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━━━━ " 📂  "

𝙋 𝘼 𝙍 𝘼 𝘿 𝙄 𝙎 𝙀

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"SO." STEVE CLAPPED his hands together, letting his arms swing by his side. His eyes scanned the basement, to wear Sadie had snatched the flashlight from his hand and directed it towards the hole. "What do we do now?"

"You think we have the answers?" Dustin said, feeling a little guilty considering his participation in the event, turning somewhat defensive.

The Harrington rose his arms in defence. "Hey - you two are the ones who called me over here talking about some missing cat - which that thing ate, by the way, we glossed over that way too soon - sorry if I have no idea what to do now."

"I didn't say you had to know what to do." Dustin sniped.

"Oh yeah? So what else did you mean, huh?"

"Just that you shouldn't assume that we know what to do all the time. Because I'm not gonna lie, I have no idea what to do next."

"Oh, that is brilliant. Thanks for letting me know. Really fills me with confidence that we aren't going to get attacked by this giant lizard thing that you decided was some bright idea to keep as a pet. Why would you keep a constantly growing lizard thing as a pet?"

"First of all, it's not a lizard, it's an amphibian, and-"

"Who gives a shit if it's an amphibian thing or a lizard? You've got to have some-"

The torch suddenly shone between their eyes, too bright and blinding them both. Simultaneously, Dustin and Steve turned away, and when they looked back Sadie was facing them. "I have a plan." She replied.

"Oh, thank god, I think I love you." Steve wiped his brow of what could be sweat, catching the glare Dustin sent his way. "So you two can talk in metaphors but the moment I try one you get all defensive!"

"Poor choice in words, Stevie." Sadie hummed, but shook her head and continued. "Like I said, I have a plan. Come here." She waved her hand and beckoned them towards her, raising the torch higher and shining it down over the object she held in her palm. When Steve and Dustin peered over, they saw the compass necklace hanging from her neck. The arrow within was pointing north.

"Extreme sense of deja vu." Dustin shivered. "I've got chills."

Steve didn't understand, so she waved him away without explanation of what had happened the previous year in the basement of the Wheelers - it was far too similar for her liking. "It goes north, right, and whilst you two were deciding who was to blame for our utter lack of plan whilst I came up with them, I decided to check out this tunnel and it looks like it goes pretty straight for a while." She began to walk her way towards the stairs, the other two following without question. "So, we follow the compass."

"And then what?" Steve asked, swinging the bat within his hands.

"If I'm thinking right... we'll reach the train tracks, and then I say we hope that our musketeer is heading towards the junkyard and we find him there. If he's come out of the tunnel somewhere else, then he shouldn't be far away seeing as it's a new world to him and despite his face opening up and eating Mews we should hope that he stays close. So we lure him with meat like we did earlier and then... we attack." Sadie shrugged like it was nothing, coming to a stop in front of the open entrance to the cellar.

"Woah. How did we get here?" Steve looked around in wonder, Dustin made sure to reach up and smack him over the back of his well-groomed head. He yelped, before turning slightly pink yet hidden in the dark, digging his hands into his pockets. "Good plan - you're... um.. you're smart."

"Thank you." Sadie nodded. "If we go early enough in the morning we can get scrap meat from the meat counter at the Big Buy, then we.... Mom."

"What?" Dustin blinked.

"Mom. She's on her way." Sadie blinked. "Her engine does this sort of rumble every couple of seconds and I just heard it."

"How...." Steve's eyes was wide. "Never...never mind. Why does that matter if she's coming back."

"Her cat's dead." Sadie blinked. "Okay, just let me think a moment. We need to leave early, right? So you'll have to come by early if you don't want to stay here - my room, I have a mattress and Dusty your room smells like bleach - and I can explain your car away by the idea that you're down the street and there wasn't parking. If you want to leave... you were here looking for Mews, which is what we're doing right now, right?"

Dustin pushed past Steve. "Close the cellar doors." He told him, before turning to Sadie and seizing her shoulders, forcing her to bend down and shaking her to the beat of his words. "Are you insane?" Sadie pushed him off. "He can't stay in your room."

"Yes he can." Sadie turned towards Steve. "Would you prefer to go home and wake up early or stay here and wake up early? I have... your clothes that I borrowed here anyway."

