chapter seventeen ♰ Hungry, Hunger, Hope

  "I'm not gonna lie to you, Sommers ━━ this is pretty fucking shit of you."

  At least Sydney could always count on Nadine Munson ━━ a girl as brittle as her own nails ━━ for brutal honesty. If Sydney knew how to go for the jugular, Nadine knew how to get to the very rotten core of your heart. When Sydney turned up practically at the crack of dawn at Nadine's trailer, in search of advice and a bud of weed for the trip, she knew this already. She wanted it ━━ a bit masochistically, she needed to be told how bad of a person she was being right now. Her duffel bag had been dumped in the cobwebbed crevice of Nadine's box-bedroom, packed for her weekend getaway, and it was a glaring testament to the fact Sydney's mind was already made up. She didn't come here for Nadine to talk her out of it ━━ just for once, Sydney didn't want to be mollycoddled.

  And Nadine lived up to expectations. It was 5AM when Sydney came knocking belligerently on the door, and Nadine already had a blunt dangling from her lips and a swollen haze to her droopy eyes. When Sydney wrenched a wad of crisp cash from the pocket of her white shorts, Nadine dramatically bowed and beckoned her in. Sydney had to step over Eddie Munson's unconscious body in the living room ━━ a scarlet NJ Warlock guitar nestled in his arms as he drooled into his overgrown nest of hair ━━ and was lazily led to Nadine's room, which was somehow worse than the rest of the trailer. White powder debris glistened in the balmy sunlight on the bedside table, and little granules of marijuana dusted the stained bedsheets. There was a few crushed cans of stale, cheap beer strewn about as well and various other drug paraphernalia. Nadine Munson was a fucking mess, but she was real. She didn't care that Sydney was a motherless girl with a bunch of issues ravaging up her brain. She didn't care about anything.

  "Like, seriously," snickered Nadine meanly, hunching over to use a zippo lighter to spark up her blunt again, using a hand to protect the flame. She only wore an oversized t-shirt, milky-white legs basically all exposed, revealing the chemical stain of a tattoo on the inside of her left thigh ━━ the inky silhouette of birds. "Really fucking shit, Sommers."

  Sydney was sat on her bed, too ━━ back flush against the careworn headboard and nails scratching at a scab on her elbow, coagulating with dry blood. "Yeah. I know."

  "He's got a girl." Nadine puffed out a rivulet of smoke. "A nice one, too."

  "Yeah. Thanks, Nads," gritted out Sydney.

  Nadine smirked around the joint. "S'what you came here for, wasn't it? To be told how bad of a person you're being."

  Sydney's scowl darkened. "You're making me sound like a sicko."

  "I mean..." Nadine gave a hoarse laugh around another exhale.

  She was pretty ━━ too pretty to be wasting her life on drugs. The genetics were palpable with her and Eddie. She was basically his carbon copy, just with more feminine features. But they had the same gaunt cheekbones and shaggy, hickory hair and tall, slender statures. Nadine was nefarious for being more laidback than Eddie ━━ who was kind of neurotic and more melodramatic than his younger sister. Nadine was meaner, too. Eddie was the town freak, sure, but Nadine was the town bitch. Not in the stereotypical bully sense ━━ Nadine didn't have any particular target in the social hierarchy; nor a place in it, either. She was an entity all on her own. Eyes the colour of earth and lungs probably to match, thanks to all the smoke.

  "You don't have to come here, y'know," mused Nadine. "Just go to confession at church, you'll hear the same shit ━━ moral degrading's free if you get it from a priest."

  Sydney's scoff was weak. "Yeah, well ━━ holy men don't sell weed. Pass me a drag?"

  Nadine gave her a lazy smirk as she handed it over. The earthy taste filled Sydney's airways and ballooned her lungs. The filter-papers the spliff was wrapped up in left a strawberry taste on Sydney's tongue as she sighed out a stream of citrusy smoke. She nonchalantly returned it to Nadine's awaiting fingers. She pinched it back between her lips, and smiled at the taste of Sydney's cranberry lip-gloss on the fibres of the paper.

  "Listen," said Nadine, apathy melting into a half-hearted kind of compassion, "I don't actually think you're a shitty person. I just think you're doing a shitty thing. And I'm not a holy man ━━ I'm not a man at all. That's why I think you should do this."

  Blanching in surprise, Sydney started to cough and splutter on the residual marijuana in her chest.

  "Yeah ... I think you should. I think you should go on this silly, little weekend away with King Steve, and fuck up, and get both of your hearts broken ━━ I think you need to fucking feel something, Sommers." Unexpectedly, Nadine poked a hard, brittle finger right over Sydney's heart. It felt like a needle. An injection of sense. It made Sydney shiver. "When was the last time you did that, huh? Feel. Go get hurt. And come home, and cry, and get better, and get over him. You deserve better, anyways."

  Sydney's throat was parched, and it wasn't just because of torrid humidity starting to fill Nadine's bedroom as the sun seeped through the gap in her motheaten curtains.

  "You're saying I need to let him break my heart?"

  "I said each other's hearts, actually," Nadine remarked. "I don't think you realise the hold you have on him, Sommers."

