Broken & Pretty..Steve Harrington

041.

THE PLAN

⇾good old fashioned lover boy by queen

i'd like for you and i to go romancing

⸺THE day after Tiffany's weird outburst where she just randomly got into the thing she feared the most, Dustin and Cory wanted to talk to everyone about it because it was for sure a little weird. Steve drove Tiffany to work and Dustin, Cory and Robin were already there. They walked into their work and Dustin quickly pulled Steve into the back room. This left Tiffany confused. Tiffany walked behind the counter and opened the window. "What are you doing, Dust?"

"I have to talk to everyone, can you just cover for them?"

"Honestly, I'm a little sick of covering for everyone."

"Can you just give us a minute please?!" Tiffany looked at Steve and he just shrugged his shoulders. "What is this even about?"

"It's not important we'll tell you later."

"Wait, wh-" Cory cut her off by closing the panel in the window on her face. Tiffany scoffed and threw her bag under the counter. There were never customers in the morning, but they still had to come in. Tiffany started drawing on a notepad that was on the counter and she started drawing the new Mind Flayer subconsciously. She completely spaced out and she couldn't even hear things.

In the back room, Dustin started off the conversation with his concern. "Alright, so something weird happened yesterday with Tiff."

Steve immediately was all ears. "What happened?"

Cory answered him. "She got in our car last night and just...drove away."

Robin scoffed, not believing it. She knew about Tiffany's fear of driving. Steve shook his head. "No, she didn't. If she overcomed her fear that quickly, she would've told me immediately."

Dustin shrugged his shoulders and answered Steve. "Well, she did. We were walking to the front door and she stopped walking with this blank look on her face. Then she got in the car and drove away without a word."

"And this morning, her eyes were all red and puffy." When Steve saw her, they weren't. "No, they weren't."

"Well, when she first got up they were, but as soon as she got ready, she was fine. Did either of you see something off about her?" Robin shook her head, but Steve had seen something weird. "Actually, yesterday her scar had black veins coming out of it. It looked sort of like roots and Billy was being oddly nice to her apparently. It doesn't have anything to do with her, but they might be connected."

Robin then opened the window and saw a pile of the same Mind Flayer drawings, stacked up on the counter. "Is this considered weird for her?"

Dustin, Steve and Cory saw it and they all said at the same time, "Yes."

Steve walked out to the front and put his hand on her back, which startled her. "Jesus! You scared me."

"Sorry, bub. What are you drawing?" Steve picked up one of the drawings. "I don't know. I'm just doodling."

"This is doodling?" He held up one of her drawings and Tiffany shrugged her shoulders. "Yeah."

Steve looked back at the other three and they shooed their hands, signaling for Steve to ask her about the driving. Steve put her drawing back in the pile. He put his hand on Tiffany's shoulder and she turned to face him with a smile.