✵

Steve reappeared in the living room, carrying a mug filled with coffee that made Ringo's heart leap with joy.

"Yes, thank you," she practically moaned, taking the warm cup and curling her legs underneath her on the couch, eagerly taking a sip of the hot beverage. Steve moved to sit beside her, watching her from the corner of his eye as her gaze wandered around the living room.

The last time she had been inside this room in particular, she had just woken up - still drunk and with a hangover just beginning to boot. The decor of the place was hardly something on her mind at that point in time, but now, she could take it all in. And it was starting to freak her out just how rich Steve was.

"What's your place like back home?" He asked out of the blue, probably making conversation to break the silence, although it was a comfortable one.

"Well, our trailer is probably the size of this room so," she joked with a shrug. "It's okay, all I need is my cassette player, my vinyls and the tree nearby the park that has a tire swing in it. I don't need anything else."

"Do you miss it?" He pressed, moving to sit more comfortably by lifting his feet and placing them on the coffee table. Ringo mulled his question over for a minute.

"Not really," she admitted quietly. "Does that make me a bad person? Fuck. I just.. my parents fight a lot. About money and... everything. It's nice to be somewhere normal for once."

Steve, sensing her discomfort, decided to change the subject.

"So," he slipped his hand into her coat pocket and tugged out the cassette player that was on show. How she managed to fit it in there at all, he'd never know. "What other songs are on this ass-kicking mix of yours?"

"Nothing you're into I'm sure, Tom Cruise," she poked fun at his earlier comment of looking like Stefan, leaning her head back against the sofa and watching him with a soft smile as he opened up the tape compartment.

Steve let out a chuckle again when he read the title of the tape once more, eliciting a slap on his arm from the girl in point. He inserted it back in its rightful place again, except this time he flipped it around to B-Side and hit play, slipping her headphones over his head.

The teenager's eyes widened dramatically at the opening chords, Ringo beamed instantly, well aware that track one on that side of the tape was 'Wild Thing' by the Troggs.

"Now this," he shot up from his seat, clipping the player onto his belt, "this is a golden oldie!"

"What are you doing?" She giggled, watching with amusement as he smoothed his hair back and started to jut his hips back and forth to the beat of the song.

"Wild thing!" He shouted suddenly, completely off-key and pointing directly at the blonde, who was still sitting, gobsmacked, on the couch. "You make my heart sing!"

"You're such a dork!" She squealed with laughter.

"Wild thing, I think I love you," he trailed on, lifting his foot up onto the coffee table and resting his elbow on his knee, "but I wanna know for sure!"

Ringo howled again as he suddenly shot his pelvis forward and removed his leg, the performance made all the more amusing by the fact his face was covered in cuts and lumps.

The song eventually came to and end, and Ringo's sides were almost split from laughing so hard. Her earlier worries and troubles had been well forgotten, and for a moment, she was just a teenager again enjoying the company of her friend.

When the last few notes rang through Steve's ears, he took an overly dramatic bow, which was met with clapping and cheering from Ringo.

"Yeah, sexy lady!" She hollered at him, "shimmy over this way, I have a dollar!"

"How very dare you," he cocked his hip to the side and pouted his swollen lips, his voice ten octaves higher to mimic a woman, "I take fives and tens only."

"You'll take what I give you!" She, in turn, deepened her voice as if she were a man in the fake scenario.

Steve was grinning widely when he moved to sit back down, taking the headphones from his head and passing them and the cassette player back to its owner.

"Here, ass kicker."

Ringo diligently wrapped her headphone cord up before placing it delicately inside her pocket, followed by the player itself. A thought suddenly coming to her as she done so.

"Hey, Steve? Where's your parents?" She couldn't believe she hadn't noticed before, but the house was completely vacant since she arrived, and it was now dark outside.

"My mom's vacationing in Mexico City and my dad's working I guess," he said it so casually, as if it were a common occurrence. Ringo came to realise that it probably was. This was another classic case of rich parents that pried their child full of expensive presents to make up for their obvious absence.

"Oh," she said dumbly, not sure of what else to say.

"But hey, on the bright side, I can do that without getting caught," he gestured with his head towards the centre of the living room, where he had been dancing just moments before.

"I would have covered for you, told them that you had a bee in your panties," she smiled tiredly at her joke, the tiredness she had been trying to ignore was creeping up on her. But she couldn't afford to fall asleep, after all, she was only here for a few hours - not for the night. Just long enough to be sure that the Byers would finally be home, and hopefully Nancy would be with them.

"My dad's pretty homophobic too, so I think he'd freak out and think dancing means I'm gay," Steve muttered, embarrassed of the revelation about his father.