  The scars of his kisses simmered then. "I don't think I do."

  Nadine rolled her eyes ━━ they were like bitter, black coffee. "You're an idiot, then. He looks at you like ━━ well. Not like he looks at Nancy. Like he's fucking consumed by you, or something."

  She glanced at Sydney's startled expression through her periphery, and tried to feign indifference, but all this Harrington/Sommers shit was probably the most interesting thing Nadine had to hyperfixate on. Nadine Munson liked dissecting things ━━ dead animals in Biology, purple prose in English and people, most of all. Sydney Sommers was the perfect dissection. She had so many layers it was like wading through molasses with her. Deadbeat dad turned adoring father. Idolised mother turned resented corpse. A best friend absolutely in love with her. And Steve Harrington wrapped around her little finger, but she was too insecure and hollow to see it.

  Nadine meant what she said about the consuming. There was something so primal about however Harrington felt about Sydney. She had seen it with her own bloodshot, keen eyes. Dissected it. It's like his heart slammed against his ribs whenever he looked at Sydney ━━ and Nadine got that just from looking over a social chasm. Steve on his throne, and Nadine in the ashes. Sydney should be able to see it ━━ it was disgusting how much he wanted her. How much he wanted Sydney to want him back. Nadine didn't know how Nancy couldn't see it, either. Unless she was looking elsewhere too.

  Another tendril of smoke fell from between Nadine's raw lips ━━ (love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs).

  "It's like ━━ yearning is too delicate of a word, but it feels wrong to say he's killing you. And love is too complicated to understand when he has a girlfriend. So you're in this grey area of touches that burn and words that ache and now ━━ now you're in a trailer with Nadine fucking Munson ... sharing a joint."

  Nadine chuckled dryly at the irony of it. Sydney looked hollowed out and stared emptily through the dirty window. The room reeked of the musky, earthen smell coming off the blunt; Sydney was struggling to see through the smoke eating it up whole.

  "Have you ever been in love?" Sydney asked cynically.

  (Because love is cynical).

  Nadine hums. "Not sure, really." She inhaled a drag. It came out from her nostrils. "Even just crushes feel ━━ wrong."

  "Wrong?" echoed Sydney.

  "Yeah, like..."

  Nadine side-eyed Sydney and pursed her lips. Her pupils were all blown out now, and her cheeks were kissed by a rosy flush. She leaned forward, warm body hovering over Sydney's numb legs. She smelt like cedar and pot. Languor, Nadine gave Sydney a debauched smile and stubbed out the joint in the ashtray on her bedside table, her bare thigh grazing Sydney's ━━ it felt so strangely intimate that Sydney feared the chemicals of Nadine's tattoo might bleed onto her, even though the touch was barely tangible and so fleeting it could've been a ghost.

  All hedonism and unholiness, Nadine leaned back, so she was no longer lingering over Sydney, and put her back flush against the peeling wall.

  "Like I'd be shamed in a church too."

  Sydney nodded, understanding ━━ she got that. She really did. She felt the raw, ugly horror of realising that she felt something that a zealot would frown upon.

  "I guess we're both a bit shitty," she said musingly.

  The sudden honking of a car-horn startled Sydney out of her daze.

  "The King's here," drawled Nadine. "Are you gonna go get your heart broken?"

  Sydney's jaw hardened, bruisingly. "I guess I am." She got up from Nadine's bed, and dusted the debris of pot and narcotics from off her shorts, and bent down to shoulder the strap of her duffel. "I'll see you in hell, yeah?"

  Nadine flashed an irreverent smile. "I'll bring the Mary Jane."

  Steve didn't know why the hell he was parked outside of Eddie Munson's trailer in the midmorning of a blistering, summertime day, but he was. Sydney had told him last night to pick him up from 'Nadine's' and he didn't question it (he never could question her). The sunshine was sweltering, and Steve felt like his skin might burn just by hanging his arm out of the window in its incandescent, menacing glare. But he was waiting for Sydney ━━ so Steve could handle a botched tanline and a bit of blistering.

  His nails warped nervously against the polished carmine of his beloved car as he bored bullet-holes into the door of the trailer. He was just about to storm up there and kick it off its hinges, paranoia eating away at him, when it burst open, and Sydney Sommers came bounding down the rickety steps. Steve breathed.

  Melting into the shadows behind her in the doorway was Nadine Munson, clad in only a threadbare tee that didn't even skim her midthigh. She had a cigarette dangling nonchalantly between two fingers now, and was smirking wittingly at Steve ━━ in the sage, malicious way of someone who knew something maiming that Steve didn't. Aloofly, Nadine waved at him and took a shallow drag of the nicotine, and vanished in the puff of smoke. The door closed behind her and Steve eased back into his seat, eyes drifting absentmindedly to Sydney as she jogged across the dry grass of the uncut lawn, blades of it tickling at her bare shins.

