Chapter Text
Dustin’s POV
It was the start of the second week of summer break that Dustin finally caved and called the others.
“Lucas, Max, do you copy? This is Dustin.”
Nothing but static through his headphones. “Shit!” Dustin threw a look over his shoulder. The door to Family Video was closed, but through the glass he could make out Steve behind the counter. It looked like he was working; nothing unusual there. But Dustin knew that something was going on with Steve. Something… weird. It had been going on for days!
Something extremely weird was going on with his friend, and Dustin was determined to find out what it was. He slid back behind the car he’d been using as a cover and activated his mic once again.
“Hey, anyone? This is Dustin! We have a situation! I repeat, we have a situation! Does anyone copy, dammit?”
“Dustin? What is it?” Lucas sounded out of breath. Dustin didn’t want to know why; Max was over there most times these days, so… nope. Not going there. “Is this a code red? Over?”
“It’s not a code red; not yet. But it’s definitely DefCon One. Does anyone else copy? We need strength in numbers! Where is everyone? Over!”
“Dustin, you know that Mike’s gone to California to help Will and his family with the moving back here,” Lucas sounded annoyed. “You were there. We saw him off at the airport last week. What’s wrong with you?”
“Right, yes, I know,” Dustin rolled his eyes. “But what about the rest? Over.”
“What rest? Do you mean Steve?”
“No! This is about Steve, so… no! I mean, his friends. Our friends! Like… Robin, and Nancy, and Eddy, and…”
“What about Steve?” Suddenly, it was Max that Dustin heard through his headphones. She must have wrestled the walkie from Lucas. “Is he hurt? What happened?”
“He’s not hurt. He’s… he’s acting weird. Really weird!”
“Weird as in how, exactly?”
“Isn’t weird kind of like Steve’s default state?” Lucas threw in at the same time. “I mean, it’s Steve!”
“This is different,” Dustin shook his head. He risked a glance across the street to the video store. Steve was still behind the counter, talking and smiling at… someone.
Someone who had been in there for three hours!
“This is weirder than usual. This is, I don’t know.” A frustrated note crept into Dustin’s voice. “And he won’t tell me!”
“So, you talked to him?”
“Yes, I did. Yesterday. Finally, after four days of him avoiding me for no reason. Though he said he didn’t, but he did. Avoid me, that is. I called his house, and at work, then I went by both places, and… nothing.”
“Err, maybe he just took off for the weekend?” Max interjected. “Like, a vacation, a break? After everything he’s been through, after what happened in spring, you know…”
“Steve wouldn’t just leave without telling me,” Dustin was sure of that. “And anyway, he didn’t. Like I said, I cornered him yesterday.”
“And what did he say?”
“That he’s had stuff to do,” Dustin grumbled. “And that it’s none of my business.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“So, why are you making it your business?” Lucas sounded exasperated. “Just leave him alone, man. The guy’s allowed a bit of alone time every now and then.”
“As are we,” Max threw in. Dustin had just enough time to think ‘eww, gross’, before Lucas continued.
“Maybe he was with a girl, ever thought of that? I bet he was having crazy monkey-sex with a girl he just met. It’s what he does after all.”
“No, it’s not. He doesn’t do that anymore; in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Huh? Since when? He used to date a different girl every night!”
“Used to, yes.” Dustin sighed. “It took him a while, but eventually he did bounce back after Nancy broke his heart. I know that. But he’s not like that anymore. Seriously. Not since Vecna. You guys haven’t noticed? Come on, what kind of friends are you?”
“I’ve noticed,” Max stated, just when Lucas could be heard in the background: “The kind of friends that try not to think about Steve Harrington’s sex-life, dude! Eww! Wait… what? You noticed?” He was talking to Max now, obviously.
Dustin waited while the couple on the other end debated whether or not it was acceptable for Max to notice, let alone talk about, the existence of Steve’s sex-life. Eventually Dustin had had enough.
“Guys, guys! Shut up! This doesn’t help us any in ‘Operation Tigerlily’.”
