"Are you holding my hand?"
"I'm scared as shit right now, so yeah, I'm holding your hand."
Steve Harrington x fem!oc
Summary inside
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From a young age, Lonnie had made it very clear that he would prefer a slut to a homo. Coming to the 'Welcome to the World' section in the paper over breakfast, he would make offhanded comments on how he would never support a baby if Halley came home pregnant before marriage, especially, if she was still in high school. But that was nothing compared to what he would say when he reached the news on the rising AIDS epidemic.
He had it drilled into Halley and her brothers' heads that if any of them were gay, they would not be welcomed under his house, and would most certainly be condemned to Hell. For a man that never went to Sunday Mass, he claimed to know a whole lot about what God did and didn't like.
Maybe that was the reason none of the Byers kids never really felt a connection with the religion that seemed to be such a holy concept to the town. Lonnie had weaponized it, twisted it into his own words despite never listening to its origins. She couldn't speak for her brothers, but the idea of worshiping something, or someone, that was tainted by father was nearly sickening.
As much as she hated to admit it. Lonnie had a lasting effect on her. His words still echoed through her head and dictated her life subconsciously.
Which explained why she had slept in the staff room at the arcade.
She couldn't go home, not yet. Everything was spiraling and as terrible and self centered as it sounded, she couldn't add more problems to her plate.
It wasn't the first time someone had crashed at the arcade. Keith used to do it a lot, actually, when he would get too high at work and had to wait for it to wear off before he faced his parents. Halley had never needed to.
While she expected the experience to be less than great, she wasn't ready for how completely shitty it was.
Hidden up in the ceiling tiles was an old air mattress. Like, really old. She used the air pump they kept around to help kids with bike flats. It took longer than she would have liked to admit.
The practically antique mattress had a horrific smell of sweat and mildew, and it was a miracle there weren't any holes in it. Finding a few old employee t-shirts, she laid them down in an attempt to buffer herself from the material. It didn't exactly work.
She woke up in the morning with a killing strain in her neck, and sweating her ass off.
It was well past 10 at that point, and someone was pounding on the singular window the staff room had. Halley groaned. The arcade didn't even open until noon on Sundays. She pushed herself off the ground, trying to stretch out her back, and cringing at the loud pops it made.
The window was sheathed with some old shitty blinds that were in desperate need of replacing, but no one had gotten around to it. To be honest, Halley wasn't sure anyone ever would.