  She looked like something cut out of his dreams. Her choppy hair was pulled back into a loose bun, with a few tendrils falling out round her pretty face, and some baby hairs stuck to her forehead thanks to the humidity. She had on a light-pink camisole, with pretty, beige lace detailing across the chest. It had flimsy spaghetti straps, and a satin bow on the front, right on her sternum. Her clavicle was so gaunt that it startled Steve out of his lovesick reverie ━━ and then he noticed how thin her legs had gotten, losing the muscle they had back when she was into running and on the swim-team and actually cared about herself. The limbs stuck out of her white jean-shorts like a doll's and were so pale they almost blended into the dyed denim.

  "Hey, pervert."

  Steve jolted ━━ when did she even get into the car? "Nicks. Do I wanna know why you asked me to pick you up from the Munson's?"

  A grin splintered her stoic face, and she showed him a little baggie with the foliage of a green bud. "Just picking up the merchandise."

  "Nadine is corrupting you," mumbled Steve, but he was smiling too.

  Maybe the smile was for other reasons, though.

  Even if he was a blind man, Sydney Sommers would be pretty. The very essence of her. How she always smelt like honey and everything else sweet in the world. Her hair always smelt of her mango shampoo. The honey smell, he found out the morning after they kissed and he showered before leaving, was all thanks to her shower gel ━━ oat milk and acacia honey. Whatever perfume she wore was infused with saccharine things, like butterscotch and French vanilla and a splash of citrus. There was all that sweetness, enough to rot cavities into his teeth, but underneath it all, the grittiness of Sydney. The faint smell of marijuana, and today a bit of a coconut smell from the suncream she lathered herself in. Yet the honey was always there, clinging to her like a cloying, candied haunt.

  "You're staring," Sydney murmured.

  He was. "You're pretty."

  Sydney scowled. "Just drive, pervert."

  "Wait, I ━━ made you something."

  He was a wound that would never heal.

  "You did?"

  "Yeah, uh ━━ it's in the glove compartment." Steve shifted, feeling a bit paranoid. "It's probably stupid, but, I ━━ oh, you're opening it, yeah, you're ━━"

  From the depths of torn condom wrappers and scratched CDs and cannabis dust, Sydney salvaged a cassette. And she held it so delicately ━━ like it was a glass vase, or a baby. Slowly, she closed the glove compartment and softened into the seat behind her as her fingers trembled around this sacred, little thing. He made her a cassette. Another love letter, really. Just put into music ━━ into lyrics that weren't his, but words that were.

  "You made ━━ you made me a mixtape."

  Steve swallowed thickly, heart in his throat (and ears, and head, and ribs, and in the palm of Sydney's hand ━━ omnipresent and hers). "Yeah. It's ━━ it's nothing, really..."

  "It's... everything."

  The front of it was marred with sparkly ink. For Nicks <3. The 'i' dotted again by a heart, but it didn't leave the same bitter aftertaste as before. Because it was so painfully Steve that it broke her with something sharp and sweet, and all Sydney wanted to do was cry. He made her hurt so beautifully.

  She turned it over, again treating it like eggshells in her hands. There was a piece of paper stuck to the inside of the case, with the song lists, split into Side A and Side B. Side A was entitled: Nicks' loves. Side B was: Nicks' hopeful loves. Her 'loves' were a methodical merge of Fleetwood Mac, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Cure, The Smiths and Billy Joel ━━ stuff Steve knew she loved. The rest, Sydney guessed, were songs he prayed that she'd like (the songs he loved) ━━ mostly Hall & Oates, but there was an assortment of Bruce Springsteen, Rick Springfield, Tears for Fears, Duran Duran, and Queen. His usual.

  Aching. Sydney was aching.

  "Steve, this ━━"

  "It's stupid. I know. Shit." Steve pathetically put his head onto his steering-wheel. "I just wanted ... You said I couldn't talk about how I felt. I just figured ━━ if I can't talk ... I can put into music, 'cause you love music. And I want you to l━━ It's stupid."

  "Steve. Steve." Sydney leaned over the console, hooked two fingers in his chin and tilted his head up to look at her. His eyes were cinnamon-infused hot chocolate on Christmas day, and they blinked at her dolefully ━━ his emotions raw, palpable and worn on his sleeve. He wanted her to what? "I love it. Yeah? I love it."

  Steve's jaw relaxed under her fingertips. "You do?"

  "I do."

  "Good. Good, 'cause ... I really want you to love ... it."

  He thought, for a ephemeral second, that she might kiss him. Then her fingers went slack and she sunk back into her seat with a feeble smile, fidgeting with the cassette.

  Steve emptied his throat. "I'll, uh ━━ let's get going, huh?"

  He reached out for the mixtape, his knuckles accidentally brushing Sydney's, and Steve nearly experienced an aneurysm. A shudder wracked his body as he fumbled with the cassette, ineptly slotting it into the tape-player. The Chain by Fleetwood Mac started to play and Sydney felt it in her veins. Her breath hitched, and her knuckles whitened as they curled around the edge of the chair beneath her. The car roared to life, and Steve extended an arm out behind her head-rest as he reversed out of the overgrown driveway of Nadine's trailer. Sydney gulped, eyes lingering for a bit too long on the tense muscles of his arms, and the angularness of his jawline, and the hickory, honey strands in his dishevelled hair.