"I... is that alright with you?" Steve looked between Sadie and Dustin, feeling something akin to nerves in his stomach. She shrugged and nodded. "Yeah, okay, I can stay. Early mornings would be better here... I don't tend to wake up early well."

"Okay. So it's sorted." Sadie blinked and waved Dustin away. "I've got a mattress under my bed.. we need an early start. Meaning like.. we need to leave after lunch" Slowly, now that the doors to the storm cellar had closed, they were beginning to make their way up to the house, the sound of Claudia Henderson's car approaching becoming louder and louder.

Sadie didn't exactly know why she had even offered for Steve to stay, in general, not just in her room. Actually - that was a lie. She knew exactly why she had asked him to stay, and it consisted of three things; one, she actually enjoyed talking to him and their conversations just seemed to carry so fluidly. Two, she couldn't spend another night with Dustin on the mattress; he both snored and muttered in his sleep and three - she would need someone to listen to her as she theorised. That was always an important step.

And the truth was, Sadie had a lot of thinking and theorising to do.

"Why can't he sleep in my room?" Dustin complained as they stopped at the back of the house, just out of the way of the porch door.

"Because Mom goes in there all the time, and I don't think you want him to be there whilst you explain why it doesn't smell like its usual pre-teen odour and instead it smells like bleach," Sadie said, rather matter-of-fact. "Overwhelmingly so. What are you worried about, exactly? We're friends, I slept in his room on Halloween?"

Dustin's head shot towards Steve, almost accusatory. "After doing what exactly?"

Sadie scoffed, holding her hand up and began to count on her fingers. "Being too drunk to walk.. being under the impression I was heading for a sleepover..."

"Throwing up in the bushes." Steve joined in, listing them off the top of his head. Sadie held up a third finger. "Er - almost throwing up in my car. Wanting slushies - we got slushes." A fourth and fifth finger joined, and Sadie moved to her next hand. "She didn't want you or your Mom to see her like that... I was being a good friend."

"And that's seven." Sadie grinned. "You would've understood if you saw it, I couldn't come home like that."

Dustin didn't say anything for a moment, before throwing his hands up in despair. "Fine. Whatever." He shook his head, clicking the bottom of the flashlight off. They were now in the safety of the glow of their own home, shielded from the escaped D'Artagnan. "Just because I don't think he should sleep in a room where Mews died."

"You don't have to keep saying that you know?" Sadie huffed, her eyes glancing to the blinds covering the glass sliding door and pulling Steve around so that he was out of view. "And my room has the best window to come in and out of."

"I'll just stay with Sadie, okay Dusty?" Steve grinned, swinging the bat in his hand from side to side as he mocked the nickname. Dustin's grin dropped and his eyes narrowed. "Why couldn't I just go home?" He muttered to the girl, not entirely understanding it himself.

"Because I like spending time with you without my brother, you know?" Sadie grinned, looking a little more mischievous than she normally did. "That one's my window, third along, you might still be able to see a couple trophies and a plant? Give me a minute and I'll let you in."

Steve nodded and stumbled back a few steps when hearing the door open. He flattened against the wall as Sadie and Dustin diligently ignored his presence. "What are you two doing out here? It's cold, you know?" Claudia Henderson's voice rang out across the backyard.

"We were looking for Mews, Mom," Sadie replied softly, and altogether very kindly. "Did you not manage to find her up at the Lake?"

"No... no, I didn't." Claudia said. "You're good kids. Come on, pizza for dinner tonight, alright? We can keep looking for her in the morning... although I hate the thought of the poor baby being out again. Without her kibble as well."

"I know, Mom." Dustin smiled, adjusting his hat. "We can go out looking again tomorrow, let's just go in and warm you up. You've been out all day without coffee or anything."

"Right, right." Claudia dithered, and Steve watched as her back turned and the two siblings turned to glare at him, gesturing wildly towards the window before making their way up into the house behind her.

They were good kids, but they had awful problems to deal with. And Steve would help them the best he could.

✧

Steve had climbed through Sadie's window like it was second nature, somehow finding something to push himself up onto and narrowly avoiding breaking one of many trophies that she had scattered out across the windowsill.

She had come in briefly, spilling apologies from her lips to open the window and lend a hand (that being steadying him as he clambered through and promptly announced he was 'like a ninja', a phrase which was quickly becoming his trademark) before heading back out to join her mom and brother in the living room. He had checked the trophy - she was state champion in some robotics competition a couple of years ago - before settling it back on its shelf, a ring imprinted on it from lack of movement.

