YOUR SONG | steve harrington

030

Steve looked through binoculars to try and spot a Russian with Dustin the very next day. Chris and Robin stayed back to tend Scoops Ahoy, while Beverly and Alicia worked at Beck's Boutique to make it up to Dylan.

"You see anything?" Dustin asked him.

"Uh, I guess I don't totally know what I'm looking for," Steve replied.

"Evil Russians."

"Yeah, exactly. I don't know what an evil Russian looks like."

"Tall, blonde, not smiling," Dustin described and Steve hummed. "Also, look for earpieces, camo, duffel bags, that sort of thing."

"Right, okay, duffel bags." Steve continued to look until he spotted Anna Jacobi talking to Mark Lewinsky. "Oh, you've gotta be kidding me."

"What?"

"Anna Jacobi's talking with that meathead Mark Lewinsky," Steve told him.

"Dude, if you're not gonna focus, just gimme the binoculars."

"Aw, Jesus Christ, whatever happened to standards? I mean, Lewinsky never even came off the bench," Steve complained.

"Dude, you are the worst spy in history, you know that?" Dustin said before he ripped the binoculars away from Steve.

"Stop, hey. Stop."

"Give me those." Dustin fully took them away from him and looked into them himself. "Besides, I don't even get why you're looking at girls, anyway. You have the perfect one right in front of you."

"Seriously, if you say Bev again—"

"Bev," Dustin cut him off.

"No, don't."

"Bev, Bev, Bev, Bev, Bev."

"No. Stop, no. No."

"Bev, Bev, Bev, Bev."

"No."

"Bev."

"No."

"Bev."

"No," Steve said sternly and Dustin finally stopped. "No, man, we're just friends. I mean, I don't even know if we're considered friends 'cause we used to hate each other. So, stop."

"Yeah, used to," Dustin pointed out. "Just because you used to hate each other doesn't mean you're not allowed to like her. And from what I remember you telling me last year, you said you tolerated her, not hated."

Steve rolled his eyes. "That doesn't mean anything. She still hated me."

"Like I said, just because you guys used to hate each other doesn't mean you're not allowed to like her. You're just trying to tell yourself that to stay in denial since you can't handle the fact that you like Beverly Crawford," Dustin explained.

"Dude, what? I'm not in denial. I just don't like her like that," Steve replied in a very unconvincing way.

"Oh, really?"

"Yes! She — she always tried to ruin my life! When I was with Nance, she said shitty stuff about me to her like she was trying to break us up or something. She always tried to get Chris to hate me, which I guess she somehow succeeded in doing so since he kinda does hate me now. And she always yelled at me when I tried to help her," Steve accounted for. "How can I like that, even though it was all my fault in the first place?"

Dustin sighed. "Maybe because the good things outweighed the bad. Like how you apparently saved her life back in 1983 when the Demogorgon attacked at the Byers'. How she offered to go down in the cellar with you when we had the Dart problem. How you guys worked together with us kids and took care of us at the junkyard. How you literally fought Billy after he choked her!" Dustin listed and Steve shook his head, not wanting to hear all of that since Dustin was right. "Look, now that you're out of high school, which means you're technically an adult, don't you think it's time you move on from the bad stuff that happened in high school?"