  Love wasn't just wounds and bleeding ━━ it's finding the person who cuts you up still beautiful even when they've bludgeoned you a thousand times over. It's madness. It's cruelty. It's sin. It's seraphim. It makes you a fool and makes you sick and it'll make you feel infallible. This was a religion ━━ an unholy one. It's monstrous. It's an angel. It was killing Sydney slowly. It's the most alive she had felt in months.

  The hunger trickled back. She wanted to eat. She wanted to fill up her stomach until she was bloated and satiated, and hoped that Steve would still look at her like that even if her collarbone didn't jut out and if her thighs were softer. Would he still want her if she wasn't brittle? Was it the pity that kept him here? Hungry, hunger, hope.

  "Y'alright?" Steve breathed out.

  Fleetwood Mac trickled into Billy Joel.

  "Yes."

  She meant it.

  Hungry, hunger, hope.

By the time Sydney and Steve finally got to Marquette, night was on the verge of falling.

  The sunset glittered on the horizon, kissing it with a marmalade glow, and alit the living room with a clementine hue. There was a velvet chaise longue opposite an fireplace, and the mantelpiece above it was crowded with things like a rustic globe, a dusty candelabra and other antique ornaments instead of family photographs. The kitchen was adjoined to the living room ━━ vintage, too, with a brick stove and the original window-panes still fitted in, a spider making its home in a silky cobweb. The floorboards smelt like citrus and cedar, creaking underfoot and billowing up exhales of dust as Sydney treaded around with awestruck eyes. The two armchairs either side of the chaise long were made of old, real leather, and Sydney just knew the fibres of it probably clung with the smell of old cigar smoke and cinnamon. Hung high on the chimneypiece was a taxidermized stag, its antlers grand and lethal.

  There wasn't a television in sight. Instead, a vintage cabinet with glass panels and shelves cramped with books whose spines were withering from use. There wasn't even any artificial lights ━━ wax stubs of half-melted candles nestled into corners, adding to the idyllic fallacy that this entire cabin was tucked away into some corner of earth untouched by time and modernity and life itself.

  "So ... do you like it?"

  Steve always sounded like cared so much about what Sydney thought and felt about things ━━ about him, about the mixtape, about the lakehouse. As if he valued her opinion so very highly. (He did).

  "I love it." (She did). "It's ━━ wow."

  He beamed. "It was my grandparents'. Hasn't been renovated since they retired to France. But, I kinda like it ━━ it's cosy, y'know? Homely."

  "Homely," Sydney echoed.

  "Yeah, like ━━ growing up, I always wanted to bring my own kids here," he said with a shrug, and a smile, and a hummingbird heart. "It's a home. 'Feels more like home than Hawkins sometimes."

  Sydney shuffled a bit. "You want kids?"

  Steve's brows pinched. "You don't?"

  "I mean ━━" She laughed nervously. "I'm barely 17, Steve."

  Amongst other reasons. Mother, with her chronic dieting, and her mercurial moods, and the gaslighting, and the turmoil she put Sydney through. Father, left and returned, but rotting away slowly thanks to his alcoholism and his withered dreams. Sydney could never envision herself being a parent, because she wasn't really sure what a parent was supposed to be. She could never be a mother, because Mother left her a hollow shell of a girl.

  What kind of mom would Sydney be? The type to make comments about her daughter's weight until she counted calories and covered mirrors with the torn up fabric of clothes that didn't fit anymore. Unhappy? Isolated? Lost of a lover and faith and family. She'd get neurotic as the years go by, and meaner to a child who resembled their father too much for Sydney to look at them ━━ because it was like glaring into unabridged sunlight. Then the alcohol would come crawling in, pervading her marrow and poisoning her blood, and she'd insist to her child that it wasn't an addiction or a dependency, it's just to numb the migraines they cause. She'd blame all her unhappiness on it ━━ but she'd blame herself the most. Thinking about what she lost ━━ an Ivy League education, and the entire world in her hands. And the child would end up the same as her. Gaunt and hungry and alone. They'd miss out on it all, too ━━ the ivy halls, and the world, because the world will never belong to a Sommers girl. Mother's deficiencies and aches are hereditary. It'll scar every daughter there is to come. And the cycle goes on.

  The snake eating its own tail.

  "I don't mean now," said Steve lightheartedly. "But, like, ever?"

  Sydney had stiffened. "I don't really know."

  But she did know. Her mind was made up. The cycle ends with her. The snake will go hungry, too. Neither will be satiated.

  "That's OK..." Steve whispered, voice soft. "You don't have to know anything right now." His fingers splayed out across the small of her back. It made her shiver. "Hey, uh ━━ how about, you go for a swim, and I'll cook us dinner?"

  Sydney blanched. "You'll cook?"

  "I'm domestic," teased Steve. "I'm basically a housewife."

  "Oh, I'm sure you are, Stevie."

  Steve tensed up, and his fingers curled into a fist, balling up the sateen material of her cami. He wound his arm a bit tighter round her waist, and she was so close to being flush against his hammering chest. Longingly, the brag of his heart pulsed around the syllables of Stevie and Nicks and the melody of a Fleetwood Mac song thudding in his eardrums. She'll ruin him. She'll kill him.