Other than the numerous trophies proclaiming her as one of the smartest kids in the state - and there was one for the country and then another for the world, which quite frankly blew Steve's mind - Sadie's room was exactly as he imagined it.

Not that he'd imagined it or anything... well... he had. He had imagined it, and it seemed to fit the bill. The shelves of vinyls and tapes and several Walkmans lined up in a row and the record player beside it. The array of science-based, movie and music-related posters pasted over her wall, the first desk covered in books and bits and pieces of technology - wires and screws and cogs and shit that Steve didn't understand and then the second desk with more books and jars of pencils and her textbooks but also the folding mirror attached and a makeup bag.

Then there were the different bits completely unrelated to Sadie's interests, yet still seemed to match her entirely. The patchwork blanket, the knitted one on top of it. The multitude of pillows and the rainbow lights twisted around her bed frame, the lava lamp, the scattered photographs, the electric guitar - the electric guitar - a carved mirror, a bowl of jewellery, a vanity, the half-open wardrobe.

It was chaotic, but organised, and Steve found himself immensely interested in it all. He tried to not look like he was in a museum - although he was, and this was a display of the interests and amazing qualities of Sadie Henderson - but ended up admiring half the shit scattered across her desk. There was a sheet of paper pushed flat against the surface detailing some kind of plan, and he had no idea what any of it meant, but it seemed so very interesting and he couldn't ignore.

He stopped by her bedside table. There was a radio, which he wasn't so interested in and the armchair with the layers of more blankets and a quilted pillow on, but instead the only picture in her room (that wasn't of her with some official, suited guy who looked incredibly disgruntled he was handing a prize to a girl who was shaking his hand most enthusiastically) that was framed. It was clearly of Sadie, her mother and Dustin, but then of another man.

Steve assumed he must be her father - after all, she did look a lot like him, and there were elements he saw in Dustin as well, like the curly hair and the eyes. She had his nose, Steve decided, and jumped out of his skin when he heard the door slide open and closed incredibly quickly.

"Shit - hi." Steve placed the frame down. "Sorry... you look like him."

"So people tell me." Sadie smiled instead of getting mad like Steve expected her to. His other girlfriends - not Nancy, but Laurie and Amy - didn't like it when he showed interest in them or their personal lives. He met Amy's parents but that was about it. And he knew she kinda liked to cheer and was trying out for the team. That was about it. Before he hadn't been quiet so.. boyfriend-y. Now he kinda hoped that he could be. Potentially. "Our pizza nights moved from Sunday to Saturday because of my mom's shift. You don't mind pizza do you? We usually get all the toppings as well so if you don't want any...?"

"No, that's good," Steve replied.

She reached for the fleece laid across the back of her desk chair before throwing him a small book. It was Neuromancer by William Gibbson, and Steve flipped the cover to read the blurb. "I don't think I have anything to entertain you with, but you can try that if you want. If you want to shower and stuff your clothes are there, and me and Dustin can distract Mom whilst you do it."

"I'm good, thanks," Steve replied. "I don't have the stuff I need to... do my hair." He added in a mutter. Sadie stared at him, before smirking. "What are you reading, by the way?"

"Anna Karenina," Sadie replied, pointing it out from where it was thrown on her bed. Steve reached for it. "It's Russian." His hand retracted. "You don't mind, do you? Staying in here and everything."

He shook his head, watching as she pulled her closet door open further and pulled out the small, floral-patterned futon that had lived, rolled up amongst the shoe boxes in there for years. "No, I don't mind it. Can I pick a blanket?"

"Go ahead. Choose a pillow as well if you'd like." Sadie nodded, coming to sit down on the chair by her desk - or what he presumed to be her main desk, considering the other surface doubled as a vanity. She didn't say anything else after that, and instead reached for a small bag on the floor below her desk and balanced it on her lap, beginning to fiddle with something. "Hey - do you have your Walkman with you?"

"It's in my car, why?" Steve got to his feet, happily abandoning the book. As much as he would have liked to, reading wasn't exactly his thing. Instead, he moved to sit at the end of her bed, looking over her shoulder. "What are you doing?"

