┏━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐭
𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐞𝐥 𝐣𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬𝐨𝐧
𝟐:𝟏𝟐 —————|—— 𝟎:𝟓𝟓
♯ 𝐀 ♯ 𝟎𝟗
𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐦𝐞 : ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▯▯
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

Saturday, Nov. 12, 1983.

IF BRIGGS HAS learned anything over the course of his friendship with Jon, it's that an angry Joyce Byers is something to be feared. Immensely.

And the Joyce Byers who storms into the police station isn't just angry. She's furious. He presses himself against the wall of the station, like he can erase himself from the world if he just becomes small enough. Thank the lord that Joyce is so tunnel-visioned that she doesn't notice him as she walks inside, coat flowing behind her on some phantom wind as if she needs help being even more imposing.

As he lingers outside the building, just close enough to the corner of the wall to keep an eye on the parking lot, he weighs his options, staring at the ratty laces of his Vans.

He could go in now. He should go in now. Or he could hold out for a few minutes, come in after Joyce releases her wrath. It'd hardly be fair. Not that his abandoning Jon in the alley was all that fair, either, but he knew how it'd look—blood on his face and knuckles in front of the officers who'd caught him in similar positions a few too many times before.

He grimaces at the thought of everything he got into near the beginning of Ma's relationship with Danny. He hadn't known where else to put his energy, so he let it out with his fists on whoever he knew would fight back. Those years... well, they didn't leave him with the best reputation. And so when Jon got pressed up against a cop car, Briggs ran.

He isn't sure where Mack disappeared to, but he can hardly blame the guy for booking it. He was maybe the only one there who wasn't at fault for something.

Briggs's thoughts are like a maelstrom, anger and regret and Jon and Mack and sirens and Tommy Hagan's jeering, bloody face and Corey where's Corey where is she and danger and Steve, Steve, Steve—

You're different, Briggs.

Not now.

You, Briggs, you're driving me insane.

Fuck off, Briggs thinks to his little mental Steve. He kicks at a pebble on the asphalt, trying to channel his frustration into something physical. He wishes he was in the pool right now, arms burning, lungs straining.

The blood is gone now, hastily wiped from his jaw and knuckles in a gas station bathroom. He examines his cracked knuckles, already knowing how much they'll sting in the pool, and sighs.

"Come on!" Briggs shouts. "Hit me again! You asshole!"

Jason Carver spits blood onto the pavement, grinning wide and slow. He won't get in trouble for this and he knows it. Hawkins' golden boy. He listens, landing a swing to Briggs's jaw, and Briggs retaliates with a punch to the ribs. There is nothing but the heat and anger of the moment, the fight. There are no consequences. There is no rationale.

There is only Briggs, who needs to punch someone. And there is Jason, someone worthy of getting hit.

He's hauled off Jason by a pair of strong arms, and he struggles against them, twisting in their grip until he turns, eye-level with a Hawkins Police badge. He stares up at the officer, at the name "Powell" shining on his ironed shirt.

He turns around.

Jason is gone.

An angry thud draws Briggs's attention back to the parking lot, where one of the cops—the skinny one with glasses—is strolling toward the front door, from the direction of... shit. The direction of Jon's car. The keys jingle in the man's dark hand, a noisy little beacon of trouble.

What does that look like to a bunch of law enforcement officers? Some hammers, stakes, gasoline, a bear trap... damn it.

The Jason incident repeated itself over the course of a few months, not with Carver but with others willing to throw fists in back alleys, with asshole jocks who wanted to pick on someone. The third time the cops got involved, Ma sat Briggs down and had a long, hard conversation—lecture, more like it—and Briggs had felt like absolute shit. All the crap he pulled while he was trying to shut out his problems instead of face them...

He realizes he can't be here. He can't get caught anywhere near... this. Jon won't give him away. He'll get it. Briggs's track record is too charred with the remains of an angry past. Jon's? His is clean.

And he has Nancy.

Briggs edges around the far side of the building and beelines for the Jeep.

▮▮▮

He doesn't go home.

