My Best Friend's Ex | Steve Harrington x Reader

Season 2 - The Fight

"It's not like it was before. It's grown."

We were back, sitting around the dining room table, trying to think of what we could do to get El to the gate. During our discussion, Hopper brought up the fact that the baby Demogorgons were bigger than before when he'd seen them in the lab, according to the dead one that Eleven had killed.

"A lot," Hopper continued, his voice serious. He leaned against the kitchen counter, eyes tired as he looked between us all. We all stood around the table, except for Joyce who sat. "And, I mean, that's considering we can get in there. The place is crawling with those dogs."

"Demo-dogs," Dustin corrected, spinning around to the man. I squinted at my little brother from across the table. I stood between Steve and Max, leaning my hands on the surface.

"I'm sorry," Hopper said, confused. "What?"

"I said, uh, Demo-dogs," Dustin said, making all of us look at him. "Like Demogorgon and dogs. You put them together, it sounds pretty badass-"

"How is this important right now?" Hopper interrupted, unamused.

"It's not," Dustin turned back around with a bashful blink. "I'm sorry."

"I can do it," Eleven said after a moment.

"You're not hearing me," Hopper shook his head.

"I'm hearing you," Eleven disagreed. I found myself smiling at her, impressed at how her vocabulary had grown. "I can do it."

"Even if El can," Mike cut in. "There's still another problem. If the brain dies, the body dies."

"I thought that was the whole point," Max said, not following.

"It is, but if we're really right about this..." Mike's voice went low. "I mean, if El closes the gate and kills the mind flayer's army..."

"Will's a part of that army," Lucas realized. My eyes went wide before shutting in frustration.

"Son of a bitch," I said under my breath, stomping my foot lightly.

"Closing the gate will kill him," Mike said. Everyone's heads dropped, but Joyce's stayed up and her mouth parted. She stood up and rushed down the hall, and we were all quick to follow.

"He likes it cold," Joyce said when we all crowded into Will's room. He was laying on top of his bed, face up, still dressed in his hospital gown.

"What?" Hopper asked.

"That's what Will kept saying to me," Joyce told us. She glanced at Will's open window where the curtains were blowing in the wind. "He likes it cold."

She hurried over to the window and shut it before turning back to us.

"We keep giving it what it wants."

"If this is a virus," I said from beside Nancy, looking down at Will. "And Will's the host, then..."

Jonathan caught onto what I was saying and knelt down beside Will's sleeping form. "Then we need to make the host uninhabitable."

"So if he likes it cold..." Nancy said.

Joyce sighed, staring down at her son with her eyes glazed over. "We need to burn it out of him."

"We have to do it somewhere he doesn't know this time," Mike said.

"Yeah," Dustin agreed. "Somewhere far away."

"I know somewhere," Hopper said, glancing at Wil and then at me. "Hand me that blanket."

I looked behind me to see an orange blanket and passed it to the Cheif, watching silently as he wrapped Will up in it. He then began spitting out directions to Jonathan and told the rest of us to look for heaters.