Chapter 3 (Tatum's POV)

"Shit! Steve, wake up! We're gonna be late!" 

"Hm?" Steve says, still asleep.

"Get up! The power went out days ago how have you not reset your alarm clock yet?" I yell. I grabbed my watch off of his nightstand and the small clock read 8:37..

Steve looked over at the clock and realized our shift was at 9.

"Can't we just skip work? I just wanna stay here." Steve whines, grabbing me by my waist and pulling closer to him. 

"Stevie! Robin is gonna kill us!" I say trying to get out of his grasp. He buries his face in the crook of my neck and keeps his arms wrapped around me. 

"Nope, I'm not letting you leave." Steve whispers in a sleepy voice. 

I let out a sigh, "Im serious. We are going to get fired!" I turn over to face him and he gives me a cheesey smile. I just stare at him blankly but soon break out in laughter. Steve starts to kiss me, moving from my lips to my neck. I relaxed under his touch, but glance back at my watch.

"Ok, Steve Harrington this is enough!" I shout.

He looks at me  with the same damn cheesey smile, "Hm?" 

"You are totally absolutely insane if you think we are going to have sex right now. We are gonna be late!" 

I jump off up the bed in a hurry and struggle to put on my uniform. I fall on the floor while attempting to put my shorts on and Steve laughs.

"Get off your ass it's 8:46!" 

Steve jumps off the bed and puts his uniform on extremely slow which annoyed me, but I can't do anything about it.

I open his bedroom door, and we both run down the stairs. I grab our 'AHOY' hats and shove them into my backpack 

"Babe?"

"What?" I ask, while grabbing my  red converse off the floor.

"Where are my keys?"

"Don't know, Steven." I say while putting my shoes on.

"I think I lost them." Steve searches around the kitchen, picking up his pace.

"Of course you did." I smuggly smile and dash up the stairs. I grab his keys off his nightstand and run back down the stairs. I toss him the keys and grab his shoes and we both sprint out the door.

Steve grabs my hand and pulls me out the door and into his car. Shoving the keys into the car to get it turned on.

"My shoes!" Steve yells. I give them to him and he shoves his feet into the blue Adidas he wears everyday from work and then drives off in a hurry.

"Shit! Shit! Shit! It's 9:14!"

"I'm, sure we're fine. Robin won't even notice." 

I glare at him, and he glares back at me making me smile. Steve grabs my hand and holds it giving it a little squeeze.

I rest my head on Steve's shoulder and I let out a sigh of relief that we made it out the door.

We arrived at the mall, and Robin was already there serving people. 

The store  wasn't very busy because it was early in the morning but she looked mad, "Oh. My. Gosh. What the hell! You assholes made me open the store by myself!" Robin shouts at us. 

All the customers turned to look at us and I froze. I scurried over to Robin.

"Shh! Everyone just heard that."

"Good. Ew.. and I swear if you guys had se-"

"Shhhh....! Shut up! I get it your mad." I sigh.

"Jeez." Steve says. 

I widen my eyes at him and he gives me and annoyed facial expression.

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My hands were in Steve's hair as we kissed, and his hands remained on my waist. The same routine as usual. Robin worked the front counter and we were in the back. 

"Hi! I'm Robin." 

I paused for a moment, but Steve kept kissing me. 

"Wait, Stevie, stop." I said.

Steve didn't really care what was going on outside, so he continued kissing me.

"Wait, baby, I'm trying to listen." I say. I was trying to hear what Robin was saying to the customer outside.

"Is he here?" The customer asked, they sounded familiar.

Steve stopped kissing me. 

"Is your brother back?" He asks.

"I don't know. I wasn't home last night.."

Steve lets go of my waist and runs out the door with a huge grin on his face.

"Henderson! Henderson!" Steve calls out. 

I follow Steve out the door and smile as I see Dustin. He was back from the science camp he had gone to.

Dustin and Steve laugh, "He's back!"

"I'm back! You got the job!"

"I got the job, man!" Steve imitates a trumpet.

"Hey!" Steve shouts.

Steve and Dustin do a nerdy little Star Wars hand shake, imitating lightsabers. 

Their laughs were so sweet. It is my absolute favorite thing in the world to watch Steve and Dustin be together and get along so well. 

On the other hand Robin looked totally terrified, "How many children are you friends with?" She asks me as we watch the boys laugh. 

Steve sighs, "This is Tatum's little brother, Dustin." 

"Cool." Robin nods still slightly concered about the boys handshake that I found cute.

I walk over to the boys and grab Dustin into a tight hug. Steve smiles at me as I hug Dustin and I flash a bright smile back.

I pull away from the hug, "You want some ice cream?" 

"Sure."

Steve and I make a banana split and serve it to Dustin. The 3 of us sit down at a booth to catch up and talk to Dustin about camp.