"Fuck him, just for that-" she broke off mid-sentence to yawn, "just for that, I'm going to eat spicy food, use his ensuite bathroom and not flush the toilet."

"Ringo," he belted out a laugh, his eyes closed as his head fell back with mirth, "that's absolutely disgusting."

When silence fell over them again, Steve used to it to truly think about his father. Sometimes he wondered if his desire to be so popular stemmed from his father's push for him to be so. He turned to voice his thoughts to Ringo, knowing that she would listen and offer her opinion, but when his head lifted he saw that she was fast asleep.

Smirking softly at her sleeping face, which consisted of her mouth falling slightly open as her face pressed against the back of the couch, he reached for the blanket that hung over the other couch in the room and draped it around her body to keep her warm.

✵

Ringo's eyes fluttered open at the sensation of movement underneath her face. Confused, she tiredly lifted her head to inspect what kind of contraption she had managed to fall asleep on now. Her eyes widened slightly in shock upon seeing that it was actually someone's shoulder, and the shoulder of Steve Harrington at that.

"Shit," she swore, sitting up straight and scraping her hand through her hair. She hadn't meant to fall asleep. Desperately, the blonde looked for a clock in the room, and cursed louder upon seeing that it was just ten minutes before midnight.

"Steve! Wake up!" She shook his shoulder harshly, shooting up from her seat and slipping her shoes on quickly over her feet.

"Shut up," he mumbled exhaustedly, turning around and burying his face into the couch cushion out of stubbornness.

"No, really! Get up, please! I need a ride to Jonathan's!" Ringo begged, tucking her blonde locks behind her ears.

"Ringo," he huffed, refusing to budge, "whatever it is, it'll be fine until the morning."

"It won't be," she denied in desperation, biting her lip in frustration before throwing her hands into the air, "okay, I'm just gonna have to walk."

This got his attention, instantly waking him up enough to open his eyes and stand up from the couch.

"Not a chance in hell," he scoffed, stretching out his long limbs and grabbing the keys from the coffee table. "Lets go, I'm giving you a ride."

✵

Ringo almost broke the handle off of the car door when they arrived at the Byers, out of eagerness to get out. Lights could be seen streaming through the windows - meaning that someone was awake. Before she could jet off however, Steve's voice stopped her.

"I need to apologise..." Steve began, looking remorseful as he switched the engine off and stared off into the distance at Jonathan's house, Ringo's eyes widened at the revelation.

"What, now? No, not now! Now isn't a good time! Do it tomorrow!" She rambled, lifting one leg out of the car, but once again - she was stopped by him.

"I have to do it now, Ringo. I'm already here so it makes sense," he ignored her protests, earning a groan from the blonde after he slid out of the vehicle and started to march determinedly up to the front door.

Ringo jogged so she could move in front of him and be the first to knock, out of politeness. She gestured with her hand for Steve to take a few steps back, just in case, which he obliged - albeit confusedly.

When no one answered for a second, Ringo was so wound up she couldn't help but shout through the wooden door.

"Guys, open up! It's Ringo!" She pleaded, hoping that it was her cousin and her cousin's new 'friend' that was inside. But she would even settle for Joyce, right now.

"And Steve!" Steve shouted from behind her, much to her annoyance as she threw him a glare. "I just wanna talk!"

Nancy Wheeler slipped the chain from the front door and opened it a sliver, just enough to give her cousin narrowed eyes and nod her head, signalling her to enter. The second Ringo slid through the gap, Nancy slid the chain back on and shut it tight, ready to ignore Steve Harrington, who was waiting on the front lawn.

But of course, his fists only pounded on the door again. The incessant banging was only driving Nancy mad, so she had no choice but to open it again to tell him off.

"Steve, you need to leave!" Nancy told him firmly, and Ringo had to applaud her resolve. This was clearly a different Nancy from what she had seen the last few weeks.

"Nancy?" He asked in confusion, before brushing that aside when he saw that she was going to close the door again. "I'm not trying to start anything, okay?"

"I don't care about that, you need to leave-"

As they bickered on, Ringo's eyes zeroed in on the bandage wrapped around the smaller girl's hand. She was beginning to worry, just as Jonathan came and stood by her side, until she noticed he had an identical cover. Ringo couldn't help but wonder if she had missed all the action already.

Now that her gaze was drawn from the scene at the door, her eyes trailed around the room, which was immensely directed with fairy lights, accompanied by a slathering of the alphabet painted messily on one wall. But Ringo didn't ask, assuming there was a meaning behind it that they'd explain later. When Steve left.

"No, no, no, no," Steve stammered, emotionally. "Listen, I-I messed up. I messed up. I messed up, okay?"

Nancy tried to shut the door, but his foot was wedged in the gap and preventing that from happening.

