"Where did it come from?" 

Dustin's birth had opened up a whole new world for his older brother. The idea of having to share everything made no sense in an only child's mind. So, naturally, Lenny had started to ask why Dustin's Mother had left him behind, and then demanded she came to take him back. And when Claudia would explain that she too was Dustin's Mommy, and the new-born babe was staying right there with them, little Lenny had a hard time adjusting to such a reveal. 

The thought of life without the sibling that had clung to his leg for years was like thinking of himself without one of his limbs. The shift of such a thing would be hard to come around to. 

But that didn't mean there weren't moments such as this. 

The clock on the wall told him it was nearly time to drop the youngster off at the arcade, where Dustin would be meeting with his friends — Will, Lucas and (the shit-head) Mike. After everything that had happened in Hawkins the previous year, and to little Will Byers, it'd been an overwhelming surge to loom. To constantly check in on not just his brother, but the four boys. 

On everyone, really. He took more time making sure his Mother was sound asleep in her bed when he came home late or woke up early. And, recently, his trips to the arcade, back and forth, was draining his money's worth, but the little town's image of community and protection meant nothing to Lenny anymore. Not when he'd seen flashes of the Upside Down. 

Dustin's voice, loud and annoyed and growing closer, was followed by the stomping of his feet. 

"Dustin!" Lenny shouted with lingering annoyance, hating how consistent his telling off's were. Their Mother's lecture involved her smiles and patting of their cheeks, and so they — for Lenny had been Dustin once, taking advantage — never took it seriously enough. "The carpet's just been cleaned!" 

The only response he got was a high-pitched scream. A sharing trait they got — most likely from their Mother — was their need for dramatics. 

Snatching his leather jacket from the bottom of his bed, messy and not at all paid attention to sort out, he takes a moment to roam through his desk before swiping up the eight quarters that he had gathered not long ago. 

Not that he had money laying around normally. With a one-person ran household, even with her Father's help, but he had been paid his mid-month pay check the week before, and unless he was aiding their Mother in household needs, he barely touched his coin. So a lot of it was handed to Dustin, who lacked in quarters for the arcade games he was obsessed with winning in. 

A sigh comes from his lips as he shoves his door open to near barge into his brother's running figure. His hand shoots up to pull the back of Dustin's coat, "What did I just say about the carpet, Dustin?" 

The younger Henderson glances down to their feet, observing their Mother's work that Lenny had helped her do. 

( And by help, Lenny had moved things around and told her jokes to make her laugh throughout the deep clean. Claudia had flat-out refused for him to touch the carpet when he'd offered. 

Their Mother barely had rules and the ones she did have, she held on loosely by. Claudia was a sucker when it came to her two sons, her sun and her shine as she called them, and the only pieces she had left of a life she was keen to forget, not that he blamed her. Their Father had been a horrid man, and a sorry excuse of a husband and Father. 

That left the terms of rules and lectures down to the eldest male in the house, and no matter how much he enjoyed being the more fun big brother, he knew that sometimes he'd have to play the stern father. And so he did. )

"It won't happen again," Dustin promises instead. 

Lenny let's him go, giving a roll of his eyes. "Yeah, right." Before moving past the younger boy and in the direction of the sitting room. 

"I found four quarters!" Dustin calls after him, his feet quick in hurrying behind Lenny's back. He shoves the coins into his pocket. "I bet Mike has more. Damn it." 

"Only if he has thirteen," Lenny responds, spinning on the heel of his foot and extending his hand out, showing off the coins he'd gathered for his brother. "Take the quarters for the arcade." 

Despite the amount of times he is given money, Dustin never fails to act surprised. "Son of a bitch!" He leaps forward and wraps his arms around Lenny's mid-section for a second, before letting go and snatching the money from Lenny. "Thank you." 

Ruffling the long curls on top of Dustin's head, so different to his own (both shorter and straighter) , Lenny shrugs his shoulders. It wasn't so much of a big deal as Dustin was making it out to be sometimes. "No problem, Dusty," He mutters back, watching Dustin run toward his bedroom. "You got five minutes and then I'm leaving!" 

