Chapter Text
Eddie plops down in the seat next to Steve in biology, ignoring the incredulous look Tommy H shoots them both from the front of the class. “Hey, so I didn’t want to freak the group out at lunch or anything, because it might be nothing. Well—” he laughs nervously “—I’m pretty sure now it’s not nothing, but…”
Steve raises an eyebrow, silently prompting him to continue.
Eddie exhales deeply. “Well, you know how you said there’s a big bad government agency that’s searching for El?”
Steve nods, now looking significantly more nervous. “Yeah?”
“And you know how big bad government agencies can do things like, y’know, surveil the shit out of regular citizens?”
Steve’s brow furrows, and Eddie cocks his head. “Judas Priest? Electric Eye? No, you probably just listen to Wham! or some shit. I mean, that song is just an Orwell reference anyways. How about Orwell, you ever heard of him? Because 1984 is upon us, bud.”
Steve just looks baffled.
“Really?” Eddie asks. “Okay, look, we live in a surveillance state. The government could very easily listen in on our phone conversations and…well, if they’re listening, there’s a non-zero chance that the lady that saw us at the trailer park blabbed to someone on the phone, because there were some very secret-service-looking individuals knocking at her door when I left for school this morning.”
Steve’s eyebrows raise, and Eddie nods frantically, continuing on, “yeah, and I got called into the office last period, which is not unusual in itself, so I thought it was just for some shit I got up to and forgot about, but, uh, they were definitely asking me questions for which I provided answers that I’m really hoping they won’t fact-check.”
“What did you do?” Steve asks, horror and trepidation tinging his voice. Eddie would like to be offended about it, but… well, Steve’s horror is kind of justified.
“Look, if they had sent cops or some shit I would have told them to fuck off and not talk to me again without getting me a public defender, but they were disguised as doctors from Hawkins Hospital, looking for a missing chemo kid, so that comeback would have just been suspicious as shit.”
“What did you tell them , Eddie?” Steve asks, his voice laced with desperation.
“They seemed really convinced at the time! But, uh, if they decide to follow up with… literally anyone, they may find that I was talking out of my ass. Emphasis on may! Some of the things I said could be true individually, but uh, I don’t remember if I was in Indy on Saturday or not, and I don’t fucking know if Zero Boys was playing, and I know for sure that I didn’t gallantly offer to drive a punk to the hospital after a crowd-killer knocked her unconscious, only to end up with a very adult, but small, stowaway in my van, trying to skip on her hospital bill as soon as she woke up.”
Steve blinks, seemingly stunned silent.
Eddie winces. “I tried, okay?”
“Yeah, no,” Steve says. “I wouldn’t have been able to come up with that on the spot, but…uh, there’s a lot of holes in that story, man.”
Eddie groans. “I knowwww. And I’m probably their only lead. El is stowed away now, and I’m probably the only one that got recognized, since I’m the only one who actually, y’know, lives in the trailer park.”
Steve sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Yeah, I wasn’t really involved in the American government part of things, but from what I hear, they’re pretty persistent, so if you’re really their only lead…”
Eddie’s head thunks against the desk. “I just got done being a wanted man.”
Tentatively, Steve reaches over to pat him on the back. “If worst comes to worst, you can always hide at mine while we get the government off your back. My mom’s fridge calendar says my parents won’t be home until next weekend, so…”
Eddie turns his head on the desk, peeking up at Steve through the curtain of his hair. “How will I know that worst has come to worst before I have a bullet between my eyes, dude?”
Steve winces, retracting his hand. “Good point.” He runs his hand through his hair. There’s a moment of silence, then he provides: “well, they probably won’t shoot you here.”
“Probably?”
“Too many witnesses.” Steve shrugs.
“Point,” Eddie mutters. He pushes his hair out of his eyes and drags it into his mouth. “‘M trailer doesn’t have wintessess, though,” he notes around the hair. “Wayne works nights.”
Steve sighs. “So stay with me.” He points to himself. “Witness. Sound good?”
“Alright,” Eddie says, spitting the hair out of his mouth. “Okay, thats fine.”
“Yeah, man.” Steve assures. “You’ll be fine.”