"I went to the junkyard last week for some scrap metal and I found an old radio." She waved said radio in her left hand before continuing. "I'm attempting to fit it up, but I don't think I have all the right parts. Which has been the case over the years, so I've kinda found substitutes for a lot of the factory parts in other things. Wires... other bits and pieces, stuff I can pick up at the Radio Shack or the mall when I can go. Don't worry, you can have one of mine,"

Steve didn't even need the incentive of having the favour returned before he was turning towards the window again, climbing up onto her bag, throwing out the flashlight and his shoes first before following them. He returned seconds later, having moved very carefully around his car to extract his own Walkman. It was a little stupid, really, but he just kind of wanted to please her. Or at the very least make her smile.

"Oh - shit." Sadie offered her hand again as Steve tumbled through the window, catching awards as he went.

"Sorry - sorry." Steve stood up straight, folding his arms. "Like a ninja... like a ninja."

"Exactly like a ninja." Sadie nodded, eyebrows raised.

"Don't look at me like that."

"Look at you like what, Steve-"

There were several knocks against her door. "Sadie?" Claudia called, her daughter's eyes widening and practically slapping a hand over Steve's mouth. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, Mom!" Sadie replied, although there was a smile growing on the corners of her lips. Steve watched as her eyes turned into crescent moons trying not to laugh. "Everything's fine. Is the pizza here yet?"

"Almost, I'll get Dusty-buns to come and get you in a moment."

"Okay." Sadie finished, ears straining as she listened for her mom's footsteps retreat. Her eyes flickered back over to Steve, who grinned as she took her hand away. "... I trust you completely."

Steve nodded. "I really get that feeling." He turned back to pull the window closed and adjust the positioning of one of the trophies. "So you won all of these?" His finger slipped below the ribbon of one of the rosettes. "Only second place, huh?"

"Oh yeah, I fucked that one up." Sadie nodded. "It didn't malfunction.. but one of the screws was loose and Danny Piessens' weren't."

"You mean that literally, or...?"

She laughed, picking up the rosette and tucking it into his collar. "No, Danny was fine. His mom, however, had that kinda pageant-mom thing going on and was completely ruthless." Sadie shrugged. "But, I've always been entered in these competitions for things. Most of them are cash prizes, sometimes they're visits or passes to something. But it's gotten to the point where it's easy to win."

"Which one is your newest?"

"It was that one." She pointed out a small trophy in the shape of the Rutherford model of an atom. "I designed and created my own radio system with special wiring and bass but then I took it apart for parts and I'm thinking of recreating it. You still wondering about pollywogs?"

Steve admired the trophy for a moment before nodding, coming back to the real world. "Er - sure. Yeah. Please, it'd be useful."

Sadie turned back to her room, scanning the sights before crossing it briefly and extracting a book from a pile, returning to the desk. "Here's the thing on pollywogs." She said, flicking to one of the pages and handing it to him. "And... about what Dart is supposed to be." Her attention turned towards a notebook, quickly sketching out a shape. "From what I can guess, he started off about this big and looked like this."

She continued on, drawing a brief arrow before adding another, more developed shape. "Then he would've grown into this, and when we locked him in the storm cellar he would have been like this. Judging from the hole he left, Dart is about to be this big and he's on his way to becoming like this."

She finished on the lanky human-like shape with the tulip head, eraser on the end of her pencil pointed towards it. "That's the thing from Jonathan's house... the thing that stole Will." Steve said.

"Yeah." Sadie swallowed, almost freezing up for a moment as she stared down at it. She didn't say anything, but her lack of actions spoke far louder. "I can't believe something like that killed Mews."

Steve didn't say anything either, but after a moment of hesitation, a shaking hand was placed on her shoulder.

✧

It was darker in the room than Steve expected, even with the lava lamp turned permanently on for the night and casting a pink glow across the room. He stared up at the ceiling, where the glow-in-the-dark stars had been pasted and were now dotted throughout the haze. He was surprisingly more comfortable on the futon than expected, hand drifting across his t-shirt covered chest as he tried to get to sleep.

But it was almost impossible. He couldn't stop thinking about Dart, or about where he was, or the fact that the smell of coffee and vanilla that had haunted him since the night of Halloween was now enveloping him in his entirety. He couldn't stop thinking about the girl laid in the bed next to him, who didn't seem to be able to keep still or fall asleep either.

Sadie turned over in her covers again, one of her cushions being pulled into her arms. His head turned towards her for a brief second, eyes landing on the sight of a muss of dirty blonde hair that was so unusually flat than what she was used to.

"Steve?"

