I do not like this.”

“Yeah, me neither.” Steve laughs, breaking into a grin as she hands back the book. “And then we also have to write an essay about it, so like, it’s a million times more complicated for no reason.”

“It is just better to read for fun,” Eleven concludes somberly, turning back to her drawing. “I like to read for fun.”

“That’s good though, you should keep doing that. You know, if you run out of books you like to read, I can go to the library for you.”

“Really?” That seems to pique her curiosity. 

“Yeah of course!” 

“Can I go?”

That draws a bit of a pause from Steve. Hell, he finds himself turning towards the garage door like he expects someone to come through. He turns back to her then, drumming his fingertips on the counter. 
“Are you sure? What about your Papa guy?”

In an instant, Eleven’s expression drops. 

“Oh. No, it is okay. There are bad men.”

“Bad… men?”

“Yes. There was… a man. Before. He helped me, but he called about me on the phone and the bad men came and killed him.”

Oh. Oh shit. 

Eleven seems to notice the pale, completely baffled and shocked look on his face, and she stiffens in her chair, dropping her pencil. 

“You cannot tell anyone.”

Of course not. 

“Is that why? Is that why you were in the woods? Were you running from the bad men?”

God, as much as he didn't like ‘Papa’ before, all this? This makes him a little sick to his stomach with anxiety, and all of a sudden his worry for the monster he’d seen, that Eleven seems to somehow know about, faded. Instead of that bursting through the window, it becomes men in black suits and foggy shades. What the hell does that even mean? People have the phones tapped? And people, really dangerous people, including Papa, are looking for her?

“Yes.”

“Why do they… why do they want to find you so bad?”

Eleven falls silent in an instant again, pursing her lips. That solemn stare returns then in an instant, the same one that made her eyes seem almost dark, her features going stony. 

“I do not want to talk about that.”

“Eleven, please.”

“No. There are bad men .” She insists heavily, leaving no room for debate. Steve leans back quickly then, rubbing his hands down his face, shaking his head. Great. Great, now this secret has to be so much more closely kept, now he isn’t even sure how he can keep her safe like that.

Does he even want to do that?

No- no, he does. He really does, he likes this weird kid, he cares about her. Knowing that she’d had some cruel Papa figure who shaved her head and forced her out into the woods in the middle of winter alone is enough cause for him to be worried, to want to help her hide. This, as much as it pains and frightens him, only inflates that urge. 

“Dammit.” 

Chapter Text

“So, I can’t just call you Eleven,” Steve hums.
They’re sat across from one another at that previously hardly ever used kitchen table. He couldn’t focus on reading The Tempest even if he wanted to, much less figuring out how to write about the characters or any of the symbolism. It was a crock of horse shit. He sits up a bit then, setting his book down a touch abruptly, which causes Eleven to pick her head up quickly. She was pretty focused on replicating the camel she’d found in the ‘Big Book of Everything’, as she termed it. 
Eleven turns to look up at him, brow knitting for a moment at that. 

“Why?”

“Well, because. You need a people name. Or a nickname that’s more of a people name, or something.”

She looks vaguely disgruntled at that prospect, before hesitating at some clear thought. “A nickname is like a short name, right?”

Now that she’s interested in the conversation, Steve takes the opportunity to close his book again. Screw The Tempest , it’s boring as hell, and he’s much more interested in finding a nickname for the kid. 
“Yeah! You got it.”

“Oh. Does that mean I can make you a nick-name?” As she speaks, the stiff lilt to her voice is still there, but the excitement in it is even clearer.  Her eyes practically light up, her head picking up just a little bit more as she smiles. How could Steve say no to that?

“Sure, why not,” Steve hums, unable to fight the little smile growing on his own face. “D’you wanna go for a walk before it gets dark?”

Eleven is quick to put down her pencil, shoving it over into the pile of other pencils and papers beside her book. She practically leaps from her chair, turning back as she makes for the back door and her boots- his old boots once, but her boots now. “I want to fix our snowman! And then I can make your nick-name, and you can make my nick-name.” 

“Alright, alright. Deal,” Steve agrees with a small chuckle- he couldn’t help it, forgetting his book there on the table to follow after her. 

It’s a quiet day out. It hadn’t been snowing as hard, the snowflakes having faded since that morning. Eleven moves fast , like she’s been waiting all day just to get outside (despite Steve having done absolutely nothing to stop her from going outside in the past). There’s a brief moment as Steve reaches for his own snow boots that it occurs to him that maybe her excitement is because she is going outside with him . 
The thought has Steve smiling to himself as he reaches for his coat from where it had been slung over the back of a chair to dry. He tugs it on, pulling out the beat up wigwam hat that’d always ended up shoved back into his pocket after he came inside. Their gloves are propped up in the windowsill, which he gathers up so he could hand Eleven hers before she got her coat on. Once they’re all ready, Steve pulls open the sliding glass door- having to give quite a tug with it almost frozen shut, but Eleven skips right out with half undone laces into the near foot and a half of snow in the backyard. 

When the snow gets like this, Steve can’t see the outline of the pool. He can hardly make out the chairs, the diving board looked unrecognizable, like something else entirely, like it had a blanket thrown over it. 
When the snow looks like this, Eleven doesn’t seem to hold the same fear of his backyard- one he can’t place the origin of, but understood nonetheless. He too can’t recognize what it was, what it meant, what had happened there, and the perpetual dread in him shrinks even as he leans inside to snatch up his bat and prop it in the snow against the house. 

Their snowman is drooping over in the corner of the yard by the pool house. It is tucked out of the way there, past a covered walkway that they could lean out to see if anyone was coming down the street. Just in case. By now it was easier to see with the trees gone barren, just as coated in white as the ground and the rooftops, the only marks being the red and black of salt on the road melting away the sheets of ice.

“We might have to start him from scratch,” Steve sighs, crunching through the snow after her. 

“Really?” Eleven huffs, stopping in front of the snowman as if she could will it back upright again. She tilts her head a bit, Steve snorts, stepping up to stand beside her and cross his arms, ever so slowly tilting his head to follow suit. 

“Yep. He still looks sideways.”

“Dammit,” Eleven whispers, reaching up to pull the carrot off the snowman’s half blown away face, now frowning. Quickly, Steve interjects. 

“No, no, just kick it down! It’s more fun that way.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I promise. Go for it.” 

Eleven turns back with a dubious scrunch of her nose before offering a hapless shrug and slamming her foot into the poor snowman’s stomach. It sways, and Eleven honestly seems pretty thrilled as she leans forward to kick and stomp at it again with a grin, Steve laughing behind her. 

“See!?” he exclaims with a bright laugh, starting forward to kick at the parts she missed until the snowman is left in a misshapen, unsnowmanlike heap on the ground. Scattered within the remains of the snowman are the blueberries that were left untouched by wildlife and the sticks all tangled up with each other . 

Laughter still caught in her throat for a moment, Eleven turns back with a determined nod, dropping to start a new snowball to rebuild what they’d torn down. As she does, she speaks up once more, “How do you choose a nick-name?” 

“You kinda just say whatever makes sense. Whatever feels right,” Steve suggests, crouching to start forming a snowball just across from her, shoving the sticks and miscellaneous decorations aside before continuing, “does that make sense?”

“No,” Eleven admits with a little giggle, brow knitting up in thought as she smoothes out the snowball in her hands. 

“Okay, fine. You said you had three friends before. What did they call you?”

Eleven pauses, and it's strange how in an instant he can see that reverence come to her again. That’s the best way it can be described, a reverence for whatever she so fondly recalled. She almost sits back, swaying on her heels as she raises her head up peer up at the sky. 
“El. That is short for Eleven.”

“I could call you El too. That’s a good nickname.” Steve suggests, unable to help but smile at the look on her face. 

In an instant, her eyes widen and she shakes her head ‘no’, tone taking up something both serious and baffled that what she said wasn’t obvious. “No. You need to make me a new nick-name because you are my new friend.” 

Steve turns to look up at her then, his expression going soft in an instant as he leans forward on his toes a bit. Eleven is looking right back at him, leaning her elbows on her knees as she stares across the mound of messy snow between them, and after a moment she waves at him like she’s ushering him to hurry up. 

“Uh,” Steve mumbles, “what about Ellie? I think that fits you.”

“Yes,” Ellie agrees. “Yes. I like that very much.”

The pair fall quiet, turning back to their snowballs for a moment before Steve starts to roll his. Scooting the little snowball around with his hands, he turns back to Ellie. 

“So, what’s my nickname then?”

“Hm. Stu.”

Steve snorts, glancing up in surprise. “Stu? Like Stu Martin?”

“No.”

“Stu Wilkins?” 

“Who is that?” Ellie giggles, completely lost as she shakes her head. 

“You know! Like- the baseball player. And the football player.”

“I do not know baseball or football.”

Steve gives an ever dramatic sigh, relenting as Ellie laughs again. “Then Stu like who?” He asks, and she breaks into a much more genuine smile.

“Stu like soup.”

“Like soup? Why?” Despite how baffled he sounds, Steve can’t help the amusement in his voice as he turns back to rolling his snowball around. 

“Because- yes, because you make me happy. You are my friend. And stew is very good.” 

Once more, Steve relents. Any hard feelings over being nicknamed after soup (all things considered, probably the tomato soup he’d made her the first full day she’d stayed) vanished at how happy it made him feel. Steve didn’t expect that. He didn’t expect to feel so warm and fuzzy inside. It is a better nickname than Steve ‘the Hair’ Harrington or ‘King Steve’, even if those nicknames made more sense. 

“Alright. Alright, okay, I’ll take it. You’re Ellie and I’m Stu.”

Their snowman gets rebuilt and stands there in the corner of the yard beside the pool house, and from where Steve pulled out of the driveway, he could see it staring after them out of the corner of his eye. The little blueberry smile spread across its face serves as a cheerful farewell as they drive. 

“Why does your house not have lights outside?” Ellie asks from the passenger’s seat. It is dark out, enough so that Steve wasn’t worried about her being seen, and it seemed that she felt the same. Just in case, however, she’d pulled one of his hats low over her head and leaned the chair back, wearing a coat that made her look a little bigger. They wouldn’t go to the Wheeler’s neighborhood- which was a shame, since they always had the nicest Christmas lights, but it was part of his promise. He wouldn’t tell anyone, he wouldn’t say anything, and he wasn’t going to give Nancy or even Mike the chance to find out about her themselves. 

“It’s too dangerous for me to put them up myself. My dad used to, but it’s just… yeah, the roof gets icy and I don’t have a lot of time between other stuff.”

That much is true. Then again, their outdoor Christmas lights are red and white, and that is just a few too many colors for him to bear. The thought of it alone has his hand aching for the comfortable hold of his bat again. 

“Oh. That is okay. It will be nice to see other houses.”

“Yeah, I bet. I’m sorry there’s not much to do at my house anyway- what do you even do when you’re outside, actually?”

Hands on the wheel, Steve absently drums along to Feliz Navidad . 

“I walk. I look at where to not go.”

“Oh,” he hums, “Okay, that makes sense.”

Slowly he goes down the road, making sure to keep the windows rolled up as they turn into one of the neighborhoods off the main road. 

Everything is bright, colorful in the distance past the trees that separate the neighborhood from the road. Outside the church on the corner - the same big old white one everyone went to when everything happened, like Benny Hammond’s real funeral, Will Byers’ fake funeral - is a nativity scene. It is lit up by a string of white lights, more of them wrapping around the front eaves and the cross on the spire. Past some more trees the neighborhood opens up, and it’s bright like it is day out. 

Eleven is leaning against the window to watch, cheek practically pressed against it as she stares out with her eyes gone huge and glimmering with excitement. He finds himself scanning along the top of the window to make sure it’s still rolled up.

Despite her excitement, Steve feels a stone of dread gathering in his throat as the flickering, blinking lights between the houses shimmer across his face, off the hood of his car, off the ice on the road, as it drowns out the near blackness of the night sky.

He’s in the house again. 

He can feel the bat in his hands, the lump in his throat, the adrenaline in his veins as it stands there. His head is pounding. It rises up on twisted haunches, the multifaceted smile of its face split wide like it means to lunge at Nancy. He strikes it- once, twice, thrice, and then it turns on him.

Nancy’s tugging on his arm. 

“Steve.”

No- no, that isn’t Nancy. 

God- What the hell is she doing here? He’s supposed to be keeping her safe .

“ Steve !” 

Suddenly he hears Ellie calling out to him urgently, and someone gives a short honk behind them. It makes him jump, snaps him out of his haze as he props his foot up on the gas again to continue the crawl. 

He’s breathing hard, he can feel his heart thumping at a million miles an hour. His head is swimming as Eleven lets go of his arm. She’s staring at him, he can feel it. 

“You look very sick,” she remarks quietly, her tone almost as dreadful as he feels. 

“Sorry,” he gasps, blinking wildly and shaking his head. “Jesus, sorry.”

“We need to go home.” She repeats quickly, as if she realizes something in that moment, “Go home.”

Steve finds himself nodding, turning quickly into someone’s driveway only to back out and go back the way they came, turning back onto the road towards his house. They’d hardly even gotten into the neighborhood, and here they were leaving again. 
What the hell was wrong with him?

“You are scared. Why?” Eleven asks. Her eyes flicker down to his hands as Steve loosens his white knuckled grip on the wheel, instead taking to tapping his fingers there. 

For a long moment, Steve is deathly quiet. He’s unable to really form the words to explain, finding them all caught in his throat as he goes. How was he supposed to tell her about this? 

No, wait, she knew about his monster. She’d seen it. Somehow that scared him all the more.
“The monster. The monster you drew uhm- you know how I…”

“You… have the baseball bat for the monster. That is why it is spiky. That is why you have it always.”

“...yeah.” 

“The demogorgon.”

“The what?” Steve turns quickly then, and Ellie is still looking at him. Staring. She looks worried, genuinely so, that concern painted in a much too sobering way for a kid her age- which says a lot, because he didn’t even know how old she was. 

“The demogorgon. That is what my friends called it,” she says. “Did you see it when we were at the lights?”

“What? -no. No, no, it wasn’t there. I was just freaking out for no reason,” he insists, shaking his head quickly. Even as he does, his words come out a touch shaken, a little upset sounding, and that only has Eleven leaning over with that serious and all too familiar furrow in her brow. 

“Why?”

“The lights,” he mumbles, “The uhm- I fought it in my uhm- at somebody’s house. There were Christmas lights everywhere, they all flickered and turned off when it came.”

With far too much understanding, Eleven nods. “Oh.”

A somber silence falls between them, something so heavy that not  even White Christmas playing over the radio could cleave into it. 

“I will help,” Eleven offers, “I can make you safe.”

“No,” Steve starts in an instant. “Jesus, no, you don’t need to have anything to do with that shitshow. Okay?”

“Yes but-”

“If anything happens, if that thing comes back, I’m getting rid of it. Or we’re getting our asses in the car and leaving. I don’t care. That’s just- no. No, you don’t have to keep me safe at all.”

“I still have bad men, too,” Eleven continues emphatically, raising her voice, “I do not want you to die! I have to keep you safe too!” It’s the first time he’d heard her speak in anything over a mumble, and it has Steve’s eyes shooting wide, his shoulders slumping as he presses back into the seat. 

“How do you know they’re going to keep looking for you?” he snaps, and she turns with a sharp huff. 

“Because! I do! I- I know things. You know me. Now the bad men and- our monster is… this is bad.” She turns away then, leaning back in the passenger seat to tuck her legs up to her chest. “I am sorry.”

Steve sucks in a breath, letting his head hang for a moment- only a moment, before glancing up at the darkened road ahead, only illuminated by his headlights and those of any cars coming the opposite way. 

“Are you gonna leave?”

Eleven opens her mouth, hesitating, and then almost deflating in the seat. 

“I do not want to,” she admits, practically under her breath. 

“Then,” Steve asserts, “I’m going to keep you safe. I am, okay, because you’re just- you’re too young for all this. And… if it freaks me out, it’s probably worse for you. You don’t need to protect me from shit.”

“But I will ,” Eleven insists sharply again, “I have to.”

“You don’t. ”

“I do. ” 

“Then tell me! Tell me what the hell’s even happened to you! Okay!?” 

“I can not ,” she snaps, tone going dangerously low in an instant, and Steve finds his shoulders tensing. 

“Then we’re kinda screwed here, Ellie.” 

He pulls back onto his street, slowing down just a touch as Eleven leans her head back against the seat. She looks nervous, pulling at the hem of her coat. 

“You don’t have to leave,” he finally assures, pulling up into the driveway. “But you’ve gotta let me help, okay? Eventually. Or if things go bad.”

“...okay,” she breathes, reluctantly. She doesn’t seem to mean it, but he sighs, sits back, and runs his hand through his hair. 

He puts the car into park, lights still on, car still running, lighting the garage doors up bright. 

“Hey. Ellie,” he starts quietly. He keeps staring ahead, well aware of how tense she is, not wanting to make it worse. “...you said we’re friends, right? Friends look out for each other. We’ll look out for each other, okay?”

She doesn’t respond, but he finally looks over, seeing her still sat there, tucked in on herself, looking strikingly like that first night he’d found her. Slowly, he holds out his hand, pinky extended. She oh so slowly turns, practically glowering at him for a moment before she falters. 
“What is that?”

“Pinky promise. We can look out for each other, but we can’t be stupid.”

She purses her lips, dwelling on the thought for a moment before glancing up to meet his gaze. 

Slowly, Ellie reaches out to tangle her pinky in his. 

“We look out for each other but we can not be stupid. Pinky promise.” 

Chapter Text

Melvald’s has to have something an artistic kid would like, right?

Steve is sat parked in front of the very movie theater he’d helped graffiti. There isn’t even a flake of spray paint left on it after how long he’d spent on top of the ladder scrubbing, being side eyed by the blonde freckly band girl working the ticket stand the entire time. She’s still in there now, still sort of side eyeing him as he stares down the list of ideas he has for Ellie. 

He knows she likes several things. She likes the Moomin show that was being put on reruns at ungodly hours (the characters looked like white hippos). She likes penguins, whales and camels, and books about animals (and the rest of the world). She also seems to enjoy Queen equally as much as he does, but he doubts she knows anything else about Queen outside the music. A trapper keeper would be a good idea- he doesn’t use them, but Nancy has one. Ellie is also long overdue nicer pencils and erasers and stuff. 

Honestly, he doesn’t know shit about art supplies. 

Well, he’ll have to figure it out when he gets in there. It isn’t like they have an art supply store in Hawkins. 

He makes his way out of his car then, walking right by the movie theater and across the street to Melvald’s General Store. 

Paper snowflakes are pasted to the windows from the inside, a string of dangly icicle shaped Christmas lights in blue. In the light of day, those thankfully don’t make the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He steps inside past Samantha Stone, who offers him a bit of a sideways look that he only catches as she leaves. 
Odd how much he notices that kinda stuff when he isn’t walking around with Tommy and Carol all the time. 

Steve finds himself making a beeline past the cash registers and the pharmacy and into the office supplies section. He’s been there a couple times in particular to get his school supplies before the beginning of the year, and he briefly recalls seeing some more ‘advanced’ stuff in regards to art; of course he had to get colored pencils for some projects, but he hardly used those outside coloring a map of Louisiana Purchase freshman year and a handful of science projects. 

In the aisles he passes the baking supplies, cooking stuff, spare Christmas decor and… there it is, the office supplies, tucked in the far back corner. Staplers likely won’t be interesting for her. There are weird little wooden briefcases all tucked in one way, boxes of printing paper, pencils, pens- there! The good stuff. 

Steve is midway through crouching to look at a particularly colorful penguin trapper keeper -all pink and purple and orange and cutesy- when someone speaks up behind him. 

“I didn’t think that was your style.” 

He nearly falls back on his ass looking up, only to find Jonathan stood there looking, well, awkward. Then again, when doesn’t Jonathan look awkward?

“Uh. I have ahhh… cousin,” Steve starts, standing again quickly. No way he is saying anything about Eleven, he’d promised. But god, he feels like Jonathan is staring through him, shifting from foot to foot. “She was born a while back but we didn’t know until recently. Y’know it’s uh… Italian things. I heard she’s artistic and all so I figured I’d just let her know she’s uh… cool. So reunions aren’t awkward.”

“...cool. Congrats,” Jonathan remarks in reply, offering a disconcerted look for a moment before he turns back towards the colored pencils. 

They haven’t talked since fighting that thing in Jonathan’s house. Not since he’d gotten in his car and driven Nancy and himself home, where they hadn’t even really talked. Honestly, Steve had no clue what was going on, he’d still been a little sore from the guy beating the total shit out of him behind the theater. 

Steve knows he’d deserved that. 

“Hey uh… are you doing okay, man? You know…” Jonathan’s expression switches from his neutral almost scowl into something surprised. It softens even, as Steve waits for an answer, and soon enough Jonathan picks his head up just a touch. He doesn’t turn to look, doesn’t meet Steve’s eyes, but he nods. 

“I mean… we had to replace the carpet in the hallway. And things were kinda tense for a while until we got all the lights down. I uh- I dunno about you, but I can’t really look at them the same,” he admits with a tired chuckle, earning one from Steve all the same. 

“Yeah. No, I get that.” 

As Jonathan reaches forward to pluck up a box of colored pencils, nicer seeming ones, he speaks up again. “How are you guys doing?”

“Fine,” Steve offers, if a touch tersely. He doesn’t mean it, not really, but all things considered things are still so tense between them. He knows why. He knows it is  well deserved. “Trying to just act like everything’s normal, all that shit.” 

“That’s pretty much what we’ve all been doing too,” Jonathan agrees. 

“And your brother, Will, right? He’s doing okay too?”

“Yeah.” In an instant, Jonathan’s demeanor changes. It softens, something entirely warm hearted as he turns to offer Steve a proper, tired smile. “He’s still freaked out too, honestly, but it’s real nice having him home. Like, knowing he’s gonna be there.”

“That’s good. That’s really good, I know he got all tangled up in this crazy shit. I bet he’s really gonna love this Christmas more than anything.”

“Oh yeah,” Jonathan laughs a touch, breaking into a still tired smile. “He’s… he’s had to deal with a lot. But he’ll be okay, I think. We haven’t been able to find Chester-” 

“Chester?”

“Our dog. Not since that night.” Jonathan sighs, shaking his head a bit, reaching up to scratch at the back of his neck. Despite his deep resentment and dislike for Jonathan, he can’t help but feel a little bad. He remembered seeing the dog around that night- white and kind of old looking, like some kind of sheep dog. 

“Sorry man.” 

“It’s fine. I think Will’s taking it the hardest.” Jonathan assures, shutting his mouth like he’s afraid of what might come out next. He turns quickly then, opening his mouth like he wants to say something, before faltering and glancing down. 

“I know this is a weird time, but uhm. I shouldn’t have taken those pictures. I shouldn’t. That was fucked up.” 

Of all things, Steve doesn’t expect that. He doesn’t expect Jonathan to outright apologize for that, and a part of it almost makes the sting of the moment return. Realizing that not only had him and Nancy’s first time together been tainted by Barb’s disappearance, but that , which had all gotten buried in the shitshow that had happened the month before. 

Oh. 

Steve doesn’t feel he should apologize. Not for breaking Jonathan’s camera at least, because shit that was creepy. It was unnerving and the last thing he expected was an apology for it. Then again, of all things, Steve did believe he deserved having the shit beat out of him for what he’d done to Nancy. 

“...it’s over. It’s over and those photos are gone, and the only one that mattered Nancy found and she used it. So… yeah. Thanks for knocking some sense into me, though. I… I deserved that.”

The tension doesn’t fade. The silence feels thicker after that, heavier, and it lingers even when Jonathan speaks up once more. 

“So, art stuff?”

“Yeah- yep. I don’t know shit about it, so it’s just… whatever feels right.”

“How old is your cousin? Like a toddler or… ‘cause that changes a lot about what art stuff she’d think is cool.”

“She’s like twelve. Honestly like Will’s age, all over drawing animals.”

“Right. Cool, here, kneaded erasers are getting pretty big right now. And these are the good pencils” he taps the pencils hung off the rack in a clear package. There is a wide variety of them, with a heftier price over the Crayolas. “And most regular pencils are good for everything else. The number two ones they have us test with.”
With a touch of hesitance, he reaches for the recommended stuff, shooting Jonathan a tight lipped smile. 

“Thanks.”

“Yeah. No problem. Will’s all over this stuff, so it’s a must know for me,” he taps his head for a moment with an inkling of a smile before faltering all over again, turning away one last time. “Well. See you around.”

“Yeah, see you.”

As Jonathan turns away, Steve ducks to snatch up that penguin trapper keeper before he makes his way back into the center aisles of the store to look at the tiny selection of stuffed animals and kids toys by the wrapping supplies. That conversation still felt so sudden, so out of nowhere, but nonetheless was somewhat appreciated. He didn’t expect to ever really talk to Jonathan again. No, he was going to go back to living like things were normal, and normal didn’t include Jonathan. 

But it… helps. In some way he can’t put his finger on, it helps. 

Eventually his scouring for any sort of stuffed animal Eleven might like had some success, as deep in the recesses of care bears and frogs, cabbage patch kids and various dogs, a little bunch of white hippos with big soulless blue eyes caught his attention. Perfect. 

With that, Steve retreats to the cashier’s stand where he walks up to the single lone cash register. He doesn’t even realize who is there, hell, the fact that Ms. Byers' work at Melvald’s had entirely escaped him as he puts his eclectic little grocerybag’s worth of things up onto the counter.
“You’re the Harringtons’ boy, right?”

Glancing up, it really is Ms. Byers talking to him. 
He recognizes her, of course. She is a short woman, with that far too nice for her own good smile, and in the present moment, an earnest and hopeful look in her eyes. 

“Ah, yes ma’am.” 

“Oh, good. God,” she starts, taking up the items to check without a second thought as she just starts talking at him, “You know, Jonathan told me how you and that sweet girl Nancy helped him out. You’re very brave for that, you know?”

Steve finds himself sort of just staring in shock. Out of all of this, he didn’t expect Ms. Byers to know anything about what he’d done, which honestly doesn’t make sense considering the fact he’d been in her house, beat her door down, fought a literal hell monster - a demogorgon - in her house, and had also assisted in lighting her carpet on fire. 

“Sorry about your carpet,” he stutters, at a loss of what else to say. 

“Oh honey, don’t worry. That’s the last thing I’m concerned about,” she waves her hand dismissively, ducking to shake out a bag to start putting everything inside. “I just wanted to make sure you’re doing alright. Are you? You look tired.”

“Oh uh, I’m fine! Just busy with the holidays and everything, you know?” Steve shrugs, if very awkwardly, quickly reaching back to distract himself with getting out his wallet. 

“Alright, if you’re sure. But please do feel free to let me know if you need anything, alright?”

“...alright, thanks Ms. Byers.” He glances up in time to catch her earnest smile, and offers a nervous one of his own as he hands over the cash for the art supplies. 

Ms.Byers takes his hand. He doesn’t expect it, it makes him jump again, the way she looks across at him with such an unwarranted kindness, a fondness , something that feels entirely like a mother’s smile. Steve’s brow furrows as he realizes he’s never been smiled at like that. Gently, she pats his hand, as if offering some quiet assurance. Like they’re confidants.
“I mean it. I’m sure you can find our number in the book.”

“Yes- yes, ma’am. Thank you.” 

“Of course. Merry Christmas! Drive safe out there! I mean it!”
Steve finds himself scrambling to pick up the paper bag of art things before he waves and scampers out the door. He doesn’t want to have to deal with being mothered by someone who isn’t even his own mom- even if the concern was nice. Hell, it was the most concern anyone outside Nancy and Ellie have shown him in… well, a month at this point, which achingly feels like very little, it almost feels alien. 

Once he’s outside, Steve sucks in a sharp breath. He doesn’t want to think about this anymore. He doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want to think about it, he just wants to get home before it gets dark and hopefully find somewhere other than his trunk to stash Ellie’s Christmas present. He has to worry about wrapping it anyway, and he has dinner to worry about as well. 

In spite of that, Jonathan’s apology lingers in his mind as he clambers into his car and starts back home. 

That camera had meant a lot to Jonathan. And he did seem really sorry. Maybe he should make it up to him. 

Chapter Text

December 5, 1983

They're making Christmas cookies. 

Things are perfect, literally, Steve can smell them in the oven, box mix but still good, still others drying on the rack. He had to show her, but since they weren’t making any for Santa Claus (considering Eleven most certainly did not believe in Santa and found the idea of him particularly creepy) they were making the cookies for themselves to gorge on. 

At the moment, Ellie is mixing up the colors they need to ice the little christmas trees and reindeer and sugar cookie men. Red that looked more like pink, green, an attempt at purple that came out brown, and yellow frosting was haphazardly placed in little bowls, and each color can be found somewhere on Ellie’s bright yellow apron. Red food dye had spilled on the counter a little bit, looking a little like a cheesy horror movie crime scene. But it doesn’t matter, not with the stone countertops. They can worry about cleaning up later, after the cookies are done, after all the dough shapes they’d made are done being baked, when the icing is on all of them, when the peppermint and cinnamon bits and chocolate are all on top. 
By then, they could turn on Scrooge or It’s a Wonderful Life or White Christmas if it’s on, probably the latter considering Ellie’s penchant for soap opera romances and the scene where Bing and Danny sang “ Sisters” again.

She’ll like that, she’ll probably find it funny like he had the first time he’d seen it. 

Right now though, his Madonna tape is in his music player, “ Burning Up ” guiding his own cookie arrangement and Ellie’s mixing. 

“-I’m burnin’ up! Burnin’ up for your love-” she sings, entirely enjoying herself as she turns with her pink icing bowl, “Do I need more red?”

“Hm-hm, hm-” Half caught in the song himself, Steve turns and shrugs, “Sure, I think it’ll look fine either way.”

“Okay, I will have more red.” She starts, turning back towards her other bowls at the counter. In an instant, however, she freezes. All of her goes tense as her head snaps up towards the garage door. 

It’s opening.  

The rumbling feels like an earthquake in his chest, sending his head rattling, because the only way that garage door could be opened is if someone is opening it manually or with the fancy fob that had been installed last year. The dread that shot back through Steve is insurmountable as his head snaps back to El. She turns back to him just as sharply, eyes going wide with surprise. 

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck , Ellie, go hide,” Steve snaps, and without question she drops the bowl back to sit on the counter, leaving the spatula and the mess to turn back and bolt up the stairs. 

Steve can feel his face getting hot. The heat gathers up in his ears, in his head, an inkling of terror and insurmountable dread shooting up his throat with a wave of nausea. 

Usually, Steve kept a clean house. He was hardly here himself, anyway, so making sure things were vacuumed and clean and organized was so easy. It was even easier when he anticipated when his parents were coming back. Yet now, things are a bit of a mess. There are blankets out on the couch. The snow clothes are hanging up to dry by the sliding glass window, which could be seen from the kitchen if someone leaned the right way. That, and the kitchen is a mess of food coloring and leftover dough he’d needed to roll out and the bowls of icing, and even though he’d cooked before it was never in this state. It was never in this state, most especially, when his parents got home.

Fuck.

As the rumble of the garage door slows, stops, Steve rushes into the living room to snatch up their things, then sprints back to toss everything down into the basement and close the door before turning back into the kitchen. 

He can feel his heart thumping wildly in his chest, the heat still stark across his face. He has to play it cool, he has to calm down. He’s making cookies to help Nancy- some bake sale to do with student council, which he usually had nothing to do with. They are gonna sell these or hand them out or something , and maybe he’d felt like making a couple more just because it was the holidays. 

His dad’s gonna hate the fact that he’s baking of all things. 

Trying to temper down the shake of his hands for potentially being caught, for Ellie being caught, Steve frantically gathers up paper towels to wipe up the food coloring. He has to figure out how to keep them out of the guest room, he has to figure out how to get her downstairs, he has to figure out how to take care of her with this. How long are they even supposed to stay? Why are they coming back in the first place?-

“-refund from the hotel.” 

“If you want that handled, you do it yourself! I keep telling you, you’re the reason we couldn’t make it in time you-”

Christ, they’re fighting. Of course they’re fighting, it is as if any second spent in this house had to deteriorate when they were there. Instead, he keeps his mouth shut so as not to draw any attention- not like that matters. 

“What the hell is all this?” His father’s voice breaks out of the argument for a moment, met with the soft thumping of their luggage falling to the ground by the door into the garage.
He turns then, much too aware of the shake in his fingers as he wipes off his hands. 

“Hi mom, hi dad,” he starts, unable to help but swallow as he works up a smile, welcoming, but surprised. “You’re back early.”

Sean Harrington is just as tall as Steve, but somehow still makes him feel like he is shrinking. He’s in his travel suit: the nice dark slacks and suit jacket and somehow still pressed looking shirt. His mother is just as put together, despite the absentminded petulance spread across her face. The tailored skirt, the matching jacket, he swears the pair of them looked like they could walk right off one of the Business - Money magazines that usually sat stacked and untouched on the coffee table. 

“You can thank your mother for that,” his dad remarks, a hint of snideness in it as his mother rolls her eyes and plops her carry-on bag on the ground. 

Steve can physically feel the tension between them in the air, just radiating. He’d probably gotten caught with somebody again, some woman, doing something very unmarried like. And his mother- his mother was too damn stubborn to embarrass him for it.

“I asked you what the hell you were doing.”

“-sorry,” Steve starts quietly, busying himself with moving the cooled off cookies off the rack and onto a plate. “Uhm- Nancy asked me to help out with a bake sale. For the student council.”

“Nancy? Why’s this Nancy got you running around the kitchen? It’s a mess.” His dad huffs, leaving his luggage there by the door as he makes his way into the living room, “This house is a mess! You aren’t having more parties, are you?”

“No, no sir-”

“Nancy. His girlfriend, Sean,” his mother remarks, and though she doesn’t say anything about the state of the place, she gives a passive aggressive glance over the kitchen counter- over him, looking like he hadn’t gone out at all that day, offering a heavy look of disappointment. 

“You shouldn’t have her running you around the kitchen,” his father insists, pausing there as he stares down at something behind the couch, out of sight of the kitchen. He leans over and plucks something up off the couch- Eleven’s drawing packet, held down on an old kid’s book from the storage in the basement. This one has a drawing of some of the houses with Christmas lights on them, a rendition of what she’d seen before Steve had driven them home. 

“What’s this about?” 

His dad is a step past annoyed now. Steve can practically feel the way his voice settles over them, as his mother crosses her arms at the sight of it, glancing over. 

“Steven?”

“I uhm-” he struggles for a response, the words caught in his throat for a moment as he stands stock still there in the kitchen. “I was babysitting.”

“Christ, Steven, cooking and babysitting? What now, did you quit the team or something?” 

“What? No,” Steve blanches, leaning back and away a bit against the counter just for the sake of huddling away and behind the fridge where it sticks out inbetween the counter and the wall. His dad steps back then, starting into the kitchen still gripping that drawing. Where his fingers dig in, it crumples, threatening to tear from the tape holding it flat. 

“Sean,” his mother remarks, reaching up as if she intends to rub her face before faltering upon realizing it's still caked in that far too fine makeup. “Leave it alone, we need to unpack.”

“I’m not standing by and watching as our son turns into a pussy while we’re gone. Babysitting? Baking? Women’s work? Really?” 

As soon as his father approaches, Steve turns his head away a bit, bracing his hands back against the counter a bit as the picture is waved there in front of him. There’s a brief moment where he leans in- close, leaning over Steve, and it brings his heart to his throat. 

“You’re not going queer on us, are you son?”

Jesus, his dad can’t be that fucking stupid. 

“No, sir.”

“He has a girlfriend .” His mom reiterates it as if that should make the answer clear enough, which it should’ve- but she sighs and turns for the stairs. “I’m going up. Steven, can you clean up, please?”

Shit. Shit , Ellie. 

Steve can’t stop his head from snapping up to the stairs just to make sure she isn’t there. Both his parents seem to catch onto that, and already Steve is scrambling for some excuse, for something to say as they spot Eleven there in the hallway, clearly having thought she’d tucked herself away in the dark shadows of the hall. 

“Who is that !?” 

His mother’s voice sounds like it was underwater, somewhere at the back of his head as he meets El’s gaze. Her expression is caught somewhere between shock and instantaneous guilt as she bundles her hands in her sleeves. She’s wearing his old clothes still- old worn out jeans and sweater, a bit big on her, but it’s clear they aren’t hers. 

“She just needed help,” Steve interjects, at least trying to assert himself there as his dad turns. “She was lost! It- it was freezing! I couldn’t just let her stay out there-”

“Oh I get it, you’re running a shelter. In our house . Under our roof .” 

“Why is her hair so short?” his mother asks, staring up at El like she was a pesky pigeon on the roof. “Where are her parents?”

“We don’t know-”

“Carol, why don’t you find a phone and call the station.” 

Ellie gasps, starting to back up into the hall as Steve practically yells, “No!”

“Don’t raise your voice!” The sting across his face almost made his vision flash white, Steve almost didn’t realize what had happened as he pitched to the side and reached to hold himself up against the fridge. No. No, he can’t let his mom get to the phone, he can’t let her call- “You’re in enough shit as is, son- get back here!”

He must’ve been moving. He must’ve been, because all the sudden he isn’t on the hardwood floor in the kitchen, he canfeel the living room carpet underfoot, he’s pitching forward, and someone’s prying him back by the collar of his shirt.

Shit. 

Ears ringing, Steve tries to speak up again. His vision’s blurring a bit, but he can make out his mom’s figure- her black suit jacket and skirt starting for the phone in the hallway towards the garage. 

“No! Mom, please, I can explain, please!-”

“ Sit down !” his dad bellows it, practically throwing him to sit there on the floor just outside the kitchen, and without finding much of a choice, Steve does, scooting away just a bit. Ellie is shouting. No, she’s screaming , and she sounds angry. He almost hadn’t noticed with how deafening his dad’s voice was, as she scurries down the stairs. 

“No! No ! Do not do that !” She almost sounds hysterical, pounding down the steps and wheeling around the banister to tear after Steve- or rather, after his dad, who turns fast at the girl. 

“Those aren’t even yours, you little thief! Don’t you dare raise your voice at me in-”

Steve sees it before he can even process exactly what he needs to do. His mom’s almost at the phone, intent on ignoring this all, and his dad’s hand is raised. It’s raised to hit her. 
No, not Ellie, he can’t hit Ellie. 

Steve moves. He moves fast, faster than he thought he could, half standing by the time he gets between his father and Ellie, and the strike hits hard. He must’ve been so angry, growing angrier by the second, and the sting snaps him back to reality again as he half stumbles back, arm held out to stop Ellie from going any closer. 

She screams. There’s nothing like the blood curdling scream of a scared, angry little girl, and from right there behind him she forces her hand forward- flat palm out like she’s telling his dad to stop again. 

Something happens. 

His dad goes flying- practically careening back through the air to land hard on his back in the kitchen with a loud shout. 

Shellshocked, Steve steps back with his arm still out for Ellie, it comes across her chest as she grips at the shoulder of her sweater, and in turn she reaches to cling onto his shirt, backing up with him. 

Glancing down, he sees her nose is bleeding. She’s breathing fast, eyes saucer wide as she stares after the figure of his dad where he lay groaning, trying to sit up. 

“What-”

“What the hell,” Steve breathes, turning back towards his mom. She’s stood there, phone in hand, mouth agape in shock. When Eleven picks her head up to face her, she flinches away, backing up against the table the phone sat on. 

“...th-the priest, I’m calling the priest-” she balks. 

Eleven can’t stay here. 

They can’t stay here like this. 

Still holding onto Ellie, Steve bolts for where he’d left his keys by the front door, snatching them up. Eleven runs with him, refusing to let go of his shirt as he goes, rounding back around the corner towards the basement door. 
They have to go. 
They have to get the fuck out of here. He doesn’t care if he has no idea where they are going to go, and Eleven doesn’t seem to care either. 

His hands are shaking as he pries open the door and rushes inside, slamming it shut behind them. He fumbles to lock it as he hears his father raise his voice. 

“You- you get your ass back here, Steven!”

Eleven quickly backs down the stairs as Steve lingers just to make sure the door is shut, before he follows after her.
“Get- get your coat. We gotta go.” 

It’s a wild scramble for a moment as Steve pries on his shoes, shoves his keys in his jeans pocket, and picks his coat up off the floor. Eleven is steps behind him, stumbling to get one of her shoes on as she scrambles to pick up a blanket off the coach and wrap it around herself and her coat, clearly not looking forward to the freezing weather outside as they went. He reaches out to grab her arm sharply, shoving the basement door open to run around the house in the snow. His snow boots are loose and almost falling off his feet, but all he can think of is ‘ get to the car’ . 

They just need to get to the car and get out of here, get the fuck away from this stupid house and whoever might come looking for Eleven with her- poltergiest shit. 

What had she done, anyway? 

He can’t worry about that now. He isn’t sure he even wants to know. 

Ellie gives a little yelp as she trips forward, losing a shoe, and Steve backtracks a split second just to pick it up from where they are halfway across the front yard. 
He hears the front door open. 

Shit. Shit, shit, shit , this can’t happen now. Steve runs, all the faster, holding Ellie’s arm and her boot in his other hand as he sprints across the front yard and driveway with her to his car, Ellie stumbling to keep up all the way. 

“Wait!-”

“Steven Micheal Raul Harrington, you come back right now !” His dad is screaming , so loud he’s sure the Cunninghams might hear him from the end of the street. But Steve doesn’t listen. He doesn’t even pause to retort, to say ‘no’, he frantically unlocks the car, pulls Eleven around, and half throws her inside, letting her scramble into the passenger seat. He tosses her boot in after her, throwing himself into the freezing cold driver’s seat with  desperation as he shuts the door, locks it, and puts his key in the ignition. 

“Shit, shit, shit ,” Steve breathes aloud, head snapping up as the engine roars to life. His face feels hot- his nose is aching, killing him, wet down his upper lip to match Ellie. 

As Steve jerks the car into reverse out of the driveway, he can see his dad in the front door. His shoulders are squared forward, and he’s marching out after them waving a fist. 

He backs out onto the road, switches the gear, and slams on the gas as they speed away from the house. 

The last thing Steve sees is their snowman around the corner of the pool house. It watches as his dad runs, slipping like a deer on ice across the driveway in his work shoes, watches as the car lurches back forward again, and might as well have offered a forlorn wave. 

Ellie’s crying. He can hear her sniffling as she brings her knees up, almost as bad as the shake in his shoulders and hands as he drives, going anywhere. For a moment he thought of going to Nancy’s- but no, no, Mike was there and Nancy knew enough as it was, and his parents would know to go there. If they even know where her house is. 

It isn’t worth the risk anyway. 

Another distant thought came that he could go to the Byers’, but no- again, he can’t. Not with Jonathan there, not with the shitshow they’d already had to put up with. 

So, shaken and suddenly aware of the hot tears on his face, Steve turns them out of the neighborhood and towards the highway. 

“I- I am so sorry,” Eleven chokes out. Out the corner of his eye, she looks destroyed. Arms wrapped around her knees, her snow boots on the floor as she shivers in the freezing car, big fat tears rolling down her cheeks and muddled together with her bloody nose. 

Steve manages to shake his head, finding his own voice caught in his throat. 

“We’re okay. We’re gonna be okay, it’s fine.” He breathes, tightening his grip on the steering wheel to try and ground himself, “I think… we have a lot to talk about.”

Reluctantly, Eleven nods and stares ahead at the road, voice cracking just a touch. 

“Yes.”

Chapter Text

Steve is silent as they drive. 

The heater’s finally kicked in, and his face is smarting from his dad’s hand. Is his nose bleeding? Slowly he reaches up, keeping one white knuckled hand on the wheel as the other goes to rub at his face. It comes back hot, red, threatening to spill on the floor of the car. It is then, but not as much as Eleven’s had been. Had- had she gotten hit and he didn’t realize? 

She’d… thrown his dad. Shoved him?

“...are you okay?” 

He finally asks her with an overwhelming trepidation, finding himself sniffing like he could stop his nose from bleeding. He’s sure that they look awful, the pair of them, with their twin bloody noses and the now undeniable tears down each of their burning faces. God, he hates that he’s crying. He shouldn’t be crying, not about his dad, he shouldn’t be scared at this point. 

But Ellie looks so damn scared. 

Sitting there in the passenger seat, Ellie looks strikingly pale. Her eyes are huge, glued to the dashboard of his car, her hands wrapped tight around herself. Her boots are strewn on the floor in the footwell. Her shoulders shake, even as she wildly tries to reach up and wipe at her face, wipe off those tears, her bloody nose. 

“I- you are in trouble,” she manages, before her voice catches in her throat and she ducks her head forward again. Simultaneously, her hands raise to her face to hide it. She starts to cry: frantic, petrified, entirely guilty in a way that makes tears gather up in Steve’s eyes beyond his control. “They will call the bad men!”

“-it’s okay, Ellie, it’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay. We can uh- we can go to Indianapolis or- Chicago! Chicago, we can go to Chicago and if we really have to we can skip out on a boat-”

“But your house,” Eleven continues, turning back to look at him with those huge, tearful eyes. “You- you need to go home, I- you- but you are in trouble- a-and the bad men will go to your house-” she falters with a squeak, welling up in a little sob again as she leans against the car window. 

It dawns on him then, that she expects him to leave her somewhere and go home. That she expects he should go back, back into that house, back home.

With a hollow, shaken realization, Steve realizes he can’t fathom why he would want to do that.

“We pinky promised.” Steve surprises himself when it comes out just as small, just as broken in his throat, voice gone a bit nasally as he sniffs. 

“But you have your house! Your house, your mama, your papa, and- school and-” she’s raising her voice again. Her hands are in her hair, her face screwed up, absolutely appalled at whatever she believes she’s done. 

It’s back again. That reverence. Each time she says those things are his, his house, his mom, his dad, his school. Probably even the unspoken everythings inbetween. It’s all he knows how to call it, reverence, a word he’d seen and only actually bothered to learn the definition of because his coach used it once. 
He doesn’t get it. He had his house- had a mom and a dad, and he knew he should’ve felt that same way. He should’ve felt reverence. Should’ve felt like he mattered, he should’ve felt like having a house, more importantly a mom and a dad mattered . Distantly, he knew it- he knew he had a lot, he knew he had a lot more than other people did. He’d heard the phrase, over and over, ‘you’re lucky you have a roof over your head’, but no ounce of him held any attachment, any reverence for that house anymore. He hadn’t since he was little, since he was maybe Eleven’s age, the only few good moments poised by missing would’ve been friends, a lack of attachment, a lack of himself in a place he was supposed to call home. 

To her, it was his home . 

He didn’t know how to tell her that it isn’t , that it is just a house. He knows she’d seen his father just then. He knows he only ever talked about his father to say something mean or to complain, and he never talked about his mother. He didn’t know how to tell her that the only people who make him feel like he is important, that he is supposed to be there, that he is needed and not just had in the past stretch of a month or so had been Nancy and Eleven herself. 

She must see his face drop, because she sits up a bit and leans her head back against the headrest, staring ahead at the darkening road, still sniffling, though trying to calm herself. 

“...you said your papa was pretty bad.” 

His voice shakes when he asks it, and he hates it. 
The statement hangs in the air for a moment as she reaches up to wipe her face again. Steve finds himself staring ahead, unable to bring himself to look at her. 

“Yes,” Ellie agrees.

“...you saw mine. He’s not good anymore. He’s not a dad like a real dad is, anymore.” He’s mumbling, repeating himself, fingers drumming along the wheel. 

“...he is like Papa.”

“He’s not safe for you to be around,” Steve agrees a little more confidently, “And I pinky promised I’d keep you safe.” 

She opens her mouth to say something, to protest maybe, finally turning to look at him. Steve finds his shoulders slumped forward, eyes glued to the road, fingers white on the wheel for how tight he’s gripping it. His nose is still bleeding, going crusty above his lip. He’s crying. He can’t stop crying, why can’t he stop crying? 

“Y-you said I could help. You said I could help when things got bad, so lemme help,” he continues, fighting to have anything else to talk about. 

She’d thrown his dad. Like that old space movie with the lightning ninjas. 

“How’d you do that?” Steve croaks, and in an instant Ellie straightens her shoulders and turns back towards him with wide eyes. He finally glances over, brow upturned, lips curled into a frown. “How’d you make him go away like that?”

They stare at each other for a long, long moment, before she sucks in a shaky breath. 

“My house is in the woods,” she starts quietly, “I… had brothers and sisters. We were special.” 

The reverence is there again. Quiet. Smaller. 

“My biggest brother killed them. And Papa thought I did because I had to… stop my brother. He was not like a real brother,” she remarks with a grimace, somehow forlorn all the same, “Papa made me use my… ‘gift’. I have to… move things but I can not touch them. And sometimes, I have to listen to people when they are far away. And sometimes I have to see people far away. And sometimes I have to do bad things to people far away.” 

She sniffs, bringing her hand up to wipe the drying blood off her face. 

Steve can feel the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. 

“Papa- Papa thought I was bad, I had to live in a small room. I ran away because there were monsters- and… they found monsters. And the monsters ran away too. They took Will. My friends found me- Mike. And Lucas, Dustin. We found the monster and I sent it away, but I got stuck in the uh- uhm, Upside Down. We say it is the Upside Down. But I got out and then you found me at your house.”

Steve goes quiet. He dwells on it for a little while, but he slowly nods. 

“...that’s why the bad men are looking for you? Because you can do crazy stuff?” 

“Yes.” 

Steve loses a heavy puff of breath at that. 

He’s really tossed himself in the deep end here, hasn’t he.

His parents could absolutely call the police. They could end up talking to these bad men who were making Ellie do bad things- he has a sneaking suspicion that those bad men were a lot more important than he or his parents would ever be, more so than the Hawkins police even.
“Our monster. I fought one of those in Will’s house. That’s why I didn’t want you to stay outside, I thought it’d come back. I thought it might hurt you or- I think it might’ve hurt someone I know.” 

“Barb,” Ellie offers, glancing up to him with a most solemn heavy look for a kid. His gut drops. 

“Yeah.”

“...Barb is dead. I saw her.” 

Steve suddenly feels like he wants to throw up. 