Somehow Briggs knows, feels it in his gut, that wherever Corey is it won't be there, and he isn't sure he can deal right now with the confirmation of his fears, the worry over where the hell she is with a monster on the loose and the cops on their case.

He heads to Mack's, hoping he's somehow gotten home by now, though he isn't sure how he would've gotten there so quickly on foot. Briggs looked for him, shouted his name down alleyways before he left the theater area, but to no avail. For all he knows, Mack's still there.

Briggs slams his hand into the steeling wheel, wrist smarting at the heavy contact, and grunts through gritted teeth.

"Fuck!" he shouts. He's not even sure what he's yelling about. The situation has just gotten so out of hand.

At the intersection near the camping and hunting store, a glimpse of a familiar baseball cap grabs Briggs's attention. Mack sits on the curb, elbow on his knee and head in his hand.

Briggs cranks down the window.

"Mack," he calls, and his friend looks up, deflating in relief. He jumps up and jogs over to the Jeep, tossing the door open and pulling himself inside before the Honda behind can get upset, and Briggs hits the gas.

"Where's Jon? What happened?"

"They arrested him and found all the shit in his trunk. So. I don't think he's getting out of there anytime soon. Joyce was there, and Wheeler's still with him—"

"Nancy's there?"

Briggs shrugs. "Yeah. I mean. I think." He cuts a glance at Mack's profile, pensive in the passenger seat.

"Where are we going now? Like, what are we gonna do?"

Briggs tightens his fingers around the wheel. "I was really hoping you were gonna have the answer to that."

"The hell?" Mack mutters, and Briggs follows his gaze. At the Cherry intersection, a block or so from Dustin's place, a trail of white vans careens around the corner, heading up toward Maple.

Toward the Wheelers'.

"No," Briggs breathes. White vans. Men in suits. Will, missing. Barb, gone. "Fuck. Fuck."

"White vans," Mack says dumbly, gaping. "Oh, shit, dude, white vans—"

"I know!" Briggs shouts, and he doesn't think it through, of course he doesn't. He just puts his foot on the gas and follows them, praying that he's wrong, that they're headed anywhere but the Wheeler's—or the Sinclairs', he guesses—but the vans hold steady past Elm, past Gloucester, past Dearborn, and they're swarming the Wheeler place like a bunch of overzealous bees around a pollen-heavy flower.

Mack is rambling, spouting theories and telling Briggs to pull the fuck over and put your head down and all Briggs can hear is the roaring of blood in his ears and his heart beating to the uneven rhythm of Corey. Corey. Where the fuck are you?

Briggs stops the Jeep where Maple crosses Dearborn and lingers near the curb, watching. And then he sees a head of blonde hair, infuriatingly familiar, but from where...?

"Holy fuck."

The woman knocking on the Wheelers' door is the same one Briggs saw leaving Mr. Clarke's house. The woman who looked right at him with that unsettling stare of hers. Saw his Jeep. Neatly pressed trench coat, unreadable expression... She's flanked by a tall man in dark clothes, silvery-white hair, saying something incomprehensible—

Briggs haphazardly glances behind him and throws the Jeep into reverse, ignoring Mack's indignant squawks and pulling a very illegal turn over the curb—"What in the name of the sweet Lord, Bridger"—before flooring it back the way they came, back toward the station.

Consequences be damned.

▮▮▮

The station's cool air sweeps into Briggs's face the moment he pushes the door open, but that's not what catches his attention first. Heated yelling comes from the bullpen, a woman, not Joyce—Briggs recognizes the voice of one of the officers, the annoying one with the glasses, trying to talk over her, but she's on a mission and won't be stopped.

"These men are humiliating my son!" she shrieks as Briggs pulls Mack around the corner, staring at the scene in front of them.

A kid, maybe Corey's age, stands beside a white-haired woman, arm wrapped up in a sling.

"No, no, no!" the cop with the glasses protests, and it sounds like a whine. Briggs grimaces. "Okay, that's not true."

"Yes," the woman demands.