"Don't leave without me!" 

His Mother is sat in her usual spot, curled up into her comfy rocking chair. A smile tilts his lips at the sight, drowning out the sound of the black and white television, before it drops at the sight of what she was holding in one arm. The little thing that Lenny had despised ever since his Mother had brought him under their roof. 

That cat. Animal. Devil. Many words to describe what Mews was, and yet not enough in Lenny's book. He'd never given the cat a chance and he had no intention to either. As far as he was concerned, Mews needed to get lost. 

( Lenny refused to acknowledge that it was he who found Mews when the cat had disappeared from the house a year before. He'd woke to his Mother worrying, hands on her hips as she stood at the front of their home, calling out her cat's name with no success of it tiptoeing it's way back to her. 

He'd told her to go back inside. It had been raining, the wind picking up and the last thing he'd wanted was a poorly Mother. And when he dropped Dustin off at school, he'd skipped his own classes and spent all day looking across town for it. 

Naturally, he likes to pretend it wasn't relief that had hit him tenfold when Lenny eventually found Mews sitting atop a sign by the abandoned bridge. )

Her own eyes lit up at the sight of him appearing in front of her, her free hand beckoning him closer to her. "Lenny," She speaks, leaning forward with her hair half curled up, "Dustin caused quite the fuss looking for some pennies." 

Leaning over, Lenny pats the cushions of the three-seater settee back down. That was something else that annoyed him. "I'll have a word with him," He tells her, a hand coming up to scratch the back of his head, the other still holding his jacket. "I shouldn't be long, Mama. Is there anything you'll need whilst I'm out?" 

Dustin had her smile. Large and blinding. He adored the sight of it. And she's gifting him one right now. "Oh, no, thank you. Just be careful on those roads, will you? I know you are a good driver. I just worry sometimes. . ." The cat in her lap hissed, "And so does Mews." 

He doubted demons cared for anything. Lenny wished his Mother wasn't so attached to the little thing and he also wished she'd stop buying every treat she came across when she did their grocery shopping in supermarkets.

"Right," Lenny didn't pinch in his thoughts on that matter. He'd told her once he hated Mews and he'd spent the rest of the day trying to convince her he was kidding, though she'd never believed he had been. Now it was a running joke in the Henderson household how he felt about Mews. "Well I'll just drop him off and be right back." 

"And you'll sit with your dear old Mother when you get back?" She asked of him, "You've been so busy with all your books and tests." 

He knelt in front of her, his jacket going over his knee for the moment. His smile screamed guilty. They looked nothing like her, save for his blue eyes — something all three of them had. Otherwise, he bore the resemblance to his Father most, of when the man was young and having only just met the lovely Claudia. 

( His Mother told him his Father hadn't always been the way he was. That anger had once been a thing that didn't exist between the couple, and only when they'd married, and her husband had been so busy with work and his own Mother getting sick, had he taken a turn into taking it out on his wife. And then his child. ) 

"Sorry, Mama," He apologises. "We can watch that favourite program of yours." 

"It's not airing tonight," Claudia sighs, disappointed. Her hand strokes the top of Mews' back before her eyes light up again, remembering something that her younger son had informed her. "Dusty tells me you have written for early applications," Why did he tell Dustin anything? "Where have you thought of going to College?" 

College. 

Lenny had told his brother, but he hadn't made the boy promise not to tell their Mother and that's where Dustin found the loophole to do so. Next time, he'd remember to make Dustin swear. 

"I was just thinking of Indiana, Mama. Bloomington." He answers honestly, no hint of anything in his voice — it'd be something he'd like to do, attend Indiana University, but he honestly wasn't sure if he could. His Mother relied on him, he'd worked as a paper-boy and then part time at the comic store, and a lot of his wages had gone to her. 

( "I want to help!" 

"This is your money, Lenny." 

"But I never go to the store to buy my own things. You do." )

"Does my Leno still want to be a writer?" 

