Chapter Text
The silence in Ms. Kelley’s office wasn’t peaceful. Dustin felt the pressure building in his ears, a physical manifestation of the ‘click-clack-click’ of her gold clock pendant. Every second that passed without him being ‘productive’ felt like a betrayal.
“Dustin,” she said, her voice irritatingly level. “You’re bleeding.”
Dustin looked down. He’d been aggressively picking at the cuticle of his thumb, a raw, red, jagged mess that he hadn’t even noticed. He didn’t stop. He just wiped the blood on his jeans and gripped the edge of his chair until his knuckles burned white.
“It’s fine,” he bit out. His voice was higher than usual, tight and brittle. “I’m fine. Can we move this along? I have a–“ he checked his watch really quickly. “–12:15 with the Superintendent’s secretary.”
“Steve Harrington told me you’ve stopped going home,” she said gently. “I know he was an old student here. He came to drop your algebra textbook off. You left it in his car. Inside the Family Video parking lot,” she finished, clasping her hands on the desk and straightening a bit.
Dustin’s head snapped up, curls bouncing. The betrayal stung more than his thumb. Steve was supposed to be his teammate, the guy who guarded the door, not the guy who sold him out to a dumb woman with a clipboard and a “sympathetic” head tilt.
“Steve is a colossal idiot who thinks a concussion counts as a personality trait,” Dustin spat, chest heaving. “He doesn’t get it. He thinks we can just…” he was already gesturing wildly, and it grew a bit more exaggerated. “wait for things to get better. But things don’t get better, Ms. Kelley. They get buried. People get buried.”
His leg started to go– a frantic, rhythmic drumming of his worn sneaker against the floor.
“He’s worried, Dustin. We’re all worried. You’re trying to restart a club that–rightly or wrongly–is the center of a police investigation. The school sees ‘Hellfire,’ and they see a motive for satanic rituals– murder.” She frowned.
“Then they’re wrong!” Dustin screamed.
He stood up so fast his chair let out an agonizing screech. He didn’t care. He was vibrating, hands shaking so hard he folded them in his armpits.
“It was a game! It was just a stupid, beautiful game that made us feel like we weren’t total losers for 5 minutes! And if I let them kill it–if I let them say it was evil–then they win. Then the... the ‘earthquake’ wins.”
He started pacing the five-foot span of the office, his limp more pronounced than usual, a physical reminder of the day the sky turned red. He felt like he was suffocating. The walls seemed closer, the same way the trailer ceiling felt when the world was ending.
“You think I’m crazy,” he whispered, pitched and ending with a weak, breathless laugh. He spun around to face her, eyes wide and dark from days of no sleep. “You’re looking at me like I’m a ‘case study’. Like I’ll bite you. But I’m the only one left who’s actually doing anything! Lucas is sitting in a hospital room waiting for a miracle that isn’t coming. Mike is.. Mike’s a ghost. Will is doing some stupid shit at his house– and– and Eddie is..” he felt guilt for what he said, but the mention of his name washed over it.
A sharp, jagged sob tried to escape, but he converted it to a snarl, teeth baring.
”I have to get it back,” he said, voice dropping to a desperate hiss. “If I can just get the club back.. If I can get them to see that he wasn’t a monster.. then maybe I can breathe again. But you sit there with your clock and your tea and act like ‘time’ is going to fix this. Like a ‘its okay to be sad’ speech is going to fix this. Time? Time is just making the lie bigger,” he spat the last words out.
In the finality, he snagged his backpack and swung it over his shoulder, petitions and stolen school record pulling him over a bit. He didn’t wait for a dismissal, just jabbed a finger down on her desk to exaggerate his anger, and left. He couldn’t handle the click of that damn necklace.
He threw the door open and stumbled into the hallway, vision tunneling. The noise of the school was a physical assault. He was halfway to the exit when he slammed into a solid chest before he could even process who was in front of him.
“Hey, watch it– Dustin?”
Dustin looked up, his face a mask of sweat and raw, unshielded grief. It was Mike. Mike had this look, exhausted too, but in a dull, hollow way that made Dustin’s blood boil. Mike’s eyes flickered to the door he exited, the one with Guidance Counselor printed beside the door, and his eyes widened in genuine surprise– maybe worry, concern, but Dustin wouldn’t let himself think that.
“Wait, what were you doing in there? Are you okay?”
Dustin recoiled, his eyes darting around the hallway like he was looking for an escape route. He felt a hot flash of shame follow the anger. He didn’t want Mike to know he was being “counseled”. Monitored. He didn't want anyone to see him as a victim.
“I’m busy, Mike,” Dustin snapped, clutching the straps of his backpack so hard the material made a noise. “I’ve got the signatures. I just need to find a faculty advisor who isn’t a total coward.”
Mike’s face fell, that heavy, defeated look that Dustin hated more than anything. “Dustin… stop. Just.. stop for a second. We talked about this. The Hellfire thing? The board denied the appeal yesterday. It’s over, man. We have to let it go.”
Dustin froze. He looked at 𝚑̶𝚒̶𝚜̶ ̶𝚋̶𝚎̶𝚜̶𝚝̶ ̶𝚏̶𝚛̶𝚒̶𝚎̶𝚗̶𝚍̶ him, and for a second, he didn’t see Mike. He saw another obstacle.
“Over?” Dustin’s voice was a low, dangerous tremor. “You think it’s over?”