The more reasonable one, the one who searched Jon's trunk, breaks in, "There was some kind of fight, Chief—"

"A psychotic child broke his arm!"

Briggs freezes. Staring at Hopper's back, he grabs Mack by the forearm and pulls him past the bullpen before the chief turns around and sees him. A psychotic child.

"A little girl, Chief. A little one."

"That tone! Do you hear that tone?"

"A little girl," Mack echoes as the woman and the annoying officer go back and forth like kids fighting over a toy nobody really wants. The chief barks out an order and silence falls over the group for a moment before the man's footsteps become heavier in the direction of Briggs and Mack.

Mack darts down the hall, making to pull Briggs with, but Briggs digs his heels in, wincing when his Vans squeak on the wooden floor.

"She had no hair and she was bleeding from her nose. Like a freak!" the boy is saying.

"What'd you just say?"

Hopper has seemingly stopped in his tracks, halfway across the room, and Briggs holds his breath.

"I said she's a freak!"

Briggs wants to round the corner and slap the kid until he gets past his repetition and gives them some real information, but he feels like he already knows—the girl was blonde, yeah, but this can't be a coincidence.

The chief also seems hung up on her hair, asking the boy a question, but the conversation becomes hushed and muffled from Briggs's vantage around the corner. He presses his back to the wall, closing his eyes like the lack of one sense might improve his hearing. And then the boy says, nervously, quietly, "She can... do things."

"What kind of things?"

"Like... make you fly?"

"Was she alone?"

"She always hangs out with those losers."

Briggs's stomach drops, making a home six feet underground. He doesn't need to hear the names, he already knows, but some stupid, disbelieving part of him waits.

"You know, the dumb Wheeler kid and the one with the lisp, and that girl who looks like a ghost—"

Ghost Girl.

"Troy," Briggs breathes. This little fucker. Mack grabs Briggs's wrists and forces him away from the wall and down the hallway, maybe sensing his rage and deciding to stop his friend from beating up a kid in a police station, maybe just growing impatient, who knows, and drags him until he runs directly into Jon.

"Gibby?" Jon sputters, and Mack, for once, doesn't even spit out a curse in retaliation at the nickname.

"Superpower chick is with the kids," he blurts, and Jon's eyes grow wide. Briggs's gaze shifts from Jon to the space behind him, and his lips part involuntarily at the side of Joyce Byers, one eyebrow raised, arms across her chest.

"Hi, Joyce," he says weakly. She gives him a look that's an impossible combination of motherly concern, exasperation, and a thinly veiled threat.

Hopper storms down the hall, stopping short at the sight of Briggs and Mack. He glances from them to Joyce and back, face unreadable, mouth slightly open like he can't decide who he wants to reprimand first.

"When the hell—" he starts, and then sighs, throwing his head back. "Whatever. Get your car, we're going." He throws a set of keys at Jon.

"Chief," Briggs breathes in a rush, turning around, and at Hopper's appraising look he shoves his hands in his pockets, like there are still remnants of blood there. His fist closes around the cool metal of a wrench. He didn't realize it was still in his jacket pocket. It probably wouldn't help his case right now.

Something hardens in Hopper's gaze, and even though the chief hadn't seemed to recognize him as anyone other than Jon's friend that day he picked Corey up from school, something's settling in now, a correlation between this Briggs with his fists in his pockets and the one pressed up against a cop car with Jason Carver's blood on his knuckles. He knows he's probably bruising around his jaw, that Hopper's judging him up and down and sideways, but he doesn't care, just needs to get this out—"They're at the Wheelers'. I don't—I don't know what you know, but you have to go—"

"I know, kid."

Briggs bristles at the term but holds his tongue for once, biting it hard enough to nearly draw blood.

"We told them," Jon says, and Briggs turns to him in question, a silent and incredulous everything? What a load of shit that must sound like to the both of them, a monster on the loose and an energy company hunting down some kids. But Jon nods. "Everything."

His eyes narrow, a little hard, and then his gaze shifts to the ground. Shit.