God. Oh god, was she? Did Eleven- had she really seen that? He knows he can’t dismiss her, he has to believe her, she couldn’t lie if she tried. 

Does Nancy know?

“We’re gonna stay away from the monsters,” Steve croaks, swallowing hard. “We’ll hide, your bad guys and Papa won’t find us in Chicago. And my parents won’t know to look there. And if they do we’ll- it’ll take a really long time, so we’ll have time.” 

Eleven tucks her chin on her knees, giving a little frown up at him. 

“You do not think I’m bad?”

“...no. No, you just had bad people around. And- I can’t just leave you hanging. Especially when you need help with people like that, y’can’t be alone with people like that, stuff like that. It’s not fair.”

“It is not fair,” Ellie agrees quietly, sucking in another shaky breath as she calms down. “You are a good friend, Stu.”

“Y’know, you are too, Ellie. You’re a better friend than I’ve had in a really long time.” 

She cracks a watery smile and glances up at him, almost disbelieving looking. “Really?”

“Yeah. You… you do cool art stuff and you don’t mind me. And you’ve got a great taste in music. And- you’re pretty damn good at untangling lights.” 

“That was my gift,” she admits, a touch warily for a moment. 

“...I guess that makes sense now. But hey. Not to sound like a total nerd, but you got like- crazy psychic powers. That’s cool too. And you fight monsters too, we got that in common.”

“I like your music. And when you make food. It is the best food. And your Jackie Chan movies. You are like… a real brother.” 

He falls silent. 

The car suddenly doesn’t feel cold anymore. He doesn’t feel like he’s driving into the abyss, Chicago feels like a purpose, feels like a million times better than Hawkins right now. He feels like he’s going somewhere and he has a reason for any of this. 

Steve feels like he’s going to cry again, but this time he breaks into a teary laugh and reaches up to wipe his face, features lighting up in a smile. 

“W-well. I’d hope so, cuz you’re like a real sister.” 

When Steve glances over again to grant her that watery smile. For a split second she looks shaken, like she wasn’t sure she should’ve said that in the first place, but the moment she catches his smile she slumps back in her seat and smiles back. She starts to tear up again. Big, big tears in her eyes that aren’t scared anymore, no, they’re relieved, they’re happy, she’s happy . 

Right now, that’s all that matters. 

“Chicago,” Ellie agrees with a little nod, “I have not been on a boat before.”

“We might have to. Everybody goes to Canada when they’re trying to get away. If we gotta go, we gotta go. We just gotta make sure we have everything we need first.”

Now that the relief that they would, really, truly stick together, that Ellie wants to stick with him as much as he wants to stick with her, he is hit with another realization. 

They have nowhere to go. Steve knows he probably only has a bit of cash in his coat pocket or the glove box. They’d need to find a cheap hotel, or somewhere… anywhere. 

He’s never really had to think about things like this. Where to stay- where to get food, if he can even find somewhere to make Ellie dinner like she apparently liked. Gas too. How much gas did he even have in his car? Where would they be able to go where people won’t be suspicious if they saw Ellie? Her hair is still so short- maybe they’ll have to pretend she’s a boy for some extra cover? Are they going to need fake names? Are they even be able to stay in a hotel tonight in case people come looking for them?

Probably not. 

He taps his fingers along the wheel for a moment, staring ahead at the road for a moment before finding the silence too overwhelming, even with Eleven practically radiating happiness. He reaches for the music dial and pops his tape in and out, letting ABBA burst to life inside the car. At least they have this. 

Chapter Text

Chicago looks nothing like it did in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. 

Then again, it’s practically mid winter in Illinois and somehow all the colder with the wind coming off the Great Lakes. He can see Lake Michigan on the horizon if he squints, out between all the tall towers and buildings. 

They’d ended up driving four hours on the highway out towards Chicago before pulling over, and Ellie had fallen asleep leaning her head against the window.  Steve’s hands had been trembling all night, up until he fell asleep. This morning, it’s freezing cold, Steve’s hands feel numb, but somehow Eleven sleeps through it-still alive, thank god, he could see her breathing by how the window fogs up. 

Steve didn’t ever remember going to Chicago. Sure, apparently there are pictures of it from an old family reunion before his Grandpa Otis died- out in a park somewhere by the water, he couldn’t have been older than four. The memories of it being so warm and hearing the chatterings of his grandmother on his mother’s side in Italian, of the way the wind felt off the water, of the wildflowers- it all feels so distant now. So unreal. 

It is a stark antithesis to the city as it is now. 

Ellie is still asleep by the time he starts through the center of town. 

Snow is piled high in empty parking lots, along the sides of the road, stacked in rows that divide the sidewalk from the street. Some buildings are strung with rows of Christmas lights on the first floors, apartment buildings sparingly lined along single fire escapes or windows from the inside. Soon enough Ellie sits herself up blearily, leaning back against the seat. 

“This is Chicago?”

He almost doesn’t notice she’s awake until she speaks, glancing over very briefly as they pass a snowplow, but he offers her a quick nod and a sigh, perking up his tone regardless. 
“Yep! Yeah- looks pretty crazy with all the snow, huh?”

“Yes,” Ellie agrees softly, turning to peer out and press her face against the frigid window, “everything is very big.”

“Yeah. You can say that again,” Steve remarks, half to himself, as she nods. 

“It is very, very big.”

Unable to help let out a tired snort, he glances over again. “Hey. All the more space for us to hide out, right? We’ll find somewhere to hunker down where it’ll be hard to find my car, n’then we’ll uh- I’ll get some food for us. And maybe you can scope us out a better place to hide?”

“...I can do that,” Ellie agrees. 

“...just, don’t go far. Okay? And we have to meet back at the car in an hour.” 

“Yes. That is a good idea.”

The ABBA tape has cycled through a couple times at this rate, since he’d woken to start driving again. In the back of his mind, he keeps thinking of the fact that people will be looking for her. If they are seen together, though, it might be dangerous- people will probably have an eye out to look for him too. People would start looking for his car, and the purple-brown maroon, whatever color it is, suddenly becomes something he isn’t quite so proud of anymore. 

He’ll have to find a way for them to hide that too. 

He needs to figure out how to keep gas in the car. If they can stay anywhere, how many hotels there are, if he can make a fake name. If his parents will come looking for him- because, as much as he felt they might, he truly isn’t sure if that is true. 

All of those thoughts remain stark at the forefront of his mind when he finds a parking lot that doesn’t seem particularly well used, as he gets out of the car, as he watches after Ellie until he can’t see her anymore when they split ways.

They have to do this together. They have to look out for each other. He’d pinky promised. 

Steve’s first job interview was much less an interview and moreso a decision made by Missus Xiao. 

The corner store, ‘Auntie’s Convenience’, is just like all of the others every three blocks, a general store a quarter the size of Melvald’s back in Hawkins, and still somehow just as full. Cramped isles are full of colorful packaging, a tightly packed row of coolers and freezers at the back that held eggs and milk and coca cola with the Christmas bottles, and if he squints at the back, there’s a few that read ‘Kentucky Derby’ along the top label. 

Missus Xiao is half his height and thrice his age, and somehow manages to remind him of Miss Byers in every way, even down to her bangs -even if they are considerably shorter- and the way her short hair sticks out behind her ears that makes her look a little bit like a dark haired, graying Meryl Streep. 

It’s his sixth store in the hour after he’s discovered he currently has 27 dollars to he and El’s names, and a half empty tank of gas. 

He doesn’t even have a resume- which to the best of his knowledge, is very important. But he’s never had a job before, he’s never applied for a job before, doesn’t know how an interview even worked outside his dad talking shit about people looking stupid in theirs. Instead, he had seen the handwritten ‘seeking help’ sign in giant red sharpie between bingo posters and faded missing posters and holiday activity advertisements. She’s making a considerable effort to lift a whole palette of cereal boxes, which altogether added up to quite a lot, through the tiny back door, something that didn’t seem like it would fit and also dwarfed her, and leads to him speaking up and scrambling over with a, “Hey! God, can I help?” and her frantic exclamation of “Yes!”

As soon as he has the palette in his arms and carefully maneuvered through the door, and out towards where she instructs that it should be in the third of five narrow isles, she leans back and crosses her arms rather scrupulously. 

“You saw my sign?” She asks, glancing him up and down for a moment. Steve finds himself stepping back almost in surprise for a moment with how sudden it was, but he gives a quick nod. 

“Yes ma’am.”

With that, she peers up at his face, towards the remnants of his bloody nose and the likely red or bruising mark on his face from his dad the previous night.

Jesus, last night he was at home making cookies with Ellie, and here he is with the knowledge that she had mind powers, and they were hiding, and he’s trying to find a job so they could find a motel or something, or at least have enough gas to keep the car warm. A month ago, he would’ve laughed in anyone’s face if that’s what they said his future looked like. He wondered what they might say now, about what it looked like. 

“So you get in fights? My husband and I will not have fights in our store.”

“No… no ma’am, I ah- I slipped and fell on the ice.” Steve nods very seriously, staring down wide eyed at her as she stares right back before sighing and glancing around her store. 

“You will do. You’re strong enough. Do you know what to do?” 

“...no ma’am” Steve starts, before speaking up with a touch more assertiveness. His dad always said being assertive was important. “Not yet.”

“Hmmm… My daughter will show you, she will be back from her classes at six o'clock. You must be here.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Good. What is your name, boy?”

“Steve Harring- Steve Herring?”

Again, she peers up at him, almost quirking her brow, but when he gives a wild nod, she relents once more and waves her hand. “Be here before six o'clock!”

Baffled and a little shook with how sudden it all is, Steve wildly nods again before speaking up. 
“Excuse me, what should I call you?”

“Missus Xiao, you will be working for my husband.”

“...Mr.Xiao?”

“Yes.” 

“Oh- okay! Alright, thank you, I’ll be back before six. Promise-”

He makes his way out minutes later with a bit more of a pep in his step. 

Back at the car, Ellie’s already waiting. She almost looked anxious until she spotted his head bobbing over the tops of the cars, and she gave a bit of a jump just to make sure before offering a bright big smile. 

“I found a good hiding place!”

“Yeah?” Steve chimes back, pulling out his keys so they could at least get back inside in the warmth. She skips around, almost slips, and slides into the passenger seat again as Steve snorts. 

“Please for the love of god don’t fall and crack your head open. Oh my god.”

“I will not! Go, I can tell you.”

“Alright, alright!” He relents, waving a hand as he drops to sit in the driver’s seat, turning the car on. The burst of heat a minute or so after the car starts reminds him of how hard it is to feel his hands, they almost go numb as he pulls slowly out of the spot, making sure not to tempt the ice on the roads into letting the car slip into another. 

That would be way too much to deal with right now. 

“Guess what.”  Steve can feel the smile on his face. Jesus, since when was he excited about the idea of getting a job?

Never.

“Huh?” El asks, for the life of her breaking into a soft smile for how excited she is with her own find.

“I got a job. I’m probably gonna have to work a lot, but in the meantime- we can take care of ourselves! Right? Food and stuff. Something to stay warm in here until we find… y’know a place. Where it feels like people won’t rat on us.” 

That’s an odd thought. He’s been used to people liking him. He’s used to only having to think about himself and getting away with things. Not having to think about where he’s going or what he’s doing unless it’s in his own house or it might somehow get back to his parents. Now he has to be worried about anything and everything . Where to get food, if someone saw his car, if his parents had called the bad men, if they’re looking for Ellie, for himself. What if someone sees Ellie? What if someone sees him and knew to get to her, to follow him?

He has to be careful. They can’t let themselves be seen, or heard. 

Maybe a motel was out of the question. They could be seen. Someone could call about suspicious kids. Meanwhile, Ellie points him towards the more industrial side of town. Here the buildings are worn out, some caved in from the snow, glass gone dusty and faded. 

He’ll have to keep his head low at the store and keep them in the back streets where people don’t go. 

“That means we will be okay?” Ellie asks, and he starts with a nod. “Exactly. I uh- I’m gonna be out a lot, though. To work. Just so we have enough.”

“That is okay. I will… hide. And-...” She purses her lips, hesitating a moment as she points him back towards a side street. How she had found this place, Steve isn’t sure, but he follows her quiet pointing and nodding towards a wide alley.

“What?” Steve asks with a hum, peering over at El. She has her lips pursed as Steve carefully maneuvers the car in, pulling to a stop behind a very empty, very frozen looking dumpster. It’s somewhere to hide, something to come back to. He’ll have to find somewhere to get something to cover it.

From here, staring ahead, there’s a chain link fence that looks out onto a wide, unused snowy road, across to big buildings, where to the left he can see a mess of tracks between the buildings, where it flattens out towards the edge of town. 

“...I feel like there is something important.” She admits quietly, and Steve opens his mouth to turn and protest before leaning back in his seat and shutting the car down to idling. 

“...what’s that mean?” Steve asks hesitantly. “...like your powers are telling you something?”

Hesitantly, Ellie nods, glancing up as if she’s still hesitant to admit that much to him. 

Steve really isn’t sure how he feels about this. He’d seen her throw his dad, for Christ’s sake. Saw the way her nose bleeds whenever she does something, and he wonders how much those powers really did. She said that she had to see people far away- move stuff, like she’d thrown his dad and untangled the lights. That she had to do bad stuff to people far away.
“How do you know? How do they even… work, y’know?”

“How does what work?”

“Your powers. Like how do you know?”

“Oh.” Ellie hums, opening and closing her mouth like a fish on the hook. “I… think very hard. Sometimes I think about where I want things to go. Sometimes I send them away forever.” She holds out her hand, just as she had when she’d thrown his dad. Steve turns, watching, crossing his arms as she continues. “And sometimes I get a feeling. I go to a big black… place. In here-” She taps her head. “But not in here. And I can see people. Or places. And I saw- someone like me.”

“Someone like you?” Steve parrots warily. 

“...yes. My sister. She is eight.” 

That’s- a quick and honestly sort of frightening development. Steve finds himself drumming his fingers on the wheel, brow knitting as he takes the moment to open his mouth, to balk, and to shut it. He frowns. 

“Y-you… you uh, you’re sure about that?” 

“Yes.” 

Steve finds himself turning to look at her- really look, and Eleven has that stony expression on her face. It's a cold almost stare, almost glower, her lips set in a thin line. “Yes.” She repeats, more insistently as Steve scrubs his hands over his face. 

“What’s that mean then?”

“I have to look.” She adamants. 

“How do you know she’s even- safe, like how do you know it's real?”

“I know!” 

“So you’re gonna go look for her. While I’m gone.”

“...tomorrow. Not today. I want to try to talk. I want to tell her I am here.” 

“You can do that?”

“Yes. She will know.” 

Steve sighs, heavily, leaning his head back against the seat for a moment. He narrows his eyes over at her, skeptical, concerned, but she stares back just as insistently. 

“I will be back before it is dark. We… will be here before it is dark.”

“...fine. Okay, deal, just- don’t talk to people you don’t need to talk to and like- I don’t- I’m not gonna stop you. But don’t let people see you. Because anyone could say something and people could be out looking for you.” 

“Yes, I know.” 

Steve sighs as she turns to lean back against the window, and he brings up his knees to prop his chin on his hand. 

“We meet back here before it gets dark. Or right after if we feel like somebody’s gonna follow us so it's easier to hide. And- here. I’m gonna show you how to turn on the car so you can keep it warm, ‘kay? Just in case.”

Quickly, still sighing in reluctance, but he turns the car off and waves her over. Ellie gives a start, leaning in with a nod.
“Okay!”

“Right so. You gotta step on the gas. That’s the big pedal here- and hold it while you turn the key.” He pauses to turn the key in the ignition to the first notch to idling, turning it back off. “Not too hard. Now you try, I’ll step on the gas.”

Eager and curious, Ellie leans forward and turns the key as the engine lights up, and her eyes brighten with excitement as she glances at him. “Yeah! Just like that. Okay- look.” He points to the dash then, to the gas meter. “We’re half full now, when it gets past the first line down there we gotta get more gas so we can turn it on. Like energy.”

“Gas is car energy.” 

“Uhuh. I’ll uh… leave the key under the wheel well for whoever comes back first. And we’ll hide the car so it's like it's not here. And then- I’ll get one of the bats out of the trunk and we’ll leave it in the back seat. Just in case of emergencies.” 

“You can show me how to do it?”

“Mhm.” Steve agrees, letting the car idle again as he turns back to her sincerely. “Y’know that all makes me nervous. You looking.”

“I know. I will come back.” Ellie assures, features going soft as she holds out her pinky just as he had. “Promise.”

With a tired chuckle, Steve hooks his pinky in hers. 

Steve does return to Auntie’s Convenience before six o'clock. 

He spends a good amount of time finding a public restroom to clean up at, not quite sure where the YMCA, or anywhere else really. He’s never had to think about this before. Not for himself, and much less for another person. But he does it, leaving Ellie with great reluctance once more to cover the car in a tarp they’d scrounged up, leaving her with a couple corndogs he’d gotten when they stopped at the gas station to fill up with what cash he had left for the moment. 

Anna May is nice. She’s tall, taller than both her parents combined, since Mr.Xiao also comes down to meet him. They seem alright with paying him cash, after Anna May explains what he says to her father, who’s apparently attending night classes to get a better hold on the whole multilingual thing. 

It doesn’t bother him, really. He’s just happy he’d managed to find something , something easy and subtle where they believe his last name really is ‘Herring’ now that he’d decided it’s a decent fake last name. 
Anna May is a college student. She’s studying to be a language teacher at the community college on the other side of town, even though she studies a handful of other things on the side, like Language Arts. Her talking about that all brings back the tick of anxiety in his gut about his essay about The Tempest , considering his copy had been left on the dining room table. She shows him how to use the register, how to restock items and how to keep up with the numbers, and where the truck of fruits and veggies drops everything off behind the building in the alley. 

She shows him the narrow hall from the back storage room up towards her family’s apartment on the second floor, says that he can knock if he was confused- she must’ve been able to read the look on his face  at some points in her explanation-  saying that she’ll leave him a note behind the counter in case she isn’t there, and then shows him how to close up. 

After that, she gets a cheeky look on her face and offers him a smoke out in the back alley. 

“You know, you don’t talk alot.” Anna remarks as she takes a long drag on her cigarette. 

It almost makes him laugh as he poses his cigarette between his fingers. “No one’s really said that about me before.”

They’re sat on the back step, a big concrete lip beneath the back door that would be level with a truck bed backed in. . Legs dangling off the edge, snow clings tightly to their pants as they shove their hands deep into their pockets away from the biting cold. Anna has a pink scarf and a sweater that looks like one Nancy would wear. 

Christ, he still has to call her. Tell her he isn’t dead, that he hasn’t vanished off the face of the earth, tell her something that won’t concern her. 

“That’s a shock.” She remarks, almost rolling her eyes for it. “I’m serious though. You look like you get stuck in your head.”

“You’re sure that’s not that psychology class of yours talking?” He teases right back, eyes on the strange shapes in the ice on the concrete below. 

“Nah. They aren’t teaching us that stuff. Yet.” She hums. “So, where’re you from?”

“What?”

“You don’t act like you’re from Chicago.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Steve asks in a guffaw, unable to help the little smile that grows on his face in disbelief. 

“Exactly what I said! So, where’re you from?”

“...Indiana. Backwoods Indiana.”

“Aah, a hick. I see.” She retorts with a snort, something that makes him near audibly roll his own eyes now. “How’s the city?”

“Not to sound like a total dork, but Ferris Bueller’s Day Off painted it differently.” He remarks amusedly. 

She laughs. He can’t tell if the clouds out her mouth are from cigarette smoke or just from the  frosty air, since it’s dark at this rate, and they’re only lit by the back alley light drilled into the side of the building. 

“Mmh, fair. It’s a decent movie. What brings you here, anyway?”

Steve purses his lips and glances down, tapping his cigarette on the dark chunks of ice clinging to the ledge. She sighs.

“You’re going quiet again.”

“Mhm. My little sister and me. We got kicked out.”

He doesn’t know what compels him to admit it- the way that Anna May doesn’t seem to give a damn about much except making sure he knows everything he needs to know to get paid, when to give him his cash, and what kinds of cigarettes he smokes. Maybe the fact that she insists at least six times that she isn’t his boss and to quit calling her ‘ma’am’ because she can’t be two years older than him. 

“...damn.”

“I got my car. It’s not so bad.”

“What about the YMCA? Or one of the churches?”

God, he wishes. 

“We’re figuring it out. Your uh… your mom really saved my ass, honestly. Glad she thought me carrying stuff around for her was a done deal.” 

Finally, Steve glances over, Anna’s eyes are knit up and her lips are pursed, but she works up a smile and gives a little nod. “She’s like that. She likes people pretty easily.” Dark eyes glued to him for a moment, she glances back out towards the dark alley, where maybe if the ice and snow on the roads wasn’t so bad, she could’ve watched traffic.
As if summoned, Missus Xiao’s voice sounds from the window above. 

“Anna! Come to bed, you have class tomorrow!” 

Steve almost starts out of his skin, whirling around in time to see Missus Xiao shutting the window of their warmly lit apartment, and for a moment he wonders how long she’d been sitting there with it open just to listen. Anna sighs, not even bothering to call back as she taps the ash off her cigarette for one last drag.

“Your parents aren’t mad that you smoke?” Steve finds himself asking, absolutely baffled. 

She shrugs, slowly and carefully standing and bundling her jacket close around herself. “Nah. They stopped getting mad at me when I wouldn’t quit. I know my dad does too, he thinks it’s funny.” Kicking a clod of snow off the ledge, she starts in for the door and waves back before she closes it. 

“G’night, Stevie. See you tomorrow. Don’t forget the instructions behind the counter.” 

“Night, Anna.” 

Slowly, he stands and makes his way back towards the car with his cigarette. It’s a good eight blocks away, down through the industrial buildings near the outside of town, so he starts walking until his cigarette is little more than a stub and finds his nose cold as he keeps pressing on to the car. 

The road is dark, he walks by groups of people who he doesn’t dare make eye contact with- ladies in heels somehow, wrapped up in coats, folks with spiky hair, others well versed in the art of trashfires in their own nooks and crannies of the city. 

Steve can count the moments that he feels like changed everything on one hand. 

The first day his dad lashed out, the day his grandpa Otis died, fighting the monster, and Ellie calling him ‘brother’.

He’d seen a lot of things, by now. He knows he was going to see more, living with Eleven like this. He’s seen what real anger looks like- real evil when it looks like something that doesn’t belong on earth, and he knows those things bleed. Maybe he wishes he’s fighting his monster instead of out here, alone, on the street. 

Maybe, retrospectively, he can believe that those changes all matter the same, or that some don’t matter at all. They don’t feel good- this doesn’t feel good. And in the moment, he refuses to believe that this is a change. In the face of everything, in the face of merely a month of his life, he can not, for his own good, believe in this. 

He hadn’t even asked for the money. The proposal came to him in the form of a man who looked like a slightly older version of his middle school english teacher, in an old red Chevy. He smiled.
Dice hung from the rearview mirror.

His life really changes with forty dollars -enough for breakfast and some more gas for tomorrow- and a hotel room rented by someone else, a room he will not be allowed to sleep or bathe in, aching more for the cold outside on a winter’s night in Chicago somewhere between December 11th and December 12th. 

Chapter Text

He’s been lying. 

Thank god he’s an excellent liar, he’s had to be with his parents- no he’s never had sex, no he’s never had parties (well, maybe a few), no he’s never gotten a ticket or drank underage. Yes, he’s studying his ass off. 

Or maybe it’s more like… flying under the radar. 

Yes, he says to Ellie, he has to work late. Even though his schedule is five days a week and no weekends, he starts at ten o'clock in the morning, and ends at approximately six o'clock. He tells her he works from ten’o’clock to late, sometimes on Saturday, and that he goes to see if he can find other jobs elsewhere, that he’ll work odd jobs for cash until he comes home. 

Well, he is working odd jobs. He brings back enough money to show for it, enough so that they have good food, that they can keep cash in the car in an emergency, so that they have gas, so they can get a tarp to cover the car, so that they can have long underwear with the thermal lining stuff on it, so that Ellie and himself can each have a pocket knife, so that they can have a little YMCA card under the fake name he’d given Missus Xiao to go shower and do laundry- so Ellie and himself can weasel spelling books out for her to use when he leaves for the day. 

He isn’t entirely fond of those jobs, but she can’t know. No, she’s just a kid. And she has a mission on her hands- one he hasn’t quite heard details about since she first mentioned it. 

He still has a couple bats in the trunk- two to be exact, both of which he’d kept since the Byers, one of which now lives on the floor of the backseat. Ellie sleeps back there, himself with the passenger seat rolled all the way back and practically on her legs, but it works. They’d found a whole hell of a lot of blankets by now too, and he finds that sleeping with a blanket under his head is easier than a pillow. 

He wakes up like this, drooling with his face buried in the shaggy blue blanket he uses as a pillow, wrapped up in his long underwear and pants, coat bundled around him so tight it's practically a cocoon, knees pulled up to his chest with the weird angle of the seat. It’s the first time he’s slept well in a long, long time, face half hidden in it. 
He almost doesn’t hear Ellie prying her boots on, rustling in the bag of their breakfast food on the floor under his seat, and it has him blearily cracking open his eyes.
“Hm?” He groans, squinting over at where she sits in- a very unfamiliar black leather coat two sizes too big for her. 

A little perturbed, Steve brings his hands up to his face to wipe the sleep away to no avail, and he yawns as he props himself up.

“Morning-” Steve yawns again, leaning back against the cold window to wake up a little bit. Ellie gives a bit of a start when he sits up, but she glances up, just as sleepily, with a nod. 

“Hi.”

“Where’re you going so early, huh? It’s only like-” He opens his eyes a bit more as he brings his hand up to his face, watch attached at the wrist still. “Jesus Ellie, it’s like seven o'clock barely.” 

Ellie, for her sake, lets her feet in her half laced snow boots settle on the edge of the seat she’s sat on, wrapping her arms around her knees. She almost seems to smile, half to herself. 

“I found her.”

That has Steve waking up a bit more, like getting in a cold shower after shotgunning one too many beers. Her. She’d found her , the other one- Eight. Her sister . 

“Really!?” 

He must have such a shocked look on his face, because Ellie laughs, tilting her head back just a little bit as her sleepy smile brightens like the sun in a summer sky. The sight alone has him unable to help but smile too as he sits forward, reaching out to tug on the sleeve of her coat.  “Is that where this punk stuff comes from, then?”

“Yes,” Ellie laughs again, holding her arms out for him to see. “It is very warm! And- she is very nice, her nick-name is Kali.”

“Kali.” Steve parrots softly to himself. He can’t help but feel excited for her- she had a sister, she’d thought all her siblings were dead. Her feeling, whatever that feeling had been, must have been right. 

Ellie nods, crossing her legs to turn and face Steve a bit more as he leans down to pick an apple out of their bag. Still exhausted from being out late working- he has to call it working- the night before, he finds food is the best idea for now. “She is helping me practice my powers. I can lift very big things.” 

“Like what?” Steve muses into his apple as he bites in, and he almost chokes with her next answer. 

“An old train. I made it go very far.” 

“Wh-what, wait, you’re serious?” 

“Yes!”

“Can- can I see? I guess you found her a while ago too- can I meet her?”

Steve would be lying again if he said he isn’t totally fascinated by what she could do. Sure he’d only seen it twice in person and had seen her here and there with a bloody nose, but he knows it’s real, he’s baffled how any of this worked. He wants to see everything she can do, so bad, at least to understand, truly, all of it. He wanted to meet this girl, Kali, her sister , to see if she was much like Ellie at all. 

“Maybe soon.” She hesitates, it has Steve frowning to himself as he goes in for another bite of his apple. 

“...what’s wrong?”

“She does not know you are my brother. She has a lot of rules- for staying safe. Like our rules. I have to… tell her. And make her like you.”

“...oh.” 

In all truth, the idea of Ellie not mentioning him to someone so important stings, just a little. They’d spent a lot of time together, they’ve been through a lot of shit together, and for the most part they understand what other shit there is. And, most importantly, they trust each other.
Ellie’s expression quickly fades into something guilty as she glances away, reaching to fiddle with her boot laces. 

“I will tell her very soon. I need her to promise first, too.”

With a soft sigh, Steve leans back again. It had gotten colder last night again, he finds himself giving a little shiver with his back against the window, even with his warm shirt on. Ellie glances up, shuffling to scoot a little bit closer as she speaks up again, worriedly, insistently. 

“I will.” 

“Hey- I know you will. I’d just like to know her, y’know. To know who you’re hanging out with when I’m not around.” For the sake of comfort- for him, or for her, he’s not sure- Steve reaches forward to ruffle the short curls of her bedhead. He knows well that his hair is probably a disaster to match, but he can’t dare look in the rearview mirror to check right now. Ellie’s worried expression relaxes again as she shrugs and fiddles with her own breakfast, one of the muffins from a tin he’d found at the store. 

“I know. You are worried.” 

Ellie sighs it, half knowingly, almost half making fun of him as she reaches up to ruffle his hair back with a little snort. “Your hair is big. No Farrah Fawcett.” 

That makes him laugh, something bright and bold and easy as he playfully swats at her hand, pulling one of his blankets up around himself. “Good hair day or bad hair day?”

“...eh.” She starts, tilting her head and scrunching her nose as Steve amusedly scoffs and rolls his eyes. 

“So that’s where you’re headed off to this early?”

“Yes. So there are no people to follow.” 

With a touch of a chagrined quirk of his brow, Steve settles back a bit to finish his apple. “Smart.”

“Not stupid is the rule,” Ellie reasons as a matter of fact, nodding quickly. 

Steve nods a bit for that, ducking his head knowingly as he tilts his head back and sits, taking a hefty chunk out of his apple as Ellie leans back to work on her muffin. 

That’s when a tiny sound rises, something that makes both of them pick their heads up simultaneously. For a moment Steve thought something in the car had squeaked or moved or broken and they’d just heard it, but then it came again. A little squeak, a meow, from the roof. In an instant Ellie’s brow furrows as she turns to look at him, and Steve gives a start, reaching for his boots.

“What is that?”

“A cat, I think it’s a cat on the roof.” Steve admits a little worriedly, because shit it was cold outside, and he hadn’t even seen any cats around. He shoves his arms through his coat sleeves to push the passenger side door open, swaying when he stands up so fast, as Ellie clambers quickly out after him on the other side. 

Steve finds himself face to face with a lump under the tarp and the thin layer of snow from last night on the roof of his car. 

“Oh jesus-”

Ellie is wide eyed, watching as he pulls the tarp back. 

That seems to start a small lump of a cat, all black and white fur, white face and big yellow eyes turning sharply around as it scoots back under the tarp- or rather attempts to do so. 

“It is a cat!” Ellie exclaims, eyes widening in recognition as a little gasp escapes her. Steve reaches out before the shivering thing can back up all the way, scooping it up in his hands before fumbling to open the passenger door again and duck back into the car. In an instant, the kitten loses a near squeal, probably equally as surprised, trembling paws stuck up as Ellie jumps and climbs back inside all the same. They slam their doors shut, as Steve slumps there with a squirming kitten in his hands, which soon enough slumps from kicking its leg and resorts to just shivering. 

“A kitten.”

“A kitten cat.” Ellie blanches, seeming entirely torn on what to do, to lean forward or to sit back like she had any reason to be afraid of the thing. 

The cat is pretty small- not a baby by any means, but not a full grown cat either, with long lanky legs and a white paws, a white face, a white belly and a big white stripe through its torso between black patches of fur. It’s cold in his hands, whiskers all standing up around its nose and eyes that make it look like it has wispy eyebrows, like Mr.Xiao. It’s tail is short- stumpy and fat.

“Oh shit.” 

“...I have not seen a kitten cat before.” Ellie admits, leaning forward a bit now to reach out as the kitten, which is blinking just a touch, as it leans forward to sniff at Ellie’s hand before letting out a very sharp, loud meow. 

Steve finally snaps out of his confusion to set the kitten down, and instantly it scampers away to sit on the floor of the driver’s seat, staring up at them both, leaning to stare at Ellie before snapping its head towards Steve. 

Steve can’t tear his eyes away. There’s something that’s oddly- comforting about the fact that of all things that could’ve happened, a kitten ended up on their roof. A very cold, shivery kitten that was staring at them. 

“Hey, Ellie- can you grab the tuna?”

“We have tuna?” 

“Yeah, for sandwiches.” 

She starts and leans down to dig around in the bag as Steve holds out his hands with a little click of his tongue.
“Hey. Hey little guy, sorry to scare you. We’re not mean.” 

The kitten gives an audible protest as Ellie holds out the tuna to Steve, who takes it and cracks it open. It might smell like shit in here, but this was worth it. As he pulls the tab, Ellie leans her arms over the edge of the driver’s seat, leaning and watching, just as much as the kitten is watching them. 

“He looks like an oreo.” Ellie hums softly, breaking into a bright smile, clearly having forgotten her plans to go to Kali for now. The kitten is a much more interesting development. 

“He’s probably so cold.” Steve agrees with a worried sigh, setting the can down on the seat as the kitten picks up his head to sniff, to lean back and stare, and put big shaky paws up on the edge of the seat to sniff again.

“Yeah, there you go!” 

“And hungry.” Ellie agrees, watching as the kitten hops up to start eating, Steve nodding quickly. 

“Very, very hungry.”

“...we should help.” 

“We are, though!” 

“But because-” She falters, looking up. “I like cats. I do not hurt cats when Papa says.”

Oh. 

“...We can help. Yeah, Ellie, we can help. You gotta nickname ‘im though. And we gotta make sure he stays warm, so he has to go with one of us.”

She seems to weigh that though, giving a little nod, reaching out oh so slowly to pet its head. The kitten flinches away, freezing, shivering, and then going back to eating again after nosing at Ellie’s hand. Pleased, she oh so lightly pats the top of his head. 

“Oreo. Because he is like an oreo.” 

“That’s it then. Oreo, he’s Oreo.”

“Little Oreo.” 

“Uhuh. Just- you stick around with me a little bit, okay? So we can make sure he warms up, that he’s not sick or anything. So we can hang out together a little bit too. I feel like I haven’t talked to you in days.”

With a smile, Ellie leans forward to run her fingers over Oreo’s little head with a nod, turning back to him. 

“I will stay.”

“Me too.” 

Chapter Text

The first time Steve is called a slut, it doesn’t really register. 
It was in the heat of the moment, and he never really said much himself. It isn’t like he needs to, he just needs it to be finished and get his cash and go, after that, he’ll stash it and find somebody else or go home.
Weird that home is his own car in an alley with the plates covered up. 

But it’s easy to ignore. Most of what gets said is ignored, because at the end of the day- or the beginning of the next, it's a guarantee for tomorrow, a little extra to save up for whatever motel won’t recognize him, or Ellie, or rat them out. Maybe even a little more if they end up having to bribe someone to keep their mouth shut. 

He gets back to the car at four sixteen in the morning, after untucking his watch and the keys from under the front tire, and he clambers into the driver’s seat to shut the door behind him. He has to keep the cold out. 
The windows are covered up with taped up blankets to keep anyone from breaking in, save a little crack from the back window. He can see El asleep back there in her little heap, small enough to still lay down in the backseat, recognizable by the growing curls out her head there in the slivers of moonlight that come in. Oreo is curled up behind her neck, asleep, seeking heat where he can with his little head buried against her shoulder. Even so, Steve opening the door has his little head picking up, ears perking before he squirms to settle again.
He should be climbing into the passenger seat by now. It’s cold still, he can feel it in his nose and fingers outside his jacket, outside the wad of mostly ones in his pocket. 

He is a slut. 

It hits like a brick wall, really. Makes him a little nauseous even, has his throat clenching up as he quickly pries the money from his pocket and puts it in the glove compartment. His hands feel dirty. He feels like the skin might ripple and crawl right off him. He won’t be able to wash them right until he got to work tomorrow at the corner store. 
Why had they even wanted to hire him in the first place? 

He wonders if Nancy had felt like this reading the theater sign. 

He’d gone and convinced her to sleep with him- which he’d wanted because he actually liked her, he does , he means that. And the instant her life went sideways he went and made a total fool of her in front of literally everyone. Maybe- Steve couldn’t really justify it as not wanting to be tripped up like his mom had with his dad. Sean Harrington must be a real slut then, too, even if it would never be said to his face. And a real asshole. 

Even so, Steve knew that if he pointed it out, his dad would call him a slut all the same. A faggot too, probably, but it didn’t count. It was for money, he did it so he could keep Ellie and himself alive as each passing day got colder. Even if he shudders to think of another stranger knowing him in ways he hardly knew himself, it didn’t count, because sometimes it was the only thing he could rely on. 

It doesn’t count.

It doesn’t count, right?

Steve quickly brings those filthy hands of his up to wipe at his face with a stuttering breath. 

Nancy hadn’t deserved that. Nancy doesn’t deserve the shit she puts up with, coming from him. She doesn’t deserve him lying on a payphone about being picked up by his parents last minute to visit his ‘new cousin’ in Italy. 

He wishes. This is the first time he’d ever been out of Hawkins outside of basketball. 

He’d have to ask Anna to sneak him a drink, tomorrow. He needs that, and bad, moreso than a smoke, especially if it meant he didn’t have to open the car doors at this hour. 

Steve moves then, leaving the keys in the cup holder as he takes his watch and clambers into the rolled back passenger seat where he could lay, pushing aside the blankets to clamber into his spot. 

He falls fitfully asleep with his eyes burning and his face gone hot. 

The nights are been getting colder, and Eleven’s been spending more time with Oreo. Away, coming back late, coming back when the folks who take Steve to hotel rooms are out. Honestly, it scares him. It really, really scares him, the thought of her out there alone. She’s small . And he’s never really thought of things like this, and of course he’s still scared of the bad men- the literal government finding her- he finds himself sometimes stopping by lightpoles smattered with too many posters of girls her age gone tattered. He finds himself stuck in the thought of her face being on one of those. Or worse, her not getting one at all.

He remembers Nancy having mentioned it offhandedly one time he’d snuck through her window to visit her. She said she thought something like that might’ve happened to Barb. That she could’ve been jumped in his backyard, or lured out onto the street or taken while waiting by her car, hurried into some old man’s car or an old white van. At least, before they’d fought the monster.

Steve has hardly had the time to talk to Eleven about it. To warn her off going out late, that she had to be back by dark now, no matter what. Whenever they ended up in the car together, one of them was usually asleep. 

It terrifies him to think of Ellie being scooped up into one of those old white vans, one of the trucks he climbed up into so often. Having to do the things he does- no, no, he can’t think about that. 

He has to focus on other things at night out late until the day after. New places to go, how many smokes he has left to warm his insides, all taken from Anna’s hands at the back of Auntie’s Convenience when he’s done working. He usually follows the crowds.
It’s often women in black overstuffed coats and teased hair. Their tights and heels light the place like pathway lights that lead his way to where he should go, where soon after he’ll find young men in tight jeans and cut sleeves somehow surviving in this weather, coats hanging on the fences to be snatched if they get a catch. 

In the past few days, Steve has found that if he stands on the curb close to the road some seven, eight feet away from a considerable clump of others doing the same things as he, looks lost enough that he usually gets a catch in maybe an hour. Things speed up after that, folks he meets in hotels gone giggly over weed or beers or something stronger. 
He does think he’s smart. He never takes anything they offer, even if they’re insistent. If he needs to throw up, he does it outside and goes to a twenty-four-hour to find a water bottle. He does his job, and he goes, no flirting. 

It doesn’t count if he doesn’t flirt. That’s one of his rules. 

It’s right up there with keeping condoms in his pocket (because he’s very, very afraid of getting sick or vomiting even though he has definitely vomited), never taking something from one of the people (like weed or beer, because of the horror stories Nancy told him), and never going past taking off his shirt. It’s four rules, easy rules, and in a way it… sort of helps.

He’s seventeen, he’s grown up , he knows how to make rules. 

But it’s not like he even wants to flirt with these people. Most of them sort of scare him, they set his skin in goosebumps and make his hair stand on end.

So far, most of them find it funny. It’s usually men old enough to be his dad. The occasional woman the same age, sometimes both, sometimes a couple men. They think it’s funny how he’s so eager to get it over with and leave, because it’s really easy to do what people pay forty dollars for if he just sits there on the floor.

It’s standing at the edge of the sidewalk sometime a little over a week into all this that someone actually talks to him. 

“You’re quite a ballsy little bastard out here like this, aren’t you?” 
The stranger’s voice is accented- a little masculine, but weirdly smooth and soothing. It sounds like a voice from somebody from Local Hero , which wasn’t even a movie he liked that much, but the accents stuck out like a sore thumb. This accent did too.

It startles Steve, just a little bit. He doesn’t expect to hear a voice like that out here, not in Chicago, not in America . And when he turns, the figure is just as confusing, disorienting. He- she? They- they’re tall. On tall heels, long legs wrapped up in fishnets under one of those black coats, half open to reveal a short red dress, tucked under a colorful scarf. Tattoos like feathers crawl up the stranger’s neck, just as colorful, up along the side of their face on one said to rest under the first of a pair of hooded, makeup covered eyes in pinks and yellows stark across tan skin, dark curly hair cropped short at the back and fringed long in the front, half obscuring their face. 
Red lips curl into a smile. 

Empathetically. He didn’t expect empathetic. 

Trailing behind the stranger is a much shorter woman, her long blonde hair teased big like it might add some height to her, lips pink as the dress under her dark blue overstuffed coat, pale legs all shivering in the cold of the wind off Lake Michigan. Half the height of the first stranger in heels, she peers around them, looks surprised, and follows curiously. 

Cigarette posed between his shaking fingertips, Steve swallows and stares up like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. 

“Ah, none of that look. What’s your name, love, what’re you doing out here?” 

“Why’s it matter to you?”

The shorter blonde woman gives a snort as she makes her way to stand by the first stranger, who offers a gutteral scoff of a sigh, rolling their eyes in a hint of exasperation. 

“Y’really must be a ballsy bastard with that attitude. M’names Molly. M’ asking because I haven’t seen you around.” 

“Not lately at least.” The blonde remarks- much more American sounding, even if there is a little hint of something else in there. “What is your name?” 

Steve can’t help but feel intimidated as they stare at him, and it's almost like their staring is what pulls his name out of his mouth. 

“...Steve.” 

“Steve. Nice to meet you, I’m Tori.” The blonde holds her hand out with a bright smile, as if the trio of them aren’t standing on a street corner waiting to be picked up. 

“And I already introduced myself- but it’s nice to meet you, nevertheless.” The tall one, Molly, chimes with a much softer smile. 

Steve, a little confused and thrown off by this all, turns back to his cigarette before speaking up awkwardly. “...so uhm. What’s up?” 

Molly breaks into a small smile, laughing as they turn to Tori. “Well- you’re new! And at least with us, a few of us who know each other, we keep an eye out for each other. Especially with how risky it is for folks like us out about now.” 

A bit at a loss, Steve speaks around his cigarette, shoving his other hand in his pocket as his eyes flick to and from the road, back between the pair. “...what’s that mean?” 

“Are you fresh off the circuit?” Tori hums, fiddling in her pockets for what soon appears to be a cigarette pack all her own, half empty, and a little red lighter. 

“...the circuit?” 

The two share a glance at that, a little wide eyed, as Molly lets out a soft whistle. 

“...do you have a pimp or are you renegade?”

“Uhm- I don’t- I don’t know?” Steve continues in a bit of a stammer. None of these words make sense, especially with how they’re thrown around so casually, he knows they have to mean something and it feels a bit frightening not to know what. They look like they know what they’re doing, both of them, and given the widening looks of their eyes, they seem to realize that he’s not following what they’re saying at all. 

“...oh.” Tori starts, glancing up to her friend, as Molly gives a quick glance around. 

“Love, I already knew you shouldn’t be out here and all- but, you shouldn’t be out here.” 

The way Molly says it, so sincere, so quiet, like he’s a kid, it makes his chest feel like it's going tight all of a sudden. To fight it off, he tilts his head up a bit and furrows his brow, offering some form of defiance, stubbornness. 

“Why not? I have- I have things I need to do.”

Tori starts speaking up, waving her cigarette around. “If you’re out here for drug money or-”

“No. No? No way-”

“Then what?” Molly asks, and Steve, for the life of him, can’t understand why these two people he’s just met want to know so much about him all the sudden. 

“My sister.” He snaps, stepping back to lean against the light pole he’s standing beside. 

“Ah shite-”

“Look uh-” Tori starts, shifting a bit as if she means to close off their conversation, her voice lowering a touch. “You’re new. You’re really new aren’t you, you’re all baby faced and everything. That’s gonna be so much trouble for you.” 

“...why? I’ve been fine so far, I don’t- I’m not stupid!” 

“You might not be.” Molly shrugs. “But horny old bastards are.”

Steve finds himself going quiet. Around them, the groups keep moving. He can hear the quiet conversation of a couple punks by the fenceline, a boy hardly older than him in a cut off crop under his coat off by the wall smoking what smells like weed, another group of women circling around each other like birds flocking in the sky. It’s like they don’t notice. They aren’t looking, they don’t care, and for now it seems their talk is just between the three of them, as if they’re in their own little world. 

“Look.” Molly continues, gathering their hands in their pockets. For a moment, Steve can see long, tailored red nails. “You’re absolutely fresh and you look like you’re fit for the kiddie walk. Just… don’t take anything from anyone. And if anyone offers you a job, like if one of these old bastards does? He doesn’t have a job for you. You tell him you work for Lorenzo, if anybody asks why Lorenzo has you out alone, you tell ‘em to call Lorenzo.” 

Steve can feel his face growing redder by the second, as he glances at Tori, who’s nodding along with all of this, though she leans in all the more- even as Steve leans away. When she opens her mouth, a mix of smoke and her own breath clouds out into the winter air. She’s still shivering so hard she might as well be vibrating. 

“Don’t tell anybody, but Lorenzo’s dead. You don’t want a pimp.”

“You don’t want a pimp, no matter what these bimbos out here tell you, they’ll tell you they have jobs too.” Molly agrees, waving a hand around at the passing others- faces just as done up, most of them shivering just as hard. “Having a pimp was the worst thing ever.”

Wide eyed, a little overwhelmed, Steve nods. “...o-okay.” 

“Oh, love.” Molly sighs. “Don’t let ‘em take you past ten blocks, either, there’s plenty of motels around here. Too far or drugs or a house- oh never go to a house, hell it’s better if you just stay in the car around the corner. You’ll end up like those boys back in ‘79 up the road.” 

“Are you following that?” Tori asks as she takes a drag, watching him tentatively. 

Slowly, uncertainly, Steve offers a nod. 

“Oh good- good. Do you have a pen?” 
“Huh?”

“I do.” Molly chimes, digging through their coat a moment to pull out a chewed up looking pen, which they uncap with their mouth- smearing said cap with that ruby red lipstick. “C’mere, gimme your hand.” 

They don’t even wait for Steve to hold his hand out before they snatch it up, pushing up his sleeve to start scrawling something down. Steve damn near jumps out of his skin, almost dropping his own smoke as he tries to pull his arm away, but Molly tuts and shakes their head as Tori glances around again. 

‘If… you need anything, or you’re spooked, or something’s going wrong, you wanna talk- you give this number a call. Somebody’ll answer. And if it’s not one of us, just tell’em we gave you the number. Alright love?” 

Again, Steve finds himself nodding as he glances down to the hastily scrawled number on his arm, as Tori reaches out to pat his shoulder. “We can wait until somebody comes.”

Still struck by how fast the pair had practically pounced on him, Steve finds himself glancing up between them all the more. They look worried, both of them. Shockingly sincere. And even if he can’t wrap his head around who they are exactly, he carefully pulls his sleeve back over the number so it doesn’t smudge, glancing up between them again with a tiny nod, if only to offer them assurance- maybe even himself.

“No. No, it’s okay… thanks, I guess. I’ll be okay.”

He should’ve listened.

He should’ve let them stay. Hell, he should have stayed with those two the rest of the night. 

Steve returns to the car at four-forty-seven, by his watch. In the back of his mind, he keeps thinking how if he was still at school, even only a few months ago, he would’ve called both of them freaks. He would’ve sworn and maybe spit, he would’ve been mean. 

He can’t bring himself to be mean to either of them. 

He can still remember Molly watching after the car he got into, a worn out Fjord truck painted black. The look on their face, soft and still worried, an upturned brow fading in the window alongside the glimmer of the hoop earrings hidden under Tori’s hair. They hadn’t even been standing with him, but they’d watched as he got in, as the car passed them by, as he went down the road to the same motel he’d been to twelve times at that point.

He hadn’t listened, and neither had that last guy. 
Steve supposes he deserves it for being stupid. 

It hurts. It hurts very much. His legs still feel shaky as he walks, like he’s walking on a boat on bad waves. Or at least, what he imagines walking on a boat on bad waves would feel like. His knees feel like they want to give out on him, and it's all he can do to keep his eyes on the red haze in the sky from the city lights, the clouds, the embers of his third cigarette that night as he walked back to the car through alleyways and away from where he knows people will be. 

His eyes sting as much as the rest of his body does. He hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t expected things to go so fast, hadn’t expected to be ignored, hadn’t expected the smell of something in the room so strong he almost thought it couldn’t be weed. He can still smell it on his clothes, even his jeans as his knees threaten to knock together. He can’t catch his breath. He feels like he’s hyperventilating.

He probably looks like a mess. 

He can feel his throat burning and aching, the sting along his back from the floor. The places where he’d been held so tightly he thought he might lose feeling in his legs or go paralyzed. 

His hands are shaking again. 

He feels like his skin might crawl off him again. 

He knows his hair is a mess too, and somehow that puts more of an ache into all of it. He’s so used to having a hold on that much, his hair, being able to run his hand through it and fix it and look like nothing had happened. 

Shakily, he pulls the tarp aside enough to pull open the driver’s side door, to shut it quickly again as the warmth of sleep hits him from inside. 

Steve feels tired, all of a sudden. So tired. His throat feels tight and his eyes burn as he sticks his feet in the passenger shoe well and kicks off his shoes, as he tears off his jeans despite how they grate against his skin, as he feels around for his long thermal underwear. He’s vaguely aware of Oreo stretching where he’d fallen asleep by Ellie- she’s there, in one piece, safe, not in somebody’s van, not back with the government. Not with Kali. 