His nose scrunched up immediately at the child-like nickname that he'd been unfortunately stuck with. He hated it, even if his Mother did call him by fondly. It made him recoil and stand back up, "You know how I hate that." 

Claudia laughs, shaking her head. She did know. And she found enjoyment in the way he seemed so against the name now. "The day," She says instead of addressing his dislike for what she'd never stop calling him, "You make me so proud."

There was violence in his past. His Father had opened the door to the beginning of that, showing him the ways of a lack of love and neglect, and that even those meant to protect you could fail you in many different ways. But there was also something that could never be replaced, and he found that was his Mother. His brother. 

And the usage of fists had never stopped. 

Lenny took to fights with a simple insult spat his way. A teacher had once said it was second nature for him to assume the worse and throw a fist, but teachers had never been one to truly care about the happenings between students. 

"Thank you, Mama," He uttered as his cheeks flared. There was only a handful of people in the world who could make Lenny blush.

( There was his Mother, for she was his Mother. A simple pinch of his cheeks made him go red and he wasn't sure why — a boyhood habit that he'd never gotten out of, he supposed. Friends of Claudia's used to aww and laugh at his reaction and he'd swat his Mother's hand away as if he'd been poisoned. 

Dustin was another with the ability. Though he'd long stopped bringing up short stories of their childhood, or Lenny's habits, because anything Dustin did, he learnt that Lenny would do worse. And being it was always around Dustin's group of friends, one faced the embarrassment a little harder. 

And the last was Jonathan Byers. Lenny's friend. His best-friend, as of the past year, but somebody that Lenny had known since they'd moved to this little town of Hawkins. ) 

The sound of Dustin muttering to himself made Lenny turn around where he stood. He was shoving something, wrapped in a brown bag, into his pocket with little success. 

"Are those candies, Dusty?" Their Mother asked. 

Dustin froze for a second, "Er, no. . ." A blatant lie. Lenny raised an eyebrow. "Just something for Lucas — yeah, for Lucas, because he asked for it." 

When Dustin glances to his older brother, finally managing to hide the brown bag in his pocket well enough, he found Lenny watching with a grin plastered across his face. Of course, his brother thought it funny that he was a bad liar. 

"Did Lucas ask you to bring him candies?" 

"No," Dustin quickly answered, glaring at Lenny as if he was a traitor. He knew how to put Dustin on the spot, he'd mastered the talent of getting his younger brother in trouble — whatever that word meant in their home — if he wished. "I smell smoke." 

Lenny's grin dropped slightly, his eyes narrowing at the ball that Dustin had thrown into the conversation. 

Claudia sniffs, eyebrows drawing together. "I don't smell smoke," The words don't bring Lenny any comfort, and he nods his head toward the front door. "Why would —" 

"I don't smell it anymore!" Dustin called over his shoulder as he stalks to the door and pulls it open, rushing out and onto the front. 

Lenny's eyes roll, "See you later, Mama." He makes his own call upon his exit as he turns to glance back at her, flashing a rather uneasy smile her way. She knew that he smoked, and she hated how he did, but he'd told her that he wouldn't smoke in or around their home. 

Which was a lie. Just a small, little white lie. 

He'd hang outside his bedroom window and smoke during the night, for he wasn't an overly good sleeper. And he'd light a cigarette as he started his truck. 

Grabbing his brother's bike and placing it into the back of his truck, Lenny pats his front pocket for his packet of cigarettes and clicks his tongue as he opens the driver's door, throwing a glare Dustin's way. 

Dustin who laughs at the greeting, "What?" 

"You spill my secrets and I'll spill yours," Lenny threatened, slamming his door shut. "How'd you think Mama would like it if she knew how eager you are to rot your teeth, huh?" 

One thing Lenny thought Claudia was strict about was sugar. Candies. And most to Dustin than Lenny, for the sake of his teeth and their growth, but Dustin had a pile of forbidden needs hidden away, which Lenny knew about and their Mother didn't. 

"You wouldn't." 

Lenny gave a small chuckle, "Try me." 

