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Dustin watches with wide eyes when Billy falls to the ground. They grow even wider when Max grabs Steve's bat and slams it between the bully's legs. The surprise on Billy's face gives him a dark kind of satisfaction. When Max moves again after Billy's head drops back on the floor and his eyes stay closed, Dustin is halfway convinced that she's going to kick him for good measure. He's tempted to himself, but she deserves it the most.
Then she bends at the waist and grabs the keys out of Billy's front pocket and Dustin has to bite back a sigh of disappointment. His heart is thumping away in his chest, his body shaking with adrenaline after the fight he just witnessed, and he's itching to move. To do something. To kick Billy Hargrove while he's within reach after what he did to—
"Steve!"
Dustin pushes away from the wall and scrambles to Steve's side. He's on his back, blood running down the sides of his face. His breathing is off and when Dustin gives him a gentle shake while calling his name, Steve doesn't respond at all.
"Is he…" Max asks, dropping to her knees on Steve's other side. Her face has gone white as her hands hover over Steve in panic. She looks like Dustin feels; panicked, needing to help, not knowing how.
"I don't… I don't know," Dustin reluctantly admits and immediately has to resist the urge to gag. He hasn't known Steve for very long, but the idea of him dying defending them, defending Dustin's best friends who he barely knows at all just because Dustin dragged him back into it makes him sick. He's not the jerk that Dustin always assumed he was when he first started dating Nancy. A jerk wouldn't have put himself in between them and danger—not just Billy Hargrove, but those demodogs at the junkyard, too.
Max finds one of the few undamaged spots on Steve's face, pressing the backs of her fingers gently against him. She swallows loud enough that they can all hear her. Dustin wonders if she's thinking about the same things he is. She'd been the one he stepped in front of when the demodog broke its way into their shelter at the junkyard.
"Steve?" she says. "Steve, please just…"
Her words trail off and when Dustin looks, he sees that she's crying. He isn't far behind; his eyes are wet, too, and threatening to spill over if he so much as blinks.
"We have to get him into the car," Mike says and Dustin and Max both look at him with wide eyes.
"We can't move him!" The words are right on the tip of Dustin's tongue, but surprisingly, it's Lucas who says them. Mike opens his mouth, but Lucas shakes his head. "I know we need to help El, but he just saved us from…"—they all look towards Billy's unconscious body before looking back at each other—"but we can't move him and we can't just leave him here."
Dustin curls his fingers around Steve's wrist and tries to think. They could call the police, but without Hopper to help smooth things over, who knows how much trouble they'll be in? And how much trouble they'll make for Will's family after this is all over. That's the last thing they need. Any of them. They could try to bandage him up a little, but Dustin doesn't think a couple of bandaids will be enough to fix this. Not on their own.
He wishes he could do something, anything, to— wait. There is something he can do. It's crazy and it might not work and Steve will probably be angry about it later, but that would be okay. So long as he's alive to be angry, Dustin can handle whatever that will mean for them later.
Using the grip he has on Steve's wrist, he lifts Steve's near-lifeless hand. Steve being unresponsive means it takes a couple of tries to join their hands together like he needs to, but he manages it in the end.
"What are you doing?" Mike asks, panic in his voice.
"Something crazy," Dustin tells him, "now I need to concentrate so be quiet."
Dustin has never formed a soulbond before. None of them ever have; it's not something people do at their age— not on purpose. But he's seen it in movies and learned about how it works in school. That should be enough to make it work here. It has to be. If he doesn't do something, he's afraid that Steve won't survive long enough to make it to the car and Dustin can't be part of the reason Steve Harrington dies. Not when he's only just realized that he's actually a decent guy.
He squeezes Steve's limp hand, closes his eyes, and imagines the threads of his soul weaving their way down his arm and through his fingers. Pop. Dustin inhales sharply through his nose in surprise when he feels those threads begin to tether to Steve's. It feels almost too easy, the way Steve's soul welcomes his, entwining without a fight. But the hum in Dustin's fingertips and the heat growing between their joined hands are proof of it working.