  "Don't ━━ Jesus."

  Sydney's fingertips traced the outline of her name across his chest. The cotton of his t-shirt clung to his torso and his skin was warm. Her cheeks were warm. The room flooded with terminal sunlight, and is this how it feels to die?

  "Hmm..." she said, sweet and thoughtful.

  "What?" he grumbled, voice rasped, like he had just woken up. "What are you gonna torture me with now?"

  "It's just..." a little tug to his tee and he was a goner. She was all honey and meanness. "Y'know how yesterday, I said I wanted something to call you ━━ like Nicks? Something that'll ruin you."

  Steve made a guttural sound in protest, head falling into the crook of her neck. His lips briefly ghosted over her pulse. There, here, with him. Here, here, here.

  "I seem to recall saying you ruin me perfectly well all on your own."

  "Well, I like it. Stevie."

  He fucking kissed her. He kissed her neck. Somehow, exactly where he kissed her that very first time ━━ where he left the healed bruise. This was far sweeter. Far more delicate. Not because he didn't want to leave something of his ━━ lilac and selfish and obvious enough to make Toby Stanfield glare at him in that same menacing way again ━━ but because he couldn't. Because he was wrecked. That's what it's about, right? Being drained of all that you are and have, because this one girl ━━ this girl who made you whole and empty all at once.

  "What's love, Mom?" A doe-eyed Steve Harrington would ask a loveless mother, expecting something maudlin and good.

  "Are you sure you want to know? It's painful. It'll kill you." He got instead.

  He should've fucking listened.

  "I'm gonna..." Sydney shivered again, stumbling back. Steve swayed and blinked at her like a drunk man in headlights. "I'm gonna go for a swim. And you're gonna try not to burn the place down. And we're ━━ we're not gonna do that again."

  Steve deflated. "We're not?"

  He noticed her sternness, the pursing of her lips and the subtle heaving in her lungs. (Did she want to kiss him, too? Did she want him back?)

  "We're not," he said firmly.

  The sky was sable-black when Sydney left the lakehouse, in nothing but a halter-top swimsuit and a towel thrown over her shoulder. Steve had insisted she wasn't allowed back in until dinner was ready ━━ he was also pretty adamant against telling her what he was cooking. Not that Sydney minded the distance put between them. They hadn't even been her 24 hours and he had already put his mouth on her. She kept telling herself as she got changed from out of her clothes and into the swimsuit that it was just the intimate atmosphere of being here ━━ in a place he associated with the future, and home.

  The Harrington's lakehouse was nestled in a thicket of cedarwood trees, and surrounded by a handful of other cabins. Their neighbours were an old, retired couple ━━ Steve greeted them earlier as the 'Collymores' when he parked the car. They had been sat around a rustic, Maribelle table on their decking and playing a game of Go Fish! Dangling from a spindly branch was a glistening windchime, reflecting moonlight and tinkering in the gentle wind.

  Salt air filled Sydney's lungs as she emerged from the copse of cedars and hiked up a sand-dune. At the top of the bank, she could see everything ━━ the unfathomable stretch of water, and the opaline moonlight on the horizon, sparkling across the lake surface. The lakehouses had this private little cut of the beach all for themselves, and its own little pier, the pillars twinkling with fairylights. Sydney now knew why Steve loved it so much here ━━ why he wanted to bring his kids here. She could envision it now ━━ tiny footprints in the scorched sand, frail sandcastles, Steve teaching a brood of messy-haired, brown-eyed kids to swim and moonlit picnics on the pier in.

  Sydney walked barefoot along the planks of splintery, uneven wood, and the salt air got stronger the closer to the edge she got. She hooked her towel onto one of the pillars and hooked her toes onto the edge of the edge of it, breathing in deeply. Her knees bent, her arms outstretched in front of her, and she dived in. It was like being swallowed whole. Water rung in her ears instantly, and her eyes stung against the force of the current. She swam right to the lakebed. Pebbles and litter cluttered the sandbank. Another imagine fizzled in her mind ━━ Steve practicing skimming pebbles by himself at a ripe age instead of with his father.

  Her lungs started to scream after about 30 seconds, ribbons of water twined around them. Sydney squinted through the murky water up to the surface ━━ she could faintly make out the waning moon, the stars, and the scintillating lights. And then she looked down at the lakebed around her ━━ the shiny pebbles, and the wastage, and a ring lost in the sand.

  What if she just stayed here?

  What if she didn't swim back up?

  Eyes open in the cold and green and mute undertow, Sydney thought maybe she'd just let the water take her.

  A real Ophelia.

  Maybe she'd pick up all these pebbles ━━ totems of Steve's lonely childhood ━━ and fill her pockets with them. Maybe she'd become the water.

  And then she looked back up, and Steve was a distorted figure on the pier. One foot dangling off the edge, the other leg held loosely by his chest, and a cigarette lax between his finger. He looked a bit like an angel ━━ haloed by the moon and the lights and a cloud of smoke.