He reaches for the cash in his pocket- twenty five dollars for the night haphazardly thrown when he had finally left the room four hours later. 

Steve can hear Ellie breathing in her sleep as he reaches for his blankets and slumps to lay, much aware of how his breath catches in his own throat like it can’t go past the forming bruises there. As Oreo picks his ratty little head up, Steve holds out a hand, giving a soft and shaky click of his tongue that has the kitty stretching, giving a soft squeak of a yawn and padding over. 

Once Oreo had spent time with them, he’s gone sweet. He loves Ellie- follows her everywhere, lets Steve hold him. 

Steve holds him now, wrapping the little cat up in his arms to fight off the tears that well up in his eyes as Oreo curls up under his chin. It all hurts so much sitting there, he almost can’t sit, instead resorting to laying sideways. Fingers tracing across Oreo’s fur, across the line of white that split him like his namesake, Steve shakes and buries sobs in the swelling of his throat, in his lungs, wrapping blankets around himself as if he hopes to emerge the next morning someone who deserved to be a big brother, someone who deserved to be in the same car as a kid like Ellie. 

He believes it- he's a slut. 

The thought burns behind his eyes as he falls asleep. 

Between moments of fitful wakefulness, where the pain in his legs and his back makes it hard to sit still, he thinks distantly of the fact that he should get tested. That he could get Ellie sick just by being there. That he hadn't gotten hardly anything for what had happened in that motel room. 

That Tori and Molly's number was still stark and fresh on his forearm. 

He knows he should call. 

He won't. 

Chapter Text

Anna seems to clock him like a barn cat on a mouse. 

In all of maybe two or so weeks of knowing him, Anna has been the only certainty in Steve’s day outside knowing the car is going to be there between the dumpster and the fence with the tarp over it- hardly moved save for when they need gas. That, and Oreo of course, often sitting awake by the time he returns, with Eleven already asleep- or waking him as soon as she returns, which is becoming later and later. 

He doesn’t like it. 

It scares him. 

He isn’t entirely sure how she figures him out so easily. Maybe something to do with her psychology classes, or spending probably way too much time waiting up late to talk with him and smoke on the back loading station. 

It's like the moment she walks in the store at five o’clock while he’s checking out a woman and her two kids, her head swivels around, her brow furrows and then shoots up as she waves for the back. He holds up his hand to greet her, to sway her from saying anything just yet before turning to count the lady’s change. Anna May can’t wait for five seconds after the lady is out the store before turning towards the counter. 

“What’s eating you, dude?”

“What?” Steves starts back with a frown. “What’d’you mean ‘what’s eating me’.” 

Anna, still wrapped up in her winter coat and pink scarf, raises her brow and tilts her head forward with a huff. 

“‘What’d’you mean what’s eating me’? Steve, you look like you stayed up late doing philosophy or something.” 

Steve snorts, shifting to lean against the wall behind the counter. Framed in the mess of chip bags, the cigarettes on the shelf behind the counter, the plastered newspapers on the window where he sat to keep the cold out, Steve feels as if he could meld into the wall. He hadn’t ever felt like that before, at least not before now, moreso recently, and he ducks his head and crosses his arms. With a shrug, with his head still ducked a bit, he peers up at her as if somehow he could get her to forget about it and go study instead. 

“I dunno. I’m just tired, I guess.” 

He swears he can hear her roll her eyes as she scrunches her nose and crosses her arms right back at him. 

“Is that all?”

“Jesus, what’re you, my mother?” 

“No,” Anna protests, sounding almost vaguely offended, before she scoffs and sighs. Shifting foot to foot, she continues, “I know you work for my parents and all, but that’s not gonna stop me from worrying about you. You’re my friend. Or- what, did they say something? Are they being weird?”

“No. No!” Steve exclaims, finally glancing up, shaking his head ‘no’ wildly. The idea pulls an anxious thought about his dad- he’d hate Steve being friends with any of his employees, since Steve was supposed to end up taking his whole business over. Being a boss requires distance, professionalism, rules, control. He couldn’t imagine Mr or Missus Xiao being like that, not with the way Missus Xiao always comes down with leftover lunch for him, Mr Xiao always comes downstairs and sit with him, listening to the radio, talking about the news. 

“No.” Steve assures again, finally leaning back against the wall to look up at her. 

Reaching up to tug off her hat, she shakes it and sighs. 

“Are we still on to talk after you close up? I can… I can help.”

With a little nod, he shrugs, he relents. “...yeah. Yeah, sure.” 

Seeming relieved, Anna nods and steps back a bit, waving her hat.
“See you later, then.” And with that, she starts for the back storage room and the stairs up to her parent’s apartment. 

She brings down dinner for him for the first time and helps him close up shop when the time comes. It's so dark out by the time six o’clock rolls around, so much so that the inside lights make the world outside look pitch black outside sparkling streetlights and the headlights of passing cars. It feels like day by day there are less of them out, what with the thickening ice on the road, how every night becomes colder and colder. He’s heard that some areas had been stuck with loads of cars frozen solid.
He has to be careful about his car. 
Turning the sign, locking the door, he turns as Anna closes the last freezer door and reaches to flick off the lights, waiting for him to make his way over to the door. He hardly gets out into the storage room before she turns and plops a plate in his hand- wrapped in aluminum foil. 

“What?-”

“Dinner. Can’t just eat cigarettes, you know?” Anna remarks with a little snort and a wink, nodding for them to instead sit on the stairs. Lit by the fluorescent lights of the storage room and improvised hallway, Steve offers her a little grin and slumps on the steps to sit and pull the tinfoil off. Chicken, rice, fried in some sort of way he’d only seen Missus Xiao bring down for him. It smells so damn good , and he might’ve taken a page out of Ellie’s book and just eaten with his hands if not for the fork sitting atop it. 

“Holy shit-”

“What?” Anna laughs. “Mom’s cooking got your tongue?”

Steve breaks into a helpless laugh for that, picking up his fork and digging right in, mindful not to spill, mindful that if he saved half of this, Ellie could eat it too. 

“No, no it’s like uhm- can I take this?” He holds up the plate a touch, only faltering a bit when he catches the suddenly confused and concerned look on her face. “...my sister.”

“Right,” She sighs, plopping down on the step beside him. “Right, shit. It’s that bad, huh?”

For a moment, Steve finds himself turning back to the plate to keep eating. It’s… it’s everything, it tastes like heaven. He doesn’t want to really say. He’s afraid that if he does, the food in his mouth will go ashy, that Anna might go right back to joking around. Hell, he hopes she might, just so he doesn’t have to say anything. 

But she doesn’t. She waits. 

“...it’s just a little something extra.” Steve offers absently, glancing over to catch a read on her face- still concerned, and maybe he should tease her for looking like a mom as much as she acts like one. 

“Do you need more?”

“Nah- nah, we’re okay. We have enough. Ellie’s got a spot where she gets food. And I’m working.” 

“You’re sure?” Anna hums, pressing her palms together between her knees, turning to watch the snow melt off her shoes. “Because like, it won’t kill us to give you more food. And ma said you’re looking skinny.” She says it teasingly despite that underlying worry in her tone, as she tilts her head forward a bit. “S’ that why you’re up late? Working?” 

“You’re doing it again.” He remarks, forgoing manners for the moment to keep food in his mouth so he doesn’t have to talk, and Anna breaks into a helpless laugh, throwing up her hands. 

“What!? Momming you? I’m only- what, four years older than you? I mean, I could call you kid,” She nudges his shoulder. “I dunno if you’d like that though. You’d make a weird face at me.”

Steve picks his head up a bit, turning to her with a little smile as he tilts his head to and fro. “Hardy-har-har-” 

“You do.” She insists amusedly, leaning her head back against the railing. “I mean it though. I wanna know what’s going on with you. Kid .” 

“...it’s okay. It is, it’s okay. We’re doing what we need to. Ellie’s…” He wants to finish that sentence with ‘safe’, but can’t bring himself to. Steve doesn’t even know if she’s safe right now. He doesn’t really know where she is, and he’d made no effort to stop her so far. 

“You don’t sound so sure about that.” 

No. Maybe he wasn’t. She wasn’t safe, he wasn’t safe, and sometimes he found himself tapping his fingers against the number Molly and Tori left on his arm, something he had to write down and keep in the glovebox like the money. 

“...what’s going on, Stevie?” 

“I don’t know.” 

His voice escapes in a croak. Steve doesn’t expect his voice to sound like that. 

There, sitting on the steps of his boss’s apartment in a storage room with hot dinner on his lap, Steve suddenly feels his face grow hot, his eyes sting, and his voice catch up in a lump. 

He does not want to cry right now. He’s had his shit together, he has no reason to cry right now , and yet he finds himself overwhelmed with the urge to do so. When was the last time anyone had treated him like Anna has? Like Mr and Missus Xiao do? When was the last time he could go back to wherever he was sleeping and not wake up cold in the morning, when he knew Ellie would be there for breakfast? When she actually told him what she did all day while he was gone? When was the last time he slept without nightmares, when he felt safe walking out at night, when he didn’t even have to think about money? When was the last time he could shower whenever he wanted, when he had his stupid, awesome Farrah fucking Fawcett spray that he’d spend way too long staring in the mirror spraying on his head? Or at Ellie to get her to stop being a twerp?

“Oh shit, hey- hey, I didn’t mean to poke a sore spot.” Anna starts quickly, and he jumps when her hand goes to reach around his shoulder. 

She pulls it away. 

“D’you wanna talk about it?” 

“I don’t know.” Steve croaks again, hands settled under the plate like he could suck the heat out. He can feel it there, staring down at chicken with a seasoning he’d never tasted before, rice and peas and carrots all mixed together, with the still ever conscious thought that he had to save half for Ellie. 

Did he? What would he say? What could he even say without risking Ellie’s safety, her sister’s safety, without her being disgusted with him? None of it counted, at least not to him, because some nights it made him more money than he made in a day in the shop, but he knew damn well all of it counted to most other people. He could get fired, or worse she could- she could call the cops, and he could get put in jail because that’s what happens to people who do what he does, they get arrested- and then Ellie would be all alone, with Oreo. Or worse, they’d find her anyway, out looking for his car. 

“I don’t- I don’t want you to hate me. I don’t want Ellie t’get in trouble.” He manages, sniffing hard as if he could will himself to stop those tears from coming, quickly setting the plate. 

Anna hesitates, bringing her hands back to clasp between her knees as she furrows her brow, as she leans her head forward. “Stevie, why’d I hate you? Why’d she get in trouble?”

“B-because. Because I can’t- I don’t know.” He offers lamely again, mumbling, letting his head drop. He couldn’t cry. He couldn’t cry right now . 

“Just tell me. Or- let it out, y’know? ‘Cause it’s been eating you up, I know it. I can tell. And you come in beat up sometimes, and you’re not a total klutz- My folks too, we can tell, we’re worried about you. I’m worried about you.” 

Bringing his hands up to his knees, he drums his fingers, pulling his lip between his teeth. 

“You can’t tell anybody.” 

“...sure.” 

“You can’t. Not your parents. They’d get mad.” Steve manages, glancing over to meet her eyes. She looks a touch startled for a moment, eyes widening as she leans back all the further against the railing. 

“Okay, okay, fine. “

“It’s uhm- it’s really hard to keep the car warm sometimes. So I go out at night and see- if uhm- if people have money for stuff.” 

“...for… stuff.” 

Steve brings his hands up to his face, unsure of how to articulate it, how to even get it out of his mouth. 

“Yeah, stuff. N’ sometimes they’re just- mean. Or rough or-”

“Oh my god.” 

If Steve could’ve curled up and withered away or willed himself to just appear in the car, he would’ve. Instead, he cringed as Anna gasped, something wild and deep chested like she’d just seen a murder. 

“Oh my god -”

“Don’t-”

She falls quiet, reaching up to hang onto the railing, absently tugging on it as her eyes dart back and forth somewhere he can’t see. Steve frantically speaks up. “I like girls. I have- I have a girlfriend at home. It doesn’t count it just- it’s money. I don’t like it. I don’t think it’s like- fun or… anything. Anything like that.”

He leans away a touch to lean his shoulder against the wall as Anna brings a hand up to scrub down her face, toes tip-tapping on the bottom stair. She looks like she’s looking for something to say, like she doesn’t know what to say, or what to think.

After what feels like a century, she speaks up. She doesn’t look at him. 

“You don’t take it back to where your sister is, right?”

“No. No way.”

“...you said you got kicked out. Where even is home?”

“She’s- she’s still my girlfriend. Indiana.”

“Oh.” 

Pursing her lips, Anna finally turns to him. Steve can feel his heart racing laps around his ribcage, he can feel the heat of embarrassment on his face, the threat of those tears in his eyes as he tries to sober his expression and instead just ends up biting his chapped lips. She hates him. He’s sure of it. Even though she turns back with that same look of worry. 

“S’ that why you got kicked out?...”

“No.” Steve insists sharply again. He’s sure if his dad ever caught wind of this, he’ll be dead. Dead like Barb, probably at the bottom of that stupid pool too. “He was gonna hit Ellie. I didn’t let him, my mom freaked. We had to go.”

“...okay.” She breathes, wringing her wrists absently. She turns, really looking at him. 

“Look. You can’t do that shit anymore. It’s really dangerous and- y’know what they’re saying about people getting sick. You’re too young to get sick. And… like four years back, when I was your age? They found this creep with all these bodies in his basement. Guys like you, Stevie. Guys who went out for the money- and I know you’ve got good reason to but just… I don’t want you to end up like one of those boys. Dead. Or- I don’t know.” 

She brings her hands up over her face, and Steve turns his gaze down to gather himself before glancing up, where there he catches the glimmer of tears now in her eyes. 

“There’s totally more creeps out there like that. Just waiting. And it’s only a matter of time if there’s already creeps being mean, like you said.”

Steve turns away, tapping his fingertips along his knees like he did the steering wheel, like his bat, like he could feel the leather, no, the wood under his fingertips, smooth, safe, familiar. He’d fought literal hell monsters. Creeps were the least of his problems, creeps weren’t the same, he could handle mean rough creeps. But he can’t tell her that. 

She won’t understand. 

When he offers no response, Anna sighs. Something deep and long lived, as she leans to look at him, head tilted back against the railing. 

“...look. Stevie. You’re my friend. M’ not gonna tell anybody. You just can’t do that anymore.”

“... I know.”

“...and uhm. If it’s getting hard to keep the car warm- it’s…” She sighs again, pursing her lips like she’s fighting tears all the same. “It’s supposed to go negative this week. It’s gonna be Christmas in like, three days. And I dunno if I like you being out in a car in negative without gas money. On Christmas . So I’m gonna talk to my folks. Okay? You and Ellie… you guys can stay with us. At least until it gets bearable again.”

The suggestion, kind as it is, makes Steve nervous again. It has his heart crawling into his throat again,as he slowly turns to watch her face for anything- anything that might indicate her offer was fake, or a trap, or just to spite him. 
Her expression doesn’t change. It’s that same sort of scrunch to her nose, downward turn of her lips, serious stark look in her eyes. If she didn’t look so damn concerned, she would’ve looked like his mom. 

“You mean it?” 

Steve breathes it. It’s hardly there over the fluorescent hum of the lights inside the half hall, half storage room. 

“Yes.” Anna May murmurs back, reaching out to wrap her hand around his hand. Just his fingers, and Christ her hands are cold. “I mean it.”

Steve finds himself unable to form words. Unable to say thank you, wanting to apologize, wanting to lean his head forward and let gravity do the rest of the work on the burning behind his eyes. But he doesn’t. Instead, he opens his mouth, his voice catches, and he falters. 

“We- our cat. We have a cat.”

“...that’s okay. My dad really likes cats.” Anna assures quickly, shaking her head as she lightly pulls Steve’s shoulder so he can look at her. “Hey. It’s gonna be okay. You can take that to your sister, and the day after tomorrow when you come back to work I’ll let you know how this’s gonna work. But I promise- I promise it’s gonna be alright. Okay?” 

“Okay,” Steve nods again doggedly, as if it's the only reaction he can offer, the only thing left in him for the moment. He can feel her squeezing his shoulder carefully, picking up his hand to get her to look at him. 

“Hey. C’mere, Stevie. It’s gonna be okay.” She repeats again, and he knows she means it, but it's as if the words rattle in his head something hollow, he finds himself staring just to fight the rising heat in his face, in his eyes, in his ears and throat as she pulls him in for a hug. 

“Thanks.” 

As much of a croak as it is, it leaves him with reverence. He means it all the same. 

Anna May watches him go with the food wrapped up in his hand and a look so anxious he can feel it burning the back of his neck. Trudging through the snow, avoiding the spots he knows by now are icy, Steve makes his way back to the car to leave the food he doesn’t eat for Ellie. It's dark when he gets there, but she isn’t there . Oreo is alone in the spot where she slept, meowing loudly and pawing at the window by the time he arrives. 

He feeds Oreo half a can of tuna, and waits up. He falls asleep in the driver’s seat after warming the car up, Oreo curling up in a little loaf on his lap. 

Ellie isn’t back come morning. He wakes to Oreo mewing and pawing at the window and lets him out to do whatever cats do in the morning, standing there against the car until he can scoop the little guy up and go back inside. 

It’s so much colder today. 

He waits. 

Ellie doesn’t return at noon, around dinner time, before dark. She doesn’t return before he goes back out onto the street with a pang in his stomach and a cigarette between his lips, teeth chattering so badly he damn near eats the thing. 

He finds himself in a motel again. He’d wanted to leave at ten. He’s there until past midnight, and the room smells just as bad, he can make out at least two familiar faces and the digital clock, the numbers are red, and he can see each minute tick by with his upside down perspective from the bed. 

He can’t help but think about where she is. It’s a distraction from the rest of the night, from foreign hands and lips around his throat after the boundaries are pushed, broken again. It lets him float off even if it's into the dark waters of his thoughts. The fear is still there- where she could be, if she’d been found. If she had been, who found her . If not, where she’d gone. He wonders, achingly, if she’d ended up in one of those white vans girls are always so scared about. He understood that much, now. Or if someone else was hurting her- if her powers had killed her, or worse. 

What if she’d fallen into a coma somewhere out in the snow, what if she’s freezing to death?

What if she’d gotten lost?

What if she’d just left, off to be with her sister, leaving him behind?

Most people leave him behind. 

Maybe he should go home. 

He very much wants to go home. 

Steve finds himself outside a motel door before the digital clock turns to three-forty-five. The bastards were too drunk to scrape up cash, and he knows deep down that if he doesn’t leave then, he’ll stay there on the bed he hadn’t wanted to lay down on forever with his clothes on the floor and hands around his neck and knees, that they’d still be promising more, more, more money if everyone had a turn. 
He knew deep down that if he stayed, he wouldn’t leave at all. 

Eleven doesn’t return until four in the morning, maybe half an hour after he does. 

Steve is half asleep with the interior front light on, leftovers cold in his lap as he picks at then, He almost doesn’t notice her walking up to the car through the little part of the back window that wasn’t taped up with blankets, kept open for the sheer purpose of seeing if someone was coming. He doesn’t even hear the crunch of her footsteps in the snow and ice until Oreo picks his head up from where he’s sprawled on the warm dashboard. 

He almost gives a little chirp, whiskers all over the place as he sits his little self up and stretches out his front paws, tail flicking around wildly just as the back seat handle clicks. 

The door, being locked, doesn’t budge, at least not until the lock slowly, oh so slowly slid up without Steve even touching it. 

Steve sits back as the door slowly cracks open, before settling still as soon as she notices the light is on. It’s Ellie, that’s for certain, in that ratty leather jacket. She looks absolutely wiped , dark circles under her eyes, a little paler than usual, and he almost feels bad for how… angry he feels for a moment. He’s not even sure what to call it, if what he’s feeling is angry, or scared, or frustrated, but whatever it is Ellie seems to notice it, almost so heavy she could reach out and pluck it from the air. 

“Where were you.” 

It’s less a question and more of a demand, as he leans his head back against the window. Eleven doesn’t speak for a moment. She stands there, staring in at him for a moment before clambering in, pulling the door shut sharply behind her, and dropping a thick manila folder- a little stained- on the seat beside her. 

“Busy.” 

His eyes drop down after the folder, going wide for a split second before he glances up at her. She’s staring- staring in her deep and intense manner, like she was thinking a million times more about what she’s seeing of him than what she’s going to say. That stare has his shoulders slumping, almost sinking into his seat. He doesn’t want to imagine what she sees- red around his neck, his bruised fingers, the reds of his eyes. He probably looks like he got into a fight. 

It felt like that. 

“Where were you?-”

“No. Nuh-uh.” Steve starts, sitting himself up again. “You were gone. For two days! Two days, I had no fucking clue where you went, you didn’t even tell me-!” 

“ Busy .” 

She snaps it, tugging her boots off pointedly, letting them drop to the floor as she crosses her arms and slumps back, turning away. Oreo takes the opportunity to slink off the dashboard top, across the divider and into Ellie’s seat, nosing at the folder. She snatches it up, fast, holding it close to her chest. 

“Too busy to even like- leave a note? Or wait around for me? Like-” He scoffs and tilts his head back again, rubbing his hands down his face with an audible and long lived groan. “What the hell!? I thought- I thought somebody found you! I-I thought you got hurt or something!” 

“Sorry-”

“No! Eleven, jesus- where the fuck do you even go ? It’s like- it’s like when you met Kali you just decided to screw off! Which-” He swallows, much aware of the lump in his throat, his words coming out fast and heated “-that’s fine I guess, but just tell me! Just tell me if you don’t want anything to do with me anymore- okay?”

A passing shadow of shame drifts over Eleven’s face as she clings to that manila folder, tucking her legs up on the seat. Her eyes drift towards the three fourths eaten plate on his lap, and then up to him again, the furrow in her brow fading. Clinging to that manila folder, Ellie ducks her head forward and her shoulders give a little shake. 

“Sorry.” 

Whatever anger had been in him fades in an instant. The fear, the worry still lingered, because really he wants to know where she’d gone, what she was doing for two days in the icy cold like this. Who she was with, if anyone at all. 

But instead of asking, at least for the moment, he scoops up the plate and clambers over the divider to squish into the seat next to her. Oreo gives a soft squeak of a meow, jumping up to the back ledge to sniff around at Ellie’s remarkably short curls, and she picks her head up to lean into it, turning to reach one hand up and pat his little head. 
Plate half held out to her, Steve brings his knees up much the same. 

“...where’d you get that folder?” 

Side by side, shoulder to shoulder, Eleven settles back with a deep frown, somehow wrapping her arms all the tighter around that folder. She held it so closely, with that oh-so familiar reverence. Her fingers run along the folded edge, gingerly, as she tilts her head a bit to the side as if she means to look at him, but instead she lets Oreo fiddle with her hair as his little teeth dig in and tangle in the curls. 

“Kali wanted me to help find the bad men.” She starts quietly. 

Steve can’t help but turn, blanching, “What? What the hell!?” 

She turns then, properly looking, as her expression grows quite pointed. 

“She has friends, too. They get rid of the bad men.” Eleven elaborates, tilting so her shoulder is against the back seat. “I… went to get rid of a bad man.” 

For some reason, that feels so much worse. It has his heart in his throat, a growing lump there as the realization what ‘get rid of’ meant, and he’s sure she can practically feel his eyes widening as he turns to face her just the same. 

“...you didn’t…” He breathes, 

Slowly, she shakes her head. 

“No. Someone else did. There were- girls. He had family, they were hiding. We had to go.” Once more, her hand curls around the folder. “He saw my mom. He had this hiding.” 

Once more, she holds up that folder with reverence. She holds it as if it is the most precious thing in the world, just as much as her friends, as the idea of home. This time, she holds it out to him, the mere inches until he can take it in his own bruising fingertips, tilting it back just a little bit to read the stamped letters along the top. 

Terry Ives. 

He glances over quickly, as she offers a little nod. “I cannot read it. The words are too big.” Eleven turns, offering him a nod, almost encouraging him to open it. In all the worry that had been eating him, the frustration gathering in him for the last two days, for the last near weeks, growing bitter and biting in the cold- it dies as he untwists the folder top and flicks it open. The whole thing is thick with tons and tons of papers in faded white paper, typewritten, noted on in cursive he can hardly make out. 
Definitely doctor stuff. 

Fumbling to keep his hands steady, Steve pulls out the first chunk of paper- something about research, with Terry Ive’s name and a picture of her with big wide 70s curls that reminds him of his mom. 

She looks so much like a mom. Ellie seems to know that much, she seems to believe it with how she leans her head in to almost rest on his shoulder, reaching out to take the other side of the paper and steady it. 

“Mama.” 

“Yeah,” Steve breathes. “That’s your mama.” 

Oreo takes the opportunity to pick his head up and jump down off the back of the seat, giving a loud and expectant meow, almost expectant as he stares up with a flick of his stumpy little tail. Ellie reaches over to scoop him up with her free hand. She bundles the kitten close, earning a squirm and a half-assed headbutt to the chin, but that only makes Steve crack a tired smile as his head slumps atop hers. Reaching out to pat Oreo’s belly, he holds the paper more between them. The woman, smiling up at them from who knew how many years before, piled atop pictures of her pregnancy all in order on the pages behind. He can see the important things there- an address, a birthday. She’d been maybe twenty in these pictures, as far as he can tell- and even that’s hard, he’s always been a slow reader. And Ellie’s right. These words are big. 

“You wanna go find her, huh?”

Eleven pauses. Hesitantly, as if she’s reluctant to give the answer, she nods and buries her face in Oreo’s fur. 

“...yes.” 

“We’ll go find her then.” He assures, reaching up to ruffle her hair a bit, heads still tucked together as he starts to comb through the papers. “Hey, but we gotta make a deal, okay?” 

“Deal?”

“...yeah. It’s gonna start getting real cold. Like real, real cold, and the family I work for said we could stay in their apartment until things warm up again. For Christmas.” He tilts his head a bit to look at her, and even with their heads squished together she tries to twist and look up. 

“Oh.”

“Uhuh. We won’t have to sleep in the car for a while. And Missus Xiao makes really good food- but you gotta promise me- you gotta promise me you aren’t gonna run around with Kali. Especially if you guys are- if they’re going out looking for the bad men. ‘Cause it really, really, really freaks me out when I dunno where you’re going. Or when you’re gonna come back or if- like, if you got caught. Or somebody found you. And there’s almost worse things than your bad men that could find you.”

His tone is heavy as he speaks, still scratching Oreo’s tummy as he stretches out his little legs. 

“And if you do go back, I wanna go with you. I wanna meet ‘em. At least just to know you’re safe.” 

“Where did you go?” Ellie interjects, her countenance gone pointed again as she leans back a little bit. That shuts Steve up, and fast, as he closes his eyes and huffs. “I can’t- it’s fine. I’m not gonna do it anymore, I’m not going out late anymore.”

“I told you.” 

Ellie sits back a bit, watching as Steve lets the papers in his hands slump to his lap. 

“Ellie- I can’t. It’s bad.” 

“Why!?”

“Because! Shit, Ellie, just because.”

“But I told you! And you- you look like you saw your papa! You look like it a lot!”

Steve shuts his mouth fast, turning to face away from her, to distract himself with Oreo. 

“You’re a kid, Ellie. You don’t need to know. I’m not doing it anymore! Okay!? I’m not, because- I’m just not.”

With a hint of reluctance, Eleven resigns. Maybe it’s how his face gets so hot, so fast. Maybe it's the sting in his eyes, maybe it's just that she knows with those crazy mind powers of hers, but she sighs and drops her head back to his shoulder, letting go of Oreo in favor of wrapping her arms around him . 

Steve melts. 

Papers forgotten, left on the divider, Steve scoots forward to wrap his arms around Ellie all the same, burying his face in her hair with the faintest of shakes.

“Y’really scared me, you stinker.” 

She must hear the way his voice cracks, because she shakes, sniffles, and clings onto his shirt like she’s suddenly very afraid to let go. With a shaky breath, she mumbles into his shoulder, “Sorry. Sorry, sorry-” she sniffs, “We can go find a shower. Because- you said it makes you feel better.”

His heart pangs just a touch as he holds onto her all the tighter, shaking his head. 

“That doesn’t matter right now. Just- just wanna make sure you’re okay. The YMCA’s closed now anyway.” 

“Okay.” 

“Hey,” he continues, reaching to pat her back. The leather felt cold under his hands, even with how long she’d been in the car already. Her ears are pink, and just as cold. “Just promise. We gotta take care of each other, right? That means we gotta stick together too.” 

“Yeah.” Ellie croaks, clinging all the tighter. “Promise.”

“I promise too.” 

Finally able to bite back the threat of tears, Steve holds Ellie close in the back seat of his much too cold car, rubbing her back, huddling there. They have somewhere to go, for now. And somewhere to go after, too. That is enough. 

Chapter Text

“Up, up!” Ellie’s whisper is right there in his ear as Steve groans, and little paws very pointedly wrap around his head, tangled in familiar cold fingers. He knows both of those very well, the little pads of those paws being something he kisses before bed with Ellie’s demand, those fingers wrapped up in his when they’d made their way up the stairs. 

From his little sideways hovel on the floor, Steve gives a less than enthusiastic groan again, even as tiny teeth make an effort of tangling in his hair and most certainly drooling.
He’ll worry about that later when he’s got a few minutes at the mirror in the little bathroom. Whenever that’ll even be- it feels way too damn early, and he’s way too damn comfortable here as he rolls over and buries his cheek into his pillow. 

Ellie giggles, letting go of Oreo- he can hear the soft patter of little paws on the well loved carpet of the Xiao’s living room. 

It’s the second night they’ve stayed here, and still every time Steve opens his eyes, he’s overwhelmed by how lived in it is. The couch is blue, and lumpy just so that everyone who frequently sits on it falls directly into the most comfortable spot. Behind it is the tiny dining room, where the laundry rack is pressed under the sunniest window and the cabinet for nice dishes sit against the wall. The kitchen is just as small, separated by a little wall, where the fridge is the first thing in the narrow doorway- shoes all lined up just so, now joined by he and Ellie’s snow boots for the time being. Off into the hall is Anna’s room, Mr and Missus Xiao’s room, the bathroom, and at the end of the hall the small divot there was decorated with a nice old table, pictures of Anna May’s late grandparents and an ultrasound that never came to be. They’re all framed by two candles, lit every morning. 

It isn’t anything like Steve’s house was. There are worn paths in the carpet and the decades old hardwood floor, from where the apartment had been someone else’s once, and then someone else’s, and then someone else’s, and now theirs. The paint isn’t the newest color recommended, the fridge is the old yellow one he could remember seeing in the house until he was seven- not the same, no, but just alike if not for the post cards and good report cards plastered to it. 
A small real Christmas tree sits in the corner by the VCR, with hardly any ornaments on it at all. 

But it still feels like home in a way he’d never felt before, in a way he’d never been able to articulate. 

Huddled under the quilts and blankets from his car, from this home, Steve is warm and safe and he doesn’t wanna get up, no matter how incessant Ellie is being. 

“It’s Christmas ,” Ellie whispers, dropping to prop her hands on the floor and lean as if making sure he can hear her. 

Finally cracking open his eyes from the safe shelter of his blankets, Steve squints up at her. She’s grinning like a cheshire cat, filled with excitement, and peering past her he spots the time on the VCR. 

“Christ Ellie, it’s barely Christmas! It’s literally two-”

“Yes, that is tomorrow. Today!” 

Her excitement is so infectious he’s sure she’s gonna give him some kinda deadly disease. The thought would’ve been amusing if not for the fact that it was 2 AM, and he reaches out to offer her a slow open faced palm to her forehead. 

“My tank’s on empty, you stinker. Santa could still be on the way.”

“But you said-”

“Ush!- No- nah, I wanna sleep in.” He reaches up to ruffle her unruly short curls as she snorts, dropping to a dramatic whisper. “I wanna sleep in .” 

“ Buuuut -”

“You’re gonna be on my ass about this huh.”

“Yep.” She chimes, popping the ‘p’ in a stark mimicry of his own habit. 

It’s a funny thing. It’s still pretty clear her hair had been shaved at one point. Mr. Xiao had mistaken her for a boy until she opened her mouth, but Missus Xiao insisted they looked very similar. The same chin, she said, the same shoulders, the same eyes, the same half dimples when they smile. They’ve been doing a lot of that lately. It doesn’t help that Anna insists they have ‘psychic conversations’- Ellie had almost looked like she was gonna puke herself until she elaborated about how they could sort of just glance at each other and pull a face and seem to know exactly what the other is thinking. 

Weird, how it works like that. He hadn’t thought it could work like that. But he guesses it does, it kinda makes sense with all the shit they have to deal with, and think about, and pretend they totally weren’t thinking about. 

She is, technically, his little sister too. 

Steve closes his eyes again, tilting his back into the pillow. The soft pattering of those paws returns with a hurried excitement only a kitten at two in the morning could muster. Those paws hurry over his shoulder as Oreo leaps between them and scampers off again. Great, now both of them were wide awake.

“How about I cut you a deal.” He starts, sleepily reaching for his sports bag- which held what he’d needed from the car. 

“Deal?”

“Uhuh. I show you a surprise and you let me sleep in until somebody wakes me up, huh?”

Clearly intrigued and amused, Ellie sits back. “Okay.” 

In all honesty, he’d been waiting for this for quite a while. The Melvald’s bag is crumpled, just a touch, having been living in the deep recesses of his trunk, and then the deep recesses of his gym bag until now. He’d left it there since he’d first gotten it, since he knows Ellie has a habit of being curious, and she never looks in there. Maybe he’d expected to give it to her later in the day, but her excitement makes it hard to want to wait. 

“What is that?”

“This is for you.” He announces, sitting himself up with a little huff, as he holds out the paper back to her. “Sorry it’s not wrapped up but… y’know. Merry Christmas, Ellie.” 

She goes saucer eyed there in the light of the VCR clock and the occasional, strikingly rare headlights of a passing car through the curtains. Sat there on her heels, she seems to almost balk at the idea that she was receiving anything for her first Christmas at all. 
Somehow, funnily, that made it better. With a snort, he lightheartedly shakes her shoulder. “Come on, I’ve been waiting forever for this. It’s all yours.”

With that, Ellie breaks into a fond, bright smile, carefully unraveling the crumpled top of the bag. Though there aren’t any Christmas lights on in the room, he’s sure Ellie could light it herself as she pulls out the trapper keeper of art stuff out- be they only pencils and erasers. He can’t help the swell of pride in his chest as she holds that thing with such reverence. Her fingertips trace over the penguins, the bright purple spine, the little pencils in the box, and she holds it with reverence. That same, deep, unending reverence she holds for the simplest things, the things she cares about. 

“I figured,” Steve starts, still sleepily, even if the smile on his face breaks through it, “With all the drawing you were doing you needed somewhere to keep it all. I bet we could find you some paper to get that started again.” 

“I like it very much.” Ellie whispers, with all the brightness of a normal little girl at Christmas. 

With a soft laugh, Steve smiles, reaching out to tap the bag. “You still got one more thing.” 

Eagerly she reaches back into the bag, pulling out the little moomin stuffie- still unnerving if you asked him, but the little gasp that breaks her banishes that thought in an instant. “Moomintroll!”

“That’s his name?” He chimes, leaning back against the couch still half caught in the well of his blankets, and Ellie nods seriously, before faltering and glancing up. 

“I did not find you a present.” 

“Psh.” It’s an easy thing to wave his hand. He never got presents- well, outside the new watch from his dad, and once a lighter, but very rarely did any of those things feel like real Christmas presents were supposed to (or so he thought) as opposed to a reminder of his expectations. This- this mattered more. “My present will be sleeping in. Don’t worry- my Christmas is already perfect.”

“Really?” Ellie asks, almost skeptically, as he snorts and nods. 

“Yes, really.”

Though reluctant to give in as she always was, Ellie shuffles closer to lean against the couch with him. The moomin doll is wrapped up in her hands, big enough to fit in both, he can barely make out those big soulless blue eyes staring up at them as she smiles. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to, simply leaning to drop her head against his with a soft sigh and a yawn. Quietly, he drops his head to rest atop hers as she fiddles with the tuft of its little tail, only to break into a soft giggle as Oreo comes proudly pouncing up to snatch at it. 

In an instant the two of them are wrapped up in sleepy laughter as Ellie holds the moomin doll out, wiggling its tail to let Oreo jump and pounce again. 

“Gotta be careful or he’ll eat your little little hippo guy right up.” 

“No,” Ellie insists, letting the kitten jump up and cling, suspended there for a minute as she wiggles it around with a snort. Oreo gave a little meow, trying to jump up and hang on again before Steve reached forward to scoop him up and smother his fluffy little head with smooches, paws all wild and squirming in protest aside. This only makes Ellie laugh all the more, though she brings her hands up over her mouth to stifle it. Oreo squirms, patting at his hair until Steve finally lets go, plopping him down. Oreo turns, jumping at him as if to make up for the offense of being picked up and cat-handled, before scampering off all sideways. 

Steve snorts, having to stifle himself just as much. Even so, he takes the chance to settle, leaning back down to slump into the warmth of his sheets again, bundling them up close. 
Ellie shuffles over, still gripping her stuffed moomin as she reaches up to pat his head. 
Patting the ground next to him, she speaks up in a whisper. 
“Can I be here too?”

“Yeah, sure,” Steve smiles. “It’s definitely not gonna be as comfy as the couch-”

“That is okay.” 

Pulling all her sheets off the couch, she plops them half across Steve and half next to him, snagging her pillow and crawling over to clamber under her blankets in her own little hovel, a mirror image of his. 

They’re still caught in the light of the VCR clock. Every so often, Steve can see the filtered instance of headlights casting familiar shapes across the wall, the stagnant glitter of Christmas lights from across the street, shops and apartments, streetlights. 
Here feels like home. Now it feels like Christmas . He doesn’t want this moment to end. For once, Steve isn’t anxious about what’s going to happen tomorrow. He feels thrilled he isn’t in the house he grew up in, where he was sure he would’ve stayed up all night for fear of the shadows that may have been cast on his walls, the things that made them. He isn’t scared about where Ellie was or where she might go- he isn’t afraid of strangers and motel rooms. 

Here on the floor of his boss’s apartment in a city he hardly before remembered, side by side with a kid that’d become his little sister, Steve feels at home .

Just as much, Ellie is watching him. She’s watching like she’s reading him, learning just like she has been every day since they first stumbled across one another. Quiet, she buries her head into her pillow just like he does, smiles when he snorts, and bundles the stuffed animal to her chest. 

Deep down inside, Steve knows she’s thinking the same thing- in her own way, though the same.

“Merry Christmas.” 

“Mhm. Merry Christmas stinker.” Steve murmurs back, reaching up to ruffle her ratty hair as she smiles.

Tucked under their blankets, they fall asleep and don’t wake until the kitchen curtains are open, and Christmas music is playing quietly. In the haze of his sleep, he can hear Mr Xiao singing along with the music, the soft pat, pat, pat of sock laden feet on the worn out tile as he and Missus Xiao can be seen dancing quietly in the kitchen on Christmas morning. 
Breakfast is cinnamon rolls from the can, and Steve doesn’t have to work on Christmas. 

Two days later, while the family is gone, the pair of them put everything back in Steve’s car. 

They don’t come back. 

The chill bites at his cheeks, his nose, his ears, it sends his face flush. Snow is coming down on the city of Chicago in a gentle haze, like the receding touch of the deep freeze that Christmas. 

Ellie has his hand in his, and her fingers are just as cold. 

He’s anxious. It’s like he knows she can sense it, like she can feel it, and maybe she’s just as anxious. She’d said Kali had rules. They all had rules. They didn’t like newcomers. And that in itself said a lot considering the mess they’d just walked through- underpasses and half tunnels and corridor alleys full with trash fires and mismade tents and people cackling, saying things that don’t make sense, speaking and smelling of death in a way he didn’t realize existed. Oreo is hidden deep in his jacket, curled around the back of his neck under his scarf, away from the cold as best as he can be without being plucked out of his pocket or hurt. 

He keeps his hand wrapped tight around Ellie’s, and keeps his head low as they pass through. 

Turning through the corners and alleys with his head keeping on a low swivel, Eleven leads the way with a stark determination, only slowing a bit as the road opens up to a small parking lot. Rail tracks sit across from them, big old abandoned factories, all frozen over, walled up in the snow. 
Suddenly he finds he aches for his car. 

There on the tracks a pair of figures stand, and Ellie approaches them, hand still wrapped around his. She practically has to drag him, as Steve tries to hesitate and take the pair in and- well, they are quite the pair. 
“You’re sure they’re alright? You’re sure they won’t kick me out?” Steve murmurs, turning his gaze down to Ellie as she marches along purposefully.
“They will like you.” Ellie insists, glancing up in her way- her ‘as a matter of fact’ way, brokering no arguments as she turns back to the eclectic couple on the tracks, half shrouded in the faint snow. 

The first thing he notices is the bleach blonde mohawk of the first figure. He’s a tall gangly guy, wrapped up in a dark almost black trenchcoat of sorts, jeans cuffed even in the cold, over loosely laced boots that mark a miracle he’d inevitably made it over ice to get to that spot. He has tattoos on his face, a well worn line across his forehead and a stick and poke star on the cheek. 
The taller of the two men greets them. He’s equally as dressed in black as the other guy, if a bit more practically. He has worn out snow boots, dark pants and shirt tucked under a loose jacket and a faded snow jacket, a cap pulled over his head. He has a distinct white goatee, and from under the cap a pair of long dark twists thrown over his shoulder. 

“Well if it isn’t Shirley Temple.” He chimes, voice deep and strangely torn between welcoming and wary. Steve can practically feel his eyes, like they’re burning through his face as they slowly approach. For a moment Steve thought it looked like they were about to have a shootout there, the crunch of their boots in the snow like cowboy boots in the dirt of a western town of one of grandpa’s old movies.  

In fact, Steve feels a touch small. Like maybe he looks just like another little kid holding Ellie’s hand, even though he’s not , he’d been taking care of her, he had a job . A couple jobs actually, even if one was marginally harder. As the two pace closer, Eleven remains glued to Steve’s side, hand wrapped tight in his as the mohawk guy approaches. 
“Looks like she brought Ponyboy with her.”

“Ponyboy?” Steve starts before he can help it, watching close as the man approaches and begins to around- looking less at El than anything, instead staring Steve down like he’s trying to make out the very recesses of his soul. It makes Steve recoil, almost wither, wincing in the cold as he turns about to keep his eyes on the man. 

“Don’t be mean.” El offers warily. She stares up at the guy from beneath her heavily furrowed brow, the mohawk guy huffs and sneers, shoving his hands in his pockets. 

“M’ just gettin’ a read.” 

“You’re that ‘brother’ we’ve heard bein’ talked up, huh?” The bigger man asks. He’s older, he has to be, perhaps a touch less defensive in his curiosity as he approaches. While the mohawk guy paces, this one properly looks at Steve. He even offers a hint of a smile. 

“So you’re where lil’ miss Shirley’s been running off to?” 

Steve frowns, shoulders raising a bit for it. 

“Yeah.” He starts shortly. “She’s my sister. I’m taking care of her.”

“S’ that why you’re here?” The mohawk guy asks from behind, almost a little snide in it. “Not at your big boy job?” 

“I wanted to meet you.” 

“Oh! We have fans.” 

“Can it, Axel.” The big guy remarks, waving a hand at the mohawk guy, who’s broad and wild smile falters. Steve swears he still has the image of every single tooth caught in his mind like a vision burnt into the back of his eyes.

Eleven, for now, is silent. Hand wrapped tight in his still, she fumbles to reach up behind his scarf to pull Oreo out, and out of everything that seems to make mohawk guy, Axel, falter. 

“Ellie told me about you. That you helped her find things out about her mom. And I’ve… I don’t like her just being gone all the time when I don’t know you.”

“I’m not stupid.” Ellie remarks pointedly up at him, and he shuts his mouth fast as the big man chuckles, as Axel returns to stand in front of them. 

“Funny coming from you. Dottie and I’ve seen you around.” He remarks, and Steve can’t help but go pale at the thought because- shit, shit , he’d been seen, was he really that obvious? Had he been followed? Where had they even seen him?-
Axel breaks into a short guffaw of a laugh for a moment as the big man quirks his brow and sighs. “So that’s it? You just wanna ‘get to know us’?”

“...yeah.” 

“Huh. You can’t do shit like she can, right?”

Steve spares a glance to El as she manages to pull Oreo out from under his scarf, holding the cat close. “No. No, I can’t uhm- I’m pretty good with a baseball bat, though.” 

“What makes you think that’s important to us?” 

“...I dunno. You just-” For a brief moment, Steve flounders on what to say. He can’t just outright tell them ‘well Ellie told me’, that he knew they’d gone out and killed somebody, because well- that would cause trouble. 
Steve doesn’t have it in him to deal with trouble right now. 
“You seem like you get around. And uhm- just in case people come after Ellie. Or… Kali. The bad men.”

“The government?” Axel interjects with a bit of a grin, shaking his head. “Yeah, no shit Sherlock.”

“...well, yeah.” 

The big guy is still listening, watching, staring at Steve and Ellie alike for a moment longer before he holds his hand out. 

“You can call me Funshine. This is Axel. Kali’l make sure you keep your mouth shut, but I’ll give you the rules. Did Shirley Temple here give you the rules?” 

He can’t help but swallow almost audibly, glancing down to Eleven as she gives his hand another reassuring squeeze. It’s enough for him to suck in a breath and speak up as he reaches out to shake the big man’s hand.

“Don’t tell anybody, don’t let anybody follow you, don’t… let anyone see your face. And don’t be stupid, pretty much. We have that rule too.”

Seeming satisfied, the big man nods, turning to indicate that the pair should follow. Ellie does so without hesitation, pulling him along as they go, though he turns to watch as Axel falls into flank behind them. Through the haze of snow, the pair guide them along as Ellie continues her purposeful march, and despite how amicable things have been thus far, he can’t help but feel intimidated. He can feel Axel’s eyes glued to the back of his head as they walk, or like they’re being led to the chopping block. 

Out from the soft haze of snow and the glare of the city lights in the cloudy night sky, the figure of an old factory building comes into view. Catwalks and pipes that remind him vaguely of the silos outside Hawkins carve the jagged shape of it against the city beyond. It’s an old rusty thing fit to collapse, and graffiti decorates every inch of the walls up ten feet like it's a modern art museum. Inside, past the glass, firelight flickers. They walk right up to a thick metal door lined by equally thick glass inside, lit by a fluorescent hooded blue bulb that Funshine draws them to like moths. He doesn’t stop for a moment as he pulls the door open. 

Here, however, standing before the door, Steve somehow feels more anxious. 

Inwardly, he’s a little appalled that the door hadn’t been locked. The inside hall here is just as smattered with graffiti, big loopy lines in yellow, blue, black, white, green- some in other languages, names, claims, all smattered across the iron and concrete in the musty orange interior light. The room opens up, just as worn, just as almost barren, but it is lived in. 

It’s like they’d been waiting. 

The rest of the group is sat around a table, beside an old metal storage drum filled with wood and lit brightly. Smoke drifts up and filters out through rust cracks in the ceiling. The graffiti travels in, marking where there was life, where old signs had been stacked and rooms had been improvised and built up. Above, a glass walled office or viewing room if graffitied over all the same, lit neon from inside. 

There are girls sat around the table, two of them around Steve’s age. The first he notices is wrapped up in a worn out knit sweater, her hair teased up big and kept in a big bow that reminds him vaguely of the bows Tammy Thompson wears at school. Except, Tammy Thompson wouldn’t be so crazy as to dye her hair half rainbow. It was faded into her blonde, sure, worn out at her grungy makeup and eyeshadow, but she turns quickly. 
“Ah! Shirley Temple’s back! C’mere, I wanna see Cookie-” She scoots around in her seat, gesturing Ellie over, eyes all for Oreo. 

The third, an older girl with a wild afro, sat in a chair beside the table, leaning like she’s been staring out the windows. She turns, curious, arms crossed and bundled in layers of flannels and wool socks. She doesn’t say anything, though she does offer Ellie a faint smile. 

The last, the other one around his age, is shorter. The side of her head is shaved, her dark hair somehow tinged purple, dark eyes surrounded by dark rings of makeup that make it look like she’s glaring at him. 
She damn well might be as she approaches, stalking up to the pair of them, and despite being nearly a head shorter, the odd sense of danger picks up at the back of his neck as he squeezes Ellie’s hand back. What he doesn’t expect is for Eleven to step almost in front of him, glancing up just a little bit, the mere inch where she’s shorter than this girl. 

“So. You’re Stu?” Her voice comes out with a hint of some accent, something that vaguely reminds him of Molly out there on the corner. 

A little baffled, Steve nods as Ellie glances up. 

“He is. He wanted to meet you. This is Kali.”

“Hi.” 

She picks her head up then to look at Steve, lips pursed and brow furrowed in a way that is strikingly like how Ellie gets when she’s focused and unamused, and there’s a brief moment where she steadies her feet out like she’s grounding herself, arms crossed. 

“You two definitely blew in from the same bush.” She finally remarks, looking him up and down again for a moment. “Why’re you with her?”

In an instant, Steve’s shoulders tighten as he speaks up. “What?” 

“Are you deaf? Why are you with her?”

She’s staring, really staring at him, and christ he’s sure for a split second she’s Tommy and he’s leaned back against his car, he wants to pull Ellie’s hand and just go, he wants to go back to the Xiao’s shop. He’s aware of all those eyes on them, Funshine, Axel, the two other girls. Only Oreo doesn’t seem focused on the conflict, giving a little wiggle in Ellie’s arms as she stops to let him down, and he scampers over to the girl with the bow.
Instead of that, he squares his shoulders and leans back just a touch, hand wrapped tight in Ellie’s as she stares Kali right back. 

“We promised to look out for each other. I wanna look out for her.”

“And what makes you think you can do that?”

Steve finds himself going quiet, licking his lips. What could he say? He could take a hit, he could handle being choked, he’d fought monsters? He could make money? He had a car? What of that would even matter to her?

“Don’t be mean.” Eleven starts shortly then, glaring up with just as much gumption. 