He turned over and she was sat up, silhouette outlined in pink. Her hand was reaching up to her mouth and chewing on her thumbnail carelessly, a habit that Steve didn't know she had.

"Yeah?" Steve replied, hoping he wasn't being too loud; he still had Mrs Henderson to worry about after all, and would be facing the brunt of it the very next day if Dustin heard them at night.

"Do you..." She swallowed, her hand dropping into her lap and the sleeve of her jumper pulled over her hands. "Do you think it's going to get bad again? Like there's going to be kidnappings and people go missing and people die, like last time?"

He didn't answer for a minute, thinking about it. "No. No, I don't think it will do." Steve said.

"Yeah... but how do you know?"

"I just figured that it can't get any worse than it did last year." He was lying - Steve had no idea how any of this was going to turn out. But... sometimes lying to someone over a matter like this appeared to make much more sense than telling her the truth. And so, Steve didn't mind it so much this time. "We'll find Dart and I'll kill him before he turns into the full thing. Will's visions will go down when the dates passed, like that soldier PTSD thing you were talking about and then everything will go back to how it was."

He came to a stop with a nod, attempting a smile although he wasn't so sure if she could see his face in the dim light of the room. Sadie shifted around again, adjusting her pillow and sighing. "Everything?" She asked.

He frowned. "What else is there?"

"Your relationship."

"With Nancy?"

"You don't think that'll go back to normal after the date passed?" Sadie didn't know why exactly she had asked it, or why she was even concerned. But... it was too late now. She had asked it, and Steve was staring at her from his mattress on the floor.

"Sadie... that isn't normal now." He shrugged, and his words sounded warmer than she expected. "This is the new normal, me without a girlfriend." He frowns. "Are you worried about that?"

"No... no." She quickly reiterated, feeling surprisingly embarrassed. She wasn't used to this. "I've just spoken a lot with you recently, and I like speaking to you. I think a lot and.. well a lot of people don't put up with it like you do. And you were so nice to me on Halloween when I was throwing up and demanding slushies and doing all that stuff - and now you're helping me and Dusty with Dart and you're speaking to me now even though we have a long day ahead of us and it's so late and oh God I'm going to be exhausted and you're going to be exhausted and-"

At some point, Steve had realised that she was only spiralling into an unexpected panic and interrupted her. "Sadie. Come here." He held out his arms, silhouette showing his actions.

Sadie brought her knees up to her chest. "My bed's comfier." She mumbled and Steve felt a smile appear on his face.

"Then I'll come to you." He replied and pushed himself up onto his feet, coming to sit on her bed beside her. There was only a moment of hesitation before he reached forward and hugged her, arm around her waist as she covered her face with her hands, wholly overwhelmed by the situation. "It's not going to get worse." He told her. "We've just got to fix a couple mistakes and hey - if anyone can get us through this it's you."

"I just... I just... and I know you'll be fed up of hearing this shit after what happened at the party..." Sadie sniffed, swallowing back any tears that threatened to embarrass her. "But I just feel guilty that maybe we're causing trouble again. Because Barb died because of the Demogorgon and Eleven's gone and... Eleven... she had no one."

His arm tightened around her shoulder as she faltered in her words, and Steve prompted her to continue. "And then me, Mike, Dustin and Lucas were there for her. She'd lived alone for so long and then she had a couple days happiness and then she died. And mews is dead and my mom doesn't know and-"

"You think way too much." Steve interrupted yet again, arm reaching around and pulling her into a proper hug, any other thoughts about hesitating and pausing and worry further from his mind than before. "It's late." He murmured. "It's been a stressful day. Tomorrow we can come up with a way to tell your mom and we'll find Dart and sort that out, so you don't need to worry about it, okay?"

"Okay." Sadie nodded, sniffing and pulling back. "Okay." She repeated, wiping her eyes and diverting his attention. "We should sleep in preparation tomorrow."

She began adjusting her pillows again, fluffing them and pulling her blankets over her legs. Steve didn't move.

"Sadie, can you sleep?"

"No."

"Okay, I'll stay here then. Come on, lay down." He told her, arm remaining over her shoulder as they laid down.

"You don't have to," Sadie murmured.

"I want to, please. For you."

"Thank you, Steve." Sadie didn't question it any further, instead laying down and getting comfortable, swallowing back any fears of what might come as Steve lay next to her.

It occurred to him then, that he had never felt like this around Nancy.