Head Over Heels » Steve Harrington

chapter two

Chapter Two: Russians

Things were bad. Borderline embarrassing, actually. It was official: Lydia had absolutely no life.

The day was Wednesday. Lydia loved Wednesdays. Why did Lydia love Wednesdays? Because she didn't have to work. And where was she spending her beloved day off? Still in the fucking mall.

On their daily call the night before, Robin had forgone her usual ramblings about the hot girl(s) she served that day and instead begged Lydia to come into Scoops to help them out with something "entirely ice cream unrelated." Now, personally, it wouldn't have been the approach Lydia would have taken. Like, Robin knew she was always happy to be bribed with ice cream, so why take it out of the equation?

It took a while, but Lydia ultimately ended up relenting. Mostly because she had nothing better to do, but also because Robin was being unusually secretive, which meant she was up to something and it was probably something dumb. So, automatically Lydia wanted to get involved. Plus, she was eventually promised a free supply of ice cream for the whole day. Who could argue with that?

So, there she was, sat in the staff room of Scoops Ahoy on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, feet up on a table, chewing the end of a pencil, wondering where it all went wrong.

Russians, apparently.

To be fair, Lydia was still getting her head around the whole explanation, but somehow Robin, Steve and a weird curly haired kid had intercepted a Russian call and now they wanted her help to...crack a code? Lydia honestly didn't know why. She wasn't the sharpest cookie in the shed and Robin knew that better than anyone.

"I just–" Lydia cut off, staring down at the mess of words scribbled on paper. The week is long. The silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west. A trip to China sounds nice if you tread lightly. Like, what the fuck? It honestly felt like reading a math equation. "None of this makes sense."

"It's not supposed to," Robin said, leaning over Lydia's shoulder to take another look. "Tread lightly..."

"I just don't get it. Why would evil Russians be in Hawkins?" Lydia asked. "Like what could they possibly want with our mall?"

"Well, that's what we're trying to find out."

"Robin, I really think we need to re-evaluate our lives," Lydia stated. "Our summer vacation should not involve cracking Russian codes with Steve Harrington and some strange kid. What's his name again?"

"Dustin."

"How does Steve even know him?" Lydia questioned. "Don't get me wrong, I can see how they'd get along since they probably have the same mental age and–"

A knock at the back door interrupted them. "Delivery!"

Robin moved to open it. Lydia picked the notepad back up and started re-reading through the code, slowly sounding out each word in her head. Truth be told, it was getting to the point where she felt as if she were actively losing brain cells the longer she stared at it.

"Holy fucking shit, Lydia!" Robin exclaimed as she shut the door behind her. "I just figured something out!"

Swiftly, Robin had snatched the notepad and grabbed Lydia's hand. She dragged her out of the chair and through the ice cream parlour, into the centre of the mall's cafeteria. Lydia frowned as Robin stepped up onto a table, slowly surveying their surroundings.

"A trip to China sounds nice..." Robin mumbled, tapping the pencil rapidly against the pad. "There!" She pointed up at the Chinese restaurant Imperial Panda. "If you tread lightly..."