"You three, with me," Hopper orders, gesturing to Joyce, Jon, and Nancy, who's just emerged from the office, frazzled and taking in the sight of Briggs and Mack. Mack waves awkwardly and Nancy hesitates before holding her arm up in a half-wave, features warped with confusion. Briggs nods at her briefly before elbowing Mack.

"We're following."

"No," Hopper barks. "Two cars will draw too much attention. This is not," he snaps as Briggs opens his mouth to protest, "up for debate. You're going to meet us at Joyce's place, and you're not going to tell anyone about this, you hear?" In the narrow hall, backlit by florescent lights and in full uniform, hat pulled low across his brow, he screams authority without saying it.

Briggs is not going to argue.

Mack swallows. "Yes, sir."

Briggs blows air through his nose. "If you don't find them before they do—"

"I am well aware, thank you," Hopper says gruffly.

"If we aren't going back to the house, I'll find a phone and I'll call there, okay?" Jon promises, nudging Mack's shoulder. "I swear." He's not looking at Briggs.

"Jon," he tries. "I—"

"Not now." It's not harsh, but it's flat and unfeeling, dry, and Jon still doesn't look as he starts down the hall, leaving Briggs to stew in his own guilt.

They're gone in a whirlwind of motion, anxious mutters and Hopper's harsh voice cutting through Joyce's worried rambling. And then Mack and Briggs are just standing in the police station hallway, shocked and silent and alone.

For several minutes, the only sound in the Jeep is the Michael Jackson tape playing itself through, punctuated by the noise the tires make against the asphalt. Their minds are too full of the day's chaos and worries and wars to leave room for speech. He misses the first turn after pulling out of the station, lost in his own mind, and mutters a curse or four before turning onto Oak to circle back.

It's Mack who breaks the silence, back at the intersection of the afternoon's events, squashed between the Post and the Radio Shack.

"Huh," he mutters. "Look." Briggs follows his gaze to the movie theater marquee.

Steve Harrington is perched at the top of a ladder, hand over the part of the graffiti that says SLUT in all capitals. For a moment, the scene doesn't register, and then Briggs realizes what he's doing.

His jacket is discarded over one of the ladder's lower rungs, and two movie theater employees stare up at him, one holding the ladder and one seemingly just supervising. Steve scrubs at the words with a rag, all concentration, one foot braced a rung above the other as he leans forward, putting his elbows into it.

"Huh," Briggs echoes, staring as Harrington pauses to push the hair out of his face, still stained with blood.

A car honks behind him, startling him into forward drive. "Jesus," he mutters. But he watches Steve in the rearview mirror, smaller and smaller, as he erases the damage.

Briggs idly wonders if other sorts of damage can be erased, too.

▮▮▮

Jon's house is a wreck.

Christmas lights are strung across the ceiling and walls, hanging from every available surface, and loose tacks and nails mark the cluttered floor all the way from the living room down the hall. "Shit," Mack mutters. Briggs's gut twists.

Jon has been going crazy in here trying to find Will, not the insane kind of crazy but the desperately searching for answers kind, and what has Briggs been doing? Trying to keep Corey from following Will into whatever hellscape he got taken to, yeah, but... beating Hagan up in an alley, running away from the cops, trying to take care of himself and Corey instead of Mack, instead of Jon, instead of his friends who were always there for him when he was at the bottom.

Fucking hell.

Something about the living room grates on him, the evidence of a grieving, desperate family scattered about like forsaken puzzle pieces that worm their way inside him and cut close to the heart. He edges around the corner and into the hall toward Jon's room, but stops outside the door, leaning against the wall.

"I feel really bad for running," Mack murmurs abruptly, fingers twisting in the pockets of his hoodie. Briggs looks at him with furrowed brows.

"You do?" Briggs asks incredulously. "You didn't do anything wrong. I'm the one who should've... I booked it."