  Sydney kicked off the lakebed and swam up. Her lungs thanked her for it as soon as she broke the surface, gasping for air and treading water and feeling lighter than she had in months. She loved water so much because it made her feel weightless ━━ like she wasn't real. Or a silver minnow. Or dead.

  "I didn't think you were gonna come back up," said Steve, half joking.

  "Neither did I."

  He knocked the cigarette against the end of the pier. The ashes sizzled against the water and sunk to the bottom with all those pebbles. He looked uncharacteristically pensive ━━ cogs whirring behind his narrow eyes. Steve took a profound drag of his cigarette and the fumes came out from his nose.

  "I thought you were making dinner?" teased Sydney.

  Steve grinned. "It's nearly done ━━ just waiting on the focaccia bread."

  "You made focaccia bread?"

  "No. Mrs Collymore did."

  Sydney laughed. She tilted her whole body back, so she was floating. Weightless.

  "But I made the rest," insisted Steve proudly. "Carbonara, baby."

  "Should I be worried?"

  "Excited."

  Sydney rolled her eyes up to the waxy moon. It didn't look real tonight. A bit like a tambourine. A Van Gough painting. "I'm sure you're a real Martha Stewart."

  Steve stubbed out the cigarette beside him, and his other leg fell down to hang over the edge of the pier too. "C'mere, Nicks."

  She almost sunk right to the bottom. "What?"

  "Just ... c'mere."

  Feeling like a sledgehammer had been lodged in her chest, and as if she was still underwater, Sydney swam the small distance back toward the pier until she was treading water between his legs. She looked up at him ━━ for once, she couldn't tell how he felt at all. He almost seemed stoic. Sydney realised with a sucker-punch to the gut that she'd probably let him hold her head underwater as she thrashed and kicked and her lungs ruptured at the seams. That was terrifying.

  His hand moved from his side and Sydney thought that maybe that's what he was going to do. Submerge her in the leaden waters and be done of the burden. But the water never came. Just a tender touch against her jaw, and a thumb sweeping across her wet cheekbone. Sydney felt lifeless under his warmth ━━ she was cold and shivering from her drenched clothes and the biting lake, but he was sunshine. Sydney Sommers will always be the moon. Sydney Sommers will only ever be loved at night.

  "What?" she asked; demanded.

  "Nothing."

  Sydney frowned. His thumb brushed over her brow. "It has to be something."

  "You know I meant everything, don't you?" he said a little desperately, tucking a strand of wet hair behind her ear. "That how I feel about Nancy ━━ it's nothing like how I feel about you."

  "Steve, we said ━━"

  "No, you said, Nicks. You did," Steve seethed. He drew in a rattling breath. "I just went along with it because I can't say no to you, and I think you know that."

  A kiss with a fist. "You make it sound like I'm the one who ruined everything."

  "Everything isn't ruined, that's the thing," said Steve, sounding tired, so very tired. His other hand flung up and he was holding her with a steel grip, but she still felt weightless ━━ she was water. She'll slip between his fingers. She wasn't his. It was ruined. "You just keep telling yourself it is because of Nancy, but you know it's you."

  Saturnine, Sydney started to panic. "Steve, please don't."

  "It's no use, Nicks, we've gotta have it out..."

  "No. No, we don't," she said adamantly.

  Then, Sydney tore herself away from his hands, ignoring the wretched fall of his face as she planted her hands on the pier and shoved herself up out of the water. She stood on the uneven wooden blanks, and the water cascaded off of her, pooling at her feet. The high ground changed ━━ instead of Steve looking down at her, Sydney was glowering down at him. He sat pathetically on the edge of the pier, his face scrunched up in despair.

  They were tangoing in the purgatory between the second and ninth circle of Hell: Treachery and Lust. Dante's laughs echoed in the fiery chamber around them. This was sin. This was wrong. She shouldn't be here. With him.

  "Leave it," she said scathingly. "Just leave it."

  Sydney yanked the towel off the pillar and swathed herself in it. Without sparing him another glimpse, Sydney was storming off down the pier, skin feeling blistery and stained by Steve's touch.

  Steve feverishly scrambled up to his feet and called after her, his throat abraded. "Nicks, please, just ━━"

  "Fuck off, Steve! I'll see you at dinner."

It was a bit ritualistic ━━ she'd rinse, and she'd scrub, rinse, and scrub.

  Scrub at the skin till it's red and raw, and when it stings so bad it feels like the flesh might peel off, rinse under scalding water. All those angry blotches from scrubbing burn with the hot downpour ━━ hard against the curve of your spine, and bellicose as it smacks down on chafed skin. It's rejuvenating if not anything else. Makes Sydney feel alive to feel the ache and the burn and the sting. It's visceral. Without all that, what do we have? Pain is one of the only things that's real. Sydney went looking for pain. The more you feel it, the more resilient you get.

  She got out and she was a bit pruned from how long she stood under the onslaught. Skin cerise and like crushed berries. Sydney had tried so hard to cleanse herself of Steve that the desperation to wash him off just made her feel more filthy. She rang her hair out in the granite sink and didn't even bother towel-drying it. She let the mango-scented droplets drip down her back and threw on an old t-shirt of Toby's. Childishly, Sydney hoped Steve would realise it was Toby's ━━ and that it would tear him up inside, and make him sick.