Steve's next breath comes out as a wheeze, strained and painful sounding. Heart leaping into his throat, Dustin snaps his eyes open. "It's not working! It isn't enough…"
None of the wounds on Steve's face have gotten any better. The healing process should have been immediate; all Dustin's ever learned about soulbonds is how miraculous they are at healing people, even when they're at death's door. But the bruises on Steve's face are as bad as ever and his breathing seems to be getting worse.
"I don't—"
Another hand joins his and he follows the arm to find Max reaching over Steve's body.
Lucas scrambles away from where he's been standing with Mike. He rushes to Max's side, wide eyed and freaked out and Dustin is right there with him. "What are you doing?"
Max glances up to meet Lucas' eyes for a second before staring at where her hand has joined Dustin's and Steve's.
"He saved me," she says, her voice low but determined. "More than once. He doesn't even know me but he put himself between me and one of those… things. And he stopped"—her breath catches in her throat but they all know what she's thinking—"so I'm going to try and help save him back."
Dustin watches her close her eyes and concentrate, just like he'd done before. It feels like no time at all before she's gasping, feeling that same welcome from Steve's soul as Dustin had gotten. A pulse goes through their hands and Dustin realizes he can feel them both now. It's a surreal experience; it wasn't long ago at all that he'd been feeling jealous of Lucas and Max getting so close and now Dustin is the one feeling her soul mixed with his.
"Is he?" Max asks and they all look at Steve to find no change. "I don't get it, this should work."
"It will work," Lucas says, kneeling on the ground and reaching out to join them. Dustin's eyes go wide. He wouldn't have expected Lucas to want to go along with their attempt. "He saved me, too."
"You're all crazy," Mike says and he's not wrong. This whole thing is crazy. But they're going through with it anyway. Steve needs help and they're going to do everything they can to make sure he gets it; Mike will just have to deal with their Party having two new members instead of one.
"You can help us or you can shut up," Max tells him, but there's no anger in her voice. She's as scared as Dustin is that this will all be for nothing, he can feel it. If Steve dies now, it will be even worse than it would have been earlier because they'll feel it now.
"C'mon Mike," Lucas says and it's asking too much of him. Mike loves El. He's probably been planning to do this very thing with her after this is all over. After their year apart, Mike is never going to want to let El out of his sight again.
To Dustin's shock, though, Mike drops down on the ground next to him and joins in. When he can't help staring, Mike rolls his eyes. "You're not going to let this go until we help him. We'll figure out how to break it later."
Lucas' and Mike's souls join theirs as easily and eagerly as theirs had with Steve and suddenly Dustin closes his eyes, wondering how he's gone his whole life without that feeling. His best friends' souls are warm and steady and it's going to hurt when they all have to do what Mike said and break their new bond after the world is saved.
The warmth between their hands grows to an almost uncomfortable degree and this time Dustin knows it's working. There's no mistaking it.
The best proof of all is when Steve's next breath is an actual breath and not a strained, awful wheeze.
"Did we just…" Max asks quietly.
Dustin opens his eyes and stares hard at Steve's bloody face. He nods.
Mike sighs from his spot next to Dustin. His free hand falls heavily on Dustin's shoulder. "He's not going to be happy about this."
"I know," Dustin says, wrapping his free hand around as much of their hands as he can reach to clutch them all together. "He can yell at us about it later."
"I don't know," Lucas says as he looks down at Steve's face before meeting Dustin's eyes. "Steve's not as bad as we thought he was. He might not yell."
Dustin laughs and if it comes out a little wet, nobody mentions it.
"He's going to yell," he says, but he's almost looking forward to when that happens. It'll be better than this silence.
"We still need to help El," Mike says. He at least has the decency to sound reluctant to bring it up. That means a lot, almost more than what he's just done, especially with El in danger. Dustin can't blame him for his one track mind when it comes to her; he's apparently not a whole lot better himself, considering the lengths he's just gone to, to help Steve Harrington of all people.
"Okay," Dustin looks Steve over more closely, noting how some of his injuries don't look as bad as they had a minute ago, "let's get him into the backseat."
The four of them barely manage to get Steve up and out of the house and getting him into the backseat of Billy's car is even harder while trying to avoid knocking him into things. But eventually they do manage it. Dustin is quick to sit in the back and wrap his hand around Steve's wrist the second he gets the chance.
They're going to have to have a long talk when the night is over and Steve is back on his feet, but for now they have another friend to save.