"I just feel like I should have been there," Mack whispers, staring at the ground. "I just, like, I—it's just my dad always told me to run when you hear cops, even if you didn't do anything, because—and it's not that I don't trust the chief but I just—"

"Mack," Briggs interrupts with a hand on his shoulder. "You don't need to apologize for that." Mack frowns a little. "Ever. Seriously."

Briggs doesn't know what it's like to be Mack, what it's like to have dark skin in a world so prejudiced against it. He knows Tommy Hagan jeering at him to speak English is a fraction of the things Mack and his parents have had to experience in a white-ass town like this one. He doesn't know how Mack feels, and he doesn't know what to say, what his place is in all this, how to tell him the world is shitty and people are shittier but Mack, he's one of the good ones.

So Briggs just squeezes his friend's shoulder and tries to channel all of it into the gesture, futile as it may be.

Mack is quiet for a long, charged moment.

"I get why you ran, too."

Briggs sighs, air whistling out of his lungs and disappearing into the house as the moment does. His reasons... they stem from choices he made, shitty ones. Decisions rooted in his own anger and self-pity, resulting in bloodstained skin and tarnished names.

Mack never got to choose. And here he is apologizing for it.

The perspective shift is jarring, and Briggs suddenly feels like the world's biggest piece of shit.

Hopper recognized him in that station and did nothing about it. It's not like he and Joyce don't suspect his involvement anyway. It's not like this shit matters, not in the grand scheme of everything going on right now.

It wasn't resentment on Jon's face earlier, not really, for Briggs leaving him in the thick of it.

It was hurt.

God, Briggs hates being wrong.

"He doesn't. And I... I shouldn't have." He meaning Jon, with his stare, his avoidant eyes, his muttered not now. Briggs clears his throat, taking his hand from Mack's shoulder and shaking the tension from his bones. Or trying to. "But we're gonna have to work that out after this jackass monster is in the ground."

▮▮▮

Tires screeching to a halt out front have Briggs standing straight up, eyes wide, listening. The Galaxie's—oh, God, he hopes it's the Galaxie—doors slam in quick succession and Briggs glances at Mack, who mirrors his expression.

Jon's first around the corner, pushing past Briggs and Mack with unintelligible muttering as a greeting. He aims for Joyce's room at the end of the hall.

Briggs waits, hoping, as Joyce appears, then Hopper, then Nancy. No kids. They didn't find them.

Or worse.

Briggs trails the others into the room, shooting a questioning look at Nancy. The room is full of what must be every light fixture in the damn house, lamps crowding the bed, none of them lit, but Jon seems unconcerned as he starts rummaging around.

"Will's walkie talkie," Wheeler explains.

Oh. Smart. As Jon ransacks the desk, Briggs starts searching the closet, Mack the other room, and for a moment the only sounds in the house are heavy breathing and the sound of things crashing to the floor.

"I got it!" Joyce shouts from somewhere, and emerges from beneath a table moments later, frazzled with the device in her hand.

Nancy beats Briggs to it, pressing a button and asking, "Mike, are you there? Mike?"

Briggs bounces on the balls of his feet. The little shit better answer.

"Mike, it's me, Nancy."

As Nancy continues to repeat herself into the speaker, Briggs's heart sinks deeper and deeper in his chest. He feels like it's gluing him to the cluttered floor. Where the hell are they?

Nancy perches beside Joyce on the edge of the bed, asking, "Do you copy?" Briggs leans against the wall beside the door with his hands tangled in his hair, just to do something with them, and Mack has given up on standing entirely and is on the floor beside him. Jon leans against the wall across the room, shifting nervously.

"I need you to answer," Nancy begs. "We need to know that you're there, Mike."

Briggs pushes off the wall abruptly and grabs the Supercom from Nancy's hand.

"Hey!" she sputters, but Briggs is already talking.

"Corey," he says into the speaker, praying, hoping, wishing. "Corey. Pick up the fucking walkie. We're not doing this whole radio silence thing right now. Please."

He's hoping, selfishly, that for some reason she'll answer where Mike didn't, that for some reason his pleading might hold more weight than Nancy's.

There's nothing.

