Don't Blame Me ➵ Steve Harrington

seventy five

Steve rolled his eyes. "No. Look, take the other night as an example, we were fooling around—"

He cut himself off realizing his audience.

"Anyway, she hit her head on the armrest and went totally cold for a good 2,3 minutes. Came to, said nothing was wrong."

Dustin directed him to take another sharp turn.

"Then a few weeks at dinner, we were at Enzo's, she didn't say a word. Literally, it was like pulling teeth."

Dustin hmm'd in response. "Maybe she's getting tired of your shit. Maybe she's thinking, wow, I've been with this manchild four years and he still won't lock it down."

"Nah, couldn't be that," Steve said instantly, not even letting that anxiety enter his brain. He didn't need any additional insecurities up there about his relationship with Dylan. "I'm telling you, it's something else."

Dustin rolled his shoulders and placed both of his headphones back on his head. Steve was then left with only the radio and infrequent adhoc directions from Dustin.

"See. Nobody wants to talk," Steve muttered to himself.

The crawl was uneventful like all the ones that had come before it. They must have done about twenty or so now. Steve waited outside the MAC-Z, about a block away, and waited for Hopper to jump into the van.

Hopper swung open the back door and jumped in next to Dustin.

"No sign of him at all?"

Hopper shook his head. "It's getting goddamn ridiculous. He's gotta be somewhere."

Steve wouldn't voice it, especially since it seemed everyone was already growing annoyed with him, but he liked to believe that maybe Vecna was actually gone.

He'd watched him burn.

Steve liked to believe they would continue these crawls and search every inch of the Upside Down and they'd realize they were safe. No more death, more destruction.

It was probably a naive train of thought. But it held as much evidence as the theory that he was still out there.

He was allowed to have some hope.

"Let's head back to base."

Steve rerouted the van back to WSQK headquarters.

Underneath the station, the others of the party gathered, welcoming them back. Per usual, and to Steve's chagrin, Dylan was in some type of conversation with Jonathan.

Steve didn't know why she could yap away with that guy with ease but then she shut down when he came around. At least it wasn't only the two of them, Robin and Nancy were huddled around them as well.

Steve ditched Dustin and Hopper who hadn't been much company anyway.

"What's up my people?" Steve inserted himself into the group, throwing his arm over Dylan's shoulder.

Robin began to speak. "We were trying—"

"And failing," Dylan interjected.