"No way? Hotter than Pheobe Cates? No."  Steve says. 

I lightly hit Steve's arm.

"Don't  worry, I don't have a shot with Pheobe Cates anyways." He whispers to me.

I roll my eyes and hit his arm again.

Dustin was telling us about his new girlfriend he met at science camp.

"Yes. Brilliant, too, and she doesn't even care that my real pearls are coming in. She says kissing is better without teeth." Dustin says, taking a bite of the bowl of ice cream.

Steve makes a face but nods, "Wow. Yeah, that's great. Proud of you, man. That's kinda romantic.. wow." Steve looks over at me and gives me a look but I shrug it off.

"Do you really just get to eat as much of this as you want?" Dustin asks, shoveling in another bite.

"Yeah, I mean sure. But it's not really a good idea for me. I gotta keep in shape for m'lady." Steve says. He puts an arm around me. 

Robin scoffs, she was cleaning off a nearby table and definitely eavesdropping to our conversation.

"She seems cool." Dustin says, gesturing to Robin.

"I don't know.." Steve hesitstes.

Steve lays his head on my shoulder and grabs my hand.

"Oh, shit. Dude, what happened to your neck?" Dustin says. 

Robin laughs, and I act like I'm not listening. I whistle and scratch my head. 

"Uh...um. Yeah, I like fell, kinda." Steve begins.

Robin walks over to the table., "It's from your sister when they were screwing the back of the store." Robin whispers. 

Dustin's face dropped as he looked at Steve and I, "That's.. um..."

"Ok, listen. That is not what happened!" Steve shouts. 

I slouched down  in my seat covering my face with my hands. 

"She totally twisted the story!" 

"Right, can we move on. I really want that picture out of my head." Dustin says. 

I sigh and sit back up in my seat, "Anyways, jeeze, so where are the other knuckle heads?" I ask.

"They ditched me yesterday. My first day back!" 

"No..." Steve says.

"Can you believe that shit?" Dustin says.

"Woah! Seriously?" Steve yells.

"I swear. Their going to regret it, though, when they don't get to share in my glory."

"Glory? What glory?" I ask. 

"So last night, when I was tryna get in touch with Suzie, and uh....." 

Dustin whispers something, but we can't hear him. He whispers again. We still can't hear him. 

"Just speak louder." Steve says.

"I intercepted a secret Russian communication!" Dustin yells. 

Every single person in the store looks over at us sitting at the booth. 

"Ok, ok, that's what I thought you said." Steve whispers. "So what does this mean?"

"It's means Steve, we could be true American heroes." Dustin says.

Steve nods in amazement, "Heroes." He mumbles.

"What's the catch?" I ask.

"No catch. I just need your help."

"With what?"

Dustin digs through his bag and pulls out a Russian dictionary, 

    "Translation."

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"It sounded familiar."

"What?"

"The music right there at the end." Steve says, he takes another bite of the banana he was eating as I pace around the back of the store. 

"Why are you listening to the music, Steve?" Dustin says loudly. 

Steve hands me the banana and I take a bite and pass it back to him while looking through the dictionary for maybe something.

"Listen to the Russian! We're translating Russian!" Dustin shouts.

"We're trying to listen to the Russin!" I shout looking up from the book.

"Alright, babysitting time is over! You need to get out there." Robin says, walking into the room quickly.

 "Hey! My board! That was important data shitbirds!" Robin yells. It was the same white board that she previously had that counted how many customers we had scared away, but now it was covered in the Russian alphabet.

"I guarantee you that what ever were doing is way more important than your data." Dustin says.

"Yeah? And how do you know these Russians are up to no good anyway?" 

"How does she know about the Russians?" I whisper.

"I dunno!" Steve says with a mouth full.

"Hello. I can hear you. Actually I can hear everything. You 3 are extremely loud. Do you think you have evil Russians plotting against our country? On tape? And you are trying to translate, but you haven't figured out a single word because you didn't realize Russians use an entirely different alphabet. Sound about, right?" 

Robin tries to quickly grab the tape, but Dustins reflexes grab it first.

"What do you think you're doing?" Steve says.

"I wanna hear it. Maybe I can help. I'm fluet in 4 languages, you know." Robin says.

"Russian?" Dustin asks.

"Ou-yay-are-yay-umb-day"

My eyes lit up, "Nice!" 

 "Wow!" Steve exclaims. 

"Holy shit!" Dustin shouts.

"That was Pig Latin dingus.. Your all idiots."  Robin says. 

I look over to see the boys lightly fighting, with Steve hitting Dustin with his banana peel, I shake my head with disappointment. 

"What?" Steve says. I shake my head again.

"I can speak Spanish and French, and Italian, and I've been in band for 4 years. My ears are little geniuses, trust me." 