Briggs blows out air angrily through his nostrils, and suddenly the walkie talkie is in Hopper's hands, and he's saying, "Listen, kid, this is the chief. If you're there, pick up." Briggs lets his hands fall to his sides, then stuffs them in his pockets, takes them back out. Fuck. "We know you're in trouble and we know about the girl."

"Please," Briggs whispers to no one.

"We can protect you," Hopper says. "We can help you, but you gotta pick up. Are you there? Do you copy? Over." His tone is deep, laced with the kind of authority that usually has Briggs bristling but now is welcome, so welcome, anything for these kids to pick up—

Hopper lowers the radio, sets it on a nearby dresser. Briggs sinks to the floor. Fuck, he thinks.

"Fuck," Mack says.

Mack bounces between swearing like a sailor and being the perfect Christian child. Sometimes he forgets he's not in the presence of his parents and ends up saying things like fudge and shi—shoot? to Briggs and Jon, who make fun of him relentlessly. Mack usually has the same reservations around all adults, but apparently they're negated by these particular circumstances.

Joyce is standing now, arms crossed tightly over her chest, eyes brimming with unshed tears. She's a sharp contrast to the Joyce of a few hours ago, storming into the police station with a mission and a handful of rage.

"Anybody got any other ideas?" Hopper mutters. Briggs takes the wrench out of his pocket, ignoring the puzzled look Hopper gives him, and starts spinning it between his fingers.

"Yeah," the Supercom crackles. "I copy."

"Holy shit," Briggs says.

"It's Mike. I'm here." A beat. "We're here."

We. We're here. Corey's there.

He has never in his life been so grateful to hear Mike Wheeler's whiny little voice.

Hopper snatches the device up again. "Where are you?"

"Junkyard," Mike says. "We're in an old bus."

"Don't move. I'm coming to get you."

Briggs stands at the same time Nancy does, assuming they're going with, and Hopper immediately shakes his head. "Stay here."

"But—"

"You're not all fitting in a vehicle," he says dryly, and Briggs fists his hands at his sides because the chief is right.

He and Joyce go out to the front room, talking too lowly to be heard, and Nancy soon follows. Briggs groans. Then he glances at Jon.

Mack stands, abrupt. "I'm, uh. I'm gonna. Yeah."

He disappears, closing the door softly behind him.

"Jon," Briggs says after a moment of stifling silence, turning to face his friend. "I—"

"Where the hell were you?" he grits out, his voice hoarse. "You were—you just left."

"I had to—"

"You didn't have to do anything!" Jon exclaims. "I got arrested, and they—"

"You think they would've let me go?" Briggs shoots back. "After all the shit I pulled? You think it wouldn't have been some kind of final fucking strike—"

"You left!" Jon shouts, voice raw. "You ditched me, okay? And for what? Because you were scared? Don't try to play this off like you were innocent, you hit first—"

"For you!" Briggs shouts. Jon stills, panting, but doesn't take a step back. "I hit Hagan because he was talking shit about you."

"I didn't ask you to do that," Jon says low, challenging.

"I know!" Briggs barks. Jon snaps his mouth shut, lips a thin line. "I know," he repeats, quieter this time. "I—I fucking left. I ditched you and I'm—look." He takes a breath, deep, steadying. His cheeks are warm, his hands clammy. "I fucked up, Jon."

Jon's gaze is still hard, but a bit of tension slips from his shoulders at the words. Briggs grits his teeth.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm really fucking sorry."

For a horrible, too-long second, Jon says nothing, just stares at Briggs with his sad, dark eyes. And then all the energy seems to dissipate in the blink of an eye, and Jon just deflates entirely, letting out a heavy breath. "I know," he says. Then he nods, like he's reiterating himself, just for good measure.

"Are we..."

"We're okay." Jon smiles a little, just the corner of his lips tugging up. Thank God. "C'mon."

Briggs follows him out to the living space, that mess of a room encapsulating the emotion and chaos of the past few days. Joyce and Nancy sit beside each other on the couch, Mack sprawled on the floor with his legs stretched out across from them. He salutes them as they walk in.

