Alice the Amazing ⇒ STRANGER THINGS

[Bonus Chapter] The Many Firsts of Alice and Steve

A/N Merry...St. Patrick's Day? This was supposed to be a Christmas bonus chapter and uhhhh it's about three months late. Oops!

This was just going to be a short thing and now it's practically novella length. Idk what happens when I write for this fic! It's like I black out and then blink and I've written five new scenes!

This is formatted differently than a usual chapter. It takes place in April 1986 (so in between two sections of the final chapter of Part 4). It also includes flashbacks discussing Alice and Steve's "firsts." It jumps back and forth pretty abruptly, but anytime you see the three heart emojis (💜💜💜) we're either going into a flashback or back to 1986.

TW for language and mentions and discussions about sex (but no smut or graphic descriptions of sex itself). Mean comments about girls being easy (NOT made by Steve, he's a feminist king). Brief mentions of nightmares and Vecna stuff. I did also incorporate dialogue from my favorite scene of Sex Lives of College Girls on HBOMax so if you're like, "Hey, I know this!" that's where it's from lol.

Finally, I gotta dedicate this chapter to my favorite person on Wattpad, dash-of-clarity! Thank you for giving some feedback on a snippet of this and for being such a great friend and fellow writer. Clara is also the inventor of the build-your-own-story trend that's going around so go show her new fic King of the Court some love!

💜💜💜

Some Late Night in April, 1986

Alice Henderson couldn't sleep.

A few weeks prior, Vecna's claws scratched three deep gashes from under her left arm to just below her belly button. Alice had needed a blood transfusion, and the thick, chunky stitches across those wounds itched like crazy.

She still had two weeks before they would be taken out, and they were driving her insane.

Alice tossed and turned, accidentally waking the boy that slept beside her.

"You okay, Al?" Steve Harrington said, voice hoarse with exhaustion as he lifted himself onto his elbows to get a closer look at her face.

"I'm about to scratch these stupid Frankenstein stitches right out of my skin," Alice grumbled.

"You don't look like Frankenstein."

"I do. It sucks."

"Well, at least we match," Steve said. He lifted his pajama shirt to show off the smaller set of stitches on his ribs and hips, courtesy of the demobats. "See? We're peas in a pod."

Alice got distracted by the sight of his toned torso.

"Huh?" she mumbled out, practically drooling. If she couldn't sleep, maybe she could convince Steve to engage in other activities...

"Perv," Steve said with a good-natured eye roll, pulling his shirt back down. "C'mere."

He opened his arms and Alice curled into his side. They intertwined, cuddling close as their heartbeats synchronized.

"I can't sleep," Alice said, voice muffled as she spoke into Steve's chest. "Tell me a story?"

"A story? What about?"

"Anything happy."

Steve searched his memories for something, anything. He settled on a faint memory from his sophomore year Spanish class. A content smile bloomed on his face.