"Steve Harrington speaking."

"Hey, kid," Jim says, feeling far calmer than he had the day before. "Jane got in contact with me while I was asleep."

"That's great!" Steve replies enthusiastically. "We weren't sure if it would work; her powers have been pretty finicky ever since she got bitten, you know, but I guess it's only the telekinesis that's not working out."

"That's… not good," Jim mutters. "Are there any other side effects? And is everyone okay? She didn't really say much about anything that happened after Joyce closed the Gate."

"As far as any of us can tell, it's just that she can't move shit with her mind. Everyone's fine, for the most part. Ms Byers was devastated until I told everyone that you called yesterday morning. And then I guess Jane must've contacted you almost right after everyone'd gone home, 'cause I wasn't there for that part. Um… Dustin and Erica Sinclair are fine, but they were manning Cerebro. Mike and Max got a little bit beat up, but they seem fine, too; Will, Nancy, Jonathan, and Lucas are also good, and Robin is only a little bit traumatized, but that's pretty much par for the course when dealing with this shit, y'know?"

"How's Murray?"

"The crazy bald dude?"

Jim snorts. "That's the one."

"I mean… he seems fine? Especially now that he knows you're alive? But I don't really know him, man, so there's no telling."

"Good, good. And, uh, the Mind Flayer was dealt with?"

"Oh! Yeah! It was possessing Hargrove, you know, and I may have crashed into his Camaro with the Toddfather, but that didn't really do much damage, except to the cars. I'm not super sure what happened after that, 'cause I wasn't there for most of it until, like the very end, but Sinclair had fireworks for some reason, and we threw those at the Mind Flayer – not Hargrove, but like, the weird, gross meat-sack of melted people?

"Anyway, then Hargrove was gonna sacrifice Jane, but she said something to him, and I guess the Mind Flayer lost its control on him? And then he, like, stood up between Jane and the Flayer, and he held it off with his bare hands, which was pretty badass. It tried to kill him, but then it kind of lost control of itself and died right before it could. I guess that was when the Gate closed. But yeah, Hargrove is still alive, which Max is pretty happy about, even though he's a complete asshole most of the time, but I guess he is her brother."

Jim rolls his eyes. He doesn't actually care about the Hargrove kid, but he supposes it's nice to know that his tiny little town didn't lose yet another person to Upside Down related shit-fests. Steve seems fascinated by the kid, though, and Jim wonders if it's because of the fight they had back in November, or if it's because Steve had his own redemption story and has somehow become nice enough that he wants someone else to have one.

Either way, Jim thinks that the Hargrove kid's got a lot of work to do if he wants to be a better person, but he supposes Hargrove is still a kid, and – as Jane drilled into his head while he was asleep – children make mistakes, but they aren't monsters.

Steve has gone on to talk about the aftermath of the closing of the Gate – apparently, Starcourt exploded, and Jim can't say he's too disappointed about that – without prompting, and Jim chuckles a little. "Jesus, kid. Anyone ever tell you you talk a lot?"

Steve pauses. "Probably," he admits, and adds, "I just like to make sure that people are listening to me," in a tone that's probably a far less jokey than he means it to be.

There's a story there, Jim thinks, and wonders if he should've paid more attention to the kid after his nanny died. He feels like he's always assuming that kids know that they can come to him, but Jane proved to him last night that that's not the case: she hadn't known that she could call him dad if she wanted. It's entirely possible that Steve never knew that he could come to Jim for help because Jim never outright told him.

Jim clears his throat against the sudden wash of shame. He's not very good at this parenting thing, is he? "I'm listening," he tells Steve. He doesn't say, I should have been listening sooner and I'm sorry I didn't, because he doesn't know if Steve is ready to hear that. Some day, though. Some day he really will listen, no matter how hard it is.

Steve seems to take his words as permission to keep talking because that's what he does. He talks about Robin, who it sounds like he thinks highly of, and Dustin, who he seems to be extremely fond of – Maybe, Jim thinks, that's because his parents are never around, or because he wants siblings – and Erica Sinclair, who he thinks is ridiculously brave and also very manipulative. Jim hears all about Steve's time in the Soviet base and is glad to realize that Steve isn't completely traumatized by his time spent there.