Kali’s eyes flick down to her, to their still tightly held hands as she huffs and picks her head up again. “I’m just making sure.”

“ I am sure.” Ellie interjects. 

Kali almost looks surprised for a moment, at least until the girl with the bow speaks up and manages to pry a necessary ounce of tension out of the air. 
“Hey, I seen you. You’re a streetwalker, aren’t you?”

“See?” Axel exclaims, and it’s not quite clear who he’s saying it to. “See! I knew it.” 

“I’m- I’m not -” 

“No, I seen you.” She nods seriously, leaning down to offer Oreo some head scritches. “I seen your look back when I got busy too.” 

Ellie turns then, confused as she glances up at him. “Streetwalker?” 

As much as Steve can’t help but get flustered for it, ducking his head and hiding his burning face as he mouths ‘later’. Shit. Shit , Ellie doesn’t need to know about that, she doesn’t need to know about that as much as she didn’t need to be running around with murderers. 
Because they are that, aren’t they? She said they’d killed. That she’d been there. 

With a hint of reluctance, Kali gives him one last squint before glancing back. 
“Alright. Rules are for you? Keep your mouth shut- no tagalongs. And you stay here, got it?”

“What? Why?-”

“Because, I said so. Those are our rules. And if you want to stick around with El, you better keep to them. Do you understand?”

Small as Kali is, her voice is big, the way she speaks demands attention and power in a way that’s quiet and too much like his dad, and it has his skin crawling in tandem with the unease in his stomach. Nevertheless, Steve slowly nods. In that instant, Kali softens- if only a little- as she turns back towards the group. 
“That’s Mick and Dottie.” She nods first to the girl in flannel, and then bow girl. “You met Axel and Funshine.” 

“...yeah. Yeah uhm, nice to meet you guys.”

“Sure.” Mick offers stoically, watching as Kali turns her attention towards Axel.

“Why don’t you help him scrape together somewhere to sleep? We’ll hash out details one on one later.” 

“C’mon Ponyboy.” Axel starts, clapping him on the shoulder. “You’ll have your pick of the litter.”

With a near jump out of his skin, Steve finds himself glancing down at Ellie as she finally lets go of his hand, turning and offering a faint smile. “See. I told you.” Her smile keeps even with the faint flicker over his uncertain features. “I can come-”

“No. That’s alright El, we need to talk.” Kali interrupts easily, waving her over. For that, Steve lingers just a moment until Axel gives him a little (less than friendly) shove towards the rickety metal stairs. 
Ellie stops just a moment to watch, reaching to pluck Oreo up off the floor and hold him as Steve goes, and she waves, still smiling. The last thing he sees before vanishing up into the hall is how her expression falters just a touch. 

Chapter Text

Four days of this and Steve finds himself wondering if this is what prison is like. Sure, it’s colorful- Dottie is nice, even if she runs her mouth, and Funshine has a penchant for cards. Kali is quiet when she’s not inadvertently demanding their ears. It’s a strange thing, how everyone seems to sway and pace and then still when she speaks. He can’t hate her, no, but he isn’t quite pleased with how everyone seems to listen to her, how it doesn’t seem to be a choice. 

But she’s smart . 

Though she hadn’t made a show of her abilities yet, Ellie explained it between light additions from the group. While Ellie makes things move, Kali makes people see things, anything from butterflies to spiders and collapsing walls to empty spaces. 

She’s also smart in the way that she finds information, and fast. The downstairs offices had been transformed into their lair of sorts, a library of pictures and ID cards belonging to people who Kali and Ellie alike might’ve encountered. Nurses, old men in scientist’s uniforms, photos of big empty pools that have his gut filling with dread, all of it is compiled to the greatest extent it can be and managed by Kali for her to seek and destroy. Ellie often makes efforts to help her with this, which is a process Steve’s ever really seen before. 

Quiet, with radio static on, Ellie often sits on a stepstool in the open space of the warehouse with a blindfold on and a box of tissues in her lap until she somehow came across something interesting or important for them to use to scour the phonebooks for information. 

Steve spends his time cooking. Or fetching this and that, or making sure the doors are locked, or keeping the fire going, never really leaving even when Axel said they need more money and he offers to go out—and Jesus, sometimes he feels like Cinderella, save for the fact that the group has a penchant for calling him ‘Ponyboy’.

The only moments he feels like he has a break are when Ellie and him hang out (which is truly much more than when they had been living out of his car) and smoke nights on the roof with Axel and Funshine. It’s what Funshine terms ‘boys time’, focused closely around the little embers of their stolen cigarettes. 

Funshine is steady. He doesn’t falter, doesn’t change even when he looks like he should be upset, and his voice is always even. Axel offers the cigarettes, and despite being fidgety, despite saying things far too blatantly, Steve finds that he isn’t mean , at least not on purpose, only intimidating. 
Even though Steve hasn’t ever worn his hair in a mohawk, he wonders if he’s ever been that mean- not on purpose. Or had he been? On purpose- on purpose he chose to call Nancy a slut in front of everyone, he’d been around letting Tommy and Carol talk shit about Will Byers, the poor kid gone missing, he’d… been a dick. 

Steve was a dick and now he’s here, and he supposes he deserves it. 

Out here on the roof, Steve’s fingertips are numb, trembling around his cigarette as they stand in a trio huddle on the top of the building. As Funshine holds out his light, Axel starts to talk as if to prevent the chattering of his teeth.
“I swear to Christ if we don’t go out on another run I’m going to puke up the next fast food we get into her lap.”

“We need more cash.” Funshine agrees readily, hands shaking all the same as he flicks his lighter shut and stuffs it readily back into his pocket. 

Steve finds himself wracked with a deep deep sigh as he brings his cigarette to his lips and shoves his hands in his pockets, turning to squint out at the city. From here, there’s merely a haze of fog, and the yellow and orange lights of the city, the distant greens and reds of the intersections, are all scattered and dissolved in the haze across a mess of factories and trainyards. 

“Sorry I’m not a professional chef or whatever, but there’s not exactly a lot to work with here.”

Axel offers a noncommittal grunt in response, as Funshine shrugs. “No one said you had to cook.”

“Yeah well, no one’s saying I should do anything.” 

“What, so you went housewife on us, Ponyboy? Jesus.” 

Steve shrugs as Axel leans back against the stairway housing, wincing with the cold of the metal wall there. Funshine lingers, he doesn’t move from his spot stood between them, puffing quietly on his cigarette. It’s hard to tell how much he breathes out is smoke and how much is hot air. 

“M’ just bored.” Steve remarks softly, turning to kick at a clod of snow with near personal offense. 

“We’re all bored.” Funshine admits, watching as Axel goes to kick that same chunk and split it. “But the girls’ll find us a target soon enough.”

“What's the deal with all that? I mean- I could go. I could work-”

Axel breaks into a dry laugh, turning fast, so fast he nearly slips on his unfit boots in the thick layers of snow there. There’s a shockingly quick rise in him, almost a vindication as he reaches out to grab Steve by the jacket, like he’s going to throttle or shake him, and that narrow face of his splits. 

“Nah. Fuck no. Fuck no you aren’t-”

“Christ, put the kid down.” Funshine snaps, perhaps the most anger Steve’s ever seen the man show thus far, and Steve himself finds his heart in his throat. 

Even if Axel isn’t necessarily mean, he’s still scary- terrifying, even, the way his eyes get back and his mouth curls down and somehow stays equally as wide as a smile would. Steve can’t fathom why for a moment as Axel drops him and paces back, away, circling like an annoyed cat over a cold patch of pavement. 

As soon as he has the chance, Steve turns back, almost scampering away to get some distance as he gives a start. 
“What the hell!? You’re all out here complaining about money and I had a whole job - at a store - didn’t need to steal anything!-”

“That can be traced. And Kali told you to stay, so it’s best you stay.” Funshine offers, as Axel turns in confusion. 

“Then what the hell were you doing streetside when we saw you?”

Steve knows they’d seen him. He does, even if Dottie still gives him the exact same sideways smirk and bubblegum ignorance she gives everyone else -that part of her makes his skin crawl-, save Oreo, who seems to get everyone’s brightest bits of attention regardless. The way it was so flippantly brought up, and still is sometimes, and the confused looks Ellie gives him whenever ‘Streetwalker’ is brought up makes his gut churn and his skin crawl like he wants to wash his hands or shower again. 
Showering makes it better. Showering always makes things better. 

“Working.” He offers lamely, turning to stare past his nose at his cigarette embers. 

Funshine laughs. It’s chock full of disbelief, either at the prospect of work or the fact that he’d outright said it, and Steve shifts to lean back against the stairwell cover now, head sinking between his shoulders. 
Axel snorts. 

“What?” Steve starts then, much aware of the tightening in his chest, and for once it’s not the cigarette smoke. “I had to do what I had to do-”

“Yeah, well, you don’t no more.” Funshine offers. “So don’t.”

“That’s not what I was gonna do, anyway,” Steve huffs, crossing his arms just a touch. “Why the hell are you always listening to Kali, anyway? Especially if you guys have to wait to go out, get in trouble, kill people-”

“The government,” Axel notes.

“Kill people, get traced , which is the whole big deal, and then go broke? It’s not working.”

“Sure it’s not,” Funshine hums, turning now to watch Steve. It’s a quiet thing, thoughtful, maybe even wary. “It’s been working way better with El around to help us look faster. This one and his sensitive stomach don’t have to wait too long for ‘proper food’ once we find someone.”

“Fuck off, man.” The punk gripes, crossing his arms. “I don’t have a sensitive stomach- and that’s beside the fuckin’ point. You aren’t goin’ out, you aren’t doin’ that ‘working’ shit-” He’s sure to put up a falsetto for that bit, “You’re stayin’ safe here. With us.”

Steve almost glares. 

“Yeah well, if it’s really not safe, we’ll move.” Funshine offers into the brief quiet that follows. 

For a moment, Steve falls into silence. He finds himself puffing on his cigarette like a train engine on coals, snow boot tapping at the ground and inadvertently flattening a round little circle around him, around where he flicks off his ashes. 
They would move. They would move, and Steve would probably never see Hawkins again. He wouldn’t see Nancy, wouldn’t get to play basketball again with his team. He’d never hear if Jonathan got the camera replacement, though knowing Nancy, he did. 
He wouldn't graduate highschool.
More importantly, he’d never know if that monster came back. He wouldn’t ever get to have the happy quiet that was life with Eleven before his parents came home. She’d be spending the rest of her life on the run, all of them, out killing people. And though they hadn’t been on a ‘mission’ since, Ellie didn’t talk about the first one. She said the guy died, and she keeps her reverence for that folder. 
She buried the death under the prospect of her mother , who’s probably still looking for her. 

Steve doesn’t want any of those things, for either of them. 

And he hates that these people get to just make that decision- that Kali gets to make that decision in all her cold bitterness. 

“Who decides?”

Axel huffs, pulling a face. “Kali. Duh.”

“Why?”

“Because! She knows what’s up, she knows why the government creeps do the way they do. She’s the boss.”

“Says who!?-”

“Says us ! She saved us! All of us! You got a problem with that, Ponyboy?”

“The only way this works is if we’re all on the same page.” Funshine remarks rather knowingly. “That means none of us go out when we shouldn’t, none of us take risks. If we do that, we risk our girl. We risk yours. You wouldn’t wanna risk yours.”

“Yeah well, I’m not so sure about that with your history.” Axel continues for a moment, and Steve tears his eyes up from the snow for a moment. 

“Can you shut up? What the fuck is your problem!?”

“Me? What’s my problem!? You got a problem, that’s my problem.”

“Yeah well, you already gave me shit about the whole… thing. Ellie doesn’t need to know.”

Funshine turns with a start for that. “What?” 

“Like hell.” 

“She’s just a kid!” Steve exclaims, dropping his cigarette laden hand to his side. “Okay!? She hardly- she hadn’t even seen a city before we got here! She doesn’t know what any of that means, she doesn’t- she doesn’t have to, she’s still trying to figure out the rest of the world. And the last thing she needs is to be worried about me , because that’s my job .”

“Yeah, and if you go out there, and one of those fuckers finds you, and you aren’t around to  worry about her?”

Steve glances back to Axel with just how heavy his voice comes out. “...what?” 

“Axe.” Funshine starts heavily, and he only offers the big man a glance, working his jaw, staring Steve down. 

“It’s fucking dangerous.”

“Yeah, I know that. I’m not doing it anymore.”

“Yeah well, I’m not so fuckin’ sure. Because I know you, I know your type, out there worryin’ about people and shit. You can’t listen and shit’s not right at all and you turn around and you fuck yourself over.”

“M- I’m not!-”

“Yeah well you are! What were you gonna do, go back to that job? You’ve been gone for days, they probably fired you. Think you’re dead or on drugs or something, and you know what you got?” 

“Axel!” Funshine continues, but the punk doesn’t stop, he just straightens, he leans up and waves with his cigarette like it’s an accusatory finger. 

“You got that same shit. And you know what happens to people who do that?” 

He reaches up to his own neck with the cigarette, gesturing sharply, making a stark sound. “Erk! You’re dead. You’re fuckin dead like what Gacey did to those kids. Or in the psych ward like Dottie. You know that? Or you know how they’ve been findin’ the stabbed bodies out there, strung up on the barns? You want her to find you like that? You want her not knowing what to do when you can’t do shit anymore? You want her to not fuckin’ know where you went because you were trynna be the big guy?” 

His head feels hot. 

Steve’s head feels hot, it feels like his brain is crushing in his skull as he stares over at Axel. He hates the way his lips go dry, the way the lump gathers so fast in his throat like there are hands around it again. He hates the way his eyes feel hot and burn as he stares, as he sets his jaw and balls his fists in his pocket. 

He hates how in all of his yelling, all of the vigor and anger spelled across Axel’s face, he looks kind of afraid. 

“Shut up.” Steve breathes, and it comes out a whimper almost. It has Axel starting forward again to grab his arm. 

“Nah. Nah, ‘cause I gotta know you’re fuckin’ gonna listen. Shirley Temple might be a weird little shitstain down there, but you- m’ not lettin’ you fuck around n’ find out. M’ not gonna be the one to pull your corpse off the concrete when you quit listening and do somethin’ stupid. M’ not lettin’ you run out and die and take his sis- her brother away, you fuckin’ hear me?”

Funshine reaches out the moment Axel does, smacking his hand away when he’s barely got a grip on Steve’s arm, and he raises his voice. 

“Will you shut the fuck up!? He ain’t gotta hear this, she ain’t gotta hear this- they’re kids!”

“ Yeah they’re fuckin’ kids!” 

As the two turn on each other, Steve feels like he’s trapped between two snarling dogs. Face still hot and eyes still burning, he drops his cigarette in the snow and ducks for the stairs before either of them can turn back to him, vanishing down the steps towards the old creaky hallways and the annex that had become his space.

Dottie is nice and Steve guesses he knows why, now.

It’s strange, though. The last lady with bubblegum who did their kinda job had sort of just stared at him.

He’s gone to his place- his room, a little annex down the hall from the big windowed office that had apparently become Kali and Ellie’s shared space- a big well loved palette bed, with a comforter blanket and everything. It looks like a home and he hates how seemingly willing they are to abandon it. 

The room is pretty small. It might’ve once been an office or something, with the big windows covered in old newspapers to keep the cold out and the glass in the frames. He’d gotten a couple of old mattresses dragged in and stacked on top of each other, a mismatch of blankets and sheets that honestly feel pretty comfortable, something he can sleep in for ages when the morning is cold enough. 
But for the life of him he can’t sit still right now, hunched on the edge of his bed, where his sports bag is slumped at the bottom side. The room, otherwise, is still, quiet, and a touch chilly. He has nothing in here, nothing of his own like everyone else in Kali’s gang does. He supposes Ellie doesn’t technically either, huddled there in Kali’s space. It is hers, entirely hers, like this place is entirely everyone else’s, like his parents house is theirs. 

Dottie knocks. He knows it’s her because he can’t hear her footsteps, ever, even with the metallic tin that sounds when everyone walks. Dottie never makes a sound, she walks like a cat, even if her laughing is a clear sign of where she is in the place at any given time. 

“Hm?”

“I gotchur cat.” 

Straightening, Steve realizes he doesn’t really want to open the door. He doesn’t want to go downstairs, he doesn’t want to be around any of them even if it means being around Ellie. There’s something dry in the ache they bring him. It makes him think of the 7/11 down on his street corner, the same kinda dry of a cold coke bottle on his face after that fight with Jonathan. 

But Dottie is nice, and he can’t fall back to being a dick again, not if he can help it. 

“Thanks. You can uhm- you can come in.”

It’s as he sits back, Dottie pushes the door open. 

She’s still wrapped up in her knitted sweater, but for now her wild tangly hair is free, a mess of hairspray and faded dye and sleep that she hasn’t bothered with in days, just like the dark circles under her eyes. Nevertheless, Oreo is slung under her arm and quite snug, only perking up as Steve cracks a faint laugh. 

“I swear, he’s practically your cat now.”

“Don’t tempt me-” She muses, pulling Oreo out from under her arm, plopping him on the end of Steve’s bed. The little cat gives a wobbly hop, tail stump waggling to and fro as he stops to stare at Steve before giving a playful pounce and running behind him to the other side of the bed before giving a loud squeak of a meow. 

Steve laughs, reaching over to ruffle Oreo’s fur and scoop him up, dangling his little legs for a moment.  “Out there making friends without me, huh?”

Dottie shrugs, leaning back against the creaky doorway as she shrugs. 
“Why the long face?”

“Huh?”

“You know.” She waves at him with a sleeve tucked around her hand, bringing it to her mouth for a moment. “Your face. It’s long.” 

Steve falters a touch, sighing as he fights the urge to roll his eyes and shoo her off right then. Instead, he just shrugs. “They were yelling up there. I’m sick of it. And I’m just tired.” 

“Yeah, they get snappy sometimes.” She reasons, glancing back down the hall. “We’re gonna play some cards if you wanna come down. Most of us.”

“I don’t have any cash for that.” Steve admits, bundling Oreo close despite a playful swat of protest at his shoulder. Dottie pulls a face then, shifting her shoulders one way as she picks up off the doorway. 

“We can split cash and you just give mine back.”

Even with the offer, even if it’s well meaning, Steve is very much aware that he doesn’t want to go downstairs right now. He doesn’t want to see their faces. He wants to be away, that’s all. 

“Maybe later. I think I’m gonna try to catch a nap.”

“You’re sure?” She asks, maybe vaguely displeased with the answer, but she watches as he nods and gives a gutteral sigh, turning around to snag the door handle. “Okay. Whatever Ponyboy, catch you later.”

Steve turns his attention back to Oreo, bundling the squirmy little guy close to bury his face in his fur, listening as the door shuts behind her. 

Jesus, he doesn’t want to be here.

With a groan, Steve lets himself flop onto his back, holding Oreo up in the air over him. His paws wobble around, and he gives a pointed meow down at Steve, clearly displeased for a moment until he falls quiet and stares. 

“What the hell are we doing here, cat?” Steve mumbles, frowning as Oreo stretches out his paws. 

Oreo squeaks back. 

For Ellie. For Ellie, of course, because here she has a sister, she has a home. She has a sister, she could find out more about her mom, if she wanted, if there’s anything left to find. 
And he’s here… for what. For what? Because he doesn’t have anywhere to go either? Because Axel’s right in a macabre way, that he has no idea what else he could do to stay afloat right now, hiding from his parents, from the people looking for her?
It brings a deep weight through his throat and down past his chest. 

“Can’t leave her alone.” He admits. “They’re crazy.”

Somehow, that makes the feeling only deeper. 

Oreo gives a longer meow, flexing his paws and stretching. 

“She’s my sister,” Steve continues, mostly to himself as he frees one hand to give a gentle bump of a finger against Oreo’s nose. “I haven’t ever had a sister before.” He murmurs, finally letting Oreo down from the little sky prison of his hand as he rolls onto his side. Oreo scampers to the side, batting at his hand for a moment before sitting and stretching, nose twitching wildly at him. 

“You had any sisters, cookie?”

Oreo doesn’t respond. 

Steve isn’t quite sure when he falls asleep. 

He wakes with a start and a dry feeling in his head, across his tongue, the vague taste of cottonmouth cheese lingering there that he hates. 

Little hands are on his shoulder, shaking him, and he’s still in his winter jacket, curled up on his side in his sad bed. Oreo is up, pacing past his head as he groans and rolls to his back. He knows those little hands on his shoulder like he knows the sound of a garage door.  

He doesn’t have to totally turn to know it’s Ellie standing there, with the door cracked open. The building is quiet save for wind in the pipes and rafters, the rattle of chill, everything still outside the faint creeping of blackness that comes before morning. 
Ellie’s face is gaunt. Pale in a way he hasn’t seen since he first met her, eyes welling up big with tears. 

In an instant, Steve’s heart jumps to his throat as he turns, sitting up on the edge of the bed to grab her shoulders. 
“Hey- hey, hey, hey, what’s going on, Ellie? What’s that for?”

She doesn’t utter a word. She leans in after him, wrapping her arms tight around him to cling at his coat, pressing her face into his shoulder with a little shudder. She sucks in a frantic breath and falls silent, clinging, like she’s doing it for dear life. In comes the creeping feeling that he doesn’t know what’s wrong, and he despises it, so he wraps his arms back around her and tucks his chin on her shoulder, going quiet for a moment to let her sniffle. 
Had Axel yelled at her now? Had they tried to go out on another one of those batshit murder missions while he was asleep?

It feels like a century before Oreo gives a loud, drawn out meow as he stretches and shivers, pausing a moment to brush against them with Ellie there. She finally leans back a bit, cheeks still pale and a little tearstained around her eyes, and her attention is all for the little cat as she reaches out to make almost heartbroken sounding kissy noises, earning a faint chirp as she gingerly picks him up and cradles him close like a babydoll, plopping to sit down on the bed beside him. 

“You gonna tell me what’s going on, Stinker?” He posits worriedly after a moment, reaching over to pat her shoulder like maybe he can encourage an answer. 

Ellie gives a trembling sigh, shakes her head for a moment, and leans against his shoulder. 

“So nothing, huh?” 

“Yup.” She finally chimes, still as sullen and upset sounding as she looks as she keeps cradling Oreo and leaning against him. 

With a sigh all his own, he wraps an arm around her shoulder and pulls Eleven all the closer, letting her sit. 

“You know what time it is?” He hums, fumbling to lean and reach down for his sports bag, where his watch is tucked between the mess of he and Ellie’s clothes, in a roll of the extra socks he’d saved up so much for. As she warrants him no response outside a shrug, he squints down at the little clock face.

Three-twelve. The witching hour, fittingly. With a faint sigh, he drops his watch back in the sock bundle and reaches up to scrub his face. Slowly, he sits back upright and reaches to lightly shake her shoulder, bundle her close as Oreo curls up against her chest. 

“Bad dream?” He tries softly. 

“No.” 

Finally the admittance breaks from her, enough for him to turn and furrow his brow, because hell- what else could’ve happened at three in the morning with this group, outside from there being too much weed in the air or someone walking too loudly to take watch. 
They still don’t even trust him with that. 

With a clear note of confusion, Steve’s lips curl into a frown as he leans back on his hands and reaches to pick at his shoelaces. 

“No?” He parrots. 

Ellie merely shrugs, scooting back to lean against the wall as she gently fiddles with Oreo’s ears, earning paws happily resting on her sweater front to snuggle warmly. 

“Can I stay?” She starts instead, not glancing up from where she’s fiddling with Oreo’s little ears and cheeks. Her voice is tiny, tired and shaken as she tilts her head forward and hides it there, hides it like she does in his shoulder. 

This isn’t like Kali’s room. It’s not big and bright and colorful and central to the building, it doesn’t look or feel lived in, the bed is hardly big enough for him. 
But Steve’s slept on the floor before. He’ll do it again. 

“Yeah, totally. Ellie. No problem.” 

He shifts a bit then, reaching for a blanket, to go to the floor. but she shakes her head. She reaches to tug on his sleeve like she always does. 

“No. Stay here. Safe.” 

So he does. Back to back with Oreo bundled between Ellie and the wall, his little sister manages to fall asleep again. 
At least, he thinks so.

Steve does not. He watches the night getting darker and darker, like it always does before the morning, when the birds that bothered linger around this part of town when they sing in the morning. 
From here he can feel her back pressed against his, the way her breathing keeps, the reassurance that she’s there that he hasn’t had waking up in the car for weeks. He can hear Oreo’s soft purrs fade into sleep. The distant city lights paint ghosts of sunlight across the floor, faded yellows and oranges. 

He’s still awake when she shifts and whispers. 
“Are you awake?” 

With a bit of a shuffle, Steve turns his head back. “Yeah.” 

“Oh.”

She’s staring up at the ceiling with her thinking face. That’s what it has to be, he knows it, he knows it was too much of the almost angry look on her face. Her lips are set into a thin line, eyes glued straight ahead under the furrow of her brow. 

“...you good?”

“She showed me Papa.” 

Steve turns then for way his stomach drops , and he shifts to flop onto his back, to turn and look at her with a look totally appalled. “What?”

She turns her head with that furrow in her brow still, something that quickly turns up and falters as her eyes well up with tears again. 

“She showed me Papa. Because- I have to be brave. I did not like it.” 

No shit she wouldn’t like it, she hardly talked about Papa of her own accord when he asked. All he knew was that he was weird, definitely mean, wanted her to kill cats and people and liked to lock her in little rooms. And, of course, that he thought she’d killed the other kids like her. That he wanted her back. 

“What the fuck?”

“Stu.” She starts seriously. “I do not want to talk. You know.” 

“Yeah.” Steve murmurs. “Yeah, yeah, I know.” 

Everything feels hot, it’s like there’s anger simmering and rising in his throat and his chest as he lays there and stares up at the ceiling with her. Hands tucked over his heart, he suddenly feels like it’s too tired of this. He’s too tired of this, he’s tired of them, they can’t stay. 

“We should find your mom.” He offers quietly. “Before my car freezes.” 

“...okay.” Ellie nods, breaking into a bit of a sniffle. “Okay.” 

He waits until Ellie is asleep this time, for real, and unable to sleep himself he climbs out of bed at probably six in the morning. 

The simmer keeps. 

It keeps as he starts quietly down the stairs and the hall to the big room Kali keeps. 

She’s awake, already. He wonders if she knew, if she’d been waiting, but stopping there in the doorway she looks so much less like the woman who’d been planning a murder again. She looks like a woman who’s been stringing out their money for days and days, she looks like a woman who has to think too much. 
Sat by the window that looks out into what would’ve once been a factory floor, Kali’s shoulders are slumped forward, her knees tucked up to her chest. The purple dyed fringe of her hair is a bedhead at her back, fingers wrapped tight in her pants at her knees. 

Kali turns her head a touch as he steps into her doorway and linger, with it half held open at his side. She doesn’t face him, no, she speaks instead. 

“What do you want.”

As small as she looks at the moment, her voice is big. 

Steve tries to be bigger. 

“We need to talk.” 

It leaves him heavy. It leaves him in a way he doesn’t expect it to, heavy and deep from within his chest, but he doesn’t hold it there. He loses it into the room and lets Kali stew in it, for however long that’ll be. 
It’s a strained thing as he lingers there in the door, like deep down inside he knows he shouldn’t pass the threshold. And she waits, she doesn’t say a word yet, like she’s tempting him to try it. He doesn’t. He lingers. 

“What about?” 

He takes the chance to step in then, crossing his arms to lean in the doorway. He’s going to stay here at the door to leave if he needs to. 

“Ellie. You freaked her out. You brought up all this- you brought up Papa. Why the hell would you do that?”

“How do you know about him?” Kali snaps it, turning sharply to him. All of the sudden the anger she has whenever she talks about the bad men, what they did, all of it’s simmering in her once more the bigness to her voice rising tenfold despite the volume not rising at all. 

Staring, glowering even, Steve gives a huff. 
“She told me. She told me because it’s important. What else’d’you do to have her crying to me? Huh?”

Stepping forward, Steve gestures back to the door he came from. Kali stares. She glances for just a moment, and he swears he can see her face twitch from that stony anger to a look of surprise for a split second. But just as quickly, it’s shot straight back to near contempt. 

“She needs to be ready. When find him again-”

“When you find him!? ” Steve balks, straightening a touch. “When you fucking find him ? You’re planning on dragging her into that?”

Kali turns then, sliding from her spot to stalk right up to him, nose to nose almost as she balls her fists up, bringing a hand up to poke- practically shove at his chest. Steve gives a start, reaching to give her a slight shove away, recoiling back a step. 

“Yeah! Yeah fucking find him, what’s gonna happen if he finds her first. Yeah? You’re gonna get a fucking bullet in your head and she’s gonna be gone because she freezes up.” 

“You don’t- you don’t even know he’s gonna find us!” Steve retorts, bringing his hands up. “It doesn’t help that you’re trying to speed up the goddamn process! Of course she’s fucking scared, he’s a fucking creep!” 

She opens her mouth to say something before seeming to think back on it, instead scoffing and crossing her arms. 

“How are you going to keep her safe? Where the hell can you even go!?”

“Like I have been!” He protests. “We can go where we need to! At least I make sure she’s got food! And she’s not scared out of her mind and freaked out about- literally killing people! Killing people !”

“She needs this!” Kali retorts, finally breaking into a more pressured exclamation. She doesn’t yell- she seems far too aware of what yelling right now might do. “She’s hurting! And they’re all out there and they get to live just fine, and we have to suffer for it!” 

“What, so she does!? She’s gotta have nightmares!? She’s gotta cry, freak out!? What if all this is making her suffer, huh!? She’s gotta be scared about him just- being there!?”

“It’s not!-”

“Have you even bothered to ask!?” 

“You don’t know what it’s like!” 

“You don’t either!” 

Kali shuts her mouth as Steve steps back again, crossing his arms shortly. Sighing, he drags his hand over his mouth, as Kali runs a hand through her hair, turning about shortly. 

“She told you?” Kali asks hesitantly, turning away again for a moment. 

With a faint sigh, Steve turns back to face her with an ever incredulous look, arms still crossed tightly over his chest. 

“...yeah.”

Clearly still frustrated, Kali turns. She paces towards the bed and slumps there on the edge, and he soon realizes he’d never seen her without a coat or a smattering of makeup kept up- as much as it's clearly meant to look messy and intimidate. Her countenance has gone displeased, maybe even confused as she shakes her head and stares down at her socks. In a funny way, she almost gets a look like Eleven does, where her brow furrows and curls up, her lips press together. 

“What?” He nagged back. 

“You don’t have anything to do with any of this. You don’t- why are you here?” She murmurs, shaking her head. 

Steve doesn’t offer her a response for a moment. But, tiredly, he breaks into a shaken laugh. 
“Good question,” he starts, “Why do you let me stick around? You could’ve told Ellie not to bring me.”

“No,” she retorts in a murmur, “No. El wouldn’t stay, she needs to stay. It’s safer here.” 

“That’s not true.”

“It is! It is, because I know , okay!? I know what it’s like, and you don’t , you’re just- fuck!” 

“What!?” He questions back sharply, “I’m what, I’m not like your people!? I’m not crazy!?”

“They aren’t crazy!” She snaps, she seethes back up at him where he’s stood. “You dick, shut up!”

“Okay, whatever- still! I’m still- I don’t like it. I don’t like this, I don’t like you using her like a damn radar and dragging her out there for your shit.”

“It’s not just my shit.”

“The way you’re doing it is your shit. She’s just a kid!”

“We were all kids! We were there, do you know what some of these people have done!? They took our lives from us! They took her mother! They’ve taken any chance for normalcy!”

“So doing literally everything to keep them looking for you is a great idea?” He scoffs, arms still wrapped tight around himself as she stands to pace again, though blessedly she doesn’t lunge at him again. He continues, steady there in the door. 

“You’re right. Okay? I don’t get it, I don’t get your shit. But it’s still your fucking shit. You can do whatever you want about it, ‘cause honestly I hate them too, even if I don’t get it. Okay? But don’t go dragging my sister into it. Don’t make it hers.” 

Kali turns hard on her heel for that, standing stiff and still in the center of her space. Incredulous, she tilts her chin up at him. 

“ Your sister.” 

It escapes her in a breath, like it's edging a threat, like she’s appalled and all she’s got in her head is ‘how dare you?’, left unspoken regardless as Steve shifts. One foot sways weight to the other, and Steve keeps his eyes glued to her, arms wrapped tight around himself as he stares. He tilts his head, sets his jaw, and almost narrows his eyes. 

“Yeah. My sister.” 

“That’s bullshit.” She snaps. “You don’t know- you’ve been here for two damn months, and we grew together, we suffered together- you have nothing in this-!”

“I don’t!? I don’t, do I!?” Steve continues, taking another inch, a step, a foot. He drops his hands as he works his jaw, and god he can feel it, that anger is deep and rising in his throat. “You don’t know the shit we’ve seen! Okay? Literal fucking monsters , nightmare shit, we fought that. You don’t have that, you don’t have the people we know, you don’t know everything she’s been through, you don’t know either !” 

He finds himself gripping the doorframe, clinging to the wood like it can offer any semblance of comfort as she turns, swears, catches a yell in her own throat, kicking at the nearest thing she can find. She turns back to slump on the edge of her bed then, dropping her face into her hands with a shaky, teeth gritted sigh. 

“That doesn’t make sense. She didn’t say anything about that-”

“No?” Steve blanches, watching as Kali turns with a scowl so deep he swears it might become permanent. 

“No.” 

He works his jaw, glancing away for a moment. He wants to run his mouth and say so much, to tell her ‘no shit, of course Ellie didn’t say anything about it’, to tell her she’s being too harsh, to tell her she’s being an asshole all the same. 
He wants to tell her she’s a bitch for being right, that they don’t have anywhere to go, that they don’t know if they can really find Ellie’s mom, and if they do if they can stay. He wants to tell her that Axel is a total dick for bringing up things he knows nothing about, even if he knows deep down inside that he’ll go right back to being a damn ‘streetwalker’ if the need calls and there’s nothing else he can do. But he doesn’t. He watches as she rubs her hands over her face with a shudder, shaking her head in what might as well be confusion. 

Inwardly, he’s shocked she hasn’t crawled her way into his head just to scare him off. He can’t fathom why, not really, not unless she feels bad for sending Ellie running. 

Maybe she just doesn’t want to waste that energy on him. 

“What?” 

She’s still angry. Still as angry as he is, really, he can hear it in her voice. 

“The lab back there. They found some weird shit, monsters came out, people went missing. It’s half the reason we didn’t stay.” And as much as the last part is a lie- it’s a thought that’s come to him more than once. It’s a thought that has him keeping his bat in arm’s reach at night in the car, aching lonely for the lack of it here. 

“Why didn’t she tell me?”

He shrugs, taking a breath, battling down that simmer as he leans his head against the door. “Want me to run it back?”

She snaps, harsh from her seat at the edge of her bed. “No.”

“Then you know.” Steve mutters, straightening a touch. “She likes you. She thinks you’re cool, y’know? You’re her sister. She decided that. But you’re being a shit one.” 

“That’s rich, coming from you.” She retorts with a dry laugh, dragging her eyes up to look at him. “Cut the shit, Ponyboy.”

He shrugs. “At least I know it. As much as your friends here seem to like reminding me, couldn’t forget it if I wanted to.”

She falls quiet again. Bringing her hands up to rest under her chin, Kali frowns to herself. She doesn’t retort about who he is to Ellie. She doesn’t say she’s any better, as much as he expects it. Instead she pushes out a breath, deep and tempered from her nose. 

“She can’t keep doing this.” Steve finally offers. “She can’t- she’s just a kid, and she’s still figuring her own shit out. I’m gonna stick around and let her figure. And I don’t wanna have to repeat myself. So don’t make it her shit. And stay out of her goddamn head.”

“... I was just trying to help. I didn’t mean for it to go like that.” Kali finally admits, pushing out another shaky breath. 

Even though he can’t see her face, the sudden turn in her tone is enough. His shoulders slump, he shoves his hands in his pockets and steps back. “I’m trying to do that too.” 

Turning on his heel, Steve makes to leave, but he hesitates, flicking his head back towards the door over his shoulder. 

“If she wants help, she’ll ask. She’s not stupid. She knows how,” He begins, going still in the hall. “She doesn’t hate you. I don’t hate you- but still. Don’t count me out and don’t get in her way. She does need something, okay? But Jesus, let her figure out what she needs. You know better than I do that once she does it’ll be easier.” 

“And what do you need?” He can hear her voice clearer from where he’s stood, she’s turned to face him, but he doesn’t turn. “How do I know that none of this is for you either?”

Easily, perhaps shockingly easier than anything else, he shrugs. “Home. She’s home.” 

Chapter Text

The dial tone lingers in his ears even when it’s finished. 

It’s almost eleven o'clock, and he wonders where Nancy is. 

The Wheelers are probably holding a party. Or more likely, they’re at one. Everybody knows the Wheelers. For a frightful moment, he wonders if his parents would be there—but no, no. His father has work friends, and they’re probably in New York like always, because if he’s not there to talk to anyone, no one can find out if anything’s wrong. Any calls made to the secretary waiting on the end of his father’s work phone would never go through. 
But she’s probably at a party. Not a party kind of party, more like a neighborhood party where Holly’s probably already fallen asleep. Mike might’ve too, and he has an inkling of a feeling that the Byers are there. 
Nancy’s probably wearing her pink dress, or maybe she got a new one if she’d gone shopping with her mom. He wonders what it looks like. What color lipstick she chose tonight, if she left her hair down. She’s probably watching the New Year’s party from New York on the CBS channel with everyone else, eating devilled eggs and quiches and cake rolls and glazed carrots. 

Her number is like an instinct from his fingertips as the dial tone rings, and it sounds like heaven in his ears. 

No one answers the phone. Instead, he hears the crackle of the answering machine, Mr.Wheeler’s voice reminding him to leave his name, a message, and a return number.

He won’t be leaving the latter. 

After the beep, Steve shifts to lean against the mildewy glass wall of the payphone booth he’s stood in. 

A deep breath in, another out, and he’s fogging up the glass in the window next to him. 

“Hey Nance. It’s Steve. I was just calling to wish you a happy New Year. I know we haven’t talked for a while, thing’s’ve been so busy here- it’s good, though. Good busy. I’m still sorry I missed Christmas though. I hope Jonathan liked the camera- I wanna hear all about it when I get home, ‘kay?” Even with the smile he forces into his tone, the uncertainty in him can’t be quelled. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever go back to Hawkins. “I think it’s looking like we’re gonna stay here a little longer. Just for a week maybe, but- yeah. Yeah uh- miss you. I miss you, Nance. I’ll try to call you later so we can really talk, when I get time. I love you. Happy New Year. See you soon.”

He fumbles a touch to get the phone back on the hook to hang up and dial another number, one he hadn’t thought of in a while. As he does, the whole of it stays trapped there in the back of his head. 
It’s a little pathetic, how little he has to say. Then again, Steve hasn’t ever been to Italy, he’s never been on a trip with his parents, and he’s never really wanted to think about that kinda thing before. He’s never thought about vacations with his parents, hasn’t even wanted to, not since he was thirteen. 

He’s hardly been to Chicago since he was ten, anyway. 

“ This is Lorenzo’s. You got an order?”

The next number connects, this time to an unamused woman’s voice. There’s music playing in the background. He doesn’t recognize either, but he speaks up. 

“Hi- is Molly there? Or Tori?” He starts, tentative, switching the phone to his other ear. “They gave me this number, uhm- I’m Steve.”

“ Oh, yeah. Sorry babe, they’re both out. Can I take a message for ‘em?”

“Yeah uh… just let them both know that I’m okay. My sister and I. And thanks. I’m being safe now.”

“ ...that’s it?”

“...yeah.”

“ Well. That’s rather succinct. Anyway, Happy New Year kid. If you wanna call again they’re usually both around in the morning, I’ll let ‘em know.” 

“Okay, thank you.” 

The line clicks dead, and he sighs, reaching to dial the third and final number. This one he’d had to find, to comb through the phonebook. But he finds it. 

He doesn’t know if he wants the Xiaos to answer. He doesn’t know if they have an answering machine, either. 

He waits, kicking at the floor with his scuffed out snow boots, staring out at the streetlamp across the road as it dials, dials, dials- and doesn’t connect, the automatic operator instructing him to dial another number or hang up. 

A touch more belated than he expected, Steve drops the receiver back onto the hook. 

“Come on, Ponyboy. Don’t wanna go missing out on the fireworks,” Funshine chimes from outside, earning a faint smile from Steve as he steps out. 

Tonight is special. Tonight, they’re hiding behind crowds and the knowledge that every mission is done behind a mask, so they aren’t needed here. 

It’s New Years and Axel went to buy beer, and Christ Steve wants a beer so damn bad right now. But they have to wait until they get out to the Lake Michigan waterfront to drink anything, they have to wait until they get out to the edge of the old Navy Pier where everyone else who wants to see the fireworks will be watching. 
They have a long way to go if they wanna get there with time to spare. 

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Steve retorted with a playful roll of his eyes, something that makes Funshine snort as he waves Steve back to the rest of the group. There on the corner they linger, Ellie hidden among them as she listens with bright eyes to the conversation at hand. 

“-I say let her have a try.” Dottie grins, toothy and amused as Mick shakes her head and starts the lead across the street.

“That’s the worst idea. Ever. Like, ever!”

“It’s El’s decision.” Kali breaks in with a chide, stalking across the street as they all filter along. 

Steve picks up his pace a bit, eyes widening a touch. “What’s what?” 

“Beer!” Axel chimes, holding up the plastic bag of tinkling bottles. 

“Oh no- no, no way!”

“But I want to try it!” Ellie exclaims, turning to walk backwards and laugh as Steve waves his hands around. 

Axel snorts, throwing up a hand. “See, told you he’d hate it.” 

Funshine breaks into a laugh for that, shaking his head. “Hey, I’m not taking any sides here. Don’t look at me.”

“Aw, that’s no fun,” Dottie turns back with a faux pout. “Not like you’d have the deciding vote or anything. Only Mick and Stu think it’s a bad idea.”

“Haha.” Ellie grins, shoving her hands in her pockets with a little skip. “I win.”

“We’ll see about that-” Steve starts, lurching forward to ruffle her hair as she yelps and ducks away, reaching up to straighten it- it’d started to curl much more now as it got longer. “Looks like Mick n’ me are the only ones with common sense!”

Mick turns back sarcastically at that, tilting her head over her shoulder. “That’s a lot of confidence.”

“Oooh-” Funshine hisses around his grin. “That’s gotta burn.” 

“Wow.” Steve huffs just as sarcastically back. 

Moving into the city, there’s so much more- more people, all in their nice coats and hats and winter gear, families and traffic all headed towards the waterfront. 

Before now, Steve hadn’t realized how much walking alone on the street made him uneasy. It’s shocking how often he ended up alone out there, in the dark, how small he feels out there alone. He’s never going to articulate that to anyone, he knows, but the thought doesn’t leave him. It stays as they march through the streets and meld into the crowds, it stays as he realizes how normal he feels walking with everyone. 
If anyone recognizes him, he can’t tell- and he doesn’t care. 

Not now. 

It’s almost midnight by the time they have to shove their way closer to the water- the pier is full, so they end up by the railings around the concrete water barriers. Finally, Axel hands out the beer bottles to the greedy pack of them. Steve cracks his open by the top against the railing, not minding the crowds around them as he tilts his head back and drinks. 

It’s shit beer. He loves it. 

In the minutes before New Year, Ellie awkwardly takes Funshine’s beer and sips it, only to gag as Kali breaks into warm hearted laughter. Dottie props herself up on the railing, and Kali climbs up all the same, as Axel and Mick lock arms and knock back their drinks. 
As the clamor rises, and around them folks count down- ten minutes, five minutes- Ellie climbs up on his shoulders. Beer held close in hand, Steve breaks into a snort as she wraps her arms around his chin, knees hooked in his arms as he stares up. 

“It’s gonna be loud.” Steve warns. 

Ellie’s still scrunching her face and rolling her tongue to get the taste of beer off, but she shrugs. 

“Okay.”

“And bright.”

Ellie breaks into a soft sigh, something edging dramatic as she grabs his cheeks and leans forward a bit. “I knoooow -”

“ Okayyyy -” Steve snorts, patting her knees. “Got any big plans for next year, stinker?”

“Find mama.” She says without hesitance, she says it with hope. 

With reverence . 

“Me too.” 

Steve’s smile pulls bright across his face as he nods, turning back to stare out at the water. Around them, he can hear the clamor and chatter of people, more than she’s ever seen, more than he’s ever seen. People her age, his age, older and younger, and they don’t for a second care who Ellie and him are, who any of the rest of them are. Right now it’s only them in the world here waiting for the fireworks. 

They come. 

As come at the end of a countdown Ellie starts yelling as she catches on, Dottie screaming it out with a vigor he’s never seen in her before. 

They come bright and beautiful, and even if Ellie flinches and curls over him for the first few moments, she leans back to stare. In fact, she leans back so much Mick has to reach up and prop her up again, lest Steve and her go toppling back. 
She’s laughing. 
Ellie’s laughing like he’s never heard her before. 

He wishes Nancy could see this. 

He wishes he could kiss her. 

The cheers arise, excitement in ‘Happy New Year’, as Kali turns around on the railing and pulls him close by the arm, loops their arms together and leans just a touch for her drink. 

This, as well, is the first time he’s seen Kali smile. 
Really, really smile. 

A tattooed arm is interlocked with his, Ellie is on his shoulders, the jovial laughter around them is breaking into familiar words. 

“Should all acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind-” He’s vaguely aware of the harmony of the crowd, nonsensical as it is, as it comes together and sends a giddy chill down his spine. Axel is laughing. Funshine is singing. Mick’s stoic composure is cracking as she wraps her arms around their shoulders. 

Arms interlocked, Kali raises her beer bottle with a cheshire grin, ankles locked in the railing supports to keep from falling. 

“To sisters.” She chimes- not a yell, he’s not even sure Ellie can hear it. “And eighty four- however the hell that’ll go.”

“To sisters and eighty four.” Steve agrees, and they tilt their heads back to drink. 

Ellie pats his shoulders when she notices, seemingly caught up in looking around at everything and everyone else. Her laughter is still there, bright and bubbling in his ear as the booming echo of the fireworks over Lake Michigan. 

They’re nothing like Christmas lights. 

For three hours on January 1st, 1984, Steve forgets that he’s afraid of anything. 

“-I just need a little help understanding, sweetie. Okay?” 

Her name is Becky. She’s the woman’s sister- Terry, Terry Ives, Ellie’s mom. Steve can hear them from where he’s sitting on the front porch with a cigarette Becky had offered him. The door to this house is old, thin, painted green and yellow. One glance over his shoulder and he can see Ellie sitting there at the table, Becky across from her. 

He owes them the solace of at least thinking they had this to themselves, but he doesn’t trust the woman for a moment. 

He doesn’t trust her and he hates standing outside by himself, like he expects a cop car to pull up and shoot. 

He’d never been shot at before last night. 

It’s still burning at the back of his mind, a mix of relief and the still present shake in his fingers. They’d already been preparing to leave, Ellie and him- he’d taken his sports bag back to the car, leaving just the few things of theirs, the things given to them, there when the cops came. 
It’d been a whole sting, they’d been looking for the Prasad gang after the near murder of the guy Ellie couldn’t kill, and finally they’d been spotted and followed back and jumped a few days after the New Year. 

He remembers Oreo tucked in his jacket, hand over his little head to keep him from hissing or meowing as Kali kept her arms out to encourage them still. 
Steve still can’t believe that those cops had just walked right by them, between them, nearly run into Mick and Axel like they weren’t there. Kali made it look like they weren’t there. And they’d run out to the van, where he reached to cling to Ellie as the first bullets hit the far side of the van. 
He’d hesitated getting in. 
So Ellie didn’t. She just looked at him, eyes screaming ‘Mama’. No look, no plea Kali could muster was enough to keep him from taking Ellie’s hand and running.

They’d run all the way back to his car and sat in it for almost two hours under the tarp. And then they looked for her Mama, with the radio playing static and a snowcap pulled over her eyes as he drove. 

“Can you tell me where you came from?” Becky tries again, “Where’ve you been all this time? Has that boy been taking care of you?”

He doesn’t hear Ellie’s reply, and instead turns his attention back towards the cigarette between his shaking fingertips.
It would’ve been rude to smoke inside,anyway. 

“A policeman and a woman came looking for you last year. Did they find you?”

“-She won’t get better,” Ellie murmurs. “Will she?”

“They don’t think so, no. But she’s not in any pain. She’s just stuck, they think. Like in a dream. A long dream.”

“A good dream?”

“I hope so.”

“Is it the same dream?”

“We don’t know. Sometimes she says some different words but… usually, it's those.” 

He can hear Ellie tearing up a bit, the familiar cadence of her shaking breaths clear even through the thin door. 
Steve understands. 
They’d expected to show up and find a woman there, not a shell. Terry Ives had been sitting in that rocking chair for almost a decade now, from what he could gather, dressed in remnants of the 70s glamor reflected in the file’s photos of her. Her face has gone gaunt in those years, hands wrapped around the armrests of the chair, smile lines and crows feet gone droopy across a pale face and graying blonde hair. Over and over again, she whispers the same string of nonsense- Breathe. Sunflower. Rainbow. Three to the right, four to the left. Four-fifty. All of those words are caught in a breathless listlessness as empty eyes stare ahead at the television, 
She hadn’t known who Ellie’s father was- if he was even still out there. Becky doesn’t either.

“She always believed that you were out there. She always believed that you’d come home one day.”

“Home?”

“Yeah, home.” 

The cigarette between his lips burns low, and he finds himself flicking the ash out into the snow before dropping it and grinding it down on the stone path up to the house. Oreo is inside with Ellie, probably getting the heck petted out of him considering the conversation at hand, but he hasn’t heard any meows of complaint yet. Maybe the little guy has a feeling that there’s something important going on and miraculously developed some manners. 

It’s really strange to think that Ellie’s got a mom. Sure, they’ve spent hours, literal hours looking at every single picture of Terry Ives that folder holds, and nothing could erase the dismay, the dread that flooded the air when Ellie first saw her. Quiet, lifeless there in that rocking chair, a mere shadow of the woman Ellie dreamed up. 
It aches him somehow more than the fear that she would’ve been like his own mom. Snide, unimpressed and offended by her very presence- not like Joyce Byers, not like Missus Xiao, not full of an unspoken affection for their beloved children. 