"Uh.." Steve, Dustin, and I were all still unsure.

"Come on! It's your turn to sling ice cream, my turn to translate. I don't even want credit. I'm just bored."

"Fine."

The bell dings at the counter, and Robin hands me an ice cream scooper, and Steve passes her the tape. 

Robin and Dustin agreed on cracking the code in the back while Steve and I served customers and tried not to scare them away this time. 

The Russian tape replayed while Robin paced around the backroom in thought. 

"Wait. That last part just one more time." 

Dustin rewinds he tape, and it plays again. 

"Ok! That word. It's pronounced dly-nna-ya, which is spelled with a D... D." Robin says.

Dustin gets up out of his seat and points at the chart, "The chair looking  letter!"

"Ok!" Robin says. She writes down the stuff they had just covered.

"Welcome to Scoops." Steve greets.

"Hey girls!" 

"Hello, lovebirds." Max says.

"Yeah, alright. What do you want?" Steve says in a annoyed voice.

Robin opens the window, "We've got our first sentence." 

"Oh, seriously?" I turn around, Tatum attached to my arm with her head on my shoulder.

"The week is long." Robin says in a Russian accent. 

"Well, that's thrilling." I say sarcastically. 

"I know, but progress.." Robin closes the window and heads back.

"Ok, here you go. You got a strawberry, and then a vanilla with sprinkles, extra whipped cream."  Steve says as he passes the 2 cones to the girls.

I pause, "Wait a sec, Are you even allowed to be here?" 

The 2 girls laugh and run off, dashing put of the store. About a minute later I see the boys from the party walk by the shop and into a jewelry store. I shrugged the weird sight off and didn't mention, but I did wonder why the girls were separated from the boys because usually Mike and El are always together when they get the chance. 

A few weeks ago I was shopping in Melvald's General Store. Joyce works there and Hopper was just ranting to her about how annoying Mike is, and how El and Mike won't ever stop kissing.  Joyce stated that it was a normal teenager thing, but Hopper wouldn't believe it.

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Hours go by and it's dark out and time to close up shop. Robin and I were the ones who did most of the work with translating.

We all make our way to the back room of Scoops and read the message together. 

"The week is long. The silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west."

"I mean, it just can't be right." Steve says while dragging down the storefront security gate and adding a lock over it. 

"It's right." Robin assures.

"Honestly, I think it's great news." Dustin says.

I stop walking with Robin and Dustin and wait for Steve to finish latching the lock, once he finishes he runs over to me grabbing my hand.

"How is this great news? I mean, so much for being American heroes. It's total nonsense." 

"It's not nonsense. We just haven't figured out what it means yet." I say.

"You're right. It's too specific it's obviously a code." Dustin says. 

"What do you mean code?" I ask.

Steve still grabbing onto my hand slings his arm over my shoulders and I put my hand on his back.

"It's like a super secret spy code." Dustin says.

"That's a total stretch."

"I don't know, is it?" Robin questions.

"You're buying into this?" I ask.

"Listen. Just for kicks, let's entertain the possibility that it is a secret Russian transmission. What do you think they are gonna say? Fire the warhead at noon? Our translation is correct for sure. So the silver cat feeds, why would anyons talk like that unless they are trying to mask the true meaning of their message." Robin explains. 

"Exactly." Dustin says. 

Steve glances to Robin then and Dustin then back at me. 

I nod, "So I guess that confirms our suspicions.." 

"Evil Russians." Dustin states.

"I can not believe I'm about to agree with this strange child, but, yeah, totally evil Russians." Robin laughs.

"So how do we crack it?" 

"Well, I guess we translate the rest, and hopefully, a pattern imerges." 

"Right! A pattern! Maybe the silver cat is a meeting place.."

"Or a person."

"Or a weapon."

"It's probably gonna take a super genius to crack, but.. Where are Steve and Tatum?" 

"Hey guys! What are you doing?" Robin yells.

"Uh.. I quarter.. I need a quarter! Got a quarter."  Steve digs through rough his pockets to try and find coins. Steve was crouched down at a little horse ride that went back and forth in the mall.

Robin chuckles, "Sure you're tall enough for that ride?" 

"Quarter!" 

Robin tosses me a quarter, and I pass it to Steve and he puts it in the little machine.

Waltz tune plays as the little horse goes back and forth.

"You need help getting up, Stevie?" I tease.

"Shhh, listen."

"Holy shit! The music. The music!"

Dustin digged through his bag and grabbed the tape out. He is starts playing it, and you can hear the same Waltz music playing. 

"I don't understand." Robin says.

"It's the exact same song on the recording." Dustin explains.

"Maybe they have horses like this in Russia." Robin guesses.

"The Indiana Flyer? I don't think so. This code, it didn't come from Russia. It came from here."