______
Everyone in the room watches as Hopper gives the pen a long, considering stare. His brow is furrowed, his arms crossed over his chest. He looks from the pen, then to El, then Joyce, then back to the pen.
El continues to concentrate, keeping the pen afloat. Hopper is the only one of them who hasn’t seen her powers in action yet. Lucas, Barbara, and Mike had all gotten a demonstration before he arrived.
Slowly, Hopper reaches his hand out, waving it in the air above the pen. His eyebrows raise. “That’s a neat trick, kid.”
El allows the pen to drop. “It is not a trick.”
Joyce chews her lip, her arms crossed and her foot tapping quickly against the floor.
Hopper turns to her, his eyebrows knitting together. “Are you really saying you buy this, Joyce?”
Joyce shrugs. “It’s pretty hard not to, when you’ve got the proof looking right in your face.” She tilts her head towards El.
Hopper squints at El. “I’d hardly call this solid proof. Just because the kid can float a couple pens doesn’t mean she’s doing it with her mind, and government agencies? Time travel? Monsters?” He scoffs. “Don’t you think it’s more likely this is just some big prank?”
El sighs. She had nearly forgotten how stubborn Hopper can be. “I can do more than float pens.”
Hopper raises an eyebrow. “What, so you can do letter openers, too?”
Instead of answering, El concentrates, focusing her energy towards Hopper. She closes her eyes, and pictures what she wants, pictures Hopper lifting into the air and slowly floating up, up—
“Okay!” Hopper exclaims, “that’s enough!”
She opens her eyes to see her imagination reflected back at her, though the real Hopper is taking it with less dignity than she pictured, pinwheeling his arms in little circles, a panicked expression on his face.
She sets him down gently, but he still stumbles a bit, trying to regain his balance. When he does, he looks back up at them both with newfound understanding in his eyes. “Okay,” he says. “I have some questions.”
After about 15 minutes of hard interrogation, Hopper pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand, waving the other to cut off a tangent Robin had gone on about the probable link between highly exploitable American government corruption and the efficiency with which the Russian government can assemble entire bases of operation in enemy territory. “Okay, fine, yeah, I’ll admit the mayor of Hawkins would probably be easy to bribe,” he concedes. “Just…” he sighs. “Alright, let me get this straight. You all want to use this twelve-year-old girl—” he gestures at El “—to fight an interdimensional monster?” Hopper asks.
Steve winces, responding with “Well, when you put it like that…” at the same time as Robin raises her eyebrow and comments “sexist, much?”
Hopper gives Robin an incredulous look.
Robin narrows her eyes. “What? I take offence to the emphasis you put on ‘girl’, there.” She turns to Steve. “I thought you said he’s a good adult, but I’m not sure I vibe with his whole—” she waves at his general presence “—uber masculine rogue cop schtick.”
Long used to the group’s shenannigans, Dustin ignores the sidebar in favor of stepping forward to speak to Hopper. “She’s kind of the only one who can fight the monster.”
Joyce runs a hand through her hair, her other hand flexing in the air. When she’s this stressed, her hand looks empty without a cigarette, but El knows she won’t smoke inside when there are kids around. Joyce shoots El a sympathetic look. “So there’s not a single adult capable of taking this thing down?”
“Well—” Robin begins, ever the quick draw.
“—I mean, if you use fire—” Dustin waffles.
“—the adult success rates are kinda—” Robin teeters her hand back and forth.
“—it’s escaped while on fire before,” Nancy argues.
“—Yeah, I’m technically an adult, but I also, uh, definitely would have died without the girl wonder,” Eddie admits.
“See! That’s how you bring gender into it without being sexist,” Robin comments, waving a hand at Eddie and firmly sending the conversation off the rails.
“That’s kinda beside the point right now, Rob,” Steve says, rolling his eyes.
“It’s never a bad time to call out sexism,” Robin says, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes. “And you can’t tell me otherwise, sailor boy.”
“We both worked that job, I don’t know why you keep bringing it up like it’s something you can hold over me,” Steve huffs.
“Yeah, but I rocked that uniform,” Robin argues, “you looked like a golden retriever that got shoved in a halloween costume, very undignified.”
“The uniform fit me fine,” Steve protests.
