𝐖𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐍. ˢᵗᵉᵛᵉ ʰᵃʳʳⁱⁿᵍᵗᵒⁿ ¹

026

026. 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗱.

𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐈 𝐖𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐃 𝐁𝐄 𝐋𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐅 𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐀𝐈𝐃 that she wasn't avoiding Steve Harrington the whole time in the shed. After she'd spoken with Nancy and had her mind completely and unfortunately sputtered, she tried to put up a front— pretending as if Nancy had simply made acquainted conversation with her. She'd walked into the shed and avoided Steve's questions with usual arcane answers, and he didn't press any further because he knew what Lori Philbin was like. If she didn't want to talk, she didn't want to talk. And besides, there were so many more important things to be concerned about.

So why, the entire time they stuck cardboard to the walls, was Steve trying not to think about her? In some stupid state of fucking denial, he tried and tried to toss her out of his mind— and on the other side of the shed, she'd been doing the exact same thing. Moving to a different task when they winded up next to one another, or grabbing a new piece of cardboard when his hand accidentally brushed against her's on the wall as he stapled. There were so, so, so many things to worry about. There was danger looming form every possible angle. Why couldn't they just think about that instead? They tried to convince themselves to.

Lori was having an easier time at this than he was. All her life, she'd closed up when things got too heavy, she'd learned how to dissociate when it suited her, and she learned what fucking denial was. If she wasn't preparing a shed to fight off demons from an alternate dimension, this would be a whole lot more peachy— she could avoid Steve Harrington as if he didn't exist. But she had to see Dart, she had to walk into Dustin's room and throw herself into this mess. She just had to thrust her and Steve into a world of forced proximity where it was absolutely impossible to not think of one another, when danger and death lingered in the air outside their shelter. And it was hard to avoid him. Lori had never had a hard time avoiding anyone— even her own father.

But their lover's quarrel didn't halt the plan in any sense. The shed had been prepared. Thanks to everyone in the house, the kids, the teenagers, and Joyce and Hopper— the shed was fully disguised and absolutely unrecognizable. They'd worked hard and fast, together, as one big group. They duck-taped cardboard pieces to the walls, they'd stapled sheets to the ceiling, they'd covered every square inch of the floor with newspapers and old sheets of parchment, and duck-taped the hell out of two chairs. The shed was completely enclosed in construction materials, there was not an inch left uncovered or a speck of original wooden walls visible. Someone had gone in every few minutes to check on Will, and it was mostly Lori who offered to take that job.

Now, Will. Hopper made Steve bring Lori and the kids inside so they didn't have to see Will being tied to the steel post (covered in newspaper sheets) with rubber wires, still unconscious. They'd left the shed and walked inside the house, and Nancy had followed too. The only people in the shed were Joyce, Hopper, Jonathan, and Mike. Lori felt that it was fair, because those were his closest loved ones. And she didn't really want to see what he was like under no sedation— she didn't want to see how a possessed person acted, and especially not an innocent child like Will.

It was far into the night when she found herself sitting on the living room floor, now, in the center of all the tunnels. Her finger was tracing along the outlines of the drawings, her legs crossed in the middle of the room. Steve was in the same room, standing at a distance, practicing his bat swinging. Dustin was standing by the kitchen window and gazing out at the backyard nervously, Nancy was leaning against the kitchen wall, and Max and Lucas were sitting in the hallway, across from one another, talking— but their voices were too low to hear. The house was quiet.