Halley's comet | Steve Harrington

ii. xxi hi bob

"𝑫𝒆𝒎𝒐-𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕𝒔?"

⇜☾✩☽⇝

Will was on their couch. Passed out and drenched in sweat. Jonathan was with him, talking softly as he pushed hair from the younger boy's forehead. Halley would go over, but Nancy was already consoling the middle of the Byers kids, and she felt awkward getting in the middle of that.

Clearly, she wasn't the only one to notice this. Steve, standing with his hands on his hips only a few feet away from her, turned at the sight, walking past Hopper, who was yelling at someone about the lab. Halley had missed that part of the briefing.

The walls around them were covered in Will's drawings, feeling strangely similar to when her mother had outfitted the entire interior of their house with Christmas lights. She hated the repetition of it all.

She followed Steve into the kitchen, casting a slow glance over each of the kids seated at the table. Mike looked seconds away from shell shock. She didn't know if he had seen Bob's death, something she had learned about once Joyce had calmed down enough to get out a word. Hopper filled in on the parts she had skipped over.

Regardless, the fact that Mike was there at all, was enough trauma for a lifetime. As if the kid didn't have enough of that yet.

Standing beside him, she put a hand on his shoulder, trying to give a reassuring smile when he looked up at her. "Thanks for sticking with Will through all that." He only nodded.

Hopper slammed the phone down, letting out an aggravated sigh.

"They didn't believe you, did they?" Dustin asked, shaking his head. In all seriousness, it wasn't like they could be that angry, before last year, none of them would have believed rumors of interdimensional creatures rampaging through a small Indiana town.

Hopper ran a hand over the stubble on his chin, "We'll see."

"'We'll see'?" Mike exclaimed, pushing Halley's hand away, "we can't just sit here while those things are loose!"

"We stay here and wait for help." Hopper spoke definitively. Letting the message hang in the air as he turned and walked away.

Halley watched as he started up a conversation with her mom. He took her wrist and said something that made Joyce smile. A sad smile, the kind that the Byers kids used to see when they were younger and asked about Lonnie. Halley looked away.

The kids sat around the table in silence. Steve was leaning against the wall by the back door with his head hung. It was an incredibly uncomfortable party reunion.

Abruptly, Mike stood up, all eyes followed him into the living room as he picked up some sort of blue cube wrapped in rubber bands.

"Did you guys know Bob was the original founder of Hawkins A.V.?" he said, running a hand over the surface of the object. He turned back around to face them, "he petitioned the school to start it and everything. Then he had a fundraiser for equipment." Mike was getting excited now, but the stark use of past tense with Bob's names made Halley shiver. "We can't let him die in vain."