They both knew Dustin wouldn't. The crossing of his arms over his chest confirms that. 

"I won't," Lenny adds after. Calling a truce. After a second, and when his truck drives onto the main road of their quiet street, he lifts his bottom off the seat and pulls his packet out his pocket, flipping open the lid and using his teeth to pull a cigarette out. 

"Seriously?" Dustin's voice sounded like Lenny after catching Dustin doing something he shouldn't. Which was pretty much a daily routine at this point. "They are cancer sticks." 

"I know," Lenny lit the end, slipping the lighter back into his pocket and removing the cigarette from his mouth, "You've told me." 

For somebody so protective, because that's what Lenny was when it came to his younger brother, and even his younger brother's friends (including the Wheeler kid that Lenny did not like), he usually did a whole U-turn on certain things. 

Like now. Like smoking in a car with Dustin in the passenger seat. 

"You shouldn't smoke." The younger brother stated the obvious. 

"And you shouldn't tell me what to do," Lenny teased back, shifting in his seat with one hand on the wheel, "I guess we both do things we shouldn't do, huh?"

"That's not the —" Dustin cuts himself off, they'd had this debate before. The week before, actually, when he'd gone to the arcade last Sunday. "Fine." 

Lenny taps the wheel with his thumb, humming to himself as he glances between some of the houses on his left. "Are you late in arriving to meet with them?" He wonders. 

"No." Dustin answered, busy glaring at what Lenny was holding, before he corrected himself, "Maybe." 

He laughed at Dustin's answer, before shaking his head slightly. Dustin never did change. Always late. And he didn't blame Dustin's hint of protectiveness, rare as it was, and often the other way around. Smoking had killed their Uncle Garrett, according to their Mother during one of her own lectures upon her first-born when she'd found out his nasty habit. 

And Dustin had taken that family member's death — even though they'd never known the man, never even heard of him until then — to heart. 

"I can hear your thoughts from over here," He outed his younger brother, "As long as you don't smoke, we're good. And you don't need to lecture yourself." 

Dustin leaned forward, "Then why do you smoke?" 

The truck turned onto a different street. "Because I can," Lenny's answer made Dustin huff. "Don't do as I do and all that." 

"Maybe you should take your own words into consideration," Dustin's retort made Lenny break into laughter, "I'm not joking! Uncle Garrett had lung failure." 

Their Mother had really planted that seed of worry into Dustin's mind, hadn't she? Lenny would give her that. Though she hadn't done it intentionally, he knew, but more because she was worried that her first-born would give himself some disease smoking packets of cigarettes for no good reason, as she'd said. 

"How'd you even know there's an Uncle Garrett?" Lenny wondered when he calmed, pressing for an answer that Dustin would become short on. "Did you ever meet him?" 

"No but —" 

"But?" 

"Mom —" 

"Could of been lying." 

"Lenny!" Dustin groaned, complaining about the interruptions. "Why do you always want to be right?" 

"Because I always am," He answered as if that was obvious, too. Dustin shook his head, but a grin had grown on his lips and Lenny knew the kid wasn't annoyed at him, but entertained by their travel. "Stop worrying about me. And I mean that. . . I don't know who is worse. You or Jonny." 

Jonathan Byers.

"Jonathan isn't going to get lung failure." 

"He might," Lenny threw the cigarette out the window, speeding up down the road. "I'm no longer smoking, so now can we change the subject?" 

Dustin didn't want to. The same way he didn't want his big brother smoking. But there wasn't really anything he could do about that, now was there? Not unless he told their Mother about how Lenny smoked outside of his window, and his brother revealed that Dustin had a store's worth of sugar in the corner of his room. 

"Fine." 

The two brothers weren't really alike. Most were surprised when it became known they were brothers, and some asked if they had separate parents — a different Mother or a different Father to one another. But no; same Mother and same Father for each. 