“It’s about the confidence, Steve, you were papably frazzled whenever you wore it.”
Nancy turns and coughs delicately, clearly hiding a laugh.
Dustin nods. “Yeah, you tried, but I could tell you just weren’t comfortable in that thing.”
Steve throws his hands up into the air, and El tears her eyes away from the bickering, deciding it’s high time to get back on topic. She stretches her hand up to rest on Joyce’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” she assures. “I will win.”
The room goes silent, and Joyce chews on her lip in deliberation. “Well, I appreciate the confidence sweetie, but I—” she looks behind her, where Hopper is hovering “—Hopper and I—we’re just having a hard time wrapping our heads around this.”
“I am powerful.” El says simply. “And you cannot stop me. It would be easier to help.”
Dustin nods. “A bit blunter than I would have put it, but it’s the truth, Ms. Byers,” he says earnestly. “She has superpowers. And also there’s eleven of us and only two of you.”
“Dustin Henderson!” Joyce exclaims, her eyes widening, even as her brow furrows. “Is that a threat?”
“No ma’am,” Dustin promises, “just the truth. Even if you managed to contain El somehow, you can’t keep us all here.”
Joyce turns to look at Jonathan imploringly.
“I don’t know, mom, they seem pretty sure about this.”
“Oh, it’ll work,” Dustin promises. “I’ve seen her kill one of these things before.” He thinks for a moment. “I’ve also seen her toss a van in the air with her mind. It was pretty bitchin’.”
“Language!”
“Sorry, Ms. Byers.”
Lucas clears his throat, and everyone turns to look to the corner that he, Mike, and Barb had all seemed to fade into, unable to really contribute to the conversation to catch Hopper up. “I don’t know, it kinda seems like they’re the experts on these monsters, and only one of them has superpowers, so…” he shrugs.
Hopper sighs, turning back to the older teens. “If you’re so deadset on sending a kid in for this, why the hell did you even bother to clue me in?”
“You’re the government dude,” Robin says. “You take care of the government shit.”
A muscle in Hopper’s jaw twitches. It seems he’s not a fan of being the “government dude”. “And what, pray tell, is the ‘government shit’ I need to take care of?” Hopper asks.
Nancy crosses her arms. “Well, like we said, there’s government agents hunting El. The big thing is just keeping her safe, and you know the most about how the government operates, and have kept her safe in the past—”
“—slash future!” Robin interjects.
“So…” Nancy finishes with a shrug.
Eddie raises his hand. “On a related note, I was called into the office today for an interrogation about the whereabouts of an—” he makes airquotes “—’escaped cancer patient’, so I get the sense that I’m a person of interest in the hunt for our telikinetic friend here. Some protection for me, also, would be nice.” He pauses for a moment, contemplating. “Though,” he looks to Steve, “Harrington has already taken on part of that task, haven’t yah, big boy?”
He claps Steve on the shoulder, who jostles at the movement, shooting Eddie a mildly irritated look. “Yeah,” Steve says, “he’s staying at mine while this blows over, but some help getting this to blow over faster would be nice. My parents come home in, like, less than two weeks, and I don’t think they’d approve of Eddie’s… anything.”
“Oh, so you just need me to bring down an entire government agency in less than two weeks,” Hopper flatly surmizes. “Any other requests?”
“No, that about covers it,” Eddie says.
Nancy seems to take pity on Hopper. “Last time, Jon and I were able to take it down with Murray Bauman’s help.”
Jonathan seems puzzled, silently mouthing “Jon?” to himself, though most seem not to notice, too focused on Hopper’s reaction. “Bauman?” He asks. “That lunatic?”
Nancy shrugs. “He seems a lot less crazy when you get a peek behind the curtain. More… eccentric and open-minded.” She wrinkles her nose. “A bit blunt, too.”
Hopper sighs explosively. “Fine, fine. I’ll talk to Bauman.”
“Great,” Dustin says, clapping his hands together. “Now, can we plan to take down the demogorgon? Personally, I vote we should try to get this over with tomorrow. Some of us have things to do.”
_____
Max is outside when Billy’s Camaro screeches to a halt in the middle of the road. She doesn’t hesitate before getting inside, no matter how badly she wants to.
