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"This is bullshit!" Dustin shouted at the locked door.
"I don't think they're gonna open it up just because you're screaming at them," Steve said. He sat between Nancy and Robin, slumped against the wall.
"I don't trust them with Eddie," Dustin turned sharply away from the door towards Steve. "And maybe if some people would join me, they'd actually listen to us."
Nancy replied before Steve could, thank God. "They're not going to listen to us, Dustin. We have no leverage. And if we're really lucky, they're gonna save Eddie's life despite that."
It was blunt. Nancy's bluntness always rubbed Steve the wrong way; he was only blunt when he was upset. Nancy was blunt with the people she trusted; it should have been a blessing to be included. Instead, during their relationship, it felt like she was constantly judging him and letting him know he didn't measure up. However, it worked for Dustin and quieted the rage brewing in him.
"Do you think they're gonna keep us here for forty days?" Robin asked. She cut through the awkward silence like a switchblade flicking out in the middle of a fight at school, suddenly escalating it.
"I'm sorry, what?" Nancy asked.
Robin was awkward and didn't know how to add to a conversation or change the topic with any subtlety, but she always had a reason to ask a question or blurt out an answer to an unasked one. That very weirdness was one of Steve's favorite things about her.
"The root of quarantine is four like quarter or quattro."
Steve nudged her shoulder. "Robbie, that doesn't tell us anything. You gotta connect the ideas for us."
"They said, 'we're putting you in quarantine,' right?"
"Right," Steve agreed.
"Well, I realized that quarantines are probably in sets of four. Or maybe forty days. Because the root of the word." Her words sped up with each statement, and Steve knew she was beginning to panic.
They were all due for a post-fight freakout. Steve hadn't had his yet; traditionally, it didn't hit him until he was in his house. Dustin was in the anger phase of his. He wasn't sure about Nancy, but figured she was like him and needed privacy and familiarity to break down.
Robin tended to have verbal diarrhea when she panicked. The come down after the almost end of the world, included. "And I just thought that there's only a little bit more than forty days until graduation, and I don't think that a shady, secret government organization is going to coordinate with the school to get us our homework, so that means I won't graduate on time. And I'll have to go to summer school. But if I have to go to summer school, then the conditional acceptance I had to Smith won't apply. Because, technically, I was accepted, but with the implication that I would graduate. On time. But I can't. Because we're in quarantine." She was breathing too fast for her speech now, each sentence coming out short and choppy.
"Robin, Robbie, Robs. Will be fine." Steve tried to reassure her, but he didn't believe himself. He thought his own voice sounded flat and distant. "Will was practically a baby when he was in the Upside Down, unprotected, and he was fine, mostly. And everybody else was in the tunnels, the next time, and we didn't have to quarantine, let alone worry about anything. They're gonna-" Steve faded out because he didn't know what would happen, and he couldn't imagine a way out of this.
Nancy picked up Steve’s optimism as he faltered. "Steve's right."
"Broken clock," Dustin bitched.
Steve rolled his eyes and bit his tongue. He was sick of Dustin's attitude, but the kid had also held Eddie as he was slowly bleeding out in the Upside Down, and despite the shower and sweatsuits they were now wearing, blood-stained under his fingernails. Eddie's blood. Steve would give him a good talking to at some point, or tattle on him to Claudia, but now was not the time.
Nancy glared at Dustin, and Steve couldn't tell if it was for the interruption or the statement. He liked to think it was both. She continued, "We have all survived things that should have killed us. More than once." She picked at the hem of her sweatshirt and glanced at Steve's torso. "Whatever they do with us in here, it is not the worst thing that has happened to us this week."
The holding room was quiet except for Robin's quick breaths and the vent rattling above them. It was less than a week since Chrissy died in Eddie's trailer. Less than a week, and there was so much more blood in Hawkins. They'd killed Henry, but fuck, was it even going to help? Or would this shit always come back?
Steve felt Robin's shoulder press back into his. He hadn't realized how much of his weight he'd been putting on her until she leaned into it instead of away. He looked at her. She was still breathing too fast, eyes fixed on the middle distance, jaw tight.
"Hey." He whispered. There was no privacy in this small room, but he needed her to know he was speaking just to her.
She glanced at him, away from whatever noise her brain was churning up.
"We got that bastard. And we saved the world," he said; it didn't matter if he believed it. Robin needed this. Probably Dustin, too. "Again. I think that counts for something."
"It doesn't feel like it," she said, equally quiet.
"No," he agreed, honesty leaking out of him even as he tried to keep it inside. "It really doesn't."
It went against his impulse to cheer her up, but that was the right thing to say, because some of the tightness left her jaw.
"Smith will still take you," he said. "And if they don't, they're idiots, and you're better off."
The corner of her mouth turned up, just barely. "You don't know anything about Smith."
"I know it's in Massachusetts. I know you got in. I know it only allows girls." He grinned at her, happy to let the others in the room think the joke was about his own desire to date a college full of girls and not Robin's. "That's enough."
"Women, dingus. It allows only women. 'Girls' is a pejorative when used to describe grown adults. And college students are grown, adult women."
"Sorry, you're right. Women."
She exhaled, long and slow, and her breathing evened out.
Across the room, Dustin leaned against the wall and sank down. He pulled his knees to him and stared at his hands.
Steve watched him for a moment, feeling an ache in his chest. It was still shock, anger, and sadness, but it was also, maybe, hope.
"For what it's worth," Steve said, louder, addressing the room again, "I think Eddie's going to be fine. He was lucid as we came out of the gate, and they took him right away. And when they," he gestured to his own bandaged, cleaned, and abraded chest. "They told me it looked worse than it was. The same is probably true for Eddie."
Nancy echoed him with her own kindness. "Lucas, Max, and Erica know where we were, and they heard the radio call that we all got out. We know they're fine, too. Let's hope the quarantine isn't forty days, but even if it is, we'll survive it."
Dustin didn't say anything. But he stopped staring at his hands. His eyes were brimming with tears. Nancy got up from her place next to Steve and sat down next to Dustin. He slumped against her, and took a deep shuddering breath. He didn’t start crying, but whatever rage had been fueling him for the last few hours was finally spent.
Robin tipped her head sideways until it rested against Steve's shoulder. Maybe he’d have his break down soon. If this went on long enough. The familiarity of Robin’s heartbeat enough for him to let go.
Right now, the four of them sat together in the unflattering fluorescent light of wherever they were, the hum of the vent the only sound, and waited.