Jon opens his mouth and then slams it shut, instead opting to take a seat beside his mom. Was he going to say something about the monster? It's not as though Joyce isn't aware of it, aware of the plan to kill it, not after what the cops found in the Galaxie's trunk.

But her brows are drawn tightly together, mouth pinched in that motherly concern she shows every kid she sees. There's no way she'd let them do it, let them risk themselves. They can't tell her. Better to let her think the incident with the cops pushed the idea from their minds.

Briggs sits down beside Mack, letting his head thunk dully against the wall. He hates very few things more than waiting.

He waits.

▮▮▮

It's dark by the time Briggs has changed positions about a dozen times, moving around the room and shifting between standing and sitting and pacing and lying on the floor like a beached starfish. He knows it's driving Mack up the wall, his movement and twitching and humming and sighing, but he can't help it.

Everything is crazy. Everything is insane. Everything is happening.

And none of it is happening here.

Enough time has passed for all of the room's inhabitants to be hopelessly on edge. Jon, too, has succumbed to drumming his fingers anxiously against his thigh, sitting by Joyce and Nancy on the couch, all of them silent and solemn.

Briggs thinks helplessly of Ma and Danny, home from work, staring out into the dark, wondering where their kids are. If he calls, they'll make him leave. Or they'll come get him.

They can't know.

Just another thing to feel guilty about.

Thoughts checker the hours in a haze of broken images. Corey, waiting in a junkyard bus. Jon, pressed to the side of a cop car. The Wheelers' place, swarming with white vehicles. Steve, wiping away those stupid words on the marquee. Steve, a breath away with blood on his face and desperation in his eyes.

Briggs shoots to his feet defensively at the sound of dirt kicking up in the driveway. The headlights stream through the window and all of them stand, Joyce making a beeline for the door before anyone can argue against it. The lights are too blinding after the dimness of the living room for Briggs to tell whose vehicle it is, but God, he hopes it's Hopper's.

By the time Briggs blinks the bright spots from his vision, Jon is gone and Nancy is standing in the doorway, Mack lingering behind her. "Mike!" she cries, the rest of her words getting lost as she, too, runs out into the night.

Briggs bolts out the door behind her, scanning the darkness for Corey as a bundle of kids piles out of the police vehicle. Dustin's curly hair, his stupid hat. Lucas at his side. Nancy, arms wrapped around a shocked Mike off to the side.

"Corey!" he shouts. For a second, he can't find her, looking hopelessly between Dustin and Lucas, and then she emerges from between them, dark hair and stupidly colorful windbreaker, and relief like he's never felt washes over him like pool water. "Holy fuck," he says, and then she's running toward him, crashing into his open arms, and she's crying.

"I'm sorry," she sobs into his chest, and then they're on the ground, just holding each other. "I'm so sorry I didn't tell you, and it all got so big, and I know you said you would help but I—"

"Hey," Briggs interrupts, pressing his cheek to her hair. She smells like dirt and sweat and musty, stale air, and he doesn't give a shit. He breathes it in. "Hey, it's fine. You're here. You're back, you're safe, it's fine. We got this shit, yeah?"

Corey sniffles, pulling away and sheepishly wiping her tears with the back of her hand. "Sorry," she says again.

"Shut up."

"Mean."

"You smell like a dumpster."

There's that smile.

Back inside, it takes Briggs a moment to clock the new addition to the group, a girl in a very dirty pink dress.

He doesn't recognize her without the blonde hair—must have been a wig—but he can put two and two together, the outfit plus Troy's rambling about a kid with a buzz cut back at the station.

"That's El," Mike says, and Briggs's gaze flickers between the girl and Corey.

He desperately wants to ask about the superpowers. Because the girl in front of him threw Lucas Sinclair across a field without touching him, and that's fucking cool. But she's eerily still, wide-eyed with nerves on full display. Asking about the time she screamed at Lucas in a junkyard and disappeared probably isn't the best thing to open a conversation with right now.

