𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗲, steve harrington

45. QUANTUM PHYSICS, BABY

"Hey, Sadie, I'm on the end of this line not sat next to you, so if you shook your head I have no way of knowing." Steve hummed. "Except I kinda do, so stop biting your nails and tell me what you can't stop thinking about. Is it the electricity again... or the translation? Do you think you got something wrong?"

"Of course I didn't get anything wrong." Sadie murmured, brushing loose hair behind her ears as she rolled her eyes. "I'm normally way too humble over majority of my abilities and my mom says that it's a rather large fault of mine but if there's one thing I can truly pride myself on it's my language skills. The translation was flawless."

"Of course it was... and let Claudia know I agree with her. Considering you've helped save the world as we know it not once, but twice, I think you should be giving yourself at least triple the amount of credit you do." Steve considered. "And without you it would've taken us another couple of days to work it out from that dictionary, you had it for fifteen minutes and boom, there it was."

"Boom." Sadie repeated softly. "But no, it's not the translation, or the electricity or the fact that a Russian plane flew over Hawkins even though I'm half sure it would be almost entirely restricted air space to a crop duster like that and it was not a documented flight path for any plane like that, let alone a Soviet one..." She trailed off. "Hm, I might call the AIP offices at FWA tomorrow, just to double check."

"Yeah. Okay. I can try help you with that." Steve nodded briskly. He might need explanations to what the hell AIP and FWA was, but he could try. "Is it the plane then? Was there something on that...?"

"No, it's that goddamn stupid fucking music."

"The music?"

"The music." Sadie repeated. "The stupid fucking-"

"Yeah, yeah, I got it, no need for profanities at.. four in the morning." Steve let out a groan at the realisation. "Sadie, it's four in the morning, what the hell?"

"What happened to the no profanities, Harrington?" Sadie replied. "But yes, the music."

"Okay. What music? Is it that song from The Breakfast Club because I can't believe you've forgotten-"

"No, I know what that song is called. Photographic memory, duh." She scoffed. "The music. The music playing in the background of Dustin's transmission."

"Oh yeah." Steve said if all too casually, as if he was talking about nothing but a morning decision about which shirt to wear. "Yeah. It's like a nursery rhyme, right? I don't remember how it goes..."

"It's the 'Daisy, Daisy' one." Sadie replied. "Or... 'Daisy Bell, Bicycle Built for Two' said to be inspired by one of King Edward VII's mistresses, the Countess of Warwick, Daisy Greville, written by Harry Dacre and comes into popularity in 1890s Britain. It's a very popular song... tends to be used a lot at fairgrounds."

"Yeah, yeah, that's it." Steve nodded and hummed the tune along to himself, fingers thrumming against his mattress in time. "Yeah, I heard it when Larry Kline held that fair before his election a couple years back. One the merry-go-round."

"And there's a Commodore 64 program named 'Sing Song Serenade' that makes a Commodore 1541 floppy disk drive to play that tune directly from the hardware." Sadie added, as though that meant to anything to Steve and not nothing at all.