  Underfoot, the oak staircase creaked and bowed. Sydney walked into the living room and stared enviously at the taxidermized stag, before the rich smell of carbonara pervaded from the dining room and her stomach lurched. She hadn't ate anything of substance in so long ━━ and it surprisingly smelt good. Bracing herself, she tugged at the hem of the fraying tee (it barely reached her midthigh), and walked through the archway into the candlelit room.

  The sweet smell of the carbonara intermingled with the red currant persimmon of the candles flickering around the room. The walls were a deep mulberry, and covered mostly by shelves amassed with unravelling books and old trinkets. In the middle of the room, covered in a gauzy cloth, was a long, ornate table of mahogany wood.

  "Smells good," Sydney hummed.

  Steve was sat at one end of the table, fork toying sullenly with his spaghetti. At the sound of her austere voice, his head snapped up and the fork hit the plate with a clatter. He was still sulking for all of a few seconds ━━ until he saw what she was wearing, and the melancholy morphed into bewildered alarm. The innate conflict of admiring how pretty she looked haloed by candlelight in only a t-shirt, and also wanting to cave in the face of whoever it belonged to before Sydney, was antipathetic.

  "Yeah, it's, uh ━━" Steve swallowed thickly. In the amber glow, he could faintly see the pinkish stretch-marks carved into her thighs. Her hair was still ringing wet, and saturating the white tee, seeping through the V-neckline. "It's my, umm, my mom's recipe. You, uh ━━ you look ━━"

  "This mine?" she interjected callously, gesturing to the plate set out across from his on the opposite end of the table.

  A pang surging through his ribcage, Steve managed a nod.

  "Cool..." Sydney mumbled, and sat herself down.

  Even the cutlery was fancy ━━ the kind of embellished silverware people only use round Christmas. Sydney twisted a few tendrils of the parmesan spaghetti and took a mouthful. It tasted so good, she could cry. Rich, and creamy, and the Pecorino Romano cheese melted on her tongue delectably. Sydney couldn't tell if it was actually that nice, or if it was just because Steve made it. She vaguely imagined him crushing garlic gloves with a knife's edge and sprinkling a garnish of black pepper into the sauce.

  Maybe he was a domestic housewife.

  "Nice?"

  Sydney's eyes darted up to his unsure ones, and she smiled softly. "It's perfect."

  "You know ... Nicks, I ━━"

  "Let's just ━━ eat, OK?"

  Steve faltered. "Yeah. Yeah, OK."

  Sydney cleaned the plate. She ate until she felt nauseous. And she enjoyed every last bit. The velvety sauce, and the well-done pasta, and the amalgamation of cheese melted on top. She felt full ━━ it was an unfamiliar feeling. It made her drowsy. It made her smile.

  Food had always been a kind of love language for Sydney, she realised now. Her mother would deprive her of it, in the name of love ━━ I want you to be healthy, she'd say, happy in your body. But cooking and feeding was an act of love for Matt ━━ an entire pizza, with all the toppings Sydney liked, even if he thought mushrooms were slimy and tasteless. It was his way of saying he cared. And whenever Sydney had holed herself up in her room, starving herself of sunlight and company and food, Toby would be at the door, with a bunch of her favourite snacks and unconditional love ━━ it's about feeling glutted.

  But this was another kind of intimate. Sensual, even. She was sat Steve's table, eating food he cooked, and he was basically inviting her into his life.

  "Am I allowed to talk now?" Steve mused. Sydney tried glaring, but she was smiling underneath it ━━ rolling her eyes, too, in that affectionate way she always did at him. "So, did you like it? Want seconds?"

  "No, no ━━ that's ... no." Sydney looked down, empty and full, at once. "We should clean up."

  "You wash, I dry?"

  La Vie En Rose by Edith Piaf crackled through radio static. The kitchen was candlelit too. Sydney was up to her forearms in scalding, bubbly water, sponging at their plates and the other kitchen appliances Steve used to cook dinner. He had a dishcloth tossed over his shoulder and he didn't take his eyes off Sydney for a second as her gloved hands waded through the soapy bubbles in search for the fancy utensils to rinse them off. It was almost a comfortable silence ━━ the clattering of kitchenware on the stainless steel of the draining-board, Edith Piaf's seraphic voice filling the cobwebbed corners of the room and Steve humming along.

  Maybe everything with Steve Harrington was intimate. Maybe he was just that kind of guy ━━ the kind you'd lose hours with, sharing a bottle of wine in dying, August light and sitting at the table, just eating and talking and laughing. There was that terrifying thought again of sunrises tasting like omelettes and waffles with whipped cream and memorising each other's coffee. His would probably have an overwhelming flavour of cardamom and milk. He'd probably quip about Sydney's feeling like moss in the mouth and tasting too bitter because she drank it black.

  "Want one?"

  Sydney turned. He was offering out a strawberry dipped in fresh cream to her.

  "Mrs Collymore grows 'em fresh," Steve said with a shrug. "Sweetest thing you'll taste, ever."