Tension hangs heavy in the air when she shuts the door behind her. She can tell Billy’s building up to explode; he’s just letting the car idle, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, probably gearing up to scream at her. “You—“
“Do you want to go surfing?” She asks, all in a rush.
Billy blinks, his grip on the wheel loosening in surprise. Her confidence bolsters. “Just for an hour or two, while we still have sunlight.” Her eyes flick west, where the sun’s beginning to hang low in the sky, in the direction she knows the beach is in. “We could say traffic was really bad. It always is, here.”
Billy stares at her, still silent.
“There’s a rental place on the beach. My dad gave me some money for food today, but I just raided his pantry instead. We could use it to rent some boards and wetsuits. Just cuz, you know, I’ve always wanted to try it. Thought it might be a bit like skateboarding.” She shrugs.
Billy snorts. “Surfing’s nothing like fucking skateboarding. I’ve never seen concrete move before.”
“So you’ve surfed?” Max asks, despite the fact that she knows the answer.
“Yeah,” Billy says, putting his car in gear. “I have.”
“Can you teach me?” Max asks.
“Whatever,” Billy responds, heading west.
_____
Several hours later, Max finds herself scuffing the toe of her shoe against the concrete. Her skin is itchy with drying saltwater, the air thick with the smell of gasoline and brine. She watches silently as Billy fills his tank.
Billy eyes her right back, calculating, but miraculously calm. El’s suggestion worked like a charm. It’s like Billy’s some kind of baby, rocked into a trance by the ocean’s waves.
Max winces and breaks out of the staring contest at the thought, resolving to keep that particular comparison locked away.
“Why the fuck’d you run away, anyways?” Billy asks.
Max sighs, turning her options over in her mind. “Oh, you know,” she shrugs. “Teenage rebellion.”
Billy cocks an eyebrow.
Max’s shoulders slump. “I don’t wanna go to Indiana.” She eyes a piece of gum on the ground. “My dad…”
The gas pump stops with a mechanical click, and Billy echoes the sound with his tongue against his teeth, wrenching the pump out of the tank. Max hurries to get back in the passenger seat, unsure if she set him off, but not really wanting to test the theory. Billy joins her not long after and coaxes the car to merge back onto the highway.
There’s a thought bouncing around in her head. It’s been there for years, but she’s always been too chicken-shit to say it out loud. She’s never been sure how Billy would take it. But… if there’s ever a time to try it, it’s now. They’ve been in stop-and-start traffic for a bit now, so it’s not like he can start speeding in retaliation.
“Your dad…” she begins, hesitantly. “Niel, he’s…” she makes a face, resolving to just spit it out. “Well, he’s kind of an asshole.”
Billy hits the break sharply.
“Jesus,” Max exclaims, checking behind her. They were slowing to an eventual stop anyways, but still. Billy’s lucky the car behind them was paying attention.
“What’d you say?” Billy asks darkly.
“It’s nothing personal,” Max says. “He’s just an asshole. We both know it.”
Billy turns to face her, hands gripping the steering wheel, eyes ablaze. “What, cuz your slut of a mother is so much better?”
Max feels a flare of anger rise up in her, and she lifts her hands in exasperation. “What did my mom ever do to you?” She crosses them, slumping in her chair. “Jesus, it’s like you hate all women or something.”
“You calling me a fag, Maxine?” Billy asks, his voice cold as steel.
All the anger leaves her in a rush, replaced with an empty sort of feeling. She doesn’t know how many times she’s overheard Neil calling Billy that. Usually, the sound of a fist against flesh accompanies the slur. “No,” Max says. “I’m just saying, it’s a bit sexist, don’t you think? Calling, like, every girl on earth a bitch or a slut just for existing. It’s not like I’d care if you were gay, but I do care that you slander my gender 24/7.”
Billy’s lip curls, but he turns back to face the road, inching forward. “What, you spend one day in L.A. and you’re suddenly a fag hag?”
“No, Billy,” Max sighs. “I just think there’s more important things in life to worry about than who people like.”
Billy doesn’t reply to that. Instead, he turns up the radio, and neither of them talk until they"re back in San Diego.