"El," he echoes. Eleven. "Uh, nice to meet you, El. I'm Briggs." She smiles, just barely, the tiniest movement of her lips as she nods shyly. He points to Corey. "That one's mine."

For a second, Briggs regrets it, remembering their fight, Corey's outraged expression in the car. You're not even my real brother!

But then she grins widely and nods, nods like she's proud to be his kid sister, and something in his chest swells and he's warm all over and he thinks maybe, maybe, everything's gonna be okay.

▮▮▮

"Okay," Mike says, holding up the sheet of lined paper, a horrible drawing scrawled in red marker. "So, in this example, we're the acrobat." He points with the marker to a tiny stick figure on the wavy line, then moves it to the other side of the... tightrope, apparently? "Will and Barbara, and that monster, they're this flea."

"Weird analogy," Briggs murmurs.

"That's what Clarke was drawing," Mack realizes aloud. "At the wake."

Joyce furrows her brows and Mack shrugs. Dustin nods in confirmation, shooting a finger gun at Mack like you got it.

"And this is the Upside Down," Mike continues. "Where Will is hiding." Joyce, Jon, and Nancy have reclaimed their positions on the couch, lamplight making stray hairs from Nancy's ponytail look like golden thread. The kids cluster on the floor, Mack and Briggs facing them on the ground beside the couch.

"Basically, spacetime has to tear for us to get there," Corey interrupts.

"A gate," Dustin cuts in. Corey nods.

"And obviously there already is a gate," she says, "because Will and Barbara and the Demogorgon—"

"—the what?" Joyce mutters.

"—have gone through it."

"We tracked it to Hawkins Lab," Lucas pipes up. Briggs thinks about those stupid white vans, that blonde lady with her trench coat at the Wheelers' door.

"With our compasses," Dustin says importantly, like he's waiting for applause. He's met with blank stares from everyone but Mack.

"Electromagnetic field," he murmurs.

Dustin grins. "Yeah. So the gate has a really strong one, and that can change the directions of a compass needle."

"What the hell?" Briggs says, and it comes out louder than he intends, because everyone's gaze swivels to him. "Why are you all so smart?"

"Because we don't pretend to read Animal Farm," Corey snarks. Briggs glares at her.

"Is this gate underground?" Hopper steers the conversation back to the topic at hand. And then a new voice breaks in, quiet, hesitant, almost scared.

Eleven.

"Yes."

She's staring at Hopper with wide brown eyes, nervous but unwavering.

"Near a large water tank?" Hopper asks. How the hell does he know...?

"Yes." God, she's so quiet. She's the human embodiment of a mouse. A superpowered, shy mouse.

"How..." Dustin splutters. "How do you know all that?"

"He's seen it," Mike says in awe.

Briggs scoffs. "Yeah, that really clears it up."

Joyce exhales shakily. "Is there any way that you could... that you could reach Will?" She talks directly to Eleven, imploring, soft. "That you could talk to him in this—"

"The Upside Down," Eleven finishes quietly. Joyce nods.

So does Eleven.

Nancy and Mack speak up at the time time.

"And my friend—"

"—and Barbara."

They blink at each other, surprised, and then Nancy turns back to Eleven. "Can you find her, too?"

Eleven nods again, barely perceptible.

"So we're doing this?" Briggs breaks the silence. "Or are we just, like, going to dramatically stare into each other's eyes for—"

"Shut up," Corey says.

"You shut up."

"I wasn't talking."

"Ooh-kay!" Nancy claps her hands together once and stands. "Enough of that. Um, Eleven." She turns to face the girl, offering her a small smile that she almost returns. "What do you need us to do?"

▮▮▮

a/n:

sorry this took seventy-nine years. Greta (nocturnalamp) finally motivated me to update this and so i did, everyone say thank you greta !!

guys i love the next chapter i am so excited about it it's one of the best ones bc MONSTER FIGHTING WOOOO

do i know i have an italics problem? yes. do i plan to do anything about it? no.

lmk your thoughts & predictions! or hopes or fears or favorite type of turtle!

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