  It sounded like a promise.

  Sydney shrugged. "Sure, but ━━" she gestured at her hands, still swathed in rubber-gloves and submerged in the sink.

  "Here, just ━━" His free hand fell on her jaw, and it fell slack. Steve's stare was unwavering as she took a chunk out of the strawberry. He was right. It was sweet. Sickeningly. The fresh cream made it so cloying that it clung onto her taste-buds and made her cringe. Steve laughed, sweeping his thumb over her cupid's bow and collecting the residue of the strawberry's syrupy blood from of there, and licked it into his own mouth. "A bit too sweet, huh?"

  "Yeah, you don't say..."

  Sydney rinsed off the last of it. The silverware glistened in the starlight, and the china was as clean as the day it was bought. She peeled off the rubber-gloves and her hands felt cauterized.

  "Strawberries, cherries, and an angel's kiss in spring... my summer wine is really made from all these things..."

  A grin bloomed across Steve's face as Nancy Sinatra's voice flourished from the radio speaker like a summertime zephyr being blown up from the sea.

  "No," said Sydney firmly. "No way."

  "Oh, c'mon ━━ one dance, Nicks? Please?"

  "You're..." She was going to say relentless, and then she herself relented to him. So fucking weak, Sydney let him thread their fingers together and, in a dainty heartbeat, he was twirling her under his arm and she was spinning into his chest. "You're incorrigible."

  Steve grinned. "Well, I missed that."

  "Maybe you're just a sick masochist, Harrington."

  "Masochist, pervert... Do you really think I'm that depraved, Nicks?" he said musingly.

  Sydney swayed with him gently to Nancy Sinatra. Moonlight and candlelight enveloping them in a little bubble. What's purgatory when you're with a boy like Steve Harrington? As Virgil guided Dante through Hell, he tells him that the second circle of Hell are for those overcome by lust ━━ condemned for allowing their appetites to sway their moral reason.

  "As the lovers drifted into self-indulgence and were carried away by their passions, so now they drift forever."

  In the second circle, Dante saw Cleopatra, and Achilles, and Helen of Troy, and Francesca da Rimini ━━ she had an illicit affair with her husband's brother, and was violently stabbed to death for her sin, along with her lover.

  "Love led us to one death," she had told Dante.

  "I think you're an evil person," Sydney contended, only half-joking. Steve rose his brows at her, smiling all arrogant. "Yeah. I think you're twisted ━━ I think you know exactly what you're doing to me."

  Fingertips digging into her waist with a primal squeeze, Steve brought her somehow closer. Their noses almost touched. She smelt of strawberries and honey and he had never felt like this about anyone in his life.

  "Yeah? And what's that, Nicks?"

  "You're breaking my heart."

  His fingers dug deeper. Not enough to hurt. Just there.

  "And if I say you're breaking mine?" he mumbled. "Then what?"

  Sydney let her forehead rest against his. His pupils were so blown out you could just about see a ring of almond brown melting around them. Their breaths were intermingling and his came out in shallow pants between his parted lips.

  "If I say you've all I've thought about since that day in the bathroom? Then what? Where do we go from there, Nicks?"

  He plunged the knife in long ago, now he just twisted it with the most vicious of devotions. And she let him every fucking time. Of course she did.

  "I would say that we're both terrible people then." Sydney's fingers carded inattentively through his hair. She smiled faintly. He smelt of Faberge Organics again. And mint, and suncream, and made her think of the delirium of first kisses and rollercoasters, and her stomach churned. He was like the perfect first love ━━ girlfriend notwithstanding. "I'd say ━━ this thing we have isn't sustainable. That it's bad for everyone involved. And we should probably back out now before it's too late."

  "And what do you say now? What do you really want to say?"

  Her breath hitched. "I don't wanna say anything."

  "How should this feel?" choked out Steve, strangled. "Should it feel like I'm being fucking gutted? Like a piece of meat at the butcher's, or something ━━"

  "Not everything feels like something else."

  Steve looked alarmed by that.

  "I think whatever the fuck we have is out of the ballpark for most feelings," Sydney murmured. Nancy Sinatra bled into Al Green but they were still swaying to the rhythm of Summer Wine, because to them, nothing existed but each other. The world revolved around them. "Maybe it's alright to not compare it to anything else ━━ maybe it's just you and me, and that's all there is too it, y'know?"

  "You and me, huh?" Steve smiled like a madman. "I like the sound of that."

  Hungry, hunger, hope.

  "Stevie?"

  "Yeah, Nicks?"

  "Just fucking kiss me."

  And he did. Again, and again, and again.

Hungry, hunger, hope.

from dani!

absolute ballache of a chapter. its ugly
and messy, i am sorry. however, it's been split
into 2 parts (yes, this bullshit continues).
ik some of u guys were like "keep it one big
chapter!!!" but this is 8k words my friends,
like i physically couldn't make u go through 20k
of these 2 just being ridiculously in love
and ridiculously stupid and wrong.
ANYWAYS happy august 1st!!!!!!
p.s. for anyone interested, here's a silly
edit of steve's mixtape to sydney<333
the ugly edits i make for this story......