No, Terry Ives can’t even speak her love, if she had any. She can’t even turn Ellie away. 

Steve aches for her. 

This place could’ve been a home for her. 

The front of the house is modest. They’d almost passed it by, their only lead being the house number painted on the mailbox, tilted at just the right angle that a joy rider could smack it with their truck and send it flying. An old white Chevrolet is parked in the driveway, clearly well used, tire tracks leading out to the plowed road. The snow itself is piled atop dead flowerbeds and clinging to the one remnant of Christmas decor left on the house- white lights, currently off, strung across the very front porch he stands on.  

Ellie had gone to the door first, though he’d hung back. Becky hadn’t wanted to talk to them, she’d thought they were Mormons or girl scouts or something , at least until Ellie made the door open with her abilities. Her brain. Her powers. Whatever it is she can do, he’s still not entirely sure what to call it. 

It makes him think of ‘the Force’.

It’s still a little unnerving to see the hunch in her shoulders and the blood in her nose whenever she makes things happen like that. 

A soft chirp of a meow raises from inside as the chairs move, the squeak of them across the floor prompting him to glance back as Ellie appears behind the window and the screen, pulling the door open. Her eyes are puffy, lips pursed, Oreo held in one arm as she sighs softly. 
“Becky has something important. I need you here.” 

“Yeah bud.” Steve agrees, glancing inside to where Becky stands in the hall. She seems nervous, watching them both with her fingers drifting over her mouth, though she turns away when she notices him looking up. Shuffling inside, Steve finds his hand resting worriedly on Ellie’s shoulder as she makes her way to the hall, following after Becky up the narrow stairwell covered in paintings and into the upstairs hall. 

It’s dark, wallpapered, scattered with boxes of records, little lamp fixtures lining the wall as they turn into a quiet, sunlit part of the hall. 

Ellie’s shoulders speak of anxiety. An uncertainty, a fear that whatever is behind the door Becky approaches will be a trap. 

Steve squeezes her hand, turns and offers her a smile despite it. He won’t let her fall into any traps. 

Becky Ives pushes the door open like she’s opening it into another dimension, and in some ways, it feels like that. Ellie’s grip on his hand doesn’t falter. It tightens, as she slowly steps after Becky into the room. 

It’s a big room. The walls are pink, lit orange by a warm on a shelf across the room. It’s in stark contrast to the world outside, cold, snowy, white, blank. In here, the room looks like a time capsule, a testament to unspeakable love. It isn’t even meant for him, but Steve finds himself with his feet glued to the doorway with how much it just feels . It feels like home like the warehouse did, like the Xiao's apartment did on Christmas, like his house when it was just him and Ellie. 
It feels like somebody was meant to live in it . 

Yellow curtains line the windows, the same color as a sunflower clock on the wall. There’s a big chair covered in blankets to the left, all knitted and well loved, a lime green dollhouse that looked like it once belonged to somebody else. Pictures of the Velveteen Rabbit hang on the wall- he remembers that book from middle school, mostly because he hated the idea of falling off a boat and drowning, and of never going home. He can’t remember much else of it. 

El steps forward. She lets go of his hand, slowly, carefully, like she’s stepping to the edge of the precipice in the Quarry on a dare, except right now she’s walking straight for the centerpiece of the room. A dark brown crib, untouched, a little dusty, perched under the window as if waiting to greet her with open arms, to welcome her home. 

She doesn’t say a word as she approaches. Oreo hops down to follow after her on half wobbly kitten feet, but Steve can’t move. He can’t move , even as Becky follows her, even as Ellie picks up a stiff old stuffed bear from the yellow and white quilt pressed along the bottom just so. 
Fingertips run across the fur of that bear with reverence, and she whispers, “Pretty.” 
It almost sounds like it hurts Ellie to say, even as Becky speaks up.

“I can get you a real bed, and you can stay here, with me if you want. How’s that sound?”

Steve doesn’t know why he doesn’t have words. Why he doesn’t have encouragement for her in this moment as he stands trapped in the darkness of that hallway. 

Ellie nods. 

Ellie has a home. 
She needs to stay. 
She wouldn’t need to be around him anymore- wouldn’t want to , and for some reason the idea makes his chest tighten just a little bit as he stares, big eyed at how easy it looks for Eleven to stand in that room, how much she looks like Becky, how much she looked like Terry Ives . 

Steve doesn’t understand why the realization makes him ache so much, because hell- everyone left. Everyone did, the nannies, his parents, his grandpa, Tommy Hagan, the gang. They left, or they didn’t need him around them anymore. Ellie doesn’t need him around anymore. 
His ears feel like they’re full of cotton balls when Becky speaks again. 

“I wanna help you, but to really do that, I need you to talk to me, okay? Doesn’t have to be now, doesn’t have to be today, but when you’re ready. ‘Kay?”

“Okay,” She turns, setting the bear down as Oreo goes scampering out into the hall. Her gaze follows after him until it perks up to Steve, and she continues again quietly. “My brother too?” 

All that tension is suddenly gone. It’s like somehow she pried the cotton balls out of his ears without even putting in effort, turning with that look she got- when her brow softened with worry and her lips pressed into a thin line, and even standing there at the crib he swears she’s reaching out her hand. 

But this isn’t about him, it’s about her, it’s her home-

Becky turns. The woman looks almost like Nancy does when she’s anxious, except there’s a permanent wrinkle in her brow. She looks up at everything even though she’s the only adult in the room, and her love comes lain on eggshells. She looks at Steve, something critical, something lost and confused as Steve swallows, before slowly and reluctantly nodding. 

“Yes, your brother too.” 

Becky knows damn well that they aren’t really brother and sister. She and him most certainly didn’t come from the same place, not both from the woman in the rocking chair in the living room. 
But Ellie looks at him like they did. Like they really have the same chin, she said, the same shoulders, the same eyes, the same half dimples when they smiled.

Steve smiles. Ellie smiles back, her hands smoothing across the old dusty wood of the crib. 

Everything’s fine until the light flickers. Ellie nearly jumps out of her skin as Steve does, and he turns with a bit of a gasp to lean against the doorframe. 

“Jesus-” He breathes, as Oreo turns back with a meow of admonishment, vaguely annoyed, before scampering off. Ellie was by his side in seconds, trailing out of the room quickly. As much as his heart near instantaneously leaps into his throat, Ellie seems a little less frightened. More curious, actually. 
Becky follows after with an audible sigh. 

“Oh yeah, that happens sometimes. Old house, bad wiring. If you ask my crazy Aunt Shirley, it’s haunted.” 

As much as she doesn’t seem to care, as much as Steve feels frightened, Ellie follows. Oreo goes scampering down the hall with a loud and drawn out meow as the light in the corner of the hall flickers.

“Ellie.” Steve starts, and he just knows how worried he sounds by the sideways look Becky gives him. The chagrin in her falters just a moment as Ellie purposefully starts down the stairs past another one of those wall lamps, which flickers. He swears he can hear the thrum of electricity in it as they get closer, and Steve picks up his pace a bit as Oreo flounces down the steps alongside Ellie. 

She rounds into the kitchen then quickly, peering around between the yellow walls of it as Oreo’s little paws move across the linoleum towards the living room. Steve is steps behind, poking his head in, and god he aches for his bat. His heart is in his throat, because this is what happened when that thing came back in the Byers’ house, this flickering and thrumming in his ears like the twinkling of Christmas lights spells ‘bad news’ no matter what. 

He jumps when the light on the opposite counter flickers, reaching out as Eleven races over. 

“Ellie.” He starts again. “Ellie, is this bad?” 

Trailing after them, Becky speaks up. “Sweetie, really. It’s just the wiring.”

She’s focused. She’s staring at that lamp like she wants to explode it with her mind or demand answers of it, like if she thinks heard enough and slips into her inside place she could hear it speak. 

“No.” Ellie finally announces in a murmur. 

He can’t tell who she’s answering, but he finds himself turning to Becky again. She’s glancing back at him, maybe silently asking for an answer, but he merely shrugs because- well, he’s scared, and he doesn’t really have any, and he can feel his hand flexing in his coat sleeve like it’s second nature. 

Eleven turns. It’s a short ‘about face’ like when they learned to square dance in P.E., and she stares down the short hall into the living room. 
The light in there flickers. 
Without hardly a second glance, Ellie moves into the room her mother sits in with a purpose. Steve doesn’t let her go alone. He doesn’t care how long it takes Becky to drift after them like she’s living out a horror movie, he goes, he follows as she stops to kneel at the shell that was her mother’s side. 

Heavily, worriedly, she speaks, raising her hand up to Terry’s face. “It’s Mama,” she practically whispers it as her fingers gently pull away a familiar splotch of blood from the woman’s nose- fresh and deep and red like when Ellie used her powers. Oreo is sat, staring up at the woman with perked ears.

“Holy shit-”

“I- I don’t understand.” Becky starts from the doorway, her shoulders raised, she’s still walking on eggshells, everything is on eggshells. 

“She knows I’m here.” Ellie starts, almost wistfully. The television audio jumps, the channels flicker, and Steve reaches out to pull Oreo away like maybe he half expects a monster to leap from Terry’s mouth. He watches with a stark unease as the television switches wildly between commercials to static. “She wants to talk.”

Becky gives a start then, shifting to and fro in the kitchen doorway. 
“What does… that mean?” She starts nervously, and Steve finally shakes himself out of the weird haze that was following Ellie while she did her weird superpowers thing. 

“Uh… okay so- blindfold, we need a blindfold.”

“What?” Becky starts, turning to him in an only more confused manner as Steve turns back, setting Oreo down again. 

“I know it sounds weird, but it’s so she can like, get in her head. Static’s already handled.”

“It is to focus.” Ellie agrees heavily, as Steve starts making his way over to the kitchen. 

Hell, if Ellie thinks she can talk to her mom in her not-headspace, it’s worth a shot. He’d helped with it before. She’d found this place by keeping her winter hat pulled low over her eyes with the car radio static on blast and Oreo spazzing out in the back seat. He’d helped cut and fold bandanas and made sure the radio static was right the first few times at the Prasad lair, so he knows exactly what to do to help Ellie now. 

“Do you have a dish towel or something?” He offers, as Becky scoots aside to let him pass. “Maybe something you don’t like? And scissors.” 

Seeming bewildered, but almost wanting to believe all this, Becky jumps back into actually doing something as she makes her way straight to the kitchen drawer with the towels, nodding. 

“Yes, here-” She fumbles, digging through the mess to dump a handful of very well loved dish towels onto the counter, turning then for the scissors. “You seem to know what you’re doing.”

“Ellie knows it better than me. I just help. I’ve got the easy part,” Steve admits with a faint chuckle. 

Becky stands back, passing the scissors over as he picks up the thickest towel. “I guess so. You two have it down.” She murmurs, peering over her shoulder out into the room where Eleven is sitting on the floor, petting Oreo, sitting and looking up at her mother. Her mother is as still and quiet as ever, caught in the near frantic whisper of looping words. 

Breathe. Sunflower. Rainbow. Three to the right, four to the left. Four-fifty.  

“So… you’re her aunt I guess, huh?” He asks, struggling a bit to cut the fabric right and hold it still between his outstretched palm. “She was really nervous coming here.”

Becky’s stiff and fidgety nature doesn’t seem to falter for an instant. She’s wearing a mixed expression, like she’s torn between doubt and shock and unease. Like she doesn’t believe this. Like she feels she’s caught in a dream. 

Steve wants to tell her he feels the same, but he doesn’t. 

“Your cat’s pretty cute.” Becky continues softly. 

“Yeah. That’s Oreo. He’s a little weirdo, he’s lucky he’s cute,” Steve finds himself musing, at least trying to keep it lighthearted to quell Becky’s worries. 

She offers a faint smile, even around the worry on her face. “Yeah,” she hums, glancing back at him now with an almost scrupulous- if not quite intimidating look. “So. I know Terry didn’t have a son of her own. It’s… nice to know she’s still got family, though. How long’ve you uhm… been taking care of her?” 

Steve shrugs as he pulls the scissors through the end of the towel before groaning as the blade goes way too far in the wrong direction, making the thing too short. Flipping the towel again, he starts once more. 

“Long enough. We were both alone, so- it worked out. She’s a pretty great little sister.” 

Becky breaks into a soft laugh, almost disbelieving still, but she nods. “Yeah! Yeah, it’s…. Yeah. You can stay, you know. If you want. It’s not exactly comfortable for four, I’m sure. But you clearly mean a lot to her. And- you both look like you need somewhere to call home… How old are you?” 

Steve falters again for just a moment. Just enough to glance up at her, and he’s sure, he’s positive she can see just how much that sentiment means by how her shoulders sag. Becky works up a faint smile then, nodding and glancing back out for a moment. 

“Seventeen.” Steve offers with a note of pride. He is- it’s weird, he’d hardly thought about that either with everything going on. He’s seventeen, has been since November, and he’s grown up and they’re here in Bloomington, Indiana and things seem fine for once. 

Things feel fine. Becky’s nice, she’s not rushing to call anybody or tell anybody, nobody’s being shot at or hungry, it’s not cold in here. And, though Ellie’s mom isn’t really here anymore, she’s still in the house, and that’s a comfort. 

“Wow,” Becky murmurs, glancing up as he holds out the cut up towel, folds it, and offers her another breathy little smile. 

“Let’s see how this goes, huh?” 

“Yeah.” 

Shuffling back into the living room, Ellie glances up, shoulders straightening her out of whatever thought she’d been caught in. Steve scoops a bigger pillow up off the couch, plopping it on the floor between the TV and the rocking chair. Ellie drags it over and clambers atop it, reaching to take up the improvised blindfold, shooting Steve an almost nervous smile as he nods. 

“It’s okay if I sit here right,” Becky speaks up, skirting around to settle on her other side, almost stumbling to make sure she’s a good distance away and not blocking the TV. 

“Yes.”

“You got this, Ellie.” Steve offers, watching as she takes a great big breath to ground herself. 

That seems to be all the encouragement she needs as Oreo crawls off her lap, and she pulls the improvised blindfold around her head, shuffling to rest her hands on her knees. 

Becky, ever anxious, continues, wringing her fingers. “And we won’t mess it up?” 

“Nope.” El huffs, if a little shortly. 

“...if you talk to Terry can you tell her- I love her very much, and that I’m sorry I didn’t believe-”

“Stop talking.”

“Sorry.”

Steve can’t help but break into a bit of a snort, quickly stifling it behind his hand for how well meaning what she asks is. Of course she’d want to talk to her sister, especially after so long. Reaching over to give a light and reassuring pat to Becky’s shoulder, he offers her a knowing smile.
“Don’t worry, she’s got it.” He whispers, as Oreo pads over and stretches in front of them, stumpy tail flicking back and forth. 

It’s clear the lady wants to say more, so much more, but she keeps her lips pursed as Ellie stills. With an understanding nod, Becky offers him a worried look nonetheless, and he turns back towards where Eleven is sitting on the cushions. 

Shoulders hunched forward, hands on her knees, Ellie looks like a monk from his freshman year history book. It doesn’t help that her hair is still short, and if he squints she still looks like her head is shaved. Her head is ducked just a bit forward, and it’s soon after she stills that her nose starts bleeding. 

Becky gives a start almost like she wants to reach forward and wipe it away, but Steve reaches to stop her. Later. There are plenty of tissues and paper towels to give her when this all is finished, though by the looks of it Terry will need some too. She’s still slumped there, hands limp on the chair handles, head tilted back, nose welling up almost simultaneously with Eleven’s. She’s still murmuring, repeating herself, the same words in a loop in that near frantic whisper. 

Ellie is still. 

She’s almost frozen until her breathing picks up, a little quick and shaken. Steve almost reaches out until it quiets again, not so severe, her head giving the faintest twitch one way. 

Breathe. Sunflower. Three to the right, four to the left. Rainbow. Four fifty.  

Ellie’s breathing picks up again. Her hands tighten on her knees as she leans back, she almost sounds like she’s panicking, until suddenly she gasps and pries the bandana back, scooting sharply away off the cushion, away from her mom, eyes big and wild. Steve jumps where he’s sitting, almost losing his own breath for a moment. It spooks Oreo, who goes scampering into the hall and away as Becky leans forward to wrap her arms around her. 

“You-you’re okay. You’re okay.”

It’s a quiet thing, entirely unspoken as Ellie curls up in Becky’s arms, letting the woman- her aunt, rock her and calm her as Steve gathers up the bandana and cushion to put them away. 

Becky knows more than she let on. 

Considering the thick stack of folders of missing children Terry had thought were like El. There are notes in there, in loopy fancy cursive, pictures of kids scattered between newspaper clippings and notes. Those pictures are of little kids, really little ones, babies and toddlers and up to ten year olds. Never older, though. 

Tucked in the comfy overstuffed chair in the corner of the room, Ellie is filtering through them one by one, taking stock of who she might recognize, who seems to fit in the profile of other kids. For her, it’s better than talking about whatever it is she saw. 

It’s honestly a little disconcerting to think about. There’s Ellie, of course. Kali. And… Ellie’s brothers and sisters from wherever Papa kept them. The ones that had died. 
As Steve unfolds the cot that had been tucked in the corner of Ellie’s would have been bedroom. It’s already getting dark outside, and Steve can smell simmering tomatoes on the stove. Becky’s making them dinner. Pasta, fresh homemade pasta, and he’s starving for it at the thought alone. The last time he’d had pasta was when he’d made it himself the day before Thanksgiving. 

“Where’d Oreo go?” He asks after a moment, letting the cot fall open as Ellie picks her head up. Peering around, she puts the papers together again and wraps them up in her folder with a shrug. It’s almost identical to the one about her mom. She hops up, peering under the crib as Steve flattens out the little cot mattress. She leans, squinting down in the dark under there before looking around at the shelves and letting out a huff. 

“I dunno.” 

“Hopefully he’s eating mice.” Steve teases with a soft smile, as she makes a face and leans out into the hall. She doesn’t call out, just stares, and Steve stands to stretch and sigh, reaching out to nudge her shoulder. 

“Hey. I gotta ask Becky for more blankets anyway. And I bet he ran downstairs. Wanna come with me?”

With an easy smile, Ellie glances back at him and nods. “Okay.”

Down the hall she patters, folder in hand, and Steve follows. Knowing the flickering lights had been Terry makes it marginally less terrifying to walk down the hall, but he still finds himself glancing up at the wall fixtures as they pass, moving down into the yellow kitchen. He breaks into a smile as he spots Oreo there in the hallway, licking himself, rolling his eyes. 

“Geez dude, you’re such a little weirdo.” He remarks, plucking the cat up to bundle in his arms. As he turns, he spots Ellie standing there in the kitchen, sort of just staring. Staring out the open door.

Steve doesn’t like that. It has the hair on the back of his neck standing on end as he steps in after her, freezing in the doorway as he catches a voice. 

“Yeah- yeah I just didn’t know who else to call. He gave me this number and he came here looking for her- I thought maybe you could help me. Yeah uh- Jim Hopper. He came here with some woman named Joyce Byers?” 

Becky is standing out on the porch, her house phone held close in hand, the cord pulled out in curly cues and tangled in her fingers. Cold air seeps in, but she’s wrapped up in her brown winter coat, and her shoulders are raised like she’s huddling around the phone, like she’s talking on eggshells. She doesn’t notice them, she’s too busy on the phone talking to- who knows. 

Who knows who she’s talking to. 

“Well, that’s a little hard to explain. Uhm- there’s another kid here too, they look like they went through the wringer, and I think he’s in trouble too. I just- I didn’t know who to call-”

Steve’s heart sinks as he glances down at Ellie. They can’t stay here. Not like this, not if someone comes looking for them, not if Becky can’t be trusted. It’s almost as if Eleven’s thinking the same thing as she reaches back, grabs his hand, and peers up with a most somber wide eyed look. 

He can hear the water behind him on the stove starting to boil too high.

It aches. 

It aches like he’s just remembering it’s gone. 

Without a word, he steps back, Oreo huddled in his arm and hand wrapped in Ellie’s. She spares one glance to Terry Ives as they start for the door, and he winces as it creaks open. Their footsteps are too loud on the front porch as they go. 

He starts to run. 

Ellie almost trips, a shaken sound breaking from her as she fights to keep up, and he only falters enough to make sure she can keep pace, glancing back to the house. The pale white Christmas lights that had been left up are glimmering, the snow crunches beneath their feet, and the warm lights of the house flood the yard around them. Through the front window, Steve can see Terry Ives in her rocking chair, lips still moving. 

They run down the driveway and towards his car, and Steve has to keep himself from stopping as Becky’s voice echoes out into the dark night. 

“Jane!” She cries, all the way back at the house. “Jane! Steve!” 

He keeps them walking until they make it to the familiar figure of his car. He feels like a robot as he reaches to unlock it, getting the door open, the lock flipped up as Ellie clambers inside with a stoic expression and trembling bottom lip. He doesn’t hesitate to start the car, at least to bring some warmth back to them both, shivering. Oreo manages to squirm from Steve’s grip and clamber into the back with a loud and long lived meow. 

“Shit.” Steve breathes, and he feels so… helpless, all of a sudden. 

“Yeah,” Ellie croaks with a withering sob. “Shit.”

Ellie sucks in one shaky breath after another beside him. It makes his shoulders shiver, makes that sinking feeling in his chest sink even deeper as he starts the car and heads straight for the road towards the highway. 

Kali and the gang are… gone, somewhere. He can’t exactly go back to the Xiao’s now. Or Chicago, really, without risk of being recognized by police. And it isn’t safe here anymore, not like they’d thought. 
He isn’t quite sure he has enough money to get them all the way to Canada. 

Without any idea of where else to go, Steve wipes his face on his sleeve and turns the car for Hawkins. 

Chapter Text

Steve’s been here for two hours already, hiding out in the locker room waiting for his hair to dry out before going out to the hall to loiter by his locker. Despite his apprehension about coming, there’s comfort in the way he’s still able to jiggle the locker room handle to get it unlocked, the way that the pinboard in the front hall is decorated with new posters and advertisements, clubs and events and a ‘Battle of the Bands’. 
It’s a comfort that despite everything, the hallways are bright, the color of his locker hasn’t changed, and it still had the weird dent on the grates of it, and when he opens it, it holds the exact same mess he’d left behind. 

He does his best to be casual. So totally and entirely casual as he watches all the teachers also totally ignoring him as they head to their classrooms. And the janitor. Not so much his coach, but that was an evasive conversation he’d sweated himself through while stuffing his gym locker with stuff from his bag- clothes, mostly. He takes his time cleaning out his locker too, making sure it looks normal despite him reappearing after a week. 

Steve is very aware of how self conscious he feels for how people could be thinking of him. 

He’s not sure what he should’ve expected as people started trickling and then flooding in. The people who came earliest are the ones who take the bus, and the few nerdy kids who wanted to get into the library and others who grew up on the farms outside town. It feels strange, sort of sitting there at his locker and watching, very much alone where he stands. 

Steve’s half aware that his coat looks like shit- the sleeves a little frayed here and there from wear, from being shrugged off and pulled on time and time again- so he turns to stow it in his locker, and focuses on reorganizing the mess that was his locker before he’d ‘gone on vacation’. 

But all those thoughts are chased away as he jumps when he hears footsteps, loud and fast starting for him. His head snaps up to meet it, shoulders tense, yet in an instant that tension fades as his shoulders slump and he smiles. 

Nancy Wheeler is beelining for him like he’s a fish in a barrel, except he’s elbows deep inside his locker emptying out the shitstorm he’d left for himself in the fall. All empty notebooks and gym socks and non assignments. 

“Steve!” 

God he could’ve sworn she was yelling it by how fast she moved, rushing over in a hurried hush to grab him by the shoulders. She almost shakes him, for all the gall she has, she damn near could’ve throttled him, but he reaches up to grab her shoulders back and work up a smile. 

“Hey!-”

“ Steve , where the hell have you been!?” Nancy exclaims, and she smacks him with her notebook on the shoulder- again and again between her words. 

He’d never been happier to have anyone smacking him, honest to god, and he can’t help but break into laughter. 

“What are you laughing at!?”

“I’m not-! Not at you, no, I’m just like- I’m happy to see you Nance.” 

Nancy pauses. Still holding his shoulders, she leans back and looks at him like she’s deeply analyzing something out of her textbook, whatever one she’s going to be focused on for the weekend. Nevertheless, he takes the opportunity to look back at her just the same. 
She hasn’t changed. Not at all save for the deep furrow in her brow. The little freckles across her nose are all the same, the deep flush her nose and cheeks get with the winter cold is the same, and her long hair is loose and wavy across her shoulders, across the purple and red sweater she likes, with that black skirt he likes. She’s still got her winter coat on, she must’ve just walked in- but her eyes are big, her lips are pursed and no, nope, he can’t let her dissect every single thought and feeling she has about him literally being gone for a month without calling or writing or… anything. 

So instead of letting that way too big brain of hers work any longer, Steve scoops her right off her feet with a bright grin. Nancy yelps, clinging to his shoulders as they spin, and Steve doesn’t care for a second about getting in anyone’s way. 

He had to figure out what to tell her that she, Nancy of all people, brilliant beautiful Nancy, would believe. 

“Sorry! Sorry- y’know, farms and everything, they don’t exactly have phones out there yet- and my uncle’s old fashioned as shit.” 

He just has to say enough for her to get her to quit asking questions. That was all. He’s good at lies by omission. 
Or he could distract her. He’s pretty damn good at that. 

So, as she opens her mouth to ask whatever else has come to mind, he drops her back down onto her feet and kisses her. It became a little bit more of a selfish thing than he’d intended, but Nancy seems to melt just as much as he wants to. He lets the kiss linger. He craves it, he misses it, leaning in to carry the upwards turn of his lips against hers. It’s sweet, it’s breathy, and Nancy cuts it short with a faint squeeze of his shoulders as she leans back and stares up at him. 

As much as her expression is soft, that scrupulous look in her eye keeps as she looks up at him, still squeezing his shoulders between her hands. All the same, he reaches up to cup her face between his hands just for the sake of holding her close, as she shakes her head softly. 

“We have to talk. You and me. And not here. Okay? Later when we get a minute between just us.”
Nancy’s still squeezing her shoulders as she says it, staring up at Steve in a manner quite familiar. She’s practically staring up through her eyelashes, head ducked down and gaze turned up, lips curled into an almost frown as she’s caught in her thoughts. She thinks too much. She’s too clever. 

“...oh, sure.” Steve finds himself swallowing, giving her a smile again. “Did Jonathan get that camera?” 

She almost seems surprised, brow shooting up as she shifts to lean against the lockers with a pleased smile. “Yeah. He wanted to say thank you,” She admits. “And that he’s sorry, again.”

“Yeah. Did he say sorry to you ?” 

Still looking surprised, she nods, finally tucking her notebook to her chest. “Yes, he did. It was… a lot, but he did.” 

That much is a satisfying answer. The whole encounter still rubs wrong on him when he thinks about it, the pictures of them though torn up, still burn in the back of his mind. 

Distantly, he knows that there are pictures of himself naked on a motel bed somewhere. But that’s beside the point, because Nancy could’ve ended up with pictures of her out there, even through the window of his house, even if fuzzy. It’s too heavy of a thought to bear. 

Smile still plastered lopsided on his face, Steve pulls Nancy close into a hug, now taking the opportunity to melt against her as she wraps her arms around him all the same. He wonders what she’s thinking, if she wants to say anything, and he prays that neither are about him despite knowing that it must be so. But she doesn’t say anything for now, simply holding him close all the same. 

He lays a kiss on her forehead. For Christmas. And another for New Years. She doesn’t protest, letting her fingers linger over the back of his ratty coat. Her protest comes in her fingers tightening just like her voice as she glances up at him. 

She’s still trying to read him. 

“You missed a lot of school. I had to go and get your homework. You have… you have a lot .” Nancy admits, but this time she doesn’t look at him in that searching way she does.  

“Good thing I’ve got you to help me out, huh?”

“Don’t push your luck, Steve.”

For a perfect moment, Steve is thrilled. Nancy’s smiling at him, just as relieved to see him as he is to be there. It feels normal. 

He feels normal. 

He’s almost shocked how much he’d missed feeling normal.

Sleep clings to his eyes, heavy over the back of his neck where his head is buried in his arms. The familiar feeling of his coat wrapped around him has him warm, and he almost doesn’t feel someone nudging his shoulder. 

“Steve.” 

He huffs, bringing his hand over his face a bit, arm slumped over his head. His hair is still a little damp from the school showers. 

“ Steve .” 

Whoever’s next to him gives his shoulder a shove, and he jolts awake. 

The desk he’s sitting in gives a rattle that draws a low roll of laughter from his friends and classmates. Sleepily, blearily, he breaks into a grin and a chuckle of his own, rubbing his eyes. Lisa Sheery is giving him a weird sideways look as she cracks a smile and rolls her eyes. 

“Harrington?” Mr. Stiflemire is staring down his glasses at him from the front of the classroom, book in hand open. He finds himself sitting straight up in his seat, hands falling flat on the desktop as he gapes, glances down at his book- The Alchemist , written in purple on an orange cover over a guy in front of the pyramids. “Can you give me an answer?” 

“Uhm-” 

Mr.Stiflemire gives a long sigh out from under his mustache and wispy eyebrows, drawing an almost bored, really just annoyed look out towards the rest of the class. 

“Did anyone else happen to hear the question?” 

Andy Campbell shoots Steve an unimpressed look, prompting Steve to reach back and rub the back of his neck. Shit. Shit, shit, shit , he’d fallen asleep. He always fell asleep in Stiflemire’s, it didn’t help that the bastard just lectured and lectured and lectured -

“You asked what the old man and Santiago talked about. More specifically, the old man was telling Santiago what the secret to happiness is.” 

“Thank you, Campbell.” Once more, Mr. Stiflemire very pointedly turned back towards Steve, quirking a brow in silent questioning. 

“Oh uh-” Fumbling, Steve cracks open the book to where he’d actually (thank god for Nancy Wheeler and excessive sticky notes) taken notes. “It’s not forgetting his sheep- or like the flock technically, because that’s what he’s supposed to do it’s like his calling or-”

“Unfortunately that was not what was discussed.” Mr.Stiflemire interjects, turning to pace and begin his lecturing again, right back into it with no qualms as Steve sinks in his seat. Well, at least no one is looking at him weird now, people are used to the stupid questions and screwing around and not having an answer. 

Well, he’d made an effort to have an answer this time, at least. Bringing his pencil up to tap against his lips, he took a moment to dwell. He’d actually been reading, actually wanted to work on his grades, because maybe it- well, it wouldn’t just seem anything to be concerned about. Nancy Wheeler really is rubbing off on him, what with her excessive sticky notes and actual notes even if half of them hung out of his book and got crumpled in his sports bag, or his locker. 

He has to be normal. He has to get there before anyone else, even the teachers, to shower. Then he has to do his hair right and make sure his clothes don’t stink or look ratty, even though they’d had to deal with literally the worst Chicago winter ever. He’d have to try and sneak into his house and find something new- or rather, steal his clothes from the house. Jesus, he had to steal his own clothes- would they even still be there? Would his parents have dumped or sold everything just to be rid of any indication of him in that house while they could still save face and pretend he was theirs. 

How long will they pretend? 

Probably as long as he can manage to pretend too. 
Probably as long as he can read people well enough to keep pretending. It’s weird how much he’s been paying attention to people lately, he’s never had to do that, and in the back of his head it feels like drinking soda for the first time- a fizz of his self consciousness clinging to everything, every expression, every change in tone, every shift in the shoulders from everyone around him. 

Lisa lightly kicks his shoe from across the aisle, and he jumps again, finding the eraser practically chewed to bits on the end of his pencil. 

Shit. 

For a week, Steve avoids actually talking to Nancy. At least, on her terms. Every time he gets the inkling that she’s leading him to one of the darker library corners where no one can hear them, or to the backside of the school or an empty classroom or wherever, he finds something else to be worried about. ‘Friends’, asking someone about homework, asking the librarian questions (he’d never done that before and he’d had no idea where to start), running off because he rolled up some fresh baked excuse of talking to his coach or a teacher or needing to work on makeup homework. 

For a week he scrapes by, unable to explain to her why he doesn’t have his car, why he can’t pick her up or drop of her off anywhere, meet her anywhere, why he’s sudden he’s eating cafeteria lunches (which are, appallingly, some of the best meals he’s had in a while, what with shitty cardboard pizza or sloppy joes and bread rolls) and why he doesn’t finish those lunches. Most especially, he scoots by not mentioning he’s having school breakfasts too. 

It takes Steve that week to realize he still has friends, too. Or rather, people willing to be his friends. Not Tommy or Carol, no- they’ve been giving him sideways looks and rolled eyes and curled lips whenever they spot him walking around, with or without Nancy. All the same, they whisper to each other. 

He’s well aware of what’s going around. Rumors. Gossip. 

Steve is dressing like shit, Steve stays after school, Steve doesn’t talk to people anymore, Steve got his car taken away or worse, totalled it, Steve is gonna be held back or kicked off the basketball team. Rumor had it that batshit crazy Byers freak knocked his kisser to the dirt and got arrested. Rumor had it, Nancy had cheated on him with the guy. Rumor had it that Steve was so ashamed he couldn’t come back to school for a while- or even more dramatically, Byers had put him in the hospital because his brain had given out or something weird and dramatic like that. 

Most of the things said aren’t true, of course. He’s honestly got better grades lately than he had in a while, which is weird considering how tired he is. But he is dressing like shit- and he is staying after school, he isn’t talking to a lot of people. If anything, he’s only really been talking to Nancy, his teammates, and the handful of folks who swept in to befriend him now that Carol and Tommy weren’t attached to him at the hip anymore, one of those people being a freshman, Fred Benson. 

He’s a tiny, scrawny kid with massive glasses and braces, and even though he’s a chatterbox, Steve doesn’t mind him. In fact, Nancy seems to at least not care if he hangs around, especially considering they’re in the school newspaper together the ‘ Weekly Streak ’. He’s become a recurring figure at their isolated end of their lunch table, oblong stares from others aside.

Outside him, a lot of the sophomore of the junior varsity team want their ‘in’ too. Not that Steve’s exactly a route for them to climb the social ladder anymore. 

What Steve hadn’t previously realized is that most of them were in court sports together- one of the only classes Steve actually likes .

“I didn’t wanna take this class.” Fred wheezes from beside him. 

As of now, they’re relegated to ‘team shirtless’ alongside the likes of Shelter, who isn’t even on the actual team, and Lewenski, who Steve knows for a fact never comes up off the bench. There are other people, sure, but the game isn’t going well and his skin is crawling from the cold blown in by the propped open gym door. 

Steve doesn’t care that it probably helps everyone else, he’d rather sweat off his very own skin than have to be cold right now. 

“Yeah, well,” Steve remarks, watching as Wilson dribbles over through half court and backs up into the new prospective early varsity player, Jason Carver. “This quarter’ll be over before you know it. And then you can take whatever… class you’d wanna take.”

“Hopefully.” Fred groans miserably, giving a little yelp when the ball is passed in their direction. With a knowing roll of his eyes, Steve ducks in to snatch it and maneuver around Carver on the defense, as he reaches around to try and snatch the ball without fouling. 

Coach McPherson is watching closely, whistle balanced in his mouth. He doesn’t cheer, encourage or discourage, he kinda just watches as the tiny teams do their exercises. Half the class is on the bleachers, watching, not really paying attention. 

He hopes not, actually. He’s not on his game right now. 

Steve chooses to focus on the game as Fred skirts around the edge of the court to get towards the hoop like he has any chance of making a shot, while Steve keeps back still pressed against Jason to keep him off the ball. At least Lewenski starting for the far side of the court is enough to inspire Shelter to go too, as Steve steps out, starts one way, and whirls right around the opposite way to juke out Carver. 

The kid swears as he starts for the far side of the court, much aware of the smug grin across his face, and that’s when Tommy’s goddamn leg stretches right out in his path of travel. 

Steve notices it too little, too late. 

Very much shirt clad and much more smug, Tommy turns right back around with a snort as Steve trips right over his outstretched foot and goes down. Hard. 

He only has a passing thought of ‘ great ’ as he smacks very loudly on the polished hardwood gym floor, with the lovely coincidence of doing so directly in front of the bleachers. 

For a moment, Steve is much aware of the flare of pain that shoots up his nose as he slams down against the floor like a gavel on a judge’s desk. He can’t help the groan that pries from his throat as the ball goes rolling away, out of reach. He can even hear the thumping and squeaking of everyone else’s shoes as they continue to play for a second, Tommy stepping breezily away in a sweet ignorance of the coach’s whistle blaring across the court. 

“Foul!” Rises the call, Coach McPherson’s shout rippling across the court. “Hagan, get your ass back to get ‘im up!-”

Blessedly, before Tommy can even turn around to do as he’s told, Carver and Fred alike make their way over. 

“Hey, are you alright?-”

“That was a hard one man.” 

Someone steps off the bleachers, a few others are moving to scoot down and probably just see what the extent of the damage is. As Steve props himself up on an elbow, he’s much aware of the throbbing in his nose, the ache as he sits up just enough to look down and see a gathering pool of blood. 
Steve’s suddenly far too aware of how cold it is, how much his face is throbbing, and how much it’s burning with embarrassment.
Tommy had gotten exactly what he wanted out of this one, hadn’t he?

“Shit- where’d the spill kit go?” Patrick McKinney is the one to ask it, one of the other lucky freshmen who’d weaseled into the class early in the year. 

As he speaks, someone holds out a hand. Steve fumbles to cover his nose as he grabs it, swaying to his feet. He probably looks like a mess- he can still feel his cheeks burning up to his ears as he manages to get up. He knows damn well he shouldn’t be so embarrassed, that it’s a stupid thing, but for some reason the unease in him climbs. He can’t help it- with the rumors, with the sideways glances, with anyone and everyone saying and probably thinking everything about him. Fred is lingering uncomfortably close, which isn’t really Fred’s fault because he has no clue how to handle personal space, and Patrick and Jason are already running off like dutiful little teacher’s pets (coach’s pets, really) to find the spill kit. 

‘The Freak’ Munson is the one who’d helped him up, apparently. Head shaved and looking like the world’s shittiest crewcut, he sort of stands there and just… holds Steve hand, and very awkwardly. 

Steve hadn’t really paid attention to Munson outside passing around offhanded rumors that he dealt drugs harder than weed, buying some of said weed once or twice for a party, and saying something crude about the guy. And of course, laughing when someone else said something mean too, laughing when one of his buddies got a swirly in the bathrooms by the art room merely months ago. 

Jesus, he hates how much that thought stings too. 

Two months ago he would’ve called Munson a freak, pried his hand away and pulled a face. Considering his resolve to not be as much of an asshole, Steve makes the conscious decision to not do that. Instead he sort of just… stands there, lightly pulling his hand away in the brief moment the coach makes his way over. 

Hand pressed over his bloodied nose, Steve meets Eddie’s eyes. 

For some odd reason, Munson looks like there are a million questions he wants to ask and won’t, questions Steve wouldn’t anyway. 

Steve can’t fathom why the hell that is. 

“Thanks.”

It comes out muffled and a little squeaky, and he can’t shake the way Eddie is staring at him. In fact, he’s kinda gaping, like a fish that’s surprised it got caught on the hook, those big brown eyes glued to him. 

“Yeah- uh-”

“Oh jeez.” Fred gripes, as Coach McPherson gives a bit of a wince and a sigh, waving at Steve. “Go clean yourself up, Harrington. If you think your nose’s broken, you can head to the nurse. Alright?”

“Yessir.” Steve nods, offering a dirty glance to Tommy, who doesn’t so much as glance at him outside a shrug. He’s quick to turn back to his new buddies, some off remarks about freshmen and losers and weirdos. 

Freaks.

He supposes he qualifies in that category. Steve Harrington, ‘King’ fallen from grace from his year and a half of royalty and respect and being wanted , being wanted by people who mattered to him. He qualifies because the way Tommy looks at him, the way Lewenski circles around to smirk, the way the other people he used to call ‘friend’ lean in like they’re conspiring something awful.

Steve can’t help how much he shivers when he passes the open exterior gym door as he makes his way to the locker room. He can’t help the way his face is still burning at the locker room door clicks shut behind him. 

Ellie will be upset to hear he got a bloody nose. As he makes his way to the sink to gather up tissues and wipe his face, he fights down the gnawing dread of having to go back outside again with the thought that he can joke about them being all the more alike. 

Chapter Text

“We need to talk.” 

It’s the same thing Nancy’s said to him almost every morning when she walks up to his locker, which he’s found he’s been spending much more time at. At the moment, he’s thumbing through his after lunch notebook to make sure his homework is there, ready to slip it back inside his locker for later in the day. She already has her things, of course- her science textbook is held close to her chest, and she’s looking up at him in that determined scowl she gets when she’s been thinking about something too much. 

Uh oh.

“For real,” she continues pensively, reaching to take his hand out from where it’s wrapped up in his pocket. He almost gives a start for it, it’s enough for her to notice, he knows it because of the crease that gathers in her brow. 

“I really gotta get to class-”

“Steve.”

“Maybe during lunch we can-”

“No, Steve.” Nancy continues. Her voice is soft, hardly over a whisper, hardly anything he can hear over the din in the hall here. “I’m serious. Now. C’mon.”

There’s something about her voice that demands he listen, even if she isn’t actually demanding anything at all. But she is serious, he can tell it, he can tell by the way her lips purse forward and somehow go small, and how her eyes never pull away from his face for a second. Steve swallows, unable to help but glance away for a moment. They do need to talk, but god he doesn’t want to say anything to her at all.

He wants to just… live. He wants to live normally, to stay safe, to keep people away from the thought that he’s different or not doing well by consequence of keeping Ellie out of danger. He wants to figure out how to navigate here without Tommy or Carol- Tommy most especially, as his crutch, how to fight rumors for the first time ever. 

He just wants to be happy with Nancy and put what had happened last autumn behind them. 

That thought has Steve losing a reluctant sigh as he gathers up his morning notebook, his math textbook, and makes sure he’s at least got a pencil tucked in the rings of his book before lightly closing his locker and letting Nancy tug him along towards the library. 

Steve can’t help but feel nervous. He almost feels like he’s been caught doing something bad, like he’s going to be yelled at or told off or worse , she’s going to break up with him. Oh, god, she’s gonna break up with him after all this mess, because he’d lied and she caught him and he hadn’t been talking to her and she’s- she’s probably embarrassed to be around him. 

As they slip into the library, the librarian gives the pair of them an incredulous, quirked brow even as Nancy waves, as she skirts around into one of the three tiny study rooms with the shades in the windows. He almost feels like he’s drifting inside, as Nancy reaches around him to shut the door, only to give a start and flick the desk light on. 

“Are you okay?”

“What?” 

Nancy is staring up at him, blinking unamusedly, concernedly up at him where he’s standing. It takes him a moment to realize he’s still standing just inside the door, his hand is still wrapped up tight in Nancy’s. He’s almost shivered, staring lamely ahead. He’s hardly even looking at her until she snaps him out of it. 

“Steve, are you okay? Seriously, you’ve looked awful since you got back.”

“...I have?”

“Yeah! Yeah you have, it’s got me a little… freaked out. I’m worried,” Nancy starts, reaching to take up his other hand now, pulling his notebook and textbook out of his hand, setting her own down on the tiny little study table. 

Her hands are cold. Even though they’re small, so much smaller than his, they’re so cold, and it drives a shiver through him so stark it prompts Nancy to squeeze his hands. He glances down. Her nails have pale blue polish on them, the same color as her socks. 

“Yeah.” Nancy murmurs, and she’s pulling his hands again, making him move, maneuvering him to sit in one of those equally small study chairs. All of a sudden he’s staring up at her now, the downward turn of her lips right there in front of her. 

She’s so serious. 

She shouldn’t be so worried about him. 

“What’s going on Steve?”

Fuck, what can he tell Nancy that she’ll believe? 

He’s quiet for a good long moment, staring up at her, and the way she’s so sincere in all of her concern. In all of this, it vaguely reminds him of the look that would pass Dottie’s face, Anna May’s, even Axel’s. Definitely Ellie’s. But here, Nancy’s face is marked with something else. It’s something all her own, like a curiosity, a yearning, like she’s looking for something. Like he’s a puzzle to be solved or a nut to be cracked, and it has him swallowing a lump down his throat. 

He knows damn well that Nancy can pick out lies. What can he tell her that’s the truth?

He can’t tell her about where he’d been. He can’t tell her about Ellie, because he’d made his sister a promise. He can’t tell her what he’d been doing, who he’d met, that he hadn’t actually been in Italy, that his parents didn’t hate him. 

What does she know about?

Monsters. She knows about that. 

“I don’t… I don’t know.” He admits haplessly for a moment, because truly he *doesn’t*, there’s an entire mess going on that he’s hardly got a hold of, with the lab, the monsters, other people- the entire fucking government. Nancy doesn’t need to be dragged into that more than she already is. 

Nancy pulls a face for that, shifting to sit on the table beside him. She’s still looking down at him a touch, having to tilt her head, her hair is tucked behind her ear. She’s so damn beautiful. He’s so damn lucky. He doesn’t want to lose her. 

“I guess- ever since all of this shit went down- things’ve been different.” Steve finally admits, and he can feel that lump climbing in his throat. “I can’t sleep. Even being away, I keep seeing that thing- it feels like it’s gonna come back or something.” 

It’s almost like the accidental tremor in his voice strikes something deep inside her as she sighs and turns away, bringing a hand up to the side of her face with an understanding nod. 

“Yeah, I know.” She admits, voice shaking all the same. 

A dreadful silence carries between them then, and Steve finds himself prying his gaze away from where Nancy’s perched on the desk to instead focus on the grainy colors of the carpet. The little loops are so tiny beneath his worn out snow boots, a mix of beige and gray and this weird purple that vaguely reminds him of the paint color on his car.

It looks like the carpet of the YMCA in Chicago. 

He remembers sitting there in a small uncomfortable chair, side by side with Ellie as her head kept ducked and her lips curled down in a figment of how Nancy’s are now. There’s so much in it, this desperate waiting, the same desperate waiting he’d felt sitting in that lobby while Ellie waited for him to get in touch with the doctor there.
She didn’t know why he’d come to see a doctor at the time- still doesn’t now, but somehow he’s met with the same mounting dread. 

It’s a dread that screams ‘Steve, you ruined it. Steve, you poisoned it’, over and over again in his mother’s voice from his father’s lips, an ache that has him worried that if he glances up Nancy will say it. He deserves it, as much as he hates it, but he dreads just as much for her to tell him this, for her to say anything. He dreads for her to mention the monster, or the Byers’ house, or the fact that he’s been gone and hasn’t said anything. 
He so deeply fears her worries, because those worries seek far too many solutions to soothe them. 

“What happened to your car?” She asks instead, like maybe this is a smaller question , like she can ease him into answering through this. 

He shrugs. “Just… had to leave it at home.” He offers lamely. Clearly she’s unsatisfied with that answer, sighing, tangling her fingers in the hem of her coat. 

“You just disappeared on me Steve.” Nancy finally starts. She almost whispers it, like there might be someone outside the door, like she was afraid Steve himself might here it. She sounds so deeply hurt and scared for a second that he swears he can feel his heart stop in his chest. 

Oh. 

“-you just- I know you were with your family, but it really scared me. And now you… you aren’t really yourself, and it’s scaring me more.”

“I’m not?” He breathes, disappointed. “I’m sorry.”

“No- Steve .” Ever adamant, Nancy scoots a bit to face him again. His eyes are still on the floor, where her winter shoes shed clods of snow like feathers that break and melt the moment they hit the floor. Even in her adamance, there’s something else in her voice, though. He can feel it like a change in the temperature, the lilting of something else, some feeling she’s burying in the exact same way he’s burying the traitorous thoughts of what he should say. “Something happened. I know it did, I don’t know when-”

“No?” 

Steve has to swallow down a lump in his throat when it comes out harsher than he’d intended, but it comes out nonetheless. Her head snaps up so fast it almost makes him grimace, but he shrugs helplessly. “You know what happened? You ran off with- Jonathan after he was a total creep to us. To you! And then when I show up some fucking alien thing comes through the ceiling, and you won’t even tell me what’s going on? All after Barb went missing in my backyard ? And then it just stopped. It was just fuckin’ gone, and now- I can’t sleep at night, I’m scared. I’m really scared about you getting hurt or that thing showing up in my house or- whatever the fuck happened to Barb because it was right there -”

Nancy goes deathly quiet for a moment as he chatters, almost nonsensical for it, before interrupting quietly. 

“She’s dead, Steve. It took her.” 

“What?”

He pries his eyes from the discomforting beiges on the floor and instead up to Nancy’s face. She’s taken her turn now to stare down at the floor, tears welling up in her eyes, still sitting there on the table. 

“How- how do you know?”

Nancy simply shook her head, pursing her lips to fight down the swell of emotion clearly rising in her. In the near dark of that little study room, Steve can’t help but reach up and take her hand gently. “...Nance-”

She shakes her head again, wrapping his hand up to squeeze it, grabbing for comfort from him. She doesn’t reach to hug him. He doesn’t reach out either, too concerned about what he should and shouldn’t do, too shaken by the sudden development. 

So that thing had been by his house. In his yard. It had killed somebody- considering the people who’d been going missing in the months leading up to the fight, a lot of somebodies. 

Oh god. 

Lowering his head to the table beside where Nancy’s sat, he shoulders break into a shake. Slowly, he winds their fingers together as her hand moves to shakily interlock with his. The other settles to cover her mouth, propping along her elbow and her chin to hide her shiver.