“Operation what now?”
“You’ve got a better name for it?”
“For what?” Lucas shouted. “There’s nothing there, man! So, Steve didn’t talk to you for a few days, boo-hoo! Big deal! Get over it, Dustin. You’re not the center of the world.”
“That’s not…” Dustin had to take a deep breath before he could go on. “That’s not what this is about, man. Seriously, something’s going on with Steve. Something weird. Also, there’s the thing with Eddie’s van…”
“What thing with Eddie’s van?”
“Steve took it,” Dustin revealed. “It’s here, at Family Video. And, before you ask, no! Eddie’s not here. I checked.”
“So, maybe Steve’s car broke down and he borrowed Eddie’s van?” Max was trying to be helpful.
“Nope,” Dustin shot her down. “Checked that, too. Steve’s car is fine. It’s at Eddie’s.”
“You… how exactly did you check if the car’s fine?”
“I took the keys, they were on the kitchen counter of Eddie’s trailer, and I started the car. It worked. So, the car is fine. And Eddie wasn’t there either, or else I’d have asked him about it.”
“Huh.”
“Exactly,” Dustin nodded. “So, Steve took Eddie’s van for whatever reason, and he’s acting all cagey and weird and… and I need to know what he’d need a van for, God dammit!”
“Is he moving out?”
“Out of his parents’ house? Why would he do that? That’d be stupid! They’re never there and he has it all to himself! Why would he want to move out?”
“He’s not moving out!” Dustin was nearly shrieking. “He wouldn’t! Not without telling me!”
“Unless…” Max suddenly had a stray thought. “Guys, what if Steve’s in trouble.”
“Huh?”
“Think about it,” the girl continued. “Dustin’s right; there’s not many things Steve wouldn’t tell us. Especially you, Dustin. Steve’s a total pushover with you, and usually, if you wanna know something, you pester him until he gives in. So, for him to keep quiet like that… it has to be something bad. Something really bad! Something he doesn’t want us to get caught up in. He’s trying to protect us. You. Whatever. He’s being Steve!”
“Oh God,” the thought hadn’t even occurred to Dustin, but… it made complete sense, now, didn’t it? Steve was in trouble, and he was trying to protect them, as always. “Oh my God, he’s in trouble. He’s trying to protect us, the idiot! We need to help him, we need…”
“Dude, calm down,” Lucas groaned. He was starting to realize that his alone time with Max was about to be cut very short very soon. When Dustin got like this, he was like a dog with its bone. He wouldn’t leave it alone.
Especially not when it came to Steve Harrington.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Dustin was still muttering under his breath. He stood up from his crouched position on the sidewalk and started to pace. His legs had been bent for too long, they were starting to cramp. He rubbed his thighs absently and tried to gather his thoughts.
“So, what do we do?”
“I’m going to talk to him,” Dustin said determined. He started walking across the parking lot.
“No, no, no! Wait!” Both Max and Lucas yelled at once. “Dustin, wait!”
“Why?”
“We need a plan! If Steve didn’t want to tell you yesterday, what makes you think he’s gonna tell you now? We need to be smart about this, Dustin!”
Dustin sighed and stopped walking. They were right, he knew. It was just so… frustrating! “Okay, okay.”
“Where are you now?” Lucas wanted to know.
“At the parking lot.”
“The parking lot? Of Family Video?”
“Yes.”
“Does Steve know you’re there? Did he see you?”
“He saw me earlier,” Dustin shrugged and leaned against a blue car, “when he refused to let me in.”
“He what?”
“Yeah, I told you, he’s acting all weird. When he saw me coming he blocked the door. And he said that he didn’t have time for me to hang out there, and that he was busy, and that I wasn’t gonna rent a movie anyway and, basically, he told me to ‘piss off’. And there was this strange woman inside, and I thought ‘Okay, I’m gonna watch you, and the minute either of you leave, I’m on to you.”
“And?”