“No– I mean, the appeal is over, Dustin,” he swallowed. “The school board denied it. They voted on it and everything. That's what I meant”.
“Oh,” Dustin said, laugh coming out high and cracked. “The appeal is over. Well then, pack it up, guys. The bureaucrats have spoken.”
“Come on,” Mike said, already tired, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” Dustin demanded, hands shaking again. He curled them around the straps of his backpack. “Make jokes? Argue? Breathe?”
“Act like I don’t care,” Mike shot back, voice sharper now. “Like Hellfire didn’t mean anything to me. I was there too, remember? I didn’t just materialize in California.”
“Yeah, you were there,” Dustin said, voice suddenly quiet. It sort of scared the shit out of Mike. “You were there at that table, rolling dice, laughing when Eddie did the voices. You were there when he waved the freak flag for us.” Dustin suddenly paused, staring up at Mike. “You were there when they started calling him a satanist in the hallways.“ He took a step closer. “And now you’re the one telling me to let it go.”
Mike flinched like he’d been hit. “You think this is easy for me?” he asked. “You think I don’t hear them? In class, in gym, in the locker room–‘that freak from your club,’ ‘are you a devil worshipper like your friend?’ You think I don’t want to do anything about it?”
“Then do something.” Dustin snapped. “Do something with me. Don’t just–“ he gestured wildly, “Fold!”
“It’s not folding,” Mike insisted, but there wasn’t much heat in it. “It’s… strategy.”
Dustin let out another laugh that sounded like a cough. “Oh, well, excuse me, General Wheeler. What’s the big master plan? Let them keep spitting on his name until everyone forgets he was a person?”
Mike’s jaw clenched, leaning in. He was notably quieter than Dustin, like he was embarrassed to be heard right now. His hair was still mostly long, like he forgot what a haircut was, his brows furrowed, and his mouth was frowning. He inhaled. “My plan is to not get expelled or arrested or– or worse, okay? You’re walking around shoving petitions in people's faces and stealing files out of the office–yeah, I heard about that–and think they’re gonna shrug and say, ‘wow, this kid really loves his dead friend, let’s give him a club room’?”
Dustin’s nostrils flared. “So what, we hide? Again? Smile and wave and pretend nothing happened? You sat at that table with him for months, Mike.” His voice cracked. “You know who he was. You know what this meant to him. To us.”
“I know,” Mike said, louder than he meant. He glanced around quickly, looking for anyone. “I know who he was. I know he gave us a place when everyone thought we were freaks. I know he died buying us time, and I know you were right there when it happened, and I wasn’t, and I am never going to be able to pay that back. I think about it every day, how I could’ve been there, done something, talked to him. Been with you. But my plan isn’t ‘get Dustin Henderson lynched by the town next.’” Mike hissed, leaning closer as he scowled, hand tightening on one of his backpack straps.
“That’s not what this is!” Dustin yelled. “It’s not about me!”
“Yeah,” Mike snapped. “That’s kind of the problem!”
Dustin blinked. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re acting like you don’t exist outside of him anymore,” Mike said, words tumbling out before he could even censor them. “Like you’re just–whatever’s left of Eddie, walking around on a busted ankle with a clipboard and signatures you bullied out of freshmen.”
Dustin’s face stilled, then twisted. “At least I’m doing something.”
“I’m doing something!” Mike insisted. “I was in that meeting, okay? I sat there for three hours while a bunch of old guys in ties asked if we were inviting ‘demonic practices’ into the school. I watched Ms. O’Donnell pretend she didn’t know us. I asked them so many questions. I heard your name out loud with the word ‘accomplice’ next to it. And I watched every single guy in that room decide they’d rather believe in a satanic panic than admit they screwed up, okay? What more do you want from me, Dustin?”
“Then why the hell are you siding with them?” Dustin demanded.
“I’m not,” Mike said. “I’m just not handing them more ammo.”
Dustin shook his head, curls bouncing. “No. No, you know what? If you really believed in him, if you trusted him like you say you did, you wouldn’t be trying to make this… tidy.” his eyes were bright and wild. “You wanna know what Eddie would say?”
Mike’s throat tightened. He already knew this was going somewhere terrible, but he couldn’t stop himself. He swallowed, genuinely confused. “What?”
Dustin bared his teeth in something that wasn’t a smile.
“Why don’t you ask Eddie?”
The words hit Mike like a physical blow. His stomach dropped, and Dustin’s eyes went wide. Dustin looked like he was hearing himself for the first time, and he prayed he could stuff the words back down his throat. Nausea washed over quickly.
“Dustin–“ Mike said, voice faint, shaking. “That’s not–“
“Yeah,” Dustin cut in quickly, almost choking. “Yeah, no, you can’t. Because he’s gone. And the only people who actually give a shit about that are busy telling me to calm down.”
“That’s not fair,” Mike whispered, thin. He already leaned back by now, seeming smaller than Dustin.
“Fair?” Dustin echoed, scoffing, almost another laugh. “You wanna talk about fair?” his voice climbed with each word. “Lucas is in a hospital room, praying to a god that clearly doesn’t care if we live or die. Will is stuck with–“ Dustin gestured, before growling, hands falling. "Whatever! Whatever, Michael!"
Dustin couldn’t think of words anymore, body shaking with anger. A teacher stepped in and forced them off to their classrooms, and Dustin caught one last glimpse at Mike, who was wearing an unreadable grimace. Something in Mike’s face scraped at him, sharp and insistent, but he shoved it down before he could name it.