Chapter Text
They lose power in the van. Steve’s off charming Jessica oh-God-who-cares for a jump start; Jonathan’s just been given the news about Nancy’s family, and his worry flares, curdles into anger.
“Jesus Christ, man,” Steve breathes out when he’s told.
Each minute stuck waiting is agonisingly slow. Steve fills the silence, babbling about Jessica placing him, and this is useless, Jonathan quietly seethes, this is so useless, the whole thing is just—
“What do we do if this doesn’t work?” he mutters.
Steve lets out a disbelieving laugh. “Well, I guess we’re screwed, Byers.”
“Seriously? You know, this might not even have—you’ve been doing this for every crawl, don’t you remember anything Dustin—”
“Oh, yeah!” Steve says vindictively. He does a show of looking in the back. “Wait a second, how could I forget the personalised handbook he made for if shit gets totally—”
“Jesus, just say you forgot, it’s—”
“Hey, you’re the one who volunteered to be here, Byers, so why don’t you come up with—”
“Oh my God, it’s not like I’m an expert at any of—”
“Neither am I!” Steve snaps, eyes blazing. “And in case you’ve forgotten, Henderson isn’t here.”
His voice cracks at the last second, just as Jessica lays on her horn.
Steve starts the van without comment. They drive at a snail’s pace, but Jonathan can’t pick up anything. He throws the headphones off in frustration. Leans forward—he can see how Steve is clenching his jaw as he drives.
“So is this, like, normal for him now? Radio silence?” Jonathan says it as carefully as he can, an olive branch.
Steve’s eyes glance up to the rear view mirror. “Yeah,” he says shortly. “Yeah.” He sighs, sharp. “Okay, this is pointless. Why don’t we just… Should we go to the hospital and just—?”
“And what, wait some more?”
“I don’t know!” And it’s the first time tonight, Jonathan thinks, that Steve sounds more afraid than angry. “But this? Jesus Christ, this is torture, man, I—”
And he stops. The engine dies so quickly that at first Jonathan thinks they’ve lost power again. Then he suspects it’s some kind of animal, a stray cat, and that Steve’s just done an emergency stop to avoid hitting it.
Except Steve’s not looking out the front. He’s turned to the side, frozen.
“No,” he says. It’s quiet, almost calm. Like he’s objecting to something that’s just flat out wrong, impossible. Then, again, “No, no.”
He’s out the van before Jonathan can even ask what’s wrong. Swearing, Jonathan tries to catch up. Later he’ll think that maybe they missed something when they were arguing. A noise, a sign, anything.
A terrible sound splits through the night. A scream, primal despair. It takes a long moment for Jonathan to make sense of it. To understand that it’s Steve.
He runs.
He finds Steve kneeling on the ground. In front of him is a bike, lying abandoned. A trail of blood. There, just a few steps away: a crumpled baseball cap.
“Dustin,” Steve’s saying. His voice is destroyed, barely human. “Dustin! Can you—” He breaks off, guttural, like something’s choking him. Quieter—he’s not aware of what he’s saying, Jonathan thinks: “Please God, please—”
“Steve,” Jonathan says as calmly as he can. He feels strange, off-kilter. It’s as if he’s looking through a mirror, seeing himself from years ago: searching the woods, screaming Will’s name. “Hey. Listen.”
“What are you doing?” Steve breathes. He looks up, eyes wild. “Why are you just standing there?”
His hands are clawing at the road desperately. Jonathan knows there must’ve been a fissure, minutes ago even, but there’s no point now; they’re too late.
“Steve,” he says again. “Stop. You’re just gonna hurt—”
“Okay so we—we—” Steve interrupts, frantic. He stops clawing, grabs Dustin’s hat instead. There’s a bloodstain on the visor. “We go to the MAC-Z, there’s a gate, we can—”
“Are you insane? We’ll get caught, we’ll—”
“We find a way! We find a fucking way—”
“Stop.” Jonathan bends down and grabs Steve by the shoulders, shakes him urgently. “Listen to me. If you just charge on in, you’re only gonna get yourself killed.”
Steve just stares. His jaw works a couple times, like he can’t find the words. He looks so young, the suddenness of it frightening: like they’ve travelled back to four years ago, like he’s just seen a monster.
“Jonathan,” he says. It occurs to Jonathan then that he’s never seen Steve cry, and he’s got no desire to start now. “I let—he was alone.”
“Listen,” Jonathan tries again. “We’ll come up with a plan. We’ll get him back. Okay?”
“Okay,” Steve says numbly. “Okay.”
When they stand Jonathan finds that there must’ve been more blood on the ground than he thought; it’s soaking through the knees of Steve’s jeans.
“I’m driving,” Jonathan says.
He gets ready for Steve to fight him on it, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s still holding onto Dustin’s hat, so tightly he might tear it. His hands are shaking.
Jonathan turns, starts to walk away. “C’mon.”
“Wait,” Steve says. “His… his bike. We can’t just leave—”
His voice fails. Jonathan is suddenly, selfishly relieved that he can’t see Steve’s face.
“So take it,” he says bluntly; that problem, at least, has a clear solution.