Stranger Things - Steve Harrington X Reader

Episode 9: The Gate

"Eleven?" Mike asks as he gets closer to her.

"Mike." Eleven says and the hug and cry.

"Is that..." Max trails off and the boys nod at her.

"I never gave up on you." Mike smiles at her. "I called you every night. Every night for-"

"353 days." Eleven finishes, Mike's smile falling. "I heard."

"Why didn't you tell me you were there?" Mike asks. "That you were okay?"

"Because I wouldn't let her." Hopper steps up. He walks to Eleven. "What the hell is this? Where have you been?"

"Where have you been?" Eleven retorts. To everyone's shock, they hug each other.

"You've been hiding her." Mike realizes. "You've been hiding her this whole time!" He shoves Hopper, not doing anything, really.

"Hey!" Hopper grabs Mike's collar. "Let's talk. Alone." They leave the room to go talk.

Eleven goes and hugs Lucas and Dustin. They talk for a moment. Max tries to introduce herself, but Eleven ignores her and walks to Mom. Mom hugs her, happy that she's okay. Mom leads Eleven to Will's room per her request.

Mom shows Eleven what we got out of Will's message in morse code. He tapped out the words, 'close gate'.

Eleven having opened the gat before, Mom asks if she can close it as well. Determination flows through her eyes and she stays silent.

...

Hopper and Mike come back and we start talking about the gate around the kitchen table. Hopper knows something that we don't.

"It's not like it was before. It's grown. A lot. And, I mean, that's considering we can get in there. The place is crawling with those dogs." Hopper says.

"Demo-dogs." Dustin corrects as he turns around to Hopper.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I said, uh, Demo-dogs. Like Demogorgon and dogs. You put them together, it's sounds pretty badass-"

"How is this important right now?"

"It's not. I'm sorry." Dustin turns back around.

"I can do it." Eleven says quietly.

"You're not heating me." Hopper shakes his head.

"I'm hearing you. I can do it."

"Even if El can, there's still another problem." Mike jumps in. "If the brain dies, the body dies."

"I thought that was the whole point." Max says, brows furrowed in confusion.

"It is, but if we're really right about this... I mean, if El closes the gate and kills the mind flayer's army..."

"Will's apart of that army." Lucas connects.

"It'll take him down with it." I say with a shaky sigh.

Mom's face goes stony in fear as she looks around at us. We go into Jonathan's room where Will lays on the bed.

"He likes it cold." Mom mumbles as she looks at the open window.

"What?" Hopper asks, confused about what she said.

"It's What Will kept saying to me. He likes it cold." Mom clarifies with a nod. She closes the window. "We keep giving it what it wants." She says, frustrated.

"If this is a virus, and Will's the host, then..." Nancy trails off.

"Then we need to make the host uninhabitable." Jonathan says as we look at Will.