In the quiet of the study room, Nancy stops asking questions of him. Steve doesn’t utter another word. He listens to the soft slush of snow off Nancy’s boot into the carpet, even if the pieces are small. He listens to her shaky breaths as she leans forward and ducks her head to cry, and he brings his arm up around his face as if somehow it’ll quell the shake of fearful loss laden tears threatening through the familiar burn in his eyes. He realizes in this moment that his absence had done just as much bad for her as it had himself. That night- not at the Byers’, no, the first night he showed her how he loved her, the first night he’d made her feel what she is to him, Barb had been snatched up through a hellish rabbit hole. It’d been tainted by pictures from somebody he still held a grudge against. It’d been the first night for the rest of their lives that they’d forever be afraid of whatever lingered out there in the dark, the first night her life turned in a way she had to learn to use a gun, the first night his would change to have him so scared outside sometimes he’d carry that goddamn bat. He realizes that the shadows of that thing, their monster, all alien and unruly and disgusting, the sounds and the shapes and the presence of it- the figure of it would remain burned in their minds like it had been burned into the carpet at the end of the hallway.

For a far too long, quiet, childish feeling moment, Steve realizes that neither of them have a best friend anymore. 

Steve starts his walk back to the car after everyone else on the team, in the afterschool clubs, are all headed for the parking lot or hidden away in their club rooms. It’s dark when he heads out, he knows his footprints will be mistaken for those of rebels and troublemakers and drug dealers out towards ‘the table’. Past that, over the road, it’s a bit of a haze but he ends up where he needs to be anyway. 

They’d found a clearing. He’d driven deep into the woods off a logging road, up through where there was enough room for a car, and into a clearing hidden far from both the logging road and the main road. In here, they had a fortress of naked trees to surround them, and it offered him a mixed comfort. His car is like an island in the white and gray, between the trees the interior light from the car spills out, the soft wisp of campfire smoke in the winter reddened sky. 
For some reason, it makes his nightmares feel more real. They’ve been so much more real since coming back to Hawkins, so much so that sometimes he finds himself in a waking sleep as his mind imagines the interior lights flickering, the fire burning out, the stars going black. He imagines the star shaped mouth of that creature pressed against the windows of the car, massive claws and drool everywhere across it, across Ellie’s face- like what had almost happened to Jonathan, like what had prompted the guy to roll over and throw up the spit that had ended up in his mouth. 
Sometimes it’s different. Sometimes he wakes up in a motel room in Chicago, and the lights are flickering, and his body feels heavy and cold on the bed and he can’t get up. 
That star faced mouth leers at him like it has eyes in the back of its skull. 

Steve always wakes up from those nightmares feeling sick to his stomach and in a cold sweat. 

He tries to bury those nightmares under his boot tracks every morning. He focuses on keeping them warm on the weekends around a tiny little fire made of brittle, semi damp wood they find every Wednesday night when school gets out early, lit by his sputtering lighter. He focuses on getting his homework done quick and right and simple, on making it seem like he isn’t different, like nothing is different , making sure no one gets suspicious. 
Ellie’s taken to ‘hunting’. She calls it that, even if it's mostly using her powers to throw rabbits and squirrels against trees. Steve has no idea how to set traps, but he can stretch their cash thin to get tuna for Oreo and other things that eating badly skinned rabbits and squirrels can’t give. 

Steve never thought he’d eat a squirrel before this. It was ridiculous to think people would eat squirrels, before. And yet, most evenings when she had a catch, he spent a good hour pulling the skin back off the little bodies, where thin white tissue clung the skin to the muscle like their little souls weren’t ready to escape yet. He learned the hard way how not to gag, and Ellie always watches, always spears them on the same stick as she spins it over the fire. 

Steve reads to her, and Oreo alike. Oreo can’t stay out in the cold long like this, so he always ends up bundled in one of their coats- little ears flat as his head pokes out of Ellie’s leather coat, as her chin sits atop his black and white patched head. The tips of his ears have started turning white as he gets bigger, he wobbles less, he meows more. When he sits in Steve’s zipped up coat, Oreo’s little paws tuck close to his heart and he purrs up a storm until he falls asleep. 

Tonight is already looking to be one of those nights as he approaches. 

There in the fortress of their trees, beside the island of his now faded burgundy-maroon car, Ellie is already crouched on her stump by the beginnings of a fire. For now, Oreo paces under the car, watching with flickering eyes as Steve trudges up and slumps across her, dropping his sports bag beside his spot with a groan. He almost wants to lay down in the snow, but that sound from him makes Ellie snort. 

“You are tired?” 

Taking the opportunity to at least lean back against the car, Steve picks up his hand and juts out his thumb, squinting at her past it. “Bingo.” 

She snorts again, cracking a smile as she shuffles off her stump and makes her way over. “I found more dinner.” 

“Oh yeah? Jeez, stinker, I got my work cut out for me huh?”

“Yep.” She chimes, popping the ‘p’, as she turns to uncover where she’d buried them in the snow. Two rabbits, tonight. Not so bad- and thankfully, neither looked like they belonged to anyone at one point, all wiry and meant for running around the woods.
With an over dramatic sigh, Steve sits up and takes them by the ears, plopping them in front of his spot. 
“Y’got the knife?”

“Mhm.” She chimes, hand already deep in her pocket by the time she finds it, and she plops it in his hand as she sits back. 

“Y’wanna try reading a little more while I get these ready?” Steve offers after a moment, flicking the blade open with a little smile. “The short story.” 

Ellie hesitates for just a moment. She isn’t great at reading, at least she thinks according to what she told him, but she had been practicing. She has hours and hours of the day alone when he’s at school, and she knows these woods like the back of her hand. That, and a lot of YMCA literacy books they’d outright stolen, stashed under the backseats. 

“Yes.” She finally starts, standing to open the car door just enough to lean in and get the small booklet he’d found in the library, a faded white softcover full of stories for kids, stuff about princes who lived on moons and mermaids and velvet rabbits. 
That was their current conquest. A story they’d just started about a stuffed rabbit. She plops down in her spot beside him again, flipping open the book to where one of her colored pencils had been tucked inside. 

In this time, he’s fiddled to start skinning the first rabbit. It was a weird process, he’d had no idea where to start, he’d ruined the first few, but by now he just pulled the fur off the back. It practically peels off once he has his fingers under the skin, but the paws always stay on- not like they’ll stay, usually dropped out by the road when he leaves in the morning. By now, he was accustomed to how big their eyes were, how limp they were, how he’d had to linger way too long near the anatomy classroom to the point that the smell of formaldehyde wafting into the hall didn’t seem all that bad. 

Ellie’s voice helps him focus as he does it. 

“‘Cooohme back and… pal-play with me.’” Though her words were slow and stilted and unsure, he nods along, leaning over when she holds the book out and points to a word. 

“Called.”

“Called the lit-tle Rabbit. ‘Oh. Do cooohme back- I’- kow- now. No.” 

It’s a step by step thing- skin, head, guts, shaken out at the edge of their barken fortress. He grimaces at the smell, at the gray sight of those guts. It looked like the skin of their monster. He wants it nowhere near their mouths. Scooping out those innards with a full body shudder, he throws them, the spatter of blood arcs away from the oasis of the car and the firelight and to the edge of their fortress. He washes his hands off in the snow beside him, leaning to look at the word she’s struggling with. 

“Know.” 

“Know?” 

“Yeah, it’s spelled weird.” Steve agrees with a shrug, as she huffs and turns back to the book. “‘I know- I am- real.’” 

“You got it!” Steve hums, reaching for the next rabbit then, though Ellie’s head snaps up almost simultaneously with a low hiss escaping Oreo. 

She doesn’t need to say a single word as his head whips around all the same. 

The sight he’s granted prompts the hair on the back of his neck to go on end. He jolts back, half bloodied hands reaching back as he moves himself between Ellie and the thing. Oreo growls , scampering back. 

It’s a pair of dogs. 

Or, what would’ve been dogs. 

One of them is bigger, looks like it might’ve been some kind of husky, head sort of tilted to the side. Its eyes glimmer in the firelight, fur matted and falling off, something winds under the flesh of its ribs like tendrils. The teeth are all wrong- canines all jagged and low, two of the bottom teeth sticking up into the lips like tusks, all smattered in dripping, blackened drool. It’s twitching. The flesh under its skin looks gray, its legs and front paws are too long, its tail looks like it almost wants to wag. There’s another dog beside it. It might’ve once been white, the fur on its haunches gone on end, the wispy fur on its face drooping and falling off. The flesh is rippled with the shapes of tendrils all the same, the flesh beneath gone gray and twitching and slick, teeth twisted and wild and abnormal. It might’ve once been a shepherd dog. 

It looks like a ghost of the Byers’ dog, even.

They look rabid. 

They look like monsters. 

They’re looking at the pair of them. 

For a fleeting moment Steve wants to think they’re here for the rabbits. That the stench of blood and guts and flesh brought them here, that if he threw them, Ellie and him and Oreo could jump in the car and lock the doors. 

But they aren’t, he can see it by the innards of the rabbit pinned under one of those misshapen paws. 

He needs his bat. 

Steve’s mouth is hardly open enough to squeak out the beginning of Eleven’s name when the not-dogs start forward. Oreo yowls but the sound the bigger dog makes is unholy, a choked out bark of a hiss, as it launches after them both. 

Ellie ducks under the car after Oreo as Steve reaches to pry the door open, to throw it with all the force he can muster as he wraps his arms around Ellie’s waist and yanks her out from under the car with a screaming Oreo in her hands. 

Steve pries himself to his knees to practically shove Ellie in the backseat, the dog slams head first into the car door. It shuts hard against Steve’s legs, and he grimaces, hisses pain between his teeth as Ellie throws herself onto her back. 

He lunges for his bat on the floor, Oreo scampers yowling and crying into the front seat, and Ellie screams .

He hardly has the time to turn with his bat as she throws her hand out and her nose bursts red. 

The once white not-dog goes flying and skidding back into the snow just as the larger scampers to its feet, swaying, jaw slack. 

It’s still going, it still lunges around the door, and it lunges right into his swinging back. 

He can hear the crack of its teeth against the nails in his bat is it bursts red, that red splatters in the snow. 

It arcs. 

Like rabbit’s blood. 

Steve is suddenly aware of his head going light with adrenaline. His fingers ache, they wind around his bat as he steps away from the door and slams it shut before Eleven can come after him. His chest feels tight, each breath in the cold burns, and his eyes are all for the not-dog that rounds the corner to lunge at him. 

He swings again. 

He pretends the dog is a ball. 

For two seconds, it’s summer and he’s at baseball camp again on the far side of Lover’s Lake. Tommy Hagan is behind him as Eric Dormer throws a clod of half rotten wood at him. They’ve been practicing all day, but Steve still wants to swing. 

He can hear the boys chanting. 

‘ Hey battah battah- ’ Tommy is laughing. ‘ Hey battah battah!-”

The big not-dog is leaping for him and he can feel fire on his heels. 

‘Swing .’

“Swing!” Ellie cries. 

He doesn’t need to be told thrice. 

Crack sings the bat across jagged teeth and flesh, not rotten, but unholy. 

The dog squeals, throws its head back, and goes sprawling into the snow. It’s head is crooked. 

He has rabbit’s blood still caked in the creases of his palms. 

He follows. He swings. He can hear it as Ellie cries out, calls for him muffled behind the car door as she shakes it- is it jammed? It doesn’t matter, she’s inside. She’s safe. But he can still hear it, he can hear it like Tommy Hagan said it, like Eric Dormer said it, like Coach Crowley did, like his father did once in the back yard when he was ten, like Cameron and Ferris say it. 

‘Hey, battah, battah, battah, battah, swing, battah!-’

Crack 

‘Hey! Battah, battah, battah, battah, sa- wing battah!’

Crack, crack, crack-

‘Again ‘n again ‘n again !-’ 

And again, and again, and again he brings that bat down on that shell of a dog. A not-dog. He can hear himself breathing, hear it fierce and stark in his lungs and out his nose, past gritted teeth that grind and gnarl together in a snarl. 

Again, and again, he strikes it until the neck is mangled and the throat is bared to the earth, until the ribs have gone delicate and those misshapen paws snap sideways, until there is not enough left of it to get up again. 

Ellie is screaming. 

Ellie’s screaming and she’s not saying to swing again. 

He turns as the door clicks open, as she goes thumping and sliding near face first into the snow. She’s scrambling, screaming, warning him. 

“Move, go! Steve!” 

The once white not-dog is there and it’s on him . It snarls something unholy, it scrambles and throws its weight on him as he stumbles, brings the bat up between them, it throws itself like it's going for the throat and it brings its teeth down. Steve lunges towards the car. He tries to duck. 

He howls when those jagged tusks and fangs and who knows what else dig into his shoulder through his winter coat, his sweater, and his undershirt. 

He feels fire licking at his shoulder, and it wants more of him. 

Ellie doesn’t let it stay. 

She scrambles upright, at least enough to throw her hand up just as Steve is slammed into the ground mere feet from the car by the weight of it. The not-dog growls, feral, maybe rabid, it digs in deeper and makes the muscle sting and ache with every move he makes to throw it off. He’s frantic, shoving at the thing as it digs its teeth in, draws jagged claws against his jacket and rips it to shreds as he bleeds. 

He bleeds, hot and sticky, much unlike the blood on his palms. 

Steve is much aware that he’s screaming bloody murder when the weight is lifted off him. Those teeth pull, and he wails something entirely instinctive, reaching up with rabbit's blood fingers to pry those teeth away, but the force lifting the dog pries its jaws free of him with a snap. 

Panting for breath, heart pounding wildly, Steve tries to sit up. One of his hands is still wrapped so tight around the handle of his bat that he swears the two won’t separate when his adrenaline fades. No, he just clings tighter as he watches Ellie’s outstretched hand, her stiff, forward hunched shoulders, and the blood dribbling down her chin. 

The not-dog squirms, lunges even suspended after him. 

He can see his own blood in its mouth. 

It twists, then. Its body winds in a way that can’t support life, it’s spine arcs one way and its neck goes the other, its legs go twisted, and its corpse falls to his side. 

Steve almost feels like he can’t breathe. 

His ears are ringing as the body crashes to the ground beside him, as Ellie rushes forward with outstretched arms. She’s shaking, her hands are trembling as sh  hooks them under his shoulders and pulls him to the car, pulls him up, and he bleeds, he bleeds on her stump and their book and their still half-skinned dinner. 
His teeth grit tightly and he fights back a scream as she lifts him back into the backseat of the car, those shaky cold fingers clasped in his jacket. 

She’s crying. 

Ellie’s crying as she wills the door shut, and it's like suddenly the world goes quiet. 

Steve can hear himself breathing, he can feel himself bleeding, as Eleven gathers him up and pulls him close to lay his head in her lap, but she’s reaching to do everything else. She’s scrambling for the blankets she sleeps on, she bundles up anything she can find and presses it against the wound even as Steve yelps for the jagged pain that lances through his shoulders, across his collarbones, down his sternum. 

“Do not- do not die, do not die -” 

“M’ on your bed. I’m gonna get blood everywhere.”

Why does he feel so hazy all of a sudden? Moments before, adrenaline was shooting through his veins, and suddenly his body feels hot and liquidy and limp as Ellie presses everything she can against his destroyed shoulder.

“Stop!” Ellie screams, she screams it right in his ear all frantic. 

Somehow, that’s what wills him to drop his bat. It clatters to the backseat floor as he reaches up for one of her hands and breaks a frantic, pained laugh. 

“I’m not gonna die on you, Ellie. I’m not-”

“There is a lot- there is too much-”

“No- nuh-uh- I have… I have stuff in the trunk-”

“ Do not die !” 

“Hey! Hey, hey- I won’t.” Steve assures, reaching to grip that blanket to his shoulder now, to press it firmly like she has it in her hands. “I won’t. I’m here.” 

Ellie leans forward, and she’s crying big fat frantic tears, everything that comes from a frightened little girl, and he hates it. He presses the blanket closer with gritted teeth and shakes his head.

Steve falls asleep bleeding in the backseat of his car in his sister’s arms on January 18th, 1984. 

He wakes up on January 19th in the back seat of his car with a badly bandaged shoulder, a raging fever, and rabbit’s blood caked into the creases of his palms. Ellie is asleep in his spot, bundled in what non bloodied blankets they have, the car is warm and Oreo is curled between him and the seat. 

The lights are on. 

There are four corpses out in the snow. 

Their fortress is quiet, and the fire is out, and their island of a car lingers still alone in the clearing. 

Of all these things, the most important thing he can make out in his sleepy, pained, almost feverish haze is that Ellie’s hand is wrapped around his wrist, his pulse point, like a lifeline. 

Chapter Text

The past few days have been hard. Since the not-dog had bitten him, he’d had to find a new shirt- sneaking back through the woods to his house, in the dead of night with only his bat and his aching shoulder. Thankfully, his parents hadn’t changed the locks, which in itself was surprising. Their cars were gone at the time, he’d made sure to check the garage. But he was able to scrounge up the box of bandages from the downstairs hall closet, crept up to put together a duffel bag of his clothes and shoes so he wouldn’t have to keep wearing his coat in class like a weirdo. The same went for Ellie- she deserved comfortable clothes again too, even if she’d gotten pretty fond of the leather jacket her sister Kali had given her. 

It was a shame there wasn’t much useful food left behind.

By the time 4:30 rolls around, Steve is trudging his way back from practice and out through the woods to where the car was. He expects Ellie to be back by now, probably with food for herself at least, stolen from wherever she could find it. He’s been trying to sneak out leftover school lunches for her just in case, or for him to eat for dinner. 
It’s getting dark, but thankfully it isn’t so cloudy tonight. It isn’t going to snow, but despite that it’s freezing cold, the air biting at his ears and nose and fingertips through his gloves. The crunch of the snow is stark under his feet as he quickly makes his way from the gym with his bag on his good shoulder, hands shoved deep in his pockets. 
It’s Friday, so he only had a little homework to do, and he has to figure out where to sneak a shower since he couldn’t go to school early with it closed on the weekends. He and Ellie have the weekend to scrounge up more to hold out, and thankfully it seems his cash from Chicago is holding out for a while, so he can keep gas in the tank to keep them warm. 

He hasn’t been visiting Nancy outside school. Hell, he’s continued to fall asleep in class the past few days, which has caused more than a few awkward conversations with his teachers. He’s tried not to be a dick about it. He’s tried to smile and shrug it off and say something about practice knocking a lot out of him, or staying up late doing homework- which, he is , his grades have been improving in that way. 

Steve trudges out across the track, entirely snowed over, and into the woods. He passes the drug table, the unspoken ‘spot’ everyone went to do their deals and get their stuff. Even further he goes, picking up his pace to beat the darkening sky. 

He has to be back before dark. It’s safer there than out in the woods when it gets dark. 

Steve’s head is on a swivel as he darts through the trees and across the road, where he ducks back into the woods where he’d pulled the car deep into the trees, so far that the headlights wouldn’t reach the road or any houses. 
Walking up towards the car, Steve can see it running. Ellie’s turned the near blinding interior lights on, the headlights off, and the tarp that keeps the snow off the car is pushed aside so she can look out. She’s sat in the back seat, looking at the newest book he has to read for his spring classes. 

The Alchemist . It’s probably the least attention grabbing thing he can fathom reading, but at least it was a little bit better than The Tempest, and it’s the only other thing they have outside The Velveteen Rabbit since it’s well… very ratty and bloodstained now. 

As he approaches, Steve makes sure to walk loudly, patting the back of the car to get Ellie’s attention. She’s curled up in the passenger seat, the windows a touch fogged up, but she picks up her head to make sure it’s him. As soon as she spots him, she almost lights up, reaching to push open the door a crack. 

“Hi!”

“Hey. How’s the book?” Steve asks, walking around the car to pop open the other back door, dumping his bag on the floor and quickly clambering in, shutting the door quickly to keep the heat inside. Oreo picks his little head up from the front seat, sleepy and clearly enjoying the warmth in kind before offering a big, big stretch and a meow. “Hi Oreo.”
He slumps there with a great big sigh, leaning back against the seat. For a moment all he takes in is the wonderful feeling of warmth , the feeling like his fingers and ears and nose might just fall off, the gathering ache in his shoulder again. He’ll probably need to change his bandages. Hell, he needs to eat- the smell in here has him starving. 

Wait.

“I found soup.” Ellie offers quickly, catching the surprised look on his face as he turns. She’s still lit right up like Christmas as she leans down to the floor between her feet and gently picks up a somewhat crumpled paper bag.
“See!”

“Holy shit.” Steve balks, reaching out to take the bag up in his hands in an instant. It’s heavy in his hands, it smells like chicken broth and it's still warm , he swears his stomach grumbled at that alone. “Holy shit! Where’d you find this?”

“There is a church,” Ellie offers delightedly, “they made soup to give people. There is a nice old lady who gave me a lot of soup. I told her- you are my big brother and you are sick at home.” 

Steve sets the bag on his lap to comb through it, pulling out the white ‘to-go’ container. There were spoons inside too- real metal ones that he reaches in for and holds gingerly. 

“You’re sure it was safe?”

“Yes. I did not say my name and I did not say where we are or your name.” Eleven insists, taking up her spoon to pat the seat in between them. Steve doesn’t hesitate to carefully set the container down and pop the lid with a deep sigh. That seems to draw Oreo’s attention as his ears perk up and his nose twitches, and he picks himself up to stretch on the front seat divider, leaning in to look at the two. 

“You’re awesome. You know that?” Steve grins, picking up his spoon and cracking the top as they near simultaneously dig in. 

“Yes.” Ellie laughs, almost spilling her first spoonful. She picks a piece of chicken out to give to Oreo, who leans forward suspiciously as he snatches it and scurries back to his warm spot in the front seat. 

Between bites, Steve continues speaking, unable but to help watching Oreo with a smile. “You still gotta- be careful though, mm’kay?”

“Yes, I know.”

“I can go get it next time.” 

Eleven turns back and pulls a look then, leaning back like she’s squinting him down. Confusedly, Steve hesitates, swallowing down his spoonful. 

“What?”

“You are sick.” Ellie insists heavily, reaching up to point at his shoulder. 

“No- it’s just healing, Ellie. It’s fine.”

“But you do- you look sick!” El continues, absolutely resolute. 

Steve shrugs, wincing with the way it made his shoulder tweak. She makes a stink face then, which makes him roll his eyes. “We probably both look like that- like- don’t be a pooper!”

“Don’t be stupid!” Ellie retorts, reaching up to catch his hand before he can give her face a playful shove. It’s something that borders a long lived sigh despite her worried smile. “I want to see it.”

Steve lets his hand fall with a bit of a grumble, shoulders slumping a touch. “Can you help me with my bandages?” 

“Mmmhmm.” She agrees, going for more soup. “Where did the band-ai- bandages go?” 

“I’ll get ‘em out of the trunk.” Steve offers with a nod, shifting to scoot back a bit. As if anticipating it, Eleven reaches to hold onto the container so it won’t spill, as Steve pushes the door open behind him and scoots back so he can go around to the trunk. It’s dark by now, and so cold he can feel the air practically scraping down his throat. Each breath out draws a ghostly little figure, reaching to unlock and open the trunk. 
As he goes to fiddle, he stiffens, much aware of the sudden sound of heavy footsteps in the trees behind him. 

Steve’s head whips around sharply, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he leans forward towards Ellie’s side of the car, speaking up in a quick whisper.
“Lights!”

Ellie gives a start, reaching to pop the top back on their soup and lurching to press on the interior lights and turn them off, scrambling to turn the key back, struggling, and then climbing into the driver’s seat like Steve had shown her to turn the key off all the way. It spooks Oreo, who leaps up like a spaz and stares at Ellie with wide eyes before scampering down to hide in the footwell of the passenger seat. She doesn’t stay inside, instead, grabbing Steve’s bat from the passenger’s seat and crawling out to stand at his side, even a little behind him, wordlessly passing off the bat. 
It’s like she knows how much of a comfort that bat is in his hand, even if he can’t swing it right at the moment. Maybe it’s equally a comfort to her that he has it, like she knows how it’s practically become an extension of his arm. 

He can see the beam of a flashlight out there, feeling far too bright, and he finds himself reaching back for Ellie. 

Jim Hopper had seen a lot of weird shit in the past few months. Between flesh monsters, other dimensions, between resussicating Will Byers, all Hopper really wants to do is get back to selectively busting kids doing drug deals in the woods, or speeders and occasional repeat drunk drivers he’s sure will never get to traffic court. He’d much rather know where that girl went, too. He knows she’s out there, what with the waffles going missing from the trail boxes where he’d left them. 

The last thing he wants to do was deal with rumors about homeless kids in the woods. Especially when he’d gotten a call from Becky Ives in Bloomington that Eleven and some kid named Steve were out there.

He’d gotten a call now from some of the families around Jordan Lake, and most recently Mrs. Driscoll, who claimed that a little girl with far too short hair came to the church potluck asking for food- which she’d given, and then had given a little more when she’d mentioned having a sick big brother. 

Apparently, the girl had scurried right out back into the woods like a cat who got the cream. 

As of now, Jim Hopper finds himself walking through the woods with his flashlight dancing across the narrow trees, which, for now, look far too much like the ones he’d seen in the other dimension. The ‘Upside Down’. The only saving grace for these trees is the severe lack of vines, there being no ash in the air, any threat instead replaced by icicles. 

Up ahead, he hears a bit of a kerfuffle. A faint rumbling he hadn’t noticed before quickly goes silent, and the one spot of light between the trees switches off.
Shit. 

With that, Hopper opts to turn off his flashlight. If this is going to be a problem, he’s at least going to use the element of surprise. 

Jim almost doesn’t see them. 

He sees the car first, half covered in snow, and he recognizes it in an instant from having caught Tommy Hagan leaning out the side window while Steve Harrington sped down back roads with a shiny new driver’s license. 

That’s Steve Harrington’s car, the kid’s same shiny maroon purple BMW gone dull and dirty, ice crawling along the tail lights. A tarp had been thrown over it, clearly an attempt to keep snow off. He’s about to step out from between the trees when he sees the pair of them. 

Steven Harrington himself is standing on the other side of his car, by the hood, half obscured by the trees. He’s leaning funny one way, and in his other hand, he has a baseball bat with nails driven through it. 

“Jesus,” Hopper murmurs, raising his light again to flash it at him. “Harrington? Is that you? What the hell’re you doing out-”

As Hopper brings up his light, Harrington flinches away, ducking his head a bit to avoid the light. The weirdly angled arm of his dips back, and there, half hidden behind the car, is the girl. Hopper freezes. He can easily recognize her, even with her hair growing out, those big round eyes and pale gaunt face of hers are unforgettable. 

That explains the phone call from Bloomington.

It strikes Hopper how they both look. The girl has a boy’s beanie on her head, a ratty leather jacket too big for her. She’s pale, with dark circles under her eyes, cheekbones clear in her face. All the same, the Harrington boy leans protectively back over her, just as pale, just as sallow, just as sleepless. 

There is something very wrong here. 

“Oh jesus-”

“Go- go away.” Harrington calls nervously, raising that bat, and Hopper holds his hand out quickly. 

“Hey! Hey- hey, cool your jets kid.” Hopper starts sharply, and it has both him and the girl stumbling back a bit. “Stay cool.”

The girl is peering out at him, and for both their sakes he lowers the flashlight just a little bit. 

“Eleven?”
The two jolt like they’re about to jump out of their skin, and Harrington reaches almost simultaneously with the girl as they grip tighter onto each other. He only raises his bat more. 

“What do you want?” He sounds shaken, a little terrified, honestly. The girl is staring. She looks… torn, almost, a stark flicker of recognition there in her outside the fear that marks her features. 

“Look uh- I dunno what’s going on here, with you guys. I’ve been looking for Eleven, I wanted to-”

“You stay the fuck away.” Harrington snaps,hell his lips curl back as if he’s going to snarl like a dog. They’re backing up again, almost like he’s going to get them to bolt. The girl’s eyes flick towards the front of the car, towards something inside, and Hopper keeps his hand out, shaking his head. 

“I’m not ratting you out. I’m not ratting the kid out.” Hopper starts sharply, desperately trying to get the two of them to relax despite his firm tone. “I know- people are looking for you, kid. Eleven. The other kids called you El, right?”

Steven and the girl glance at each other, Steven looking ever hesitant to believe any of this. She meets his gaze, takes up the awkwardly leaning hand, and nods softly before turning back to Hopper with a tiny voice. 

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Hopper breathes. “Do you recognize me?”

“...yes. From school.” 

“Right. That’s right.” 

As much as he seems to have Eleven reassured, Harrington is ever hesitant. He only drops his bat, just a bit. “What do you want?” He asks again shortly, tiredly.
“I just wanted to make sure she was okay. She’s been lost a real long time- and I guess you too, you got all wrapped up in this huh?”

“What’s it to you?”

Hopper finds his brow furrowing and his shoulders slumping just a touch at the sheer amount of distrust in the kid. Last time he’d seen Steven, it was with a lot of attitude last spring. Now, the kid seems way too fidgety, eyes everywhere like he expects someone or something to leap out of the shadows, his arm still firmly and protectively in front of the girl. He doesn’t look like the bratty kid he’d talked to, scolded, threatened to ticket within an inch of his life lest his parents find out about his joyriding. Why the hell isn’t he in his house? Why is his car all the way out here, why is he with the kid practically the whole government in the North half of the country was looking for?

“I want to help.” Hopper articulates shortly, letting his hand slump just a bit. “Kids like you shouldn’t be out like this. And kids like her have people looking for her.”

“The bad men.” Eleven voices softly, in agreement. 

Steven picks up his chin a bit defiantly, watching with a sharp gaze as Hopper takes a slow step forward. They don’t back away this time. It almost looks like Steven tries, but Eleven remains standing firm half behind him. 

“You have Eggos.” She remarks curiously. “You give them to me.”

“Right. In the trail boxes.”

“How do we know we can trust you? How do I know you’re not gonna turn her in?”

“Because the Feds bugged my house, kid. I saw the gate, I saw what the hell’s going on here. I even went in, I helped get Will Byers out of there. You know, the missing kid?”

“Yeah, I know.”

Slowly, Hopper nods. “It’s messed up. And I don’t want her to have to deal with that shit anymore, got it? I wanna make sure she doesn’t end up back in that lab. She’s just a kid. You’re both just kids, however the hell you ended up in this.” 

“What’re you gonna do then?” 

“...I know a place. There’s this old cabin out past the edge of town. No taps, no bugs, nothing. It’ll be safe there.” 

The pair fall quiet for a moment, and once more Steven glances down to the girl as if to get her read on the situation. She’s still staring at Hopper, he damn near feels like she’s staring through him, but he remains ever vigilant and quiet, waiting. He doesn’t know what he’s gonna do if they refuse. If the Harrington kid goes after him with that bat. He’d probably try to offer help, at least, get them food or something, but he has the inkling that if he leaves them both tonight they’ll be gone before sunrise. 

“...it’s okay Stu.” She murmurs quietly, tugging on his jacket. “He helped before. Friends don’t lie.”

Hesitantly, Steven side-eyes the chief from where he’s stood. “This is stupid.”

“ Not stupid.” Eleven insists again. 

With that, Steven slowly lowers that monster of a bat and reaches to grab at Eleven’s hand still ever protectively, staring Hopper down in some figment of being unintimidated. “Fine. I’ll follow you.”

Hopper doesn’t like that. He still has the inkling that they’re going to speed off given the first chance. 

“I’ll take you. I’ll take you both, and I’ll come back to get your car tomorrow. Alright?”

Steven pales a bit at the thought, practically glowering, but Eleven tugs on his coat again, turning up with a far more emphatic nod. “We will be okay. Pinky promise.”

With a great heave of reluctance, Steven’s shoulders finally slump as he turns back to Hopper. “If something’s weird, we’ll make you pay.”

“I believe it.” Hopper retorts, holding his hand up briefly again. “You can bring what you need for tonight. It’s a little dusty, but it’ll be warm. I promise.” 

“Oreo.” Eleven starts then, reaching to open the passenger’s side door. From inside a loud and nervous meow escapes, as she leans down to pick up a little black and white cat- equally as far to small as the pair of them are. Steven lingers for a long, achingly long moment before leaning into the open passenger’s side door and opening the glove compartment, taking out a wad of cash that’s deposited in his ratty coat pocket. He leans further in and takes up a brown paper bag, which he slips carefully into what looked to be a sports bag, and Eleven trails behind him as he goes to the trunk. She pauses to kick the passenger’s door shut after snatching out a well worn blanket and wrapping it around herself and the squirmy cat, who she holds tightly to. Soon enough, Steve rummages in the trunk and pulls out a small cardboard box, which he drops another blanket and his bat atop of after allowing Eleven to shove in a colorful trapper keeper and a stuffed animal. 

Hopper lingers. By the way they act, wordlessly moving along with whatever the other did, they’ve been together for some time, and likely out in this weather for much longer than they should’ve been. He finds himself turning away a bit, occupying himself with the way the snow settled on a well used trail from the school, only glancing up when the trunk closes with a ‘thunk’. 

“You ready?”

“Mhm.” Steven nods, the box slung under one arm, bag over his shoulder, Eleven’s hand in his. 

Thus begins their slow trek back to Hopper’s car. 
It’s a way’s out, back onto the trails and past the trail box he often frequented, down the embankment to a logging road where the car sits stark along the side of the road. Silently, Steven waits as Hopper pops open the trunk, and he gets the box and the bag inside. The cat, Oreo, gives a bit of an aggravated meow, huddled in Eleven’s blanket. 
The pair don’t hesitate to climb into the back and sit side by side in a tense, awkward quiet, watching like a pair of hawks as Hopper makes his way around to hop in the driver’s seat and start the car. 

It feels like they’re caught in that tense silence still for the next thirty or so minutes, and Hopper finds himself looking in the rear view mirror every chance he can get. It’s miraculously unsettling how there is always at least one pair of eyes on him, either Eleven’s or Steven’s. Eleven seems slightly less concerned out of the pair of them, the cat settling across their laps to fall asleep, and the sleepiness of the cat seems to slowly draw Eleven to sleep. 

Steven stays awake. Steven’s eyes remain on the rearview window, on Hopper, and it makes his arms break out in gooseflesh under the sleeves of his uniform. He’s never seen a kid look like that. Not out here. And he didn’t expect it to be a kid like him.

“Wanna tell me what the hell is going on?” Hopper finally asks, peering back at the pair, where Eleven is slumped asleep against Steven’s shoulder. He’s petting the cat, scratching at its ears as he scowls warily back.

“Didn’t you say you knew?”

“I know a lot of weird stuff happened. I know the government’s all over this. I dunno what got a kid like you all tangled up in it.” 

“She got lost by my house a week after uhm- all the shit went down. I was at the Byers’ house.” The kid seems almost reluctant to admit it, watching Hopper through the rearview mirror for anything in his reaction. Hopper purses his lips and slowly nods, turning away from the rearview mirror as Steven continues. “I’m taking care of her.”

“ You ?” Hopper can’t stop himself from saying it- he can’t stop the disbelieving chuckle in his throat, because he cannot imagine the Harrington’s son having an ounce of responsibility after all the things said about him, after the things Hopper himself has caught him doing. 

But Steven speaks up, practically snapping. “ Yes .”

Eyes widening a bit, Hopper flattens his palms against the wheel and relents. “Christ, alright,” he huffs. “Why were you two out in the woods? Don’t you live with your parents?”

“...no. No, they caught her in the house. It wasn’t safe anymore, so we went to Chicago.”

“ Chicago ?” Hopper balks, turning in his seat. Steven jumps a bit, startling and leaning away. 
“Yeah, it was gonna be harder for people to find her. She calls ‘em the bad men. I was kinda guessing the FEDs or something, anyway. And I needed to make money to keep the car warm for a while and get food and stuff. I just had to come back because I had school, and if I didn’t show up everyone would freak out and if they found me they’d find Ellie.” 

With a sigh, Hopper turns back forward again. That was shockingly smart, if equally as disconcerting.

“How long were you in Chicago?”

“A month, maybe.” 

Once more, Hopper swears under his breath, bringing his hand up to run through his short cropped hair. What the hell ? 

“So you don’t want t’go back home, do you?” 

Steven snorts, leaning back against the back seat. “No fucking way. My dad was gonna hit her.”

That’s all Steven really needs to say for Hopper to shut his mouth and turn back towards the road. He hesitates a moment before glancing back again.
“And what about you?”

“Doesn’t matter. M’ not there anymore.”

“Christ kid, you know you could’ve called-” Hopper starts, and he can’t for the life of him fathom how that had slipped under the radar, especially with how laissez-faire Steven seemed about it. It came across as just a fact of life for him, even more pressing was the fact that his parents hadn’t called. No calls about him leaving, no filing for a missing kid, not even a call about Eleven. It brings a stark dread to Hopper’s gut as he turns to peer ahead at the dark road like it might hide any ounce of shame he carries. From the rearview mirror, he can see Steven finally leaning back to rest his head against Eleven’s. They’re both in a state. There’s only so much a teenage boy can do after running away from his rich parent’s house, in the middle of winter no less. 

Steven doesn’t offer him a response for that, only another scowl. 

“What’s that bat for?” 

“Whatever those things are that come outta where you saved Will Byers from.”

That explains a little bit more, at least. 

“So… no one knows you left your parents?”

“They kicked us out. And no.”

“...alright. Well uh…” Hopper hadn’t been exactly planning on taking care of two kids out in that cabin. He isn’t even sure he can, but giving a glance back towards where the pair are in the back seat has his heart practically shattering.
He can’t separate them at this point. 

“I’ll keep an eye on both of you then. We’re gonna need some rules.” 

“...okay.” Steven starts dubiously. He glances back again to see Steve rubbing at his shoulder with a visible grimace. 

“Let’s uh- how about we talk about those tomorrow, though. You two need some rest. Are you alright?” 

“M’fine.” 

“Y’look like you might be getting a cold.” Hopper notes, and well- he’s not wrong. The kid looks so pale, eyes a touch bloodshot, features sallow and sad looking. He looks as if he hasn’t slept in days either. From where he’s leaned against Eleven, Steven glances up and seems to weigh something, seems to come to some awfully dreadful conclusion that he doesn’t like. 

“A dog bit me the other day. I don’t have rabies though- it just hurts.” 

“What? Did you go to the hospital?-”

“No. ‘Cause then they’d call my dad. Or they’d charge my parents and they’d probably freak out.”

“Jesus fucking christ.” Hopper breathes, squeezing the leather wrapped wheel of his truck as he pulls into the woods. “When we get inside, I’m gonna get you two settled down and take a look at that.” 

Slowly, Steven nods, reaching up to stifle a yawn. The cat slowly stretches and sits up, padding over to the window as if intending to watch where they went, pulling off the road and onto another logging road, deep windings out in the woods until he comes to a stop. 

Hopper has spent some time here already- doing most of the patching things up, making sure the windows are sealed, the plumbing works, that there’s enough electricity with a generator for the lights to come on. Along the sideways porch up past the trees, split logs are stacked. Snow lines the roof, thick and icy, mean looking icicles clinging to the eaves and blocked up window sills. 
Steven hesitates at the sight despite not even having gotten out yet, so Hopper speaks up in assurance. “If you wanna carry her in, I’ll get’chur stuff, alright?”

“...promise there’s no funny business?”

“Promise. I’m sick of funny business.” 

Assured or not, Steven nods and turns to scoop up the cat, plop it in Eleven’s lap, and pick her up with another little wince. Slowly, he scoots to the edge, elbows the door open, and makes his way outside as Hopper follows along. The cat scampers up to peer over Steven’s shoulder, staring at Hopper a moment before bumping its raggedy head against his cheek, as he casts one tired glance back. 

He looks too tired for a kid, with another kid in his arms. 

“Just wait there and I’ll unlock the door.” He finds himself nodding to the boy, who lingers at the bottom of the steps in half untied snow boots. 

Box and bag teetering in his grip and across his shoulder, Hopper fumbles for the keys on his keyring, unlocking the first, second, third and fourth locks before opening the door and nodding him inside. 

It’s dark in there. An old couch and an armchair have been pushed to the middle of the room in front of a box TV, the wooden floor barren, a bit dirty by the door. His own bed is pushed into the corner, where woodworking and repair tools are scattered around the beginning shapes of a kitchen. Hopper knows then that the couch and the bed will be theirs until he can bring his mattress from his trailer by the quarry. Steven pauses just inside, watching closely as Hopper sets down the box, picks up the bat, and meets Steven’s eye before leaning it beside the door. 

That’s the first moment Steven really relaxes. Without a word he moves inside, leaning to let the cat jump off onto the couch with a soft ‘mrrp’, watching after the pair of them just as closely as Hopper as Steven sets the girl down on the bed in the corner, only pausing to tug off her boots and leave them beside the bed before pulling the sheets up around her. 

“Y’know I never really liked cats, but this little guy is kinda cute.” Hopper offers into the quiet of the room. Plucking up some logs from beside the door, he marches over to the woodstove and nods for Steven to sit on the couch. “You’re sure I can take a look at that bite?” 

“Yeah, that’s Oreo- we found ‘im in Chicago, he used to be a lot littler.” Steven agrees. “I have a first aid kit in the box.” 

As the kid slumps to sit on the couch, Hopper kicks off his boots in near tandem, picking up that box, huffing and puffing a moment as he sets it down beside the couch. Carefully, Steven sheds his coat and bundles it on his lap, tugging down the sleeve of the gym shirt he still hadn’t changed out of. 
“Christ kid, you’re sure it wasn’t a bear?”

“Yeah-” He gives a tired laugh. “I’m pretty sure.”

It had to have been a massive dog. It looks like it might’ve tried for his neck and instead got his shoulder and went to pull off his arm. His shoulder has been wrapped, if not particularly well, gauze stuffed haphazardly where the deepest teeth wounds have bled through along the course of the day.

“When was this?” Hopper asks, and he can’t hide his shock if he tried, reaching to start pulling off the bandages. 

“Two or three days ago, I think. I had to miss a day of school because I was sleeping it off. Ellie helped me take care of it.” The kid hisses. “Ow- ow, shit.”

“Hey, careful. M’ gonna keep an eye on this and make sure it doesn’t get infected. I… I really think you should see a doctor, Steven.”

“Steve.” The kid interjects. “I can’t. I’d have to go back to my dad’s house.” 

“...dammit, kid,” Hopper gripes heavily, grimacing at the sight. Between the forming bruises and swelling, he could see every outline of the teeth from that dog, deep puncture wounds on either side of his shoulder, jagged waves in the skin where the front teeth had dragged across his collarbone. It looked like it might get infected- or hell, already is. “If you pass out on me or get feverish, I’m taking you. I don’t give a damn, I’ll deal with your damn dad later. Your parents are probably gonna be more worried about where you’ve been and hearing you’ve been bit by a dog than you leaving.”

Steve laughs- quiet, tired, bitter, and internally Hopper feels like he’s missed and realized something all at once. 

“Chief?” He asks back, turning to watch as Hopper stands and makes his way to the kitchen sink to wet a rag. Hopper turns back to see the boy hunched there, eyes big, practically glimmering in the near dark of the cabin. “Please- please don’t tell anybody. Don’t take me back. I won’t say anything I won’t- I don’t wanna get her in trouble. I don’t wanna get in trouble with my dad.” Steve’s voice falters, quiet, and for a moment Hopper almost can’t believe the kid was what- sixteen, seventeen. He looked far too afraid, far too tired, far too burdened with all of this shit he hadn’t needed to worry about at all. He looks as if he might cry, and at the same he most desperately doesn’t want to. “I just wanna keep Ellie safe.”

Against his better judgment, Hopper sighs and nods, finishing washing his hands. “You really care about her, huh kid?”

“...yeah.” He murmurs, turning back to watch the fire between the metal slats in the woodstove. “She said… she said I’m her brother.”

Hopper spends that night tending to the kid’s wound. They don’t talk much- Hopper isn’t quite sure what to talk about that won’t send the kid spiraling to the edge of tears again. It wasn’t easy disinfecting it, patching it up again, feeding him some of the soup from his bag that apparently he and Ellie had been sharing. The little cat, Oreo, curls up on the back of the couch almost as if to keep watch, eventually falling asleep in a little heap. 

The kid falls asleep by six o'clock, leaning against the armrest of the couch, and Hopper takes the time to cover him in one of the blankets from his car, keeping the fire warm for the rest of the night until he falls asleep in the arm chair.

Chapter Text

She wakes with a start in near silence as she has every morning for the past three and a half months. 

For a long moment, Eleven is breathless, clinging at the sheets of the bed she finds herself on. There are images of her dreams still caught behind her eyes, and she swears she can see Papa out the corner of her eye, lingering in the shadows like the illusion her sister cast upon her. She even swears she can hear the pitter-patter of mangled paws in the snow as if she’s still outside, still in the car. 

This is not the car. This is not home. 

In fact, Ellie doesn’t know where this is at all . 

She finds herself laying on a small bed tucked into the corner of what feels like a very large room. It’s a little chilly here, but the bed is warm, the springs a stark presence bent under her like someone’s already been sleeping there a lot. Someone had taken off her shoes and put them on the floor, her socks sitting funny on her feet. Oreo is curled up there, tucked at the end of the little bed in a little donut, looking very much like his namesake. The blankets under her are blue and worn and quilted, the pillow deflated from the weight of her head. She’s still wrapped up in her favorite leather jacket too, her hat having fallen off her head from rolling over sometime in the night. 

The room smells like dust and woodsmoke, like from their dinner fires, but there isn’t any fire now. The woodburning stove tucked into the corner of the room, black and sturdy despite its age, has gone still and quiet and dark, though piles of ashen logs peer out at her from the darkened tempered glass window. Above her, the room arches up into the roof. Big wooden beams breach the gap between the walls sparingly, leading her gaze along towards where a room is, lined on the wall by a ladder that bridges the ghost of a kitchen and a tiny loft. 

It’s not the same as the kitchen from Mike’s house, or Steve’s old house. The pipes of the sink are exposed, and the oven is pulled out of the wall, and the icebox is the only thing that looks like it's where it’s supposed to be. The windows are all covered in shades or boarded up, barely holding back the silvery light of the early morning. 

Across a dusty floor, layered with plywood and planks, she spots a single muddy rug by the door. Her brother’s spiky bat is propped up beside the door alongside the box of their things from the car, his sports bag- his ‘school bag’. 

He’s asleep on a patchy couch when she sees him. 

In an instant relief floods her, and Ellie scoots and gets off the bed, pushing off the thin sheets that’d been pulled over her. Oreo slowly uncurls himself as her sock laden feet hit the floor, ears twitching with a squeak of a yawn while he watches her. 

Silently, Eleven banishes her fear of shadows of Papa and infected dogs in exchange for the reality of the worn out wood she finds beneath her feet. Still without a sound, she makes her way over to her brother first, even if she can see the figure of the policeman in the armchair that looks like Mike’s dad’s. She’s quick to sit, scooting over on her knees to lean in close and check that he’s okay. 
Steve is asleep. He looks totally dead to the world, face tucked deep in a pillow, the shoulder where he’d been bitten is angled up so he wouldn’t lean on it if he moved, just like he’d been sleeping the past few days. A few of their blankets had been put over him, his boots sit on the floor at his feet. 

His hair is big, like it always is in the morning. But he looks more sick than he had the past couple days, and it prompts fear to swell in her chest as she leans in just to make sure he’s breathing. 

He is.
It’s quiet, but it’s there, just like how she could feel his heartbeat after he’d fallen asleep the night the dogs came. His face looks… pale. Like how her fingers start to look when they’re too cold, and his eyes look tired, with what he calls ‘dark circles’, something he’s nervous about being obvious and has talked quite a lot about over making dinner- that and every other thing that comes to mind. 

It’d been so scary when he first got bitten. The dogs had that inkling of bad, danger, all over them, but thankfully they didn’t seem to have passed onto her brother. But it hadn’t been quite the same with the dogs as it had the demogorgon, either. But he’d looked like Barbara’s body did for a little while, only with a lot more blood. The same kinda pale, sunken dark circles around the eyes. He’d even been bitten on the same side of his body, the left side, and where her lungs had been turned to bits and rot and dried up gore, his was covered with blood, and puss, and swollen for days- still the same when she tried to help him fix it. 

He needs new bandaids- no, bandages , which is a scary thought because looking at the bite makes Eleven’s skin itch wrong and she’s very aware that they’re running out. And very fast. 

The policeman snores abruptly in his sleep, and it’s enough to startle Ellie back sitting, head whipping around towards him. Oreo appears to be rather unfazed as he hops down from the bed and gives a long stretch, wobbling over to bump against her and continue his path towards the policeman. 

Eleven turns to squint at him. 

She recognizes the policeman, of course. Distantly, she recalls his name is Hopper, but she’s not certain and she doesn’t want to pin it if she’s not sure. His beard is the same, and he’s asleep in the exact same uniform he’d been wearing at the school. His hat sits on the ground beside his chair, and his feet are propped out like he wants to recline, but he can’t, head slumped all the way back, mouth open beneath his big bushy mustache. 

He snores. It’s really quiet now that he’s squirmed his way into a good position, and Ellie wonders for a moment if this is what woke her up in the first place, and not actually her nightmares.

Oreo doesn’t seem keen on letting him continue sleeping, however, hopping up onto the arm of the chair just so that his little front paws land on Hopper’s arm. 

Hopper jumps, jolting awake, and Ellie finds herself scampering back a few inches to lean against the couch, staring up at the man. 

Both of them watch as Oreo leaps for sheer surprise, managing to pull off quite the acrobatic feat before scampering off into the kitchen. 

Reaching up to wipe the sleep from his face, the policeman teeters in his chair and leans forward, head swiveling around to spot her. He stares, almost like he’s surprised she’s awake as he grumbles and wipes his face again. 
“Shit, hey kid.”

Ellie doesn’t have words. She stares, saucer eyed and tense where she’s sitting next to the couch. 

In that tense awkwardness, Hopper leans forward to lean his elbows on his knees as if in an effort to be more level with her, and El remains quiet as she stares, unfaltering, serious. She can’t let this guy know how scared she is, how uneasy it is being well- who knows where, at the moment. 

“...you uh… you remember me, right?”

Briefly debating an answer at all, El finally gives in to say something. 
“Yes.”

“Right.” Seeming reassured, the policeman slowly stands and groans, rubbing a crick in his back. “You hungry?”

“...yes.” 

“Good. ‘Cause I’m making breakfast.” 

The way this man speaks is quiet- not in the same way Papa speaks quietly. There’s no threat in it, it’s merely soft and sleepy, maybe even trying to ensure Steve doesn’t wake. She spares a glance over to him again, finding Steve not having moved so much as an inch. 
That’s good, a t least. 