"Really, please. I just want to make things right. Okay? Please?"

There was something about the scene that irked Ringo. Originally, she had thought it was because they were about to summon some kind of animal that could kill them all and Steve was only delaying that. But now, as he begged Nancy for a chance to redeem himself, Ringo realised it was because she didn't approve of their relationship.

Even if Ringo had gotten over the cinema incident, Nancy was his girlfriend, and his willingness to hurt her was a sign to Ringo they weren't a good match. It wasn't even a case of opposites don't attract - because she firmly believed that they do, but Ringo just didn't necessarily meant that Steve and Nancy were one of those couples. As far as she could see, since Ringo arrived their relationship had become a consistent cycle of hurting the other person or getting into an argument because they were expecting to get hurt. The lack of trust was obvious.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Steve's next words, which had prompted Jonathan and Ringo to share a panicked look in the confines of the house that Steve couldn't see.

"Hey, what happened to your hand?" He questioned, his voice thick with worry all of a sudden. "Is that blood?"

"No, nothing. It was an accident," Nancy ripped her arm out of view, and threw a desperate glance towards her cousin for her help.

"No, what's going on?" Steve's voice had turned from pleading to protective. "Where did Ringo go?"

"Nothing happened and I'm right here!" The blonde interjected, shuffling up to show her face at the gap in the door right next to Nancys.

Steve instantly picked up on her panicked demeanour, and combined with Nancy's injury - it was enough to set off alarm bells in his head.

"Wait a second- did he do this to you?" His voice then turned from worried to angry as pried his way past Nancy and Ringo through the front door, despite their best protests and efforts to keep him back.

The scene inside stopped his warpath the second he encountered it, his mouth gaping open as he looked around at the scene inside the house.

"What is-" he began, until he saw the gun and axe laying in the coffee table in the living room, "what the fuck?"

"You need to get out of here," Jonathan finally intervened, clasping the taller man's shoulders tightly to push him towards the exit.

"Woah- what is all this?" He grabbed Jonathan's arms to prevent from being shoved.

"Listen to me, I'm not asking you-"

"What is that smell?! Is that gasoline?" He yelled in horror, and Ringo wondered if she should interject again. But what could she possibly have said to explain the situation? His questions would only be directed towards her then.

"Steve," Nancy's voice, accompanied by the safety click of a gun, caught everyone's attention, especially since she was aiming it right at him. "Get out."

"Nancy!" Ringo screamed, wanting to shove her cousin and rip the weapon from her hands. She knew that Nancy would never have fired it, but she also knew that guns went off by accident all the time.

"What?!" Steve shouted, Jonathan throwing himself out of the line of fire a few feet away from him. "What is going on?!"

"You have five seconds to get out of here!" Nancy persisted, ignoring Ringo's pleas.

"Put it down, now!" Ringo roared angrily at her, this was going way too far and her best friend wasn't going to die because of it.

"Is this a joke?! Stop! Put the gun down!"

The entire situation blinded the two cousins and Steve to the fact that the Christmas lights were now flickering behind them.

"Three," Nancy began to count.

"Nancy, stop!"

"No! Stop!"

"Nancy!" Jonathan bellowed to get her attention, "the lights!"

On cue, the two girls whipped around to see that the bulbs had begun to flicker furiously, something that horrified Nancy and Jonathan.

"Wait! What does that mean?" Ringo cut in, starting to back away from it out of fear.

"It's here, Ringo!" Jonathan informed her, prompting the blonde to instantly reach for the axe she had earlier procured from her neighbours garden.

"What's here?" Steve demanded, being completely ignored by the trio.

"Where is it?" Nancy quaked, backing up until her back was against Jonathan's. Ringo moved to stand beside Steve, not so that he would protect her, but so that she could protect him as she raised her axe up slightly to hold it correctly.

"Woah! Be careful with that!"

"I don't know where it is!" Jonathan called out, their shouts only heightening the tension in the room.

"Hello! Will someone please explain to me-" Steve thundered, but however loud his voice was, it wasn't as loud as the sudden cracking of wood that quite literally split through the house.

The four of them turned instantly to the ceiling across the room, which was now being shredded through by something they were unable to see fully yet.

Ringo involuntarily screamed, shouting over and over again, "oh, holy fuck!" Nancy began to shoot blindly, hoping to hit her target before it was too close to be killed.

Jonathan wrapped his arm around her waist to stop her so they could execute their plan, and dragged her away, shouting, "go! Go! Run!"

Ringo didn't need to be told twice, instantly she turned around and booked it down the hallway, letting out another scream when she almost stood right into a bear trap in the hall. But her high pitched screams were drowned out by Steve's, as they all ran into the bedroom down the hall and firmly shut the door behind them.