“What? A woman?” Max wanted to know. “You didn’t mention a woman!”
“Yes, there’s a woman, she’s still in there, and I don’t know who it is, and how she knows Steve, and what she could be doing in there for, like, almost four hours now!”
“Is it a date? Did Steve bring a date to work? Seriously?” Lucas sounded put-out.
“It’s not a date,” Dustin threw back. “It’s not.”
“How do you know?”
“This is not some girl he brought with him. It’s a woman! Definitely an adult.”
“How old is she? Like, a mom? A grandma? Or what?”
“No, not that old!” Dustin had only seen a glimpse of her; Steve had blocked the door very effectively, and most of the windows were covered by shelves, so… he couldn’t be absolutely sure about her age. “But older than Steve, I think. Definitely older than Robin or Nancy. I’d say… about twenty-something. College-age.”
“So, technically, it could still be a date.”
“She’s wearing a business suit, well, no, not a suit. A blouse and skirt, but it screams ‘business’. Not exactly Steve’s type, I’d say.”
“Could it be, like, a business meeting? I mean, maybe she’s Steve’s boss or something? Doing… I don’t know, some kind of revision or whatever it’s called? You know, book-keeping stuff?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?” Max thought it had been good thinking on her part. But Dustin shot her down.
“Because Steve could have just said so. Why hide it? Doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe the business is in trouble? Maybe he’s scared of loosing his job? That’s definitely something he would want to hide.”
“Yeah, but why the van? What would he need Eddie’s van for?”
Dustin let out a deep sigh. This was bullshit! They were going in circles. They could try to come up with explanations for days and it would all be nothing but guesswork. They needed proof!
“Guys, we need to stop guessing and do something instead!”
“Like what?”
“One of you,” Dustin announced, having come up with some sort of plan, “needs to go over to Steve’s house and look for clues. Anything that could tell us what kind of trouble he’s in. You can go through the back, through the woods.”
“Like the Demogorgon did.”
Dustin went on as if he hadn’t heard Lucas. “There’s a gate that leads to the back door. The key’s under the mat.”
“What if his parents are home?”
“They’re not.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” Dustin stated. “We’ve known Steve for what, two years? Three? And how many times have we met his parents? I’ll tell you. None. Nada. Zilch. They’re never at home. They didn’t even come when Steve was in hospital, after Vecna and the demo-bats. Or before, after… Billy.”
“That’s…” Depressing, is what it was. To know that your parents just didn’t care… even if Steve was technically an adult… it was awful.
“Yeah. Anyway, so. One of you goes to Steve’s, and the other needs to try and find Eddie. If anyone knows what’s been going on, it’s him. Steve has his van after all, so…”
“Okay, so I hit the guys from Hellfire Club,” Lucas said. “Maybe they know where Eddie is. What about the others? Nancy? Robin?”
“Nancy went to Cali, too. Remember? I doubt that she knows anything. Still, call her and Mike at the Byers, just to be on the safe side. But Robin’s out. She’s visiting family on the East Coast. I don’t know where, we have no number, so… no. We’re on our own here.”
“What about you, Dustin?”
“I’ll stay here, continuing the observation. That woman has to come out eventually. Then I’ll follow her. And if not… well, Steve has to go take a leak some time, right? As soon as he’s not watching the door like a hawk any longer, I sneak in and… I don’t know. Hide behind a shelf and listen. Or I’ll talk to her. I don’t know.”
“Okay, you stay there, Max goes to Steve’s, and I hit the phone. Meet up at my place in an hour, or radio if something happens, okay?” Lucas liked to state the stats. “Operation… what’s it called again? Whatever, it’s underway.”
“Operation Tigerlily.”
“Why is it called Tigerlily again?”
“Because,” Dustin rolled his eyes. “There’s a poster in the window of Family Video that has lots of flowers on it for whatever reason. And the only one I recognize is the Tigerlily. And I have been staring at it ALL MORNING.”
“Yeesh, alright! Operation Tigerlily it is! Go! Over and out.”