Slowly, Ellie stands, making her way to tentatively follow Hopper into the ramshackle beginnings of a kitchen, where Oreo had retreated to recover from his shock and putter around under a sink with exposed piping. Instinctively, El finds herself picking her arms up to grip the sleeves of her jacket in an attempt to keep in the warmth. 
She watches as Hopper reaches into the plugged in old fridge to take out a very familiar yellow and red box. 

“Eggo.”

A satisfied smile curls up under Hopper’s mustache as he nods, turning to the worn out, beat up looking toaster set up on the duster countertop- faded and cracked with age. 

“Yeah. Lucky you, I even got syrup,” he remarks, cracking open the box. 

Eleven can’t fight the glimmer in her eyes as she watches him pull apart the plastic bag inside and pop two waffles in the toaster. 

“Syrup with butter?” 

Ever amused, almost… relieved in some odd way, Hopper’s brow softens and he nods, tucking the box on the counter for a moment. He leans like he’s thinking, but he just smiles at her a bit, shaking his head. 

“Yeah, syrup with butter,” He agrees, glancing back up to her. “Your name’s Eleven, right? Or do you prefer Jane?”

“...yes. Ellie is my nick-name. That is my favorite.” She offers quietly, standing still there in the middle of the cabin as if she might turn around and soak it in again, but she doesn’t. She keeps staring up at Hopper, around towards Oreo, instead soaking in the little details of that kitchen. The curtain rods over the narrow windows, an empty hanging wire fit for a lonely lightbulb, the awkward angle of the fridge, the dust caked on the floor. “You are Hopper.”

“You got that right.” Hopper agrees softly, kindly ignoring how she jumps when the toaster pops the waffles back up again. He easily turns and rustles around for a paper plate and a worn out old fork, and he plops it down on the tiny end table- it almost looks like one of the red diner tables from where she’d first found food and eaten french fries.

When she’d met the man named Benny. 

“I uh… I got a call from your aunt.” 

In an instant, Eleven finds her incessant craving for waffles squashed as her head snaps up to the policeman. In an instant she feels her head go hot and her face go clammy, and Hopper seems to realize her expression shifted just as fast as it had happened. 

“You’re not in trouble, kid,” Hopper starts, holding his hand out flat. To Ellie, it almost looks like he’s squishing that idea down into the table. Her eyes flicker up again as he continues, “I met her a little while ago when all of this stuff-” he nods around them as if said ‘stuff’ is still happening “-was going on. I was trying to find you. She uh… she just called because she knew that. I’m glad you found your mom.” 

Still disconcerted, Eleven doesn’t touch her waffles for a moment. The little olive branch on the table between them remains resolute there, the one thing between them other than the long silence for a moment. 

She drops her gaze to the waffles again, shoulders raising. He’d been looking for her, yes. He’d said it. She remembers him from two months ago, maybe longer, when he’d first sort of yelled at them over the radio when she was hiding in the bus- her and Lucas and Dustin and Mike. 
He can keep them safe. He can protect them. That’s what he’d promised, and he really had done that. He’d beaten up a bad man right there in front of them and smuggled them all away to Will Byers’ house. 

Everything seemed to happen at that house. Will Byers going missing, learning about the Upside Down, and Steve fighting their monster. The Demogorgon. 

She shared with him the exact same uncertain stare she had when they’d all been sitting on the couch. His stare then had been much more severe. He’d had such a deep furrow in his brow, jaw set, almost glaring at her past his pointy nose. 
She’d ridden in his car to the school, with Mike and Nancy. 

At the time, he’d been a little scary. But now, in the hazy morning dark of this cabin, he doesn’t seem so scary. The furrow in his brow has faded a touch, the scowl turned to something vaguely more neutral. 

Hesitantly, she glances back at Steve, who’s still deeply asleep on the couch. 

He can keep them safe. 

And if not, Ellie knows what to do.

“Me too.” Ellie agrees softly, reaching out to accept her plate of Eggos with a near fervor. That alone seems to draw tension from his shoulders. 

Those waffles are the most delicious thing she’d eaten in ages . The sweet syrup, and the butter, all drowning together into things that are just good . It’s like breakfasts at Mike’s house, or when Steve made pancakes back in his old home. Mornings like that were always the best, even if all mornings there had been good. 

“So, uh… you two are pretty close?”

“He is my brother.” 

“Huh.” Hopper remarks, mostly to himself. It’s something deeply considering of that sentiment. “How’d that happen?” 

Speaking around her waffles, Eleven shrugs, glancing up again. Hopper is thinking more about what she’s going to say, by the look on his face.

“I got lost. Stu found me by his house.” While her words come out stilted, her confidence doesn’t waver. Steve taught her a lot about talking. He still is, really, and mostly it’s through the process of talking at her. He doesn’t say a lot of big words, just a lot of words in general, and she listens. It helps that he doesn’t mind offering words up for her to add to her growing internal dictionary whenever her sentences stutter into dead air. 

“...right. Alright, so that’s where you’ve been?” Hopper continues, standing to occupy himself instead of just staring. “Steven- Steve filled me in a little bit. Said you guys were hiding in Chicago.”

“...yes.” She agrees trepidatiously, shoveling the rest of her waffle into her mouth. 

“How long ago did he get hurt? Did you get hurt at all?”

Ellie sits up a touch, watching as Hopper gathers up a broom and a dustpan from the mess of things in the far corner of the kitchen. 

“No- I did not. I got stuck in the car.” She admits. “It was- not a lot of days ago. I do not remember.”

Hopper doesn’t seem particularly satisfied with that answer, glancing up for a concerned moment, but he sighs and nods. 

Ellie doesn’t like that he doesn’t just talk and explain whatever’s going on in his head. Instead, he turns, puts a hand on his hip and surveys the room as if he hasn’t been there for who knows how long before. 

“Well. We’re gonna be here for a while , so hows about we start cleanin’ this place up?” 

El’s head swivels around at the place to follow Hopper’s gaze, before jumping back to the broom in his hand. Oh. So cleaning. Ellie hadn’t ever done much cleaning, except to help Steve. It was easy stuff, like cleaning up her art supplies or the dishes, folding blankets. He had a cool thing called a ‘dishwasher’, which had been a ‘new model’ at the time, so it worked a charm. 

This, however, is going to be quite a lot of cleaning. 

Peering down at the plywood flooring, the dust in the corners, the cobwebs in the ceiling, and the conscious thought that here is not the car, here is not the warehouse, or her mama’s house, or Steve’s, or Mike’s, or her little room. This isn’t a home, but she can’t shake the feeling that they’re going to be here for quite some time. 

It’s empty, and they’re in it. And she very much wants somewhere to call home. 

Readily, she shimmies out of her chair and nods. 

“Yes.”

The sugary smell of syrup is what wakes Steve up, soon followed by the stark notes of mildew and dust. 

His head is pounding as he lays there, sprawled in the warmth of the itchy pillow under his head. Here, the haze of sleep pulls at his eyes, it coaxes him back into the dredges of exhaustion. He can’t fall back into it fully. Not with the pounding in the back of his head, not with the throbbing sting of his shoulder, and he clenches his jaw for it. 

It doesn’t help that there’s a creeping hunger rising in his gut. 

Maybe if he keeps his eyes shut long enough he’ll fall back asleep. The fabric of the pillow, of the patchwork couch, the blankets thrown over him trapping the warmth against his skin, it has him wanting to curl up and be small, to take the comfort in it. Despite that urge, the aches in his body and the sounds and smells and feelings of the world around him ground him back into the world of the waking. 

A soft ‘ swish swish, swish swish, ’ sound from the other side of the couch. The wet smell of old wood is there in his nose, the tickle of dust billowing up- followed by the far too loud clink of something farther away, probably towards where that kitchen is. He can her little paws on the plywood, the creak of the old roof overhead. He can smell the twinge of burnt toaster crumbs, cold cardboard, dirt, the faded smell of woodsmoke and ash. 

The dust makes his nose tickle. 

The soft ‘ swish swish, swish swish ’ continues. 

He groans, squeezing his eyes shut with the throbbing in his head. For that, a voice calls from the kitchen area. 

“Well, good morning sleeping beauty.” 

“Huh?”

“Good morning!” Ellie’s voice is enough to make him sit up, slow and- oh boy, that doesn’t feel great . His shoulder burned and twisted, aching, throbbing deep into muscles he hadn’t had any clue existed. All of that is caught up in an agonized squint and a grimace as he props himself up. 

“Woah- hey, settle down kid. You stay there. You’re on bedrest.”

“Yes. bed-rest.” 

Propping himself up slightly on the itchy pillow, he finally manages to drag his eyes open to see Chief Hopper standing there with… a plate of waffles. 

The events of the previous night leak back into his memory- coming home from school, Ellie having found soup, the pair of them going to change his bandages, and Hopper stumbling his way across them after admitting he’s sort of been bribing his little sister into a truce with waffles. 
He’d… helped. That’s such a weird thing to wrap his head around. Steve is sure the last encounter he’d had with Hopper was getting reprimanded for the gazillionth time about buying beer somewhere- because someone must’ve seen something when he went and worked his charm, since he didn’t have a fake ID to throw around. 

With measurable hesitance, he takes the plate with his good hand, sitting back. For a moment he sort of just stares at it, as Hopper turns away to let him debate the sanctity of waffles on what’s essentially a stranger’s couch. Instead, he turns his attention to clearing out the corners of the soon to be kitchen. 

Steve still can’t wrap his head around the idea that this guy intends for them to stay here. He knows this- Hopper had said it, that here is supposed to be a place to hide away, but all of Steve expects that to last hardly more than a week. 

Steve is all the more aware that he hopes it doesn’t keep. He expects it not to keep. They don’t need a fucking cop to take care of them, he’s been doing fine- dog attack aside. 

Ellie skirts around the back of the couch as if she could see him spiraling into the sleepy haze of his thoughts, broom in hand, with the faint hint of a smile on her usually solemn face. 

“Eggos.” 

Even with her little smile, her eyes flicker over to the policeman when he turns- she’s wary still, wary as she’s been with anyone in the YMCA buildings, what with their crisp little uniforms and smiles and occasional stares. 

But it had ended fine there. It always did. 

“Yeah.” Steve murmurs, finally pulling the plate close. The flimsy paper wobbles in his hand, it has him leaning to steady himself and his grip on the plate as he tries to pick up his bad hand to hold it. It’s a miracle those waffles or the metal fork he hadn’t noticed here didn’t fall off and make a mess. 
He’s worried about making a mess. 

He has no idea what this guy’s limits are, anyway- which could be a vast variety of things considering everything that had happened form the last few months. The monster, the Byers, the whole government thing that still made the hair on the back of Steve’s neck stand on end at the thought alone. And of course, Ellie. 

“What’re you doing?” Steve murmurs, trying to angle his leaning to something at least resembling comfortable. He fiddles to pick up his fork and start digging in, unable to help but start wolfing it down at soon as he gets a first bite. 

The headache has begun to fade.

“Cleaning,” Eleven hums, holding up her broom as if that much is obvious. “We… will stay here.”

“You sure?” 

“Yes.” She peers over at Hopper for that, as if to reaffirm whatever decision she’d come to. He follows it, chewing on his waffles as much as he’s chewing on his thoughts. Those thoughts all come tumbling in after that, as he inhales his waffles, drowning in syrup, sweet and feeling strangely like it’s meant to quell his worries. 

Maybe he wants to believe it’s a lie. A trick. But for now he doesn’t, not if Ellie doesn’t. Not if Hopper keeps well- keeping his distance. 

“So you eat waffles with your syrup?” He offers into the room, earning a faint chuckle from Hopper, Ellie’s brow scrunching up at the sentiment. 

“Apparently you hardly eat waffles with your butter.” Hopper remarks, sticking a bushbroom up into the rafters to clean up the cobwebs there. “Sleep good?”

“...mmh, yeah. I slept alright,” Steve admonishes, turning to meet Ellie with a smile. “What about you, stinker?” 

“I slept nice. I want more breakfast later.”

“I still have your soup,” Hopper hums. “I can’t have you eating Eggos all day.”

Seeming vaguely disappointed, Ellie draws her broom close and starts sweeping- slow and precise sweeps one after another, that swishing sound. Steve hadn’t ever shown her how to sweep like that. 

“...okaaay-”

Steve snorts, only sleepily grinning when she turns back to scrunch her nose at him, but he nods in a near reluctant agreement. “I can’t get mad about that. It’s good soup. And we gotta save the Eggos for tomorrow too, right?”

“Exactly.” Hopper agrees. He almost seems relieved, pacing around them with his head turned up after the cobwebs, but the faint smile on his face is audible in his voice. Ellie goes right back to confidently sweeping, scooting around and pulling dust bunnies out from under the couch. It makes Steve cough as he sways to stand, letting the blankets heap off him and drag their heat away. It makes him shiver, balancing the flimsy and now syrup-soaked empty paper plate and fork, and he can’t help but pause to grit his teeth. 

The headache is gone, but the searing in his shoulder has awakened with him. 

Nevertheless, he starts a shuffle around Ellie to go find something to do- to occupy himself. He felt too off to start his homework, not wanting Ellie and Hopper alike to do all the hard work even in his sleepy haze. There’s paper towels on a rickety old red table, a pair of plates. Trash, he can handle that. He wouldn’t want it sitting out on the table either. 

As he reaches out to pull those plates closer, stacking them one by one, Hopper turns with a double take and halts his cobwebbing to make his way over to Steve, reaching out for his shoulder. 

“Hey kid, you’re on couchrest still.” He reminds- a light reprimand, but a reprimand nonetheless, and Steve finds himself jumping a touch regardless. 

Pausing for a moment, he makes an effort to straighten his shoulders and bury the lingering pains. 
“It’s okay- I don’t wanna just sit around all day. Can’t let Ellie do all this stuff alone, anyway. Especially if we’re all supposed to be here for a while. Doesn’t really feel fair.” 

That brings quite the expression to Hopper’s face. Steve knows the guy has a lot of opinions about him. And well placed ones too, what with catching Steve drinking underage multiple times, speeding, smoking once too. He probably remembers all of that, and all of the sudden that critical ‘You?’ from last night in the car when Steve had mentioned he was taking care of Ellie. 

He looks… surprised. 

That stings. 

“...sure, alright. No heavy lifting, though. How ‘bout I go get some trash bags outta the truck and you can get all the chunks we can’t sweep.” He sort of lingers- Steve swears he can practically hear the leftover cigarette smoke in him turning the gears in his head. But he turns, off in his even almost saunter to the front door. He pushes it open through the ripped screen, briefly lets in the cold as he leaves. 

Ellie watches him all the same. 

With the two of them there in the house, for a moment all he can hear is the faint cooing of early morning birdsong. With each faded step of Hopper’s shoes in the snow outside, the little crunch, Ellie and him turn back to one another. 

“You’re sure?” He asks, as she turns back to stare at the door, and then up at him with a faint, tentative nod. 

“Yes. He is good.”

“He doesn’t like me.”

“That is not true.”

Steve pulls a face, tilting his head to the side as he squints out at that door. “He caught me getting in trouble a lot- well. He got me in trouble a lot. I don’t want him to get us- or you-”

“We can go. We know how to go,” She reasons, with that hint in her tone that barters no argument, the same she’d taken every so often with Kali. “But I want to stay. And you are sick, so we need to stay.” 

Steve bites back the ‘I’m not sick’, even if his state this morning hadn’t agreed with that. She knows it, she knows it like she knows how they can leave if they have to- how they’ll stumble through the woods even though they don’t know where they are right now, they’ll end up somewhere if they don’t have to be here. 

The porch steps creak, and Ellie turns around with her broom to brush it along the floor, in no corner in particular. Thankfully her progress seems to prove worthwhile with the dust heaping where she leaves it. Hopper returns with a roll of trashbags in hand, which he plops down on the table. 

“Ooh-” Ellie starts, and Steve takes the opportunity to reach out and take up a bag, letting it hang loose in his hand as he starts scooping up the remnants of the morning’s breakfast. Hopper even starts to help him for a moment, making enough space to dump a bag of other cleaning supplies. As he pulls open a pack of dusting towels. He starts speaking up as Ellie gets back to sweeping just in time for Oreo to launch out from under the couch to attack one of the gathered dustpiles and send it all out across the floor again like he’s jumping into leaves. 
“...aw…” She sighs, just in time for Hopper to shake his head and fight down a snort.

“Since we’re all here, why don’t we do a quick rundown of the rules?” 

“Rules?” Ellie starts, glancing up just in time to catch Steve frowning and reluctantly nodding. 

“...sure.”

“Right. Now, I’m gonna have to be out working a lot of the time, but I have three days off during the week. That’s Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Otherwise I got ten hour shifts. And you have school.” 

Hopper points to Steve just before he makes his way into the kitchen to start scrubbing down the janky sink in the middle. Well, that answered one question. 

“After that shoulder is healed.”

In an instant, Steve turns. “What? Why-? It’s been fine so far.” 

“I don’t care. You need to heal, and considering it looks like a damn bear almost ate you, I doubt you’ll want people asking questions.”

“Well, no- but-” Steve flounders, trash bag forgotten where it still slumps in his grasp, the edges sticky with syrup, sharing a glance with Ellie, who seems almost torn by the furrow in her brow. “-I already missed a lot of school when I was in Chicago- and what about my homework? And my girlfriend?”

Hopper, no longer so amused and light hearted, turns to lean on the counter a touch. Brow quirking, frown forming, he sighs. 
“Your girlfriend ?-” 

“...well yeah. She gets my homework and she doesn’t know I’m not… with my parents anymore.”

Steve’s skin feels prickly, the words coming off his tongue like bile he’d been trying to keep in the back of his throat for fear of throwing up. Before he knows it, Ellie’s little hand- it’d always been small, knobby little fingers and calluses she shouldn’t have- wraps up in the hand not holding the trash bag. He spares her a glance, partially grateful for the distraction, before peering back up at Hopper with a resolve of near annoyance. 
He’d managed this far, so why was it such a big deal?

Shoulders slumping just a touch, Hopper steps a touch forward to meet the pair of them, looking down with a crinkle in his brow and a slight pull of his lips like his mustache is going to crawl down and consume his mouth. 

“I’ll handle it. I’ll make sure you don’t miss out on anything.”

“Isn’t it gonna be suspicious that you, the Chief, is gonna be asking about my homework?-”

“I said I’d handle it. I will.” Hopper sounds vaguely annoyed before losing a deep chested sigh as he rubs his hands together. Behind them, Oreo can be heard jumping and thumping and rolling around in the dust clod he’d attacked. “But I need to make sure you stay in one piece, kid.”

“...okay. Fine.”

“Right.” Hopper agrees, almost staring Steve down for a moment to make sure that conclusion settled. Nevertheless, he continues. 

“Right. Rule one, we always keep the windows shut. Curtains too, once I get some.”

That rule makes sense. No lights, no movement, no signs of life, like how they’d kept the car in Chicago. He finds himself nodding. 

“Rule two; we only open the door for the secret knock.” 

“What is the secret knock?” Ellie pipes up curiously. 

“We’ll uh… we’ll figure that out sometime later.” He resolves, continuing as he turns his attention. “Rule three is mostly for you. That’s to never go outside alone. Especially not in daylight.” 

Ellie’s expression takes something entirely baffled as she shakes her head. “I do not want to stay inside. Our rule is don’t be stupid.”

“Seriously,” Steve agrees. “You can’t just keep her locked up here-”

“That’s how it’s gonna have to be.” Hopper continues with a heavy voice, something brokering no contest. “We can add that as our fourth rule. Don’t be stupid. But you can’t be seen outside-”

“What? Why!? She knows how to hide-”

“I know how to hide.” Ellie agrees eagerly alongside Steve’s protests. 

“ Because ,” Hopper interjects shortly, “the lab is open. They were ballsy enough to bug my old house, so I don’t doubt they’ve planted folks in town. Probably the phone lines too. So, if anyone sees you outside Eleven-”

“Ellie.”

“It’s Ellie.”

“- Ellie , it won’t be good.”

Ellie turns her head down a moment in a note of something resigned, giving Steve’s fingers a squeeze as he speaks up still. 

“But she was fine in Chicago. Can she not even go outside here?”

“No. Wait, you two just ran around Chicago? In the open?”

“No, we’re careful- we’re careful. We know how to be careful.”

“Not stupid.” Ellie agrees. “I find places to hide. And food. Stu had to work a long time when it is dark and then when it gets dark again- doing… cashier. And streetw-”

“ Ellie -” It comes out a touch meaner and louder than he intends, squeezing Ellie’s hand tight as he whips his head around, and she shuts her mouth so fast he can hear her teeth click together, staring up at him with a wide eyed and confused look. She seems to catch the instantaneous fear rising on his face, and though the confusion keeps, she instead keeps her lips pursed tight and turns to look over at Hopper. 

Steve glances back all the same. 

“What?” 

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, he’d screwed it up again- he’d screwed it up and he hadn’t even tried. The man has a look of passing confusion of his own for a moment before it cracks into realization, his eyes pulling over to Steve with a look so weighted it nearly steals Steve’s will to stay standing. Hopper’s tone takes something from somewhere deep inside his chest, a low grumble of the question like the growl of an angry dog. 

Steve doesn’t want to think about dogs right now. 

Ellie squeezes his hand after trying to wriggle it free for a moment, dropping the broom to shift- almost stepping in front of Steve to meet Hopper with a glower to match. Hopper looks angry. He looks like a lot of things, but the first and most important thing Steve can see is anger, and he can’t help but pull Ellie back a bit, swallowing hard. 

The silence that settles is so heavy, Steve feels like he’s going to drown in it. It’s there- there in Hopper’s eyes, some vague recognition as he stares Steve back in the face like he’s smoke steaming through a million more thoughts. Most likely how to get him out. He knows it, Steve knows it- no cop is gonna want him around, not with what he’s done, not somebody like him. Even if it’d just been for the money. No, cops arrest people like him and lock them away for life, and he really doesn’t like the idea of just having to up and leave Ellie alone here. 

Stuck in this house.

Alone. 

Steve’s head feels like it’s squeezing as Hopper turns away to suck in a great big breath, running his hand through his hair. 

“Shit.” Hopper starts, before he turns to walk towards them. Steve flinches, and hard, as Ellie scoots back and closer to grab onto his sleeve. He drops the trash bag on the floor, but Hopper breezes by for the door, for where his leather cop’s coat is hung haphazardly on a nail that shouldn’t have even been there. With that still heavy look, he fumbles in his coat pocket and withdraws a pack of cigarettes. 

“ Shit ,” he repeats again in a murmur, frantically lighting it. His hands clench into fists, his voice still sounds angry- his face still looks so angry , and it has Steve’s heart in his throat.

For sheer panic, Steve sputters out a question that has Ellie’s shoulders tensing under his fingers. 

“Are you gonna kick me out?”

For a far too long moment, Hopper doesn’t answer. He stands there, staring at the floor by the door as he drags on his cigarette so long it almost becomes ashes in itself. He watches the ashes fall, making sure to snuff them out before glancing up again. 

The anger is still there. It keeps even when Hopper looks very suddenly distraught, silent in it. Silent in the way his gaze on Steve changes from that of a cop critical of a spoiled mischief maker and instead into something… something else. Something Steve can’t read.

“...no.”

Steve lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, as Ellie leans into his side with a faint sound of relief. Her unspoken terror fades, but still lingers. 

“No, I’m not. But that’s why we have the rules, so you don’t get into shit like that. What you’re gonna do, Harrington, is keep your head down and do school. That’s it. And only when I’ve decided you’re healthy enough to do so.” He turns to stare over at them again, the scowl creeping to return to his face. “Do you understand?”

Swallowing down the frantic beating in his chest and the sudden dryness in his throat, Steve weakly nods, as Ellie pulls away enough to look up at Hopper with her scrutinizing look again. 

“I said, do you understand?” Hopper repeats, tone hardening. Steve almost jumps out of his skin for it, the nervous prickling returning as he nods again. 

“Y-yeah. Yes.”

“...okay.” Ellie agrees reluctantly. 

Hopper stays still just long enough to stare at them for a moment before sighing from deep in his chest. “I’ll be right outside chopping some wood for tonight. Yell if you need me. And don’t do any heavy lifting.

With that, he turns and rushes out the screen door again, leaving a trail of cigarette ash. Ellie turns back up to him then, leaning her head against his arm gently, as if she’s well aware not to bother his injuries. 

“...sorry.”

She doesn’t ask anymore questions for the rest of the day. In fact, she hardly makes a peep. He helps her figure out how to sweep up and trash the dust bunnies before Oreo can count them as victim, he cleans up trash clutter and wonders time and time again how long Chief Hopper had been here, living like this. 
It’s miserable. 
Steve keeps glancing over his shoulder, wary of anything happening, before eventually Hopper returns with an armful of short cut logs and starts the fire, and dinner. Eventually he turns on a Jim Croce record on a player that looked something like the one Steve’s mom threw out five years ago. 

He feeds them peas, mashed potatoes and chicken from microwave packets since the stove still isn’t working safely, as Croce sings about hustlers and uptown and ‘not messing with Jim’. Hopper changes his bandages again, and promises to get more form the store. 

He doesn’t mention what he’d heard, even if that anger remains quiet, simmering into something else, and Steve can feel it like a change in temperature. 

Steve falls asleep in a marginally cleaner cabin to Hopper fiddling with a television cable, Ellie sitting at his feet. 

Hopper doesn’t mention it the next day. Or the next. Or the day he brings Steve a homework packet and tells him he’d brought his car to the safe parking spot at the bottom of the hill, where Hopper will drop him off every morning he needs to drive to school. He doesn’t mention it, but he doesn’t have to, and Steve bears through feeling the tiniest bit each day that Chief Hopper hates him and staying here is a gift he doesn’t deserve. 

Each day, the cabin shifts from shack to house. Each morning, Steve wakes up with some new ache or pain that fades too quickly to be worth mentioning. And each day Hopper passes them each the olive branch of waffles and syrup, and with Eleven’s fading hesitance, Steve’s fear dwindles. 

But even tiny, it keeps. 

Chapter Text

The first week back to school is strange. Hopper shows him where to park on the logging road- Steve thankfully still has his tarp to throw over, which is ratty as ever and the perfect disguise for his car. He has to park there, in a thicket again, and carefully make his way out and off the other logging road here when Hopper can’t drive them closer to the house, around the traps Hopper had set, and out to the cabin where the knock was to hit the door twice, once, and thrice. 
It feels a little safer, at least. More secure. And Ellie has all her books and art stuff now to keep her occupied. 
His second week long absence stirs ever more annoyance in his teachers, his coach too, but thankfully none of them say anything- something he feels is Hopper’s doing. He has plenty of time to do his homework and plenty of time to heal, like Hopper says he needs to, and thankfully he’s healing fast. 

In this time, Hopper’s made the place much more homey. The plywood is cleaner, the kitchen takes shape with a mismatch of dusty old appliances and tables for extra counter space. A little shelf has been brought into the room against the wall, and the little room is slowly shaping out to be a temporary bedroom for he and Ellie- with mattresses Hopper dragged in from who knows where. They don’t have a door yet, for now it’s a long curtain that Oreo likes to sit in and get tripped over, but they can put their things in here- their clothes, his school stuff. 

Ellie’s drawings decorate the walls. 

Hopper gets the electricity working, and the tiny box TV becomes something Ellie knows like the back of her hand. She returns to her love of shitty soap operas.

The last day of January, Steve wakes up early when everything is still dark, before most school buses start their routes, to his watch alarm. Ellie has begun to sleep through the high pitched tenor of his watch easily. Thankfully, his annual morning headache is lesser today, and he can already hear Hopper in the kitchen making breakfast. Ellie stays fast asleep with her arms bundled around Oreo. Another thing he’s thankful for is that he doesn’t have to trip over the cat this morning. 

He fumbles to gather up a heap of his clothes to wear for the day, sleepily marching out from the curtain and across to the equally sad bathroom. It’s a little chilly in this room, the tiny window looking down on the curtained tub shower, exposed pipe sink and old toilet that had taken way too long to clean. 
There’s nothing but a sad little rug with an already worn path on it to keep his feet warm. Despite it he can hear the wood-stove crackling awake like he is, bringing warmth to the cabin. Dumping his clothes on the little rack by the sink, he shimmies out of his pajamas and turns on the shower, waiting the thirty seconds it takes to warm up. During that time, he pulls off the bandages from the previous night and drops them in their improvised trash can- now only tinged vaguely yellow and faintly red here and there. 

That wakes him up. He pulls from his sleepy haze, prying the curtain closed as he leans up into the warmth of the shower with a groan. It breaks across his face, wetting his hair, warming his shoulders, offering little but a fading sting to his shoulder. He can’t take too long, or it’ll get cold for Ellie, but he really can’t help but want to stay here longer than he should. 

Soon enough, he starts washing his hair with the (frankly depressing) shampoo between them, finding himself glancing down to his shoulder. 

It’s hard to see the marks from here, and they’re…pretty obvious. Even with the weird angle of it being directly on his shoulder. It’s healing faster than he thought it would, which to him is all the more evidence that it hadn’t been as bad as Hopper thought. There are two big indents on the back of his shoulder, and two more to match on the front. There are deep drags in the skin leading up to each where those teeth had dug into his flesh and raked, having to be pried off by Eleven’s powers. Even the little bottom teeth left marks on his collarbone. Though they’re healing, they look like they’ve healed a lot more than just a week and a half. 

It’s honestly kinda cool. Outside the horrible bruising and tenderness and the fact that he definitely has to wear a bandage on it- and t-shirts under his jerseys and long sleeves so Nancy doesn’t notice. So his old friends don’t find something to genuinely call him a freak over. 

Christ, he can hardly handle the rumors and bullshit about the fight with Jonathan and Nancy cheating, with him being gone for ages, looking like shit all the time, acting like a nerd and paying attention in his classes even if he hardly gets anything right.

Who’s he kidding, he still looks like shit.

A little resigned for that conclusion, Steve finishes washing his hair, his face, and reluctantly twists the water off. He still has plenty of time to let his hair dry out and then make sure it looks nice—though it aches not to have a hairdryer right now—but it’s better than he’s had in a while and he can’t complain.

He can’t take long showers here, though the anticipation of the cold to come he tenses his shoulders and scrambles for his towel just as he flicks the water off, scooting out of the shower to wrap the towel around himself with a shiver. 

Christ, it’s cold . 

Shivering, he dries himself off, glancing over to triple check that the curtain is closed- there’s no door here in the bathroom yet, just a checkered curtain that occasionally brushes his ankles if he stands close enough. Patting down with his towel, he stumbles sleepily into his clothes and starts rubbing his hair dry, at least enough so it isn’t sopping down his back. Soon enough, he’s able to hang his towel up again, turning back to check the dingy mirror. 

Hair still damp, eyes still heavy with sleep, there is a brief moment where he feels that the face in the mirror isn’t his. Skin pale, eyes a touch sallow with sleeplessness, lips marked in a chapped palor, Steve is quick to draw his own attention away from how he looks by snatching up the flimsy toothbrush that’d been designated as his. 

Once he has the toothpaste out and has a line of the stuff out on his toothbrush, he starts the arduous process of brushing- if there’s one thing he wants to keep, it’s his pearly whites. Even so, the comforting ritual of brushing his teeth is cut off by a sharp sting as his brush passes over his front teeth. 

It’s so startling, he almost drops his toothbrush in the sink, as his eyes snap up into the mirror in front of him. Clear even in the faded reflection, pink and soon red blossoms across his gums and those pride bearing pearly whites again. 

With a shock, he leans in- his gums haven’t bled since he was a kid. 

He swears his teeth almost look sharper, and he finds himself struck by it, as his mind put together the atrocious picture of them bending back to draw blood. But his teeth hadn’t done that. 

No, the bristles of his toothbrush are stained pink, and his gums are bleeding for the first time in almost a decade. 

He doesn’t have time to worry about this. He has to eat, make sure his hair is dry, make sure his homework is all finished by the time Hopper is ready for the day. 

Pushing down the tumbling, churning unease in his gut, Steve ducks to suck up some water from the sink spout and spit out the blood left behind, washing off his brush and abandoning it in the cup as he starts out into the rest of the cabin. 

Hopper is standing in the kitchen frying eggs- uniform lain on the back of his armchair, Hopper stands with his messy hair cast over his receding hairline, his pajama pants just as tattered as the rest of the house. He offers Steve a grunt in greeting as he weasels in to take up his plate of fried egg, turning back to sit at the table to start digging in. 

“G’morning.”

“Morning.” Steve chimes back, reaching back to where his sports bag is tucked against the wall. He tugs out his homework folder, a touch ratty and worn at the corners as it flops onto the table. Just geometry by the looks of it, and Steve isn’t particularly awful at that. It’s something to draw his attention away from his thoughts as he starts his breakfast. 

“D’you sleep alright?” 

“Mhm. Those mattresses are magical.” Steve remarks amusedly, earning a soft chuckle from the big man. It’s enough for Steve to crack a sleepy close lipped smile. “Did you sleep okay?”

“Yeah,” Hopper sighs. “Just the same old, same old. You know how it is.”

“Well, it does feel a little different now.” 

Hopper makes his way over to the table with a plate all his own, one more left on the counter for Ellie when she wakes later in the day. She deserves to sleep in, after all of this. 

“Yeah? How so?”

“It sorta just does. I mean- I’ve never really had someone making breakfast before I’m ready for the day.” 

Hopper almost looks surprised for a moment as he quirks his brow, stabbing his eggs to chew with nonchalance. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. These are awesome .” Steve agrees, offering Steve a much more forward smile. 

Hopper chuckles, dropping his gaze down to his eggs for a moment, shrugging. “Well, it’s easy. It’s a good way to start the day. And I’ll make you eggs as long as you need me to.”

“...thanks, Hop.”

“‘Course, kid.” Hopper nods, nodding over to the packet sat on the table beside him. “What’cha got going on there?”

“Just some math. I’m gonna finish it now- or in the car before you go to drop me off.”

“Good luck with that, I feel like if I try to read in the car I get motion sickness.” He points out, shaking his head at the thought. “Especially on that road out there.” 

“Practice makes perfect,” Steve muses around his eggs. “And I gotta get it done.” 

“Hm.” Hopper hums, fork offering soft tinks and bumps against his plate as he picks apart his egg whites. “I had a bit of a plan, by the way. I want you to think about it.”

“What?”

“I know, uh… I know you don’t want to go back to your parents.” Hopper starts pensively, looking up just in time to meet Steve’s scrunched nose and white knuckles around his fork, tapping the thing lightly against the table. 

“What’re you saying?”

“I’m saying,” Hopper starts, holding out a hand. His tone raises, only an inch, but it’s more than enough for Steve to sit back in his chair and drop his shoulders. “If there’s something you need from the house, I bet I can find a way to get you in. For you and Ellie.” 

“Oh.”

Still tapping his fork on the table, he shrugs. The thought of going back to the house has something bitter rising on the back of his tongue, and his shoulders raise again. 

“...I dunno. I don’t even know if they’re gonna be back or not. Or where they’re even gonna be.” 

Hopper must pick up on his anxiety, because he shakes his head and leans back, dropping his hand flat to the table. 

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll figure it out later.”

Still only having half finished his eggs, Hopper stands, scoops up the rest of his food, and makes his way back into the kitchen to plop his empty plate into the sink and marches over into the bathroom, snatching up his uniform as he goes. 

They don’t talk a lot. There’s still something between them, like Hopper is holding him at a pole’s length and Ellie is their only point of junction, the only reason they have to interact. That and the Upside Down. 

The thought keeps as Hopper takes his turn getting ready for the day, as Steve manages to polish off his math packet, as he pulls on his boots in the strange silence settled so comfortably between them. It keeps as they walk out to Hopper’s truck, as he clambers into the passenger seat, as the car starts rumbling back down the logging road from whence it came. 

It keeps until he opens his mouth about it, as they ride side by side down the bumpy road. 

“What’s it like?”

“What?” Hopper hardly turns to him as he sits up to ask it, sports bag held on his lap. 

“The other place. You said you went there. To get Will Byers. Ellie said she got lost there too-”

“You don’t need to worry about that, kid.” Hop interjects, and rather quickly, shortly, lips twitching under his mustache. “It’s gone, it’s over.”

Almost disappointed by that non-answer, he turns back to face out the front windshield. Steve knows a few things. He’d seen the weird mucus-like nature of the creature he’d fought, all warped and twisted and unhealthy looking and somehow so unexpectedly strong. He knows little Byers had been dead for a little while in there, and would’ve died outright if not for Hopper and Missus Byers. He’d been there in the hospital sat next to Nancy’s dad until the announcement came that he was alive. 

“...sorry.” He murmurs. 

Hopper gives a soft ‘humph’, shaking his head as he stares ahead through the windshield as they get closer to Steve’s tarp covered car. 

Steve leaves without answers, clambering into the familiar driver’s seat, the car still smelling of metal and bleach. He rives himself to school, tongue running along his teeth with the strange thought that they feel pointier than he last remembered.

“Have you thought about your college entrance essays yet?”

Nancy’s voice interjects his fingernail picking. It’s become a bad habit as of late, but he can’t help the fact that it seems they grow faster than he can trim them. Frowning, Steve pulls himself out of his head and looks up at Nancy as she gnaws on her packed lunch apple. 

“What?”

“Your essays. We have to start working on them by the end of the summer.”

Of course Nancy’s already thinking six months ahead, especially for something she doesn’t even have to worry about for a year. 

His parents wanted him to go to Yale. Or the University of Texas, or New York, and if worst came to worst, the college in Chicago. He’s supposed to study business, pretend he’s not partying, and most certainly get a sports scholarship despite the Tigers not having won a single tournament in months. Not since the beginning of the season. 

College is honestly the last thing on his mind. 

“Oh uh- no, not really.” 

“Oh? Why not?”

“I guess I’ve just had a lot going on. And I wouldn’t really know where to find the prompts anyway, they make that stuff so hard to find.” Steve shrugs lamely, pulling his eyes away to spoon lamely at the hot lunch mashed potatoes in front of him. 

He can tell she’s disappointed like she can tell when he’s lying. But she sucks in a breath and shrugs, apple crunching. It feels so damn loud, like all the chatter in the cafeteria around them despite them being allocated to an isolated end of their table. 

“I’ll help you.” Nancy asserts breezily, “It just depends on what colleges you want to go to-”

“I dunno, Nance.” Steve continues lamely. “Do they even have that stuff out, yet?”

“No, but last years are. And those are great examples to start with.”

He falls silent, still spooning at his potatoes, not even bothering to take a bite. He’d already inhaled the sad looking meatloaf, and despite his hunger, the sight of the potatoes makes his stomach twist. 

She must notice, because she quickly changes the subject. 

“We’re already starting to write prom ideas out in the school paper, you know.”

“Oh yeah?” Grateful for something else to talk about, Steve cracks a little smile. “What about?”

“Mostly just a vote for the theme. Springtime or… get this, MTV. There’ve already been teachers complaining about that.” She snorts, shrugging. “I think it’d be fun.”

Steve rolls his eyes knowingly. “What, is Mrs.Maywether throwing a fit over modern music? She needs to get a hobby.”

“I know!” Nancy exclaims, throwing her hands up a touch. “I’m sick of her coming in and just… standing there. It’s weird. If she has that much of a problem I’m sure she can veto it in the student council, but I’m also happy she doesn’t seem to have the guts to do that either. I just wish she’d stop being such a stalker.”

“I bet you can find something else to distract her with.” Steve shrugs, crossing his arms on the table where he sits across from her. “One of the clubs or something. Like the uh- Hellfest?”

“Hellfire. Maybe. But I don’t wanna be that chick and sick her on some other poor souls.” Nancy laments with a sigh, reaching into her bag for her sandwich. 

“Well, shit. I dunno then Nance,” Steve chuckles. “You might just have to deal with your new best friend.”

“I’d rather gag.” She snorts, now taking her turn to roll her eyes. “Part of me half expected you to offer to throw a party so she has something else to complain about.”

Feeling the back of his neck prickling at the thought, Steve shakes his head. He can’t exactly throw parties anymore- wouldn’t have wanted to with Ellie around anyway, but he glances down.

“I think my partying days are over, Nance. I have college to think about anyway- and I wanna stay on the team. And English’s been kicking my ass.”

“Still?” Her brows raise in surprise. 

“Yeah, still. We finished the Alchemist already, I could hardly keep up.” Steve remarks with a sigh, tucking his chin in his hand and ignoring the genuinely concerned look Nancy gives him. 

“Oh, wow. I always thought those classes were so well paced.” She murmurs. “Guess not. What’re you reading now?”

“ Lord of the Flies ,” He snorts, holding his hands out spookily. Nancy breaks into a soft laugh for it, face falling into a fit smile. “Oh, that’s easy stuff. I can help. And it won’t hurt to read the study guide ahead of time.” 

With her still smiling, Steve snorts and reaches out to jostle her arm playfully. “You are such a schemer! Always trying to get ahead,” He remarks amusedly. “God, I love you for that.”

“And you are such a charmer, Harrington.” 

“Seriously though, I do.” He insists, lighting up just a touch. “Hey. I know it’s very, very early but- I don’t want some genius to come in and try to scoop you off your feet. So… d’you wanna go to prom with me?”

Clearly a touch surprised, Nancy’s cheeks go pink in a way that much influences his own, has him grinning like a fool as she straightens in her seat. 

“Well- yeah! Yes, of course!-” She agrees, a touch flustered. “Geeze, Steve, but prom isn’t for months!”

“I guess you’re just rubbing off on me.”

The flustered look on her face falters into a bright peal of laughter- sweet, appreciative, and Steve swears he could listen to it for centuries. Just a track labeled ‘Nancy Wheeler laughing’ on repeat for all of eternity, especially if it means he can hear her laugh like this. Unable to fight away some laughter of his own, Steve shakes his head and scoops up her hand to lay a fond kiss. This is nothing special. Nothing big, not like she deserves, but since when does Nancy like big?
This makes her happy, either way. He can tell it on her face like he’s reading scribbles off the back of his hand. 

“So you will?”

“Yes, of course Steve. I’ll go to prom with you.”

Chapter Text

Steve is incredibly happy that this morning hadn’t been one of the sparingly weird mornings where he wakes up with a killer headache. A migraine, technically. It hadn’t been one of the mornings where his body is wracked with odd aches and pains that he swears aren’t from working out or practice, accompanied by the ghostly throbbing of the rapidly forming scar from the dog bite. 

No, this morning Steve woke up to the smell of breakfast. He’d used the near half remainder of his Chicago money on a nice shirt and a tie that would match Nancy’s baby blue dress, gone out to get a corsage and boutonniere the day before. It isn’t senior prom- he’s no senior, not until next year, but he sure is excited just at the thought of getting a normal evening to spend with his girlfriend after all of this- with every excuse not to return to his house hand crafted by Hopper himself around an earnest smile. 

In the previous days, Steve even made an effort to clean up his car- barring what he couldn’t do with March mud and Indiana rain. The past few days had been cold- very cold, some days still reaching below freezing, but he still did it.

Ellie brought it upon herself to make breakfast- or her best attempt at breakfast, with scrambled eggs and of course waffles, drowned in syrup and butter just like they always like it. She’s sitting at the table with him, with Hopper, chowing down on her waffles and eggs. 

“At prom- that is where you dance fancy?” She asks after swallowing down a giddy mouthful of waffle. 

“Yep.” Steve chimes back with a smile, brushing his waffles around in the puddle of syrup on his plate. “Senior prom’s more special though- but you kinda gotta know how to dance fancy in all the school dances. I learned in P.E.” 

He shrugs, as Hopper turns curiously. “You know about prom?”

“Yes- and the Snow-Ball.” Ellie chimes, offering Hopper back a bright toothy grin that has the man raising his brow. “Huh.”

“Yes, Mike said I could go with him.”

Hopper gives a start, almost (but not quite) sputtering on his coffee as Steve breaks into a bright grin. “Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like a date to me, Ellie.”

“A date?”

“Woah- woah, woah woah. Hey.” Hopper starts, picking up his hands to wave away the idea almost frantically. His voice is almost naturally stern as he shakes his head, “None of this dating stuff.”

“Well!- I was dating when I was her age,” Steve protests, still grinning. “Kinda.” 

“Oh my god.” Hopper gripes, rubbing his hand over his face. “No. Absolutely not.” 

“Oh-” Ellie starts, but Steve quickly interjects as he scoops up the last of his waffle and hops to his feet, prompting Ellie to turn quickly. 

“Okay, maybe no dating- whatever.” He sighs, waving Ellie to her feet as Hopper peers out from over his hand. “But you still gotta know how to dance. I know you don’t know how to dance.” 

“I know how to dance.” Ellie argues softly, but she stands nonetheless, unable to help but smile nonetheless, almost skipping over. 

“What are you two on about?” Hopper continues, but the chagrin in his voice has faded into a faint amusement. He knows well what they’re on about, propping his face in a hand as Steve grins and rolls his eyes. 

“Don’t you have old music for dancing?”

“ Old? ” Hopper retorts with a snort, as Ellie breaks into a bitten laugh as if sparing Hopper’s feelings. 

She turns, breaking into a shy smile and a shrug. “A little old.” 

With an ever amused sigh, Hopper stands and paces over to to the old record player to comb through the little box of records for a song fit to practice dancing to, as Steve holds out his hands. 

“Alright. Hands on my shoulders.” He announces, resting his own on hers- small, still slight like she had been before, though it’s clear, like him, that she’d been growing into her bones under Hopper’s care. It brings a comfort Steve hadn't known he needed. It makes him light up as Ellie playfully drops her hands on his shoulders (or rather, reaches up to do so). 

“Why?” She asks, perking up as Elton John’s smooth voice breaks into the morning still of the cabin. 

“Because.” Steve shrugs, glancing up to shoot Hopper a bright smile of thanks as Hopper leans back against the wall to watch the two of them stumble with a near wistful smile. Elton John starts singing about the woes of being an artist writing lyrics for the subject of the song- it in itself being a gift, as Steve shows her the first steps of a partnered prom dance. 

Slowly he steps back and to the side, as she stumbles to mirror him, first going in the wrong direction as she breaks into giggles. 
“Wait, wait! Wait.” She exclaims, staring down at their feet to steady herself. 

“You use your right foot and step forward, okay? Just focus on your feet.” Hopper encourages, reaching to brush his hand over his mouth as if debating to say anything else, mostly just smiling to himself as Steve nods.

“Yeah. Right foot, left foot, then sideways. And then back. One, two, three- one, two three.”

Slowly nodding, Eleven breaks into a bright smile as she follows his pace. It’s an almost nervous thing at first, slow as they fall into the sway of the music, dancing with the same practice of first time prommers- often interrupted by Ellie’s laughter and Steve’s clear accompanying snickers. 

“Yeah, you got it! And then- here-” He continues, reaching to grab one of her hands and give her a twirl that has her practically skipping, not even minding the music for a moment as she spins, stumbling in her socks over the plywood floor and the old fashioned carpet cast out like its meant for them to dance on. 

“How- many dances are there?” She asks as she comes out of her twirl, fumbling to grab Steve’s hands as she starts to follow his steps again, earning a hum from him. 

“Well… you have the Snow Ball. There’s prom when you’re older. Homecoming-”

“Don’t forget Sadie Hawkins.” Hopper remarks, turning back to his collection of records, fingers idling over a sleeve with Jim Croce’s signature door logo on it. He brings the spinning record to a stop, earning a sound of protest from Steve, only for he and El to falter alike as he puts the new record on. 

“Hey!”

“Now listen- listen! This is music. This is how you dance.”

Along with the preppy guitar and soft drums, Croce’s voice starts to croon about funky streets and sons of guns and not messing around with Jim. As it starts, Steve shares a rather vexed look with Ellie, who peers back at him with a look much the same, only for it to break into a bright giggle as Hopper starts a little shuffle, snapping his fingers to the beat. Steve can’t help but break into a little grin for it, rolling his eyes- it’s only a little embarrassing, but he and Ellie are the only audience to see. 

Clearly inspired, Ellie turns to swing Steve’s arms to and fro as she beams, starting them in a little circle as their feet thump softly across the floor. From above in the loft, chin tucked in his paws, Oreo watches this all with a flicking tail and perked ears, as Ellie dances Peanut Gallery style circles around Steve’s amateur waltzing and Hopper’s enthusiastic shuffling. 

They dance, Ellie getting twirled by each of them (and even attempting to twirl Steve despite his need to crouch) until her appetite returns and she makes it back to the table before Oreo can push the boundaries and jump up for his steal of waffle breakfast. Steve finally finishes his own breakfast in order to retreat to the the bathroom and style his hair, Hopper reaches out to take his good shoulder. It almost gives Steve a start for how unexpected it is, but turning back to Hopper not looking so serious or upset has his shoulders slumping just a touch.
“What’s going on?”

Hopper’s voice is hushed as he leans in, clearly making an effort not to be heard by Ellie, and the thought of that alone has Steve wary. Furrowing his brow a touch, his concern still doesn’t falter as Hopper speaks up softly. 

“That was real sweet what you did, kid,” He starts. “But don’t… don’t get her hopes up too high.”

“What?” 

“Look, I know.” Hopper starts with a sigh, reaching to run his hand over his face like its a force of habit. “I know. I know you don’t want her stuck here, but I don’t… we don’t know when it’s gonna be safe for her to leave.” 

It's a very real possibility, and Steve knows it. He knows it like he knows deep down inside that thing could come back, but it doesn’t make the prospect sting any less. The last conversation about this had ended badly, too, and the thought makes him nervous- so, so nervous. 

Hopper must see it, because he straightens his shoulders and shakes his head. 

“I know you’re being nice. She needs that right now, I’m sure. But with the lab still open- that one where all the shit came out of… you know. It’s not safe.”

“...it’s not safe.” Steve agrees reluctantly, still very aware of Hopper’s hand on his shoulder. This is the first time Hopper’s actually talked to him about anything that isn’t remotely simple back and forth since the last big conversation, which had ended with Hopper smoking out on the porch. The man is still an enigma to Steve, to the extent that he can’t tell if Hopper hates him or not. He hadn’t even spoken about the construction materials he’d slowly been bringing by the cabin, hiding under tarps so the wood doesn’t warp. Everything the man does, Steve has to assume- maybe he’s building another room, by his frequent measuring of the wall by the tiny table where the TV sits. Maybe just another door outside if they have to make a quick escape. Steve can’t tell. And he isn’t sure what to think about the rest of this, either. 