First came Lenny. His hair was a little darker, and shorter, and he lacked the curls that Dustin had been gifted with by Claudia. Their eyes were the same, but their facial shapes were not. Lenny had the cheekbones of their Father and Dustin had the cuteness of their Mother. Everything else in appearance resulted to Lenny's age gap, being taller and leaner. Dustin was short with stubborn baby fat clinging to his body. 

And Dustin was smarter. He spent all his time hung up in his school's science lab, and he knew the most random of facts that would never prove useful, and he liked to correct people, just as Lenny did. 

Their differences mostly came on the outside. Their personalities weren't that far apart, in truth. Lenny was just more protective, but that came with having to be the man of the house and take care of things that their Mother didn't. But with that meant Dustin was never bothered by High Schoolers, and some even greeted him in passing in the parking lot.

"Are you still picking me up at nine?" 

"Not a moment later," Lenny promised, slowing down his truck to turn into the arcade's lot, before he threw his brother a look, "Don't be going anywhere else." 

Dustin rolls his eyes. "Okay, Mom." 

It was the same words every time. Dustin would confirm the time, and Lenny would repeat that he was not to go anywhere else. Not that Dustin ever did. 

Lenny opens his door and get's out, rolling his shoulders back and grabbing his leather jacket that he'd thrown between them, before placing it on. He raises his eyebrows at his brother, who remained sat inside until he climbed out as well. 

Dustin hurries to try grab his bike from the back of his brother's truck. 

"Stop," He shakes his head, "Stop, stop," He reaches over and pulls on the bike bars, his other hand going underneath the seat. "I don't even know why you insist on bringing your bike with you when you can't ride it anywhere." 

"I think you got the muscle and I got everything else," Dustin instead comments with slightly widen eyes, coming forward to grab the handle bars when Lenny offers it in his direction. "Right?" 

( Lenny would say that good looks were in their genes. That girls one day would adore the curls in Dustin's hair. ) 

"Whatever you say," Lenny doesn't argue, sticking one hand in his back jean pocket, nodding up toward the arcade. "You got your quarters?" 

"And my —" Dustin pulls a face, whilst Lenny coughs to hide his laugh, "Lucas's thing." 

"Yeah, course," Lenny pretends as if he believes him. He didn't care for Dustin's sweet-tooth all that much. "Tell Lucas not to eat too much otherwise he'll be sick, alright?" 

"I'll tell him." Dustin stops, looking to Lenny who leans against the car. "I'll see you at nine?"

He never spoke about it, neither of them did, but what had happened last year had spooked Lenny. Nightmares of his little brother being thrust into the alternate dimension and never being seen again had haunted his nights for months and as a result, Lenny barely slept. 

It didn't feel done. 

That fear had yet to die. 

"Nine," Lenny nodded, his arm coming up to rest at the back of Dustin's head, pulling him forward so he could press a kiss to his younger brother's temple. It was two hours away and gave Dustin plenty of time to enjoy with his friends. "Not a second later." 

Dustin saluted him, before turning around and rushing toward where Will had gotten out from his Mother's car — for Joyce Byers, like Lenny, dropped the thirteen year old boy off instead of allowing him to travel here alone. 

Lenny shook his head at his brother's dramatics but he does raise his hand to wave back at Will's Mother who beams from where she's standing by her car, relief flooding across her expression at the sight of him. The knowing that Will wasn't the only one being mothered, if you could say. 

And the two boys rush toward the arcade, Dustin's bike being left outside. A smile of understanding being shared between them. Mike and Lucas were both allowed to get themselves here. 

And just like last year, during the worst time of Lenny's life — and he'd lived with his Father for half of it — when he wasn't sure if there could come a point he'd lose his younger brother like Jon had lost his (though temporary), there's an ache in his gut. A terror that one day, something would happen to Dustin and he wouldn't be there. 

edited note. 

— the first edited chapter! this has no extra scenes in. a handful of chapters in, there will be extra scenes and completely re-written chapters, but for the first few, not much of the scene has changed. my writing just isn't as. . . awful. reading back on some of it, and i actually appreciate how much y'all loved my fic regardless of it. like, thank you. 

anyway, enjoy!!