Seeming reassured, Hopper offers a faintly worried smile and pats his good shoulder. “They’re still looking for her. And they will be for a while, I’m sure. I’ve been seeing things outside in town, all the things to be worried about.”

“...she can’t be here forever.”

“I know kiddo. She won’t be. But we don’t know when the end’ll be.” 

“...Hopper-”

“Don’t.” 

For that, Steve shuts his mouth fast. He can’t have Hopper getting angry. He can’t have him getting angry at Steve, for any other reason, because he can’t bear the feeling again. But instead, Hopper turns away and waves him over as he starts towards his sleeping cot in the corner. 
Reluctantly, Steve follows, only to stop short as Hopper pulls out a pair of fairly new- if used looking loafers, which Hopper holds out to him expectantly.

Steve finds himself sort of just… staring. A little taken back, he’s struck with the thought that he’d planned to go to prom in the same shoes he’d been wearing for the last two and a half months. 

“Can’t have you going to your first prom without good shoes. I know they’re not pretty. Maybe a little big on you, but they’ll do you good.”

“Oh.” Steve’s struck by it, honestly, working up a smile to fight the overwhelming mess of feelings that strike him all at once. “Well… technically I went to prom with Samantha Parson her senior year-”

“Oh, shut up.” Hopper snorts, reaching out to ruffle his hair as he plops the shoes in Steve’s arms, inviting no protest. “Go on and get ready. You can change in to those before you get to your Nancy’s house so they don’t get muddy outside. I’ll drop you off at your car.” 

For the first time in a long time, Steve’s well aware of a swell of emotion in him. Sucking in a breath, struck with a reverence he’d only seen in Eleven, he tucks those well used shoes of Hopper’s to his chest and offers him a great big smile.

“Thank you. Thanks, Hop.”

“...no problem, kid.”

The photo of them sits tucked in his rearview mirror. 

In the foyer of Nancy Wheeler’s house, the pair of them can be seen smiling for Mrs. Karen Wheeler’s barrage of photographs. He looks so simple next to her- of course he’d done his hair right, swept to the side just so, and Hopper’s lended shoes can’t be seen in the picture. He’s wearing the slacks and shirt he’d ironed himself that morning with the hand iron, while Ellie watched, tie tied just so. It’s the same blue as Nancy’s dress, and his boutonniere- white and blue flowers like her corsage, is pinned to a faded brown suit jacket Hopper had lended him weeks ago, small from when he was younger. 

Nancy makes him look like a nobody. Her curly hair is stacked up in a tall bun, fringes pulled loose around her round delicate face. Her cheeks are painted pink, lips the same shade. Her dress is something she’d taken the time to pick out early with him asking her early, bell sleeves loose and flowy from where the upper part of the dress tucks in- all airy, beautiful, with delicate white ribbons lining the edges. Layers and layers of chiffon make up the whole thing, every movement she made a sway- he could hear each layer of fabric brushing against one another, the clack of her heels, the rustle of the flowers around her wrist. 

Overexposed in the flash, the photo shows them side by side, smiling up at Karen Wheeler, figments of Holly and Mike escaping the camera’s view in the side hall. 

Mike had spent most of that time staring at him from the stairs, making weird faces and dubious expressions every time he so much as held Nancy’s hand, making the offhand comment that ‘your teeth look weird’ (which was such an encouraging thing to hear right then) until Karen told him off and he scampered away. Why the hell Ellie has a crush on this kid, he has no idea.

Steve hates the way his eyes look in it, the weird shimmer from the flash that makes his eyes look sort of glowy. But he’ll find somewhere safer to put it later, but for now it stays there as he drives, hand tangled in Nancy’s atop the console between the front seats. 

The lights from the dancefloor are still caught in his mind, pinks, greens, oranges and reds across the taped down wooden dance floor, the swirl of yellow, pink and varying blue dresses swirling around, none had been like Nancy’s, none are. It’d been a great evening, just them in their little world, with the successful ‘MTV Themed’ dance that was mostly just an excuse for bright colors and better music. They’d danced until Nancy took her heels off, and he had to carry her so her feet didn’t get dirty on the muddy asphalt outside in the school parking lot. 

They’d gone to get pie at Sherry’s diner.

It feels so normal. Oh, how he’d missed this feeling.

David Bowie is singing on the radio, and Nancy’s singing with him. 

“Let’s dance! Sway through the crowd to an empty space- if you say run, I’ll run with you.” 

He can feel her eyes on him like he can feel her hand wrapped up in his, the way her lips curl into a smile, the way her eyes sparkle forming a presence all its own, like it means to take up the back seat of the car. 

It’s a miracle he doesn’t smell bleach in here anymore. 

“I don’t want it to be over.” Nancy soon sighs, her singing interjected as she turns to lean and lay a lipstick smattered kiss to his cheek. Squeezing her hand, Steve turns as he starts to turn down her street on the far north side of town, offering her a knowing smile. 

“Me neither.” He admits. And he means it. For now, he can pretend, he can fall right back into the normalcy of the world he used to live in- the normalcy of classes and games and staying up late to get pies after school dances made as fancy as they can be in a gymnasium that, according to Nancy, had previously been host to an improvised sensory deprivation tank. He can fall back into the normalcy of getting to kiss and hold hands with Nancy Wheeler, the prettiest girl he’d adored unspoken for upwards of a year and a half, who he’d break a million cameras and monster skulls for. “Me neither, Nance.”

“Hey-” She starts, leaning over with a murmur, another kiss graced across his cheekbone now as her thumb eases over the back of his hand. “Why don’t you stop the car somewhere? Away from my house- I wanna make it last.” She offers, and the thought of still hanging onto the evening for just a little while longer, to find somewhere dark and private to kiss and be brings a leap through his chest. 

With a faint laugh drawn over the drone of David Bowie fading into Journey, he turns the car back from where they came, around a block and down towards the parking lot by where the dirt tree lined roads of the farms start. He hardly has the chance to stop his car on the side of the road, to turn the lights off when Nancy reaches out to cup his face and pull him in for a much deeper, much more sincere kiss. 

God, when was the last time they’d kissed like this?

Steve doesn’t know, he doesn’t care, instead he fumbles the car into park and reaches up to take her face up all the same, kept safe there between his hands. Their lips meet sweet, they taste like summer, and her hands feel like peaches, her eyelashes against his cheeks has him leaning back into her all the same. He loves her deeply, and a kiss like this feels so long overdue, so well deserved, a quiet thanks to god above that their nightmares have faded for now, that they’re here to kiss one another like this. 

In the dark of the night here, Steve is wrapped up in the comfort of her lips and the lingering cheer of dancing all night long and fresh pecan pie. They’re wrapped up together in baby blue chiffon and worn out burgundy paint that’s lost its shine, in the sway of winter branches naked for the green cores of blossoms about to push through as February rolls into March, into April, into spring. 

He loves this. He loves kissing her like this because he knows what happens next- sweet innocent nothings, and then he’ll drive her home, and they’ll kiss again on her front doorstep before he leaves.

For now, he kisses her feverishly, craving it, as his fingertips brush soft against the back of her neck and her fingers wind in his hair, messing it up something wild, but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care if she’s the one to do it. He wraps his arms around her waist over the console instead, as she offers a breathy laugh against his cheek, and she moves, clambering to move half across it to keep kissing him. 

He can’t tell why this all feels like so much more. Why he swears he can hear her every breath, almost panting when they manage to part for a chance to breathe, the way her heartbeat pounds so loud in their proximity he can feel it under his fingertips, the soft skin of her neck over the low cut of her dress that her mother said made her look so grown up. He can feel the weave of the fabric, the polish on her fingers as they ease under his jacket, as they comb through his hair like his tangle in her curls. He can smell her perfume. The ghost of sweat, whipped cream on her lips, and want . 
It’s so much more, and it’s too much, because she doesn’t deserve to tangle herself in him again as he is now. 

The realization doesn’t hit him hard, not at first. Not until she shifts to straddle him, still clinging to his shoulders, not until she shamelessly hikes up her skirts so there’s room for him to meet her. 

It comes when he realizes he doesn’t want to meet her. 

That he can’t, because the prospect brings a tightening in his chest and the figment of red alarm clock numbers back to his mind. That he can’t let her see the bandages still keeping the tail end of his healing in. No, all of the sudden, Nancy’s hands don’t feel like hers, they’re bigger, calloused and scarred and wrapping firmly around his throat as opposed to anything sweeter. This isn’t what he’d known would happen next.

He’s so tired of not knowing what will happen next.

He brings his hands almost frantically about her waist, pulls her back, and starts in a frantic almost whisper. 

“Nance- Nancy-”

She stops. She stops, because of course she does, though she looks absolutely miffed as she does. Her eyes have gone wide, brow furrowed just a touch, lips curled into a frown. 

“What? Steve, what’s- what’s gotten into you?” She protests, sounding riled, and god, oh god, he’s fucked it up. He’s fucked it up again. 

“I can’t.” He starts weakly, lamely, hands still settled on her waist, though now in a manner far more tentative. 

He watches as her face falls. It’s a mess of shock, confusion, maybe a hint of something like betrayal or hurt as she sits back, trying not to lean into the horn of his steering wheel. In all honesty, they’re still practically nose to nose, staring at each other as Steve frantically wracks his mind for an excuse. 

He hardly has a moment to think before she sucks in a faint gasp, shoulders slumping, hands falling as she pulls what few centimeters away from him she can manage. 

“I knew it!-”

“What?”

“I knew it, I knew exactly what I was getting myself into with you, Harrington.” She snaps, squirming to climb over to the passenger seat. “All that shit about me not being like those other girls-”

“Woah- woah, hey! Nance, that’s not- hey !” Steve exclaims, sitting up to reach out to take her shoulder, to encourage her to sit, anything . She recoils, pulling away to lightly smack at his hand, and Christ, he can feel his face going deeply red, entirely flustered. 

“Nancy!” He starts, reaching to take her arm just to still her, to get a word in. “Please, that’s not what I meant. It’s not you-”

“Oh yeah? It’s you, it really is, that’s fucking clear-” 

“Please. That’s not- that’s not it, I just wanted to spend time with you, I mean it. And I know last time- last time we had this a lot of bad things happened for you. I- I didn’t wanna bring it up again, I didn’t- I didn’t wanna ruin tonight.”

Nancy slumps back in her seat, crossing her arms. Hair mussed, head downturned, skirts all a mess around her, the flowers on her wrist a little rumpled. Uncomfortably, Steve gathers up the coat she’d slipped off his shoulders, letting it fall into the back seat. 

“It’s a little too late for that, don’t you think?”

“...Nance.” He breathes, exasperated, helpless for a moment as he brings his head forward in his hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t… I didn’t think you’d wanna have sex right now. Much less in my car -”

“Well, what if I did? What if I thought you wanted to? What if I’m not the total prude everyone makes me out to be, Steve? You should know that much! You know me !”

“I’m sorry!-”

“Yeah? Are you? I guess you must’ve lost it when you were in Italy. Or did you find someone there to-”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Nancy, I wouldn’t cheat on you!” Steve exclaims, mortified, and in an instant a wave of guilt floods her face. Still a little flustered, cheeks red, arms crossed, Nancy turns back as she peers over at him past her eyelashes, lips pursed into a frown. 

“Then what’s going on? Why’re you so- why’re you so different, Steve? I don’t get it. I know there’s something going on. Something else outside all the crap that went down this fall because I still think about it and it hasn’t screwed me up that much.” 

A lie, Steve knows it, it’s a straight up lie out of her mouth because she can’t make friends anymore, just like him. At least not in the same way she had before. He knows she keeps that gun in a shoebox under her bed, he knows she hates Christmas lights, he knows- he knows she hates the idea of sex more often than not because that was the last time their lives were normal for a while. And the thought that he’s so inherently different stings, the fact that she knows it, that she can read him better than he can read himself. 

How long can he lie to her?
Not much longer. Not any longer. But he can’t tell her everything, he knows it. She’ll never ever look at him the same if he explains everything. He can’t tell her that the moment she’d started, the idea of making love to her suddenly became frightening.
And he can't lose her, his only comfort, his only normalcy left.

“I got kicked out.” He relents heavily, perhaps a touch more harshly than he intended. “When I first called- I got kicked out, I wasn’t in Italy, I was in Chicago.” 

He leans forward then, bringing his hands to his face to hide it from her prying eyes, from any insight she might find on his face, from having to look her in the eye. 

She goes quiet, but the sound of her heartbeat rings in his ears, he feels like he want to float away. 

“Mm’sorry. I didn’t- I didn’t wanna worry you. Not with everything else going on, not with us trying to get things to go back to normal.”

He hates the silence that follows. He hates the way she shifts to stare ahead so prim and proper, he hates how she now slowly reaches out for his shoulder, his bad shoulder, and he hates the way he winces when she touches him. He feels like he’s drowning in it, that all he can see are dogs teeth and hotel alarm clocks, words he can’t say, words he doesn’t want to and still somehow needs to.

“Steve.” 

Her voice is so quiet. Not in the way it usually is, not her reserved tenor, not even something thoughtful. 
It’s just full of guilt. She sounds like she’s going to cry. And he can’t bear to think that he’s brought that feeling to her. 

“Steve,” Nancy tries again, those featherlight fingers soothing across his shoulder, and gentle or not, it feels painful. “I’m… I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t’ve… I’m so sorry.”  Her voice shakes, that guilt keeps, deep and sincere in her chest that it aches just to hear it. Gentle still, she reaches to cup his face and coax him from where he’s hiding. 

Finally, reluctantly, he does, much aware of the heat behind his eyes as Nancy reaches, struggling for words. The look on her face is still rather guilty, but struck entirely full of realization, like she’d put tons of pieces together all at once.
“I’m sorry. I really am, I’m so sorry. Why- why didn’t you tell me?”

“I told you. I didn’t wanna make you worry, I didn’t wanna end up living out of your basement like some schmuck.” He admits, now taking his turn to cross his arms, head ducked just a touch. Reluctantly, he lets his hands fall, he lets his gaze raise to meet Nancy’s as she reaches out with every intention to pull him close. 

Just as reluctant, he lets her, shaking his head. 

“Why?” She finally asks, as he shakes his head. 

“Stupid shit.” He admits. “M’sorry. I- I should’ve told you.” 

“You can still stay. We can take care of you, I bet… my parents, you know, they like you-”

Slowly, he shakes his head, leaning forward to rest his head against Nancy’s shoulder, to let her wrap her arms around him- chasing that normalcy for just a moment. 

“It’s okay, Nance. I got somewhere safe to stay. Uhm… Chief’s taking care of me, he’s helping me figure everything out.” 

Her surprise only rises again, as she slowly tucks her head against his. With a faint, near shaky sigh, she slowly nods. 

“You’re sure? You’re sure you don’t need help?”

“I’m sure.” He insists softly, “I am. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I’m sorry I didn’t- say anything, you know? It would’ve made things easier.” He admits. 

Nancy shrugs, lips trembling. “I shouldn’t’ve jumped to conclusions. I just wish you had.” 

“I know. Please just don’t tell anyone, I can’t deal with more shit right now.” Steve admits a little tearily, rubbing his face for a moment. “Sorry for killing the mood.”

A little shaken still, Nancy gives a faint laugh, something dry and tired. “Sorry for assuming. I won’t- and you don’t have to be sorry. We’ve had enough being sorry.” 

“Yeah.” Steve agrees with a faint chuckle, finally pulling himself from her arms to lean over and offer a chaste, comforting kiss to her cheek. “I love you. Really, I do. I think we… I know things aren’t ever gonna be the same, but we should just move on.” 

As he slowly straightens in his seat, resting his hands in his lap to wring his wrists, Nancy ducks her head just a touch. 

“...I don’t think we’ll be able to. Steve-”

“We gotta try. Please Nance, before we keep losing things.” He breathes, reaching to take up her hand again for any semblance of comfort. He can’t begin to fathom what she’s thinking about, what she might still be holding onto when everything that was left of it just hurt. 

Lips pursed, she reaches out with her free hand to brush out the rumples in her dress, and she nods without a word. Her eyes are glimmering with tears.

“Is the rest of that pie still back there?” She finally asks. Unable to help himself, Steve breaks into a faint laugh, absently wiping at his face. 

“Yep.” 

“Good. Please bring it up here, I think we need it.”

They spend the rest of the night eating pie in his car, before he drives her home, kisses her cheek and tells her he loves her. He walks her up to the front door, shakes his head at the worried look she shoots back at him when Ted Wheeler greets them at the door and congratulates him for having good manners and bringing her home on time. 

He drives back with an empty pie tin and his jacket in the backseat, and changes into his snow-boots before getting out of his car, walking through the woods shortcut to the house. He's careful to step over the traps Hopper had set, spying the lain out shapes of room outlines at the back of the cabin in bits of the wood Hopper had been dragging up. 
With the near half dozen keys needed to get inside, he quickly rushes in, locks the door behind him, and rushes for bed past the chief's sleeping form in his chair. Steve makes sure to paste the picture of him and Nancy on the wall above his mattress, as Ellie snoozes away, tucked up as if she'd been waiting for him.

Chapter Text

The sun beats down on his shoulders, as for the first time in months, Steve’s torso is bared to the sun. Clad in improvised swim trunks in the form of old sports shorts acquired from his school, Ellie and him pick their way down to Lake Tippecanoe through the woods. 
It’s summer, there’s no school, no one to see them, and he’s made it through with decent grades while Ellie has managed to survive with her life through periodic bouts of cabin fever.

Hopper’s old house had been torn down months ago by the man himself, who pulled it apart for the wood, to squash every semblance of himself left behind and every inch of reach the lab’s heavy handed lackeys had in watching him. Now that the fear of it has faded, Steve feels much more confident out here in the woods. With the sunglasses he’d kept in his glove box tucked on his head, a bag over his shoulder containing no more than three towels, three cans of coca cola and five sandwiches, he has every intention of making the best of the quiet out here in the woods- too early in the break for many folks to want to sneak out and take the long trek onto what’s technically the private property of the chief of police. 

This little adventure is the epitome of months and months and months of begging Hopper to let Ellie out. 

“Slow down, you two! Dammit!”

And of course, Hopper insisted on coming. 
The man is smacking at mosquitos as he stumbles along their path. Flip flops in hand, he tromps behind them, a towel of his own thrown over his shoulders as they go. He isn’t particularly pleased by this predicament, but Steve insisted- he’s insisted for months, in fact, mentioning over and over the fact that Ellie can’t stay cooped up in that damn cabin listening to intermittent hammering as the rooms went up for weeks at a time. 

Ellie is practically skipping as she goes, bundled in a big shirt that was once Hopper’s, more shorts Steve had scrounged to better fit her, a baseball cap with the Hawkin’s Tigers logo on it. Her hair is still short, though now looking much more like a curly Julie Andrews’ from The Sound of Music . It’s a good thing, considering how much Ellie adores Julie Andrews- now that Moomins aren’t quite frequent replays on the TV anymore, she’d become addicted to the tape collection featuring the actress. 

That and her soap operas.

“ Hey .” Hopper huffs, tone a touch sharper for their attention, and Steve finally rolls his eyes behind his glasses, coming to a stop to wait for Hopper to make his way over. 

“We’re waiting!” Steve insists, glancing over to share an unamused smirk with Eleven, who shrugs and shakes her head. Finally, Hopper makes his way up to join them, sighing as he sidles between them and steps ahead towards the path the Tippacanoe from the house. It’s better to walk, to stray away from where the deer hunters mark their territories, along old gametrails where they tread over anthills and between wildflower patches. Here, they aren’t at risk of being seen. Most importantly, Eleven won’t be seen, it’ll be a safe way to give her a rare moment out. 

She’s so excited for it, really. 

“Are you sure you have a rope swing?” Steve asks, picking up his pace to keep up with Hopper’s frustrated tromping, though the frustration fades as he goes on, as he leads them closer. 

“Last I recall. If not, I’m sure we can rig something up or you can find something else to do.”

“I cannot wait to swim,” Ellie chimes. “I want to swing on the rope-swing.”

“Hey, if worse comes to worst, I can throw you,” Steve teases.

Ellie turns with a skeptical, surprised look at the prospect. “Why throw me?”

“Because it’s fun that way. And you’re little enough, and I’m strong enough,” he chimes, almost following in her skipping as the trees thin and break out into the grassy, muddy shores of Tippecanoe lake. 

The lake is nowhere near large, but it feels vast spread out before them. 

To the far left, there’s the figment of a clearing where Hopper’s trailer had been. It has nothing left but the skeleton of it, half of it gutted, even full windows removed, the rest of it likely sold so Hopper could buy more materials for the cabin extension. It’s begun to go overgrown, just like the little dock at the bottom of a path from the house, where the only sure remnant is a deck that looks out over the lake. 

The pine trees around it are growing bright and green and sturdy, a small road leading around the far side into the woods, and there in the trees and underbrush is a small dirt bank hidden within the bushes. Hopper doesn’t hesitate to lead them towards it. They muck among the fleabane, queen anne’s lace and little sunflower mimics that gathered around their feet, out through the brush, the sprigs grown to the size of bushes that Hopper must not recognize entirely, as he leads them on quite the winding path out towards that little sheltered embankment. 

Untouched, littered with rocks, and barren above to the sun, this place is entirely theirs and Ellie’s entirely giddy for it. She skips ahead of them, almost tripping on the rocks as she skips into the water, only barely managing to stumble out of her shoes as she stands to stare down in too big sunglasses and her too big hat. She’s grinning ear to ear in clear delight as Hopper drops his drawstring of ‘just in case’ things like sunscreen and mosquito repellent and bandaids. He’s sure he saw Hopper stuff arm floaties from Melvalds in there despite Ellie’s insistence that she knows how to swim very well , what with having to catch herself in sensory deprivation tanks in emergencies and all. 

Hopper’s worry for Eleven doesn’t seem to fade for an instant, and while annoying at times, Steve finds it to be more reassuring than anything. 

“Hey! Careful, I don’t want you drowning on us.” 

“Not on my watch,” Steve assures, dropping his own bag onto the rocks, the soda cans clinging together, and without a shirt to worry about, he kicks off his shoes all the same and starts to wade after her, careful to leave his sunglasses behind. With the place to themselves, he has not so much as an inch of fear for his scars being seen. “And that’s on the swim team.”

“You still gonna do that?” Hopper asks with an amused scoff, turning to search around for the perfect place to sit and watch after them. 

“I dunno! I still have basketball. And I don’t want you to have to drive me to my car at four thirty in the morning.”

“Eugh,” Hopper agrees, shaking his head as Steve snorts and wades backwards, stopping as he gets up to his knees, only a little ways past where Ellie stands. Here, watergrass sways around his ankles, pebbles and silt underfoot, and she’s stood staring down. 

“Watcha doing?”

“What’s that?” Ellie asks, pointing down among the watergrass and rocks, crouching just a touch. Hopper cranes his neck a bit, leaning over from the shoreline. 

“Oh hey! You found yourself some tadpoles.”

“Tadpoles.” 

“Baby frogs,” Steve suggests, as he wades forward and finds himself facing a wave of black little tadpoles, wriggling through the water on a path from one end of the lake to the other, purpose entirely lost to himself and Ellie alike. With a soft thump of his shoes on the shore, Hopper tucks up his pants and wades in to lean and see. “Yep. They’re always all over here.”

“That does not look like a frog.” Ellie remarks, watching as Steve reaches out to easily scoop up quite a few between both hands, as the rest break and scatter, soon reforming their path. As he picks through to find one with legs, Hopper hums. 

“That’s because they’ve just come out of the eggs. They live here in the water until they pop legs, and eventually they grow into frogs. Then those frogs make eggs and it starts all over again.”

“Oh.” She frowns, peering up to watch Steve picking around through the tadpoles in his hand, not minding the few that squirm free and pop back into the water. 

“There you go. Good find, kid.” Hopper continues as he gestures to one of the tadpoles in his hand, which prompts Ellie to lean in all the more. Still small, a little tadpole is kicking around among the dozens of others, half camouflaged by its bulbous head and stumpy tail, distinct by the little frog legs it paddles around with. 

“See?”

Not entirely pleased at the sight, Ellie furrows her brow and gives a slow nod. “Okay.” 

“Can you see the little legs?” 

“Have you seen frogs?” Hopper asks worriedly, as Ellie shrugs.

“I saw a frog in a book.” 

“Well, you’re gonna see a real one,” Steve determines without hesitance, dropping the tadpoles back into the water. “Come on! We’re going frog hunting!” 

The surprise that marks her face for it is well worth the announcement as Hopper nods and steps back. “Stay where I can see you-”

“If we can’t see you, you cannot see us.” Ellie finishes for him, only sounding slightly annoyed as she sheds her hat and sunglasses on a rock just on the water’s edge and follows after Steve. He’s already steps ahead, adjusting to the water with the exciting thought that he hasn’t been ‘frog hunting’ since he was really little, since before frogs stopped living in the pool and chlorine repairs became consistent. 

They take quite some time to look for frogs. As he wades, he leans down into the bushes, lifts up the rocks- Ellie squeaks at the sight of a crawdad scurrying away into deeper water. Eventually they manage to follow the faint sound of croaking, just within Hopper’s line of sight, to where the frogs are hiding. Careful to tread lightly, Steve holds a finger to his lips, as there beneath the overhanging branches a near dozen big fat frogs sit on the rocks. Bringing a hand up to cover her mouth, she settles a few feet away, following him near silently. One of the frogs hops away into the water, another turning to stare, and Steve freezes. Ellie halts, staring right back, watching as he slowly raises his arms up and out, ready to snatch up a frog at any moment.

He finds himself caught in a strange focus. Unable to draw his eyes away, entirely unblinking, Steve stares the little line of frogs down. He can hardly hear his own shallow breathing, but rather the soft croaking of the frogs, the way their little feet sound as they shift, the in and out of their breath, the buzz of the flies, the water lapping along the shore. He’s even aware of Ellie there beside him. Waiting, tentative, following his instincts, Steve lunges with a splash after the line and wraps his hands around a big, fat frog.

He grins, laughs, turning back as Ellie winces away from the water and holds up her hands with an excited yelp, only to go entirely saucer eyed as Steve turns with an eager exclamation. 
“C’mere, you gotta hold it!” 

She fumbles to stick her hands out as the frog squeals, big mouth splayed open as its big webbed feet wave around wildly in an attempt to escape, and soon enough she’s able to grab it as he stands back.
Ellie holds the frog out and away with both hands like she entirely anticipates it to do something strange, only to give a yelp and pry her hands away, letting the thing fall into the water with a ‘plop!’ as she stares at her hands. 

“It pooped! It pooped on me!”

Her face goes pink as he breaks into uproarious laughter, flopping back in the water a bit. Ellie stands there, absolutely appalled with her frog poop smeared hands held up to the sky as if in a silent plea to God of ‘why’. The frog, fortunately or unfortunately, makes its escape deeper into the lake. 

“Ste eeeve! ” Ellie exclaims, starting to wade for him, but he paddles back with a yelp and another laugh. 

“No! No, no, no,” He starts, and seeing her opportunity she lunges after him with her still stained hands, earning a near ‘eek!’ from him as he scampers away as best he can. “Keep your hands away from me, stinker! Put your hands in the water!”

“But you made it poop on me!”

“Did not !”

“ Yes !”

“ Hey! ” Hopper calls, voice a formidable boom over the water, as he leans slightly around the bush to make direct eye contact with the pair as they freeze- Steve awkwardly floating in the water, Ellie with her outstretched frogshit hands. “What’s going on over there?”

“She’s tryna put frog shit on me!”

“Don’t say shit! El, wash your hands off. There’s plenty of frog shit in that lake already anyway.” 

Disappointed that her reign of terror can’t continue, Ellie drops her hands in the water to wash them off, as Steve groans and rolls his eyes. For all of Hopper’s insistence that he doesn’t swear, Hopper does plenty of swearing himself. 

Nevertheless, he turns his attention back towards the shoreline, where a rope hangs down and brushes sadly against the water. Perking right up, he wades over and reaches up, calling back to Hopper where the bushes somewhat obscure him again, farther past where the frogs had been. A touch disgruntled from his peaceful day being interrupted once more, so soon, their policeman sighs and stands, starting to push through the trees after the sound of Steve’s voice. Steve, meanwhile, reaches up to give the rope a hard tug. The branch doesn’t give, but it bends. He clambers up to hang off the rope a bit, about to give it another tug as Hopper starts. 

“Hold your horses, kiddo.” It’s a little sudden, and it spooks him as Ellie starts to wade up into the shaded alcove where the ages old rope swing sways. Hopper stands there, hands on his hips as he stares up at the tree and the branch.
“The rope looks rotten up there, I dunno how I feel about you guys swinging on that.” 

“You’re sure?” Steve tries, though he knows well it’s a pretty fruitless attempt to convince the man to start. 

“Yep, I’m sure. Last time I saw somebody swing on something like that he came out with both his arms snapped. It was a kid around El’s age.” Hopper states as a matter of fact, and Steve finds himself staring up at him to get a read on whether or not that had been a real event or just some overinflated story that had been passed around. Hopper wears a look that screams of impasse, however, so he lets go of the rope and sighs. 

“Fine. Hey Ellie, want me to throw you?”

From where she’s standing, half in the shaded alcove and overhanging Leaves, Ellie raises her head and nods slowly, curiously, watching the rope with a faint hint of disappointment. 

“Make sure you’re out in deeper water for that.” Hopper encourages, waving them out, and she nods agreeably. 

“Okay.” 

Following as she goes, Steve pauses just a moment to duck down into the water completely, popping up again to throw his head back and keep his hair out of his face with a shiver. The lake water is still a bit cold, especially when he dunks in completely. Shoulders tensing just a touch, he rubs his arms and follows after her as the water climbs to his ribs, and they meander out to where Hopper can see them again. Their policeman is sitting perched in the rocks with his towel spread out, thumbing through something from his work, files or reports or whatever. Much more of that, and he’ll certainly be falling asleep. 

“I do not like frogs.” Ellie decides as they go out. While the water here is low on his ribs, it catches her shoulders every so often. Offering her an apologetic smile, Steve shrugs. 

“Sorry it pooped on you. Frogs kinda just do that. Most aren’t that loud though.”

An amused hum escapes her as Steve wades around for somewhere to stand to throw her, at least for some semblance of fun in place of the rope swing. 

“I will still listen to them,” she chimes regardless. “At night. I like it when the frogs sing at night.”

“Me too,” he agrees, taking a moment to just float there, to lean back and soak in the sun. Ellie wades over, playfully wrapping her hands around either side of her face as he squints up at her. She stares a moment before breaking into an almost shy grin, giving his face a squeeze. 

“Will you throw me?”

“Yeah, yeah, gimme a break.” He agrees with a playful laugh, rolling back to stand as he faces away and holds his hands back. “Stand on my shoulders and grab my hands, okay? I’ll go under, and when I start to go up you gotta start to jump.”

“Oh- but that is not like throwing!” She protests, but he shrugs. 

“That’s what my grandpa called it!”

Steve still has clear memories of his grandpa playing with him like this in the water. He can’t recall any lake or pool in particular, but when he was her size, maybe even smaller, he remembers climbing up on his grandpa Otis’ shoulders and being launched out into the water. He can’t help but want to show her the same. He’d done it as long as he possibly could, until his back hurt too much and his old injuries from the war, when he became weary in his old age and spent much more time watching from the sidelines and encouraging Sean Harrington in vain to offer Steve the same attention.

“Will your shoulder hurt?” Ellie posits worriedly.

He pauses at the thought, absentmindedly glancing over to the well formed scars on his shoulder there. They’re still a distinct thing, pink and new, but fully healed. The drag marks are still distinct from where Ellie had pried the not-dog off, but the most distinct marks are from the canines and the tusklike teeth that came from below. It’s clear he’s been bitten by something, clear he’s been bitten by a very large dog no less, but the pain itself has long faded. Rare are the moments where phantom aches plague him, only on cold, bright nights, and just as rare are the waking migraines that plague him. 

With a proud smile, he shakes his head and crouches a bit again, holding his hands back once more. 

“Nope. Not at all.”

Encouraged by this, Ellie takes his hands, he ducks under, and she clambers on his shoulders. It takes a few tries for her to learn when to jump, but she does, ending up half doggie paddling back with bright big smiles and laughter. She doesn’t have to call out for him again, she doesn’t when he gets tired, she just floats with him under the sun as Hopper nods off on the little bank they’d hidden in. 

Steve floats. Arms outspread, back in the water, he soaks in the feeling of listlessness, the warmth of the early summer sun, the faint breeze making the sunrays easier to take as he stays. Hopper’ll get upset about them not putting on sunscreen later, for sure.

He’s sure he can fall asleep here, too. There’s something about it, the crisp smell of life in the air, the way the wind brushes across the surface of the water like its curling warm breezy blankets across his skin, tucking him in. Strangely, he feels at home like this. Like he could paddle around forever, that perhaps the lake could wrap its waters around him. 
He would feel the same. Sleepy and comforted, drawn by the stark smell of water, and call of the frogs, a stray swimmer splashing here. He’d be pulled in by the sunshine and the soothing feeling across his skin, his scar.

Though he doesn’t fall asleep, not entirely, he finds himself caught in a haze of just listening to the world. Ellie’s breathing is a stark thing, as she floats all the same beside him- likely enjoying the fact that she has no obligation to go into her brain place. Instead, he listens. 
He counts each breath. The beat of her heart echoing through the water. The earthy smell of the water climbing up his scalp, the buzz of mosquitos and waterskimmers too shy to venture close to them, so far out. Under the water, the world is brought in and out of a muffled haze, where below everything is deep and scattered and he swears he can hear the wind fold the water’s surface, he can hear the crawdads skittering below. He can hear Hopper snoring on the shore, he can feel the chill and the heat and the wind. It feels like he’s wrapped up in everything, and he’s never felt, heard, smelled so much before. 

He can hear birdsong. 

He can hear a voice singing.

His haze is interrupted as sounds of laughter and guitar chords ring from the far side of the lake. He straightens, ears straining to listen. Footsteps, many of them, over gravel and dirt. Even as he stares, he can’t see much of anything past the skeleton of Hopper’s old trailer and the growing, thick boughed sprouts of evergreens. Someone’s playing a guitar, singing, there’s laughter and voices he vaguely recognizes- but oddly enough, it isn’t too shocking. It sounds so far away, but it is getting closer.
Nevertheless he stands, treading water a minute to find somewhere to stand as he shakes Ellie’s shoulder. 

“D’you hear that?” 

Miffed for being woken, she cracks her eyes open and glances back, craning her neck to stare at him for a moment confusedly. 
“No?”

He huffs, shaking his head. “Somebody’s coming.”

That much has her eyes going wide as she rolls out of her floating position, half treading and half paddling, as Steve starts swimming for the shore. As much as he hadn’t necessarily been immediately concerned, the gathering volume of the approaching group has him wary for either of them being seen, from whoever’s stupid enough to come wandering in through a cop’s property. 

As they scramble up into the bushes to peer back, they find another group on the far side coming down the shore- a bit of a ways past Hopper’s old trailer. Out from between the leaves they peer, as Steve stares out in an effort to make out who’s there. First is a smaller kid in a red flannel, short cropped wavy hair. He vaguely recognizes him as he makes his way down to the water and kicks off his shoes, rolling up dark pants. Soon following is another- somebody he knows as Jeff, who drops a small box of drinks on the ground as he finds a nice rock to sit on, and another bigger guy who he’d only ever known as ‘Freak’. Following alongside his friend is none other than ‘ the Freak’ Munson, an acoustic guitar in hand, painted up in graffiti by his own hand. He can’t quite make out what the white lettering says, but he can make out those fingers strumming away as they laugh and joke around- Freak giving Jeff a shove, the smaller kid turning back to fling water at them. 

“Dammit.” Steve sighs, as Ellie turns back to where Hopper had likely fallen asleep. 

“We need to tell Hop. They need to go away. I do not want to go home.” 

“I know.” Steve agrees, unable to help but frown for how upset she sounds about it. Watching after the group for just a moment longer before turning back to Ellie with a look just as miffed as her, he nods, reaching out for her hand to start squirming through the bushes and brush, ending up closer to the water. 

Thus begins their precarious attempt to sneak back to the hidden bank.

He tries to be careful. He really does, fighting to keep his head low and Ellie behind him and out of sight. She falls into place behind him there like it’s instinct. Just as carefully, he fights to avoid brambles and thorny bushes, harsh rocks, and in that process ends up carefully leading them a bit closer to the water. 

He’s not sure what gives them away. If it’s his stepping into the water, Ellie almost tripping into him, or just coincidence, but Freak is the one to call out first. 

“Hey, is that Harrington?” 

There’s a snideness in his voice, and it has Steve’s head snapping up. He hadn’t been paying attention to them, but by now Munson and Jeff have both shed their shirts and pants to slip into the water in boxers alone. Steve feels like a mouse in the trap. He can’t help the gazillion thoughts that rush to his head as he steps pointedly in front of Ellie to hide her from sight. There, he’s presented alone, in naught but the ratty shorts that make up his own improvised swim trunks. Scars on display, hair a muddled mess, perhaps even a little sunburned, he stares across the narrow lake at the other group of boys who seem quite displeased to see him all the same. 

He doesn’t reply. He just stares, lips curling into a frown as he steps back. Ellie bumps into him, bundled as small as she can be in her great big swim shirt. 

Instead, he turns to stare at Munson who’s… very shirtless, and very much staring back at him with a look somewhere between startled and something else he can’t place. He’s kinda scrawny. His curly hair brushes his shoulders. Munson’s pale cheeks are flush from the sun, and his eyes are glued to Steve’s face- dancing all over him before returning to linger a moment longer. 

“The hell is he doing here?” Jeff asks, as the kid turns with a scowl. “Who’s that?”

“Fuck off!” the smaller guy calls, and he can feel Ellie flinch behind him.

Steve doesn’t say anything. For a far too long moment he feels frozen there, staring back, as Munson pauses, seems to realize something, and works up a smirk as he turns back to his friends. 

“Harrington’s not royalty anymore, he can’t send any of his little knights off after us.”

“Yeah, this’s our lake !” The younger kid shouts, earning a jubilant and agreeable laugh from Freak and Jeff alike. “Go find your own damn lake in Loch Nora.” 

“Fighting sea monsters out here?” Jeff asks loudly across the water. “Or did one of your girlfriends do that?”

“I bet Hagan did it.” Freak remarks with a little grin, earning a half shove from the kid.

Steve keeps silent. It’s such a stupidly simple thing- they’re clearly proud to lord over him here, no longer afraid of him, happy to take advantage and assert themselves. Honestly, he can’t blame them. He’d been such an asshole- but regardless he’s much aware of his face flushing, arms reaching back to hide Ellie. He’s startlingly self aware of the scar on his shoulder, bringing a hand up to cover it as he stares like a deer in the headlights. Still sopping wet, he just steps back up onto the shore, wincing with the stones under his feet as he shuffles out of the water, as he ushers Ellie back and they retreat into the woods between a mess of prickly yarrow as Munson’s voice chimes over the water. 

“Eh, he’s fine. Can’t do a thing to us anymore, can you Harrington?” He calls after Steve as he retreats, and it takes all of him not to start as Ellie whirls around with a scoff. He pulls her back, shaking his head. 

Their conversation continues- something about him being tripped on the court, but he doesn’t care, instead proud that he’s managed to hide her. Instead, his concern is buried as Hopper’s booming voice calls not after he and Ellie, no, instead it calls after the boys on the other side of the lake. 

“What’re you doing out here?” He calls, a tenuous strain in his tone that threatens a roar, as the water on the other side sounds in a clamor, a few shocked gasps and a yelp, some swearing.

“Shit-”

“Fuck, I thought he didn’t even live here anymore!”

“Go-”

“You go on and get outta here!” Hopper shouts as Steve and Ellie pick around through the brush, following the sound of Hopper’s voice to get back to him as the odd band boys he’d once bullied so ruthlessly scampered away from their attempt at a summer party- a big brave adventure at the chief’s ‘former’ lake. “Trespassers! Punks! Lucky I don’t come get you!”

Steve stops just long enough to peer out from the bushes to see the little group retreating. Freak almost trips over a rock, the younger kid scampering up the sandy bank on the far side there, Jeff scrambling for clothes as Munson runs shamelessly in his boxers, throws the guitar over his shoulder- his guitar, and sprints with a surprising burst of will up after his friends, turning to stare back at the trees for only a moment as they all go cursing and white faced back into the woods. 

It’s weird, how he feels his hair stand up on the back of his neck like he’s being watched. Like Munson meant to look for him, and might’ve even found him for a moment. 

Ellie stares up at him once they find another game trail to follow back to the little bank they’d set camp on, as she speaks up.

“Why is your face pink?”

“What?” He starts, confused, still flustered for having been spotted and made fun of. 

“Your face is pink.”

“From the sun. I didn’t put on sunscreen, your face is pink too.” He insists, glancing down as she stares up at him, still holding his hand- unashamed, comforted in it even. 

Instead, she just smiles to herself and peers ahead, running off when she spots the edge of their bank once more.

In the slow progress since March when Hopper had first laid down the foundations of the two rooms, Steve had been watching all of this- and tentatively helping here and there when he had nothing else going on. The hall is four feet wide, and very small- sixteen feet long, leaving eight and six feet square each for the spaces Hopper announced were going to be theirs. 
Steve is still struggling to wrap his head around the thought that he’s going to have his own room even as it slowly takes shape. 
What Hopper does first is lay out the walls. Long strips of wood pried from the remnants of his trailer, where the long frames are nailed together. He’d helped Hopper put them up, helped him hold the windows ripped from the trailer- one in his room, one in Hoppers, two in the hallway along with one more door. Those fall into place, held up by more beams, the walls filled with recycled insulation nailed in like halloween spiderwebs, boards crammed vertically side by side on the outside and the inside alike. 
Those steps- the floor after a week, once the foundation was steady, the walls within three days Hopper had off at the time, the windows included. The door is easy, the step up to it made out of nothing more than a couple big vaguely square rocks and bricks. The roof is tin scraps scrounged from the junkyard that don’t have holes in them, polished and waxed and waterproofed- the longest part of the process outside squeezing the palette bed frames into he and Hopper’s rooms. 

Hopper says he can paint the walls whatever color he wants, just like Ellie can. He says he’ll find Steve a bed frame if he wants, he’d already found dressers- one for Ellie from his old house, one Hopper keeps in his own room for his work uniforms and the clothes he’d scrounged from his trailer. Steve keeps his clothes, sparing as they are, in an old trunk of Hopper’s under his bed. Instead he gets a desk, a plank shelf- and a desklamp to light his room. 
A red chair is his place to sit, where he can read or write or do homework when the school year comes by. A twin size mattress pressed against the wall, with new blue sheets that apparently Miss Flo from the police station didn’t need anymore, this room feels more like his own than the room in the Harrington house ever had.

There, the whole place was wrapped up in ideas meant for him to be a perfect son. Not a sissy, not a weak kid, the successor to the Harrington name. Plain upon plain, things that meant nothing to him and everything to what he should be lining the walls, sitting on his desk. The only good part about that place had been that night- no, less than an hour of his life spent with Nancy before everything fell apart. 

Here, the walls are raw wood, warm, blank for him to make anything of. He has no curtains yet, he can choose them- choose not to have them at all. His bat is tucked against the wall by his bed, quilts and blankets acquired from he and Ellie’s traveling, his shoes- his snow boots and tennis shoes, side by side by the door. His sports bag under the desk for wherever he wants to go, the swim shorts hanging to dry on what should’ve been the curtain rod. He even has a little rug, one more thing Hopper gave him, some braided oval looking thing that looked like something Becky Ives would’ve adored. 

His desk keeps a few things. There’s a paper Christmas tree Ellie made him, sitting up above on the little shelf with his books from school, including a brand new copy of the Velveteen Rabbit , something not bloodstained. In his drawer, he keeps a coin from Mr. Xiao- though he hadn’t had the greatest propensity for the english language, he’d been cheery company. To Steve, he’d felt very much like what dads should be. Kind, patient, able to pull a laugh without uttering a word, instead tugging his ear and flicking the coin out as if he’d pulled it from there- an immature trick, according to Anna Mae, but it’d pulled a smile from her nonetheless, from him all the same. He keeps it beside a paper he’d done well on, the things from his locker. 

Over his deck, he’s pinned little locker notes from Nancy, a copy of her yearbook picture she’d given him. There too sits their prom photo, and a postcard from Chicago depicting Lake Michigan. Beside it, a copy of his team photo- the Hawkins Tigers crouching and standing with their basketballs in front of them, held in their hands and on their laps. Two phone numbers sit scrawled on a stickynote on the worn wood.
Over his bed, a gallery’s worth of Ellie’s pictures decorate the walls. 

He wishes he had a camera for more- or better yet, he wishes he had a picture of his Grandpa to put in here, but that seems so far away. 

While that comfort is gone he does have the familiar comfort of Oreo. 

Today, in the early hours of an early summer morning, he wakes- not hungry yet, but no longer tired, he sits up to look around for the cat. 

He has to admit that he’s jealous Oreo seems to mostly sleep in Ellie’s room. As he creeps in to fetch the cat- no longer quite so little, Oreo is always found in the morning curled against Ellie’s back or at the edge of the bed, where Ellie is heaped in her blankets. He’s there at the edge of the bed for now, ears flicking in his sleep, and oh so careful, Steve is easily able to scoop up the sleepy kitty and retreat back to his room. 

Oreo gives a start, flopping back in his arms to stare up with a sleepy meow before stretching- paws sticking out on both sides. It makes Steve smile, has him leaning down to smother that kitty’s forehead with kisses until his little white paws come down to squish his own fluffy face down. 
“G’morning, lil guy.”

How long had it been since Oreo had been a borderline frostbitten kitten? Four months now, and he looks grown up, four months feel like so long. 

Shuffling back into his room, he passes Hopper’s. He can hear the man snoring, he can still hear him just a touch as he slumps back into his bed and huddles under the sheets, snuggling Oreo close. 

“You’re always running away from me,” he remarks, finally letting go as Oreo stretches and stands for a moment, staring around his room with big eyes and perked ears before he circles around and loafs there in front of Steve’s face, tucking his paws close under his fluff, squinting over and yawning. 

Of course, Oreo has no response, no excuse. 

He reaches up to offer scritches under the chin instead, to which Oreo leans into his hand at one side.
“Bet it’s been weird living in a real house, huh?” he murmurs, quiet so as not to interrupt Hopper’s snoring. “It’s a good thing you’re keeping Ellie company when I’m gone.” 

Oreo, once more, doesn’t respond. What can a cat respond with, anyhow? Instead, Oreo rolls his head to the side, sticks out a paw, and stares with those big yellow eyes of his, whiskers all twitching as he gives another half hearted stretch and a yawn. 

“You know what happened yesterday?” he continues, still running his fingers through Oreo’s fur. “We went to the lake. Hopper has a whole ass lake to himself, I never woulda thought that- but like, we went there. And this guy showed up.”

Kind enough to give him some attention, Oreo perks his ears and turns his head to face Steve, blinking slowly at him. 

“I know right? His friends and him were so trespassing. Hopper got so pissed. But anyway this guy is- I was really mean to him? And his friends. But it was kinda weird because I thought they were gonna almost come after me? Which would’ve sucked- like I totally would’ve deserved it, but he like… didn’t let his friends? Which is weird because I’ve totally talked shit about him before in front of his face.”

Oreo opens his little mouth and makes a little chirp of a meow, still blinking as Steve waves around his hand just a touch between petting him. 

“His name’s Munson. I only know more about him ‘cause of… y’know. He lives out in the trailer park, he got held back this year and everything.”

Oreo squints at him, giving a twitch of his nose. 

“Not like… not like he’s gonna get held back just ‘cause he’s from a trailer park. If that’s true, I shoulda been held back because… y’know. You were in Chicago.” He sighs, as Oreo offers no response outside squinting again. “Anyway. I just thought it was weird,” he remarks, before continuing. “You know what’s also weird? When Tommy tripped me on the court and I got a bloody nose, he helped me up. Didn’t make fun of me or anything.”

As Oreo shifts to shuffle closer and tuck under his chin, Steve lays back with a soft sigh and lets the cat wriggle into a comfy spot, leaning forward to wholeheartedly bury his face in the black and white fur there- soft, no longer short or patchy. The cat rolls, moves his paws, shifts his head around and snuggles against his bad shoulder, purrs so deep and clear through his little body he practically vibrates. Steve happily leans into it, hides in it, lets himself be wrapped in the relaxing wave of purrs. 

“Bet he thinks I’m weird. He can’t- like, do you know how bad it is if one of the weirdest people ever thinks you’re weird ?” 

He sighs, reaching up to run both hands across Oreo’s face, fingertips tracing his little cheeks, where the black fur turns to white, around those big eyes as they happily close again. 

“Jesus, I sound like an asshole. I don’t wanna be an asshole. It’s so weird. Like, actually all of this is so weird, because I never like… thought about it.”

His eyes roll over to the two phone numbers on the sticky note pasted haphazardly on his desk. “Had to think about a lot of stuff. I… I wonder what he’s like. What those guys are like. Molly n’ Tori- they were really nice. I woulda been really mean to ‘em if I didn’t… do all that stuff.”

His tongue feels a little bitter at the thought as he stares up at the ceiling, well aware of the beginnings of soft patterings up above. The soft ‘ting, ting, ting’ of May raindrops singing overhead. It’s a symphony there, with the soft rhythm of Oreo’s purring, soothing, making the words leave him easier. 

“I oughtta call ‘em sometime. Hop said we can’t have a phone here though so nobody listens to our conversations. He’s got this morse code thing, I’m bad at morse code. Maybe- from the library or something. Maybe I can call from there.” He shrugs to himself, turning his head as Oreo rolls away a bit and curls his little paws up on Steve’s chest, nestling his head under his chin. 
That seems to be all the assurance he needs, honestly, as he leans back and just thinks for a moment.