He also hears a frankly unnecessary amount about the sailor costumes at Scoops Ahoy, and the customers there, who, according to Steve, are "Even more entitled than I am, Jesus Christ. I mean, am I or am I not the richest person in town? Why do they all act like the sticks up their asses are fuckin' crowns, man?"

And that's an interesting way to phrase that, isn't it? The richest person in town, like it's not Steve's parents' money, but then Jim remembers that no one in town's ever seen hide or hair of the Harrington parents. He doesn't know why that's never struck him as odd.

From what Jim's heard, Steve moved to Hawkins back in seventy-seven with his nanny. No one ever saw his parents then, either, and the generally accepted story was that the Harringtons were both very rich and very absent.

But then Steve's nanny – Elda, that was her name; he should've remembered; she'd asked him to look after Steve, after all, and look what a bang-up job he's done so far – had died in seventy-nine, right after Jim had moved back to Hawkins. The parents never came home, and – when anyone bothered to ask, which was rare, Jim knows; for such a small town, the people in Hawkins are never nosy enough, especially when they need to be – Steve had told everyone that his parents thought he was old enough to take care of himself. He'd been mid-way through eighth grade at the time, Jim remembers, and nowhere near old enough to be living on his own, so why the hell had everyone just accepted it?

Clearly, weird shit's been going on in this town for far longer than Jim's realized.

"Why'd you get a customer service job if you don't need the money?" Jim asks. That's the other strange thing: who the fuck works a minimum wage job when they live in Loch Nora? The people there are all in business this and medical that; they're the richie-riches of town, and they throw extravagant but elegant parties complete with hors d'oeuvres and catered meals and hundred-year-old wines served in dainty crystal glasses, or something. Surprising exactly nobody, Jim's never been invited to those parties.

Steve mutters, embarrassed, "My dad said that someone who's grown up as rich as I have would benefit from the life experience. I dunno. I was more preoccupied with the fact that he was disappointed in who I was than the whys of his disappointment, y'know? I kinda always thought he'd be, like, happy to know I was alive." Jim hears him swallow around the bitterness in his voice before he sighs. "I guess it'd be awkward to have your kid show up randomly when you're having dinner with your whole-ass family," he spits out the last word like it's personally offended him and sighs again. "It's whatever. He wasn't wrong, anyway. And I met Robin, and she's great, so at least something came out of it."

"I have… so many questions about everything that just came outta your mouth, kid, but I'll let it go for now. You sound like you're done talking about it, and, anyways, we don't know each other well enough for me to poke and prod at your life story." Jim hopes he's made the right move, here; he finds that he wants to know about the kid's life, but he also wants Steve to want to talk to him about his shit.

At times like this, when Jim is his own company almost all the time, when he is completely entrenched in the dangers of a world that resembles his own except for how there are monsters instead of people – and, oh, he thinks he gets it, now – it is nice to be stuck in someone else's head.

Steve pauses on the other end of the phone, and Jim wonders what the kid is thinking. "Maybe…" he says tentatively, "we can talk about it someday?"

"I'd like that if you ever feel comfortable enough to tell me about it," Jim agrees. "For now, though, can you tell me anything about how you guys're planning on getting me out?"

"If they've got a plan," Steve tells him apologetically, "I don't know anything about it. I'll ask, and I'll let you know if they tell me anything the next time we talk, if you'd like."

"Sure, kid." God, but Jim is tired – he's tired of this bullshit place, with its monochromatic color scheme and its homicidal vines and its monster-instead-of-human population. He wishes he could just… get out, and go back to the cabin, and give Jane a fuckin' hug, or something. Unfortunately, that's not an option right now; instead, he's got this other kid that he can't see, and that he doesn't know very well, but that he wishes he'd been there for. Fuck it, he decides, and says, "Hey, kid?"

"Yeah, Chief?"

"Two things. Well, three, now. First is a thanks for talking to me. I'm sure you've got other things you'd rather be doing –"

"Not really," Steve interrupts.

"– and I really appreciate you taking the time outta your day. It helps keep me sane," Jim continues over him. "Second is that I wanna apologize for not being around after Elda died. She asked me to keep an eye on you, and I'm afraid I never really did. I hope you know that you can talk to me about anything, and I'm sorry that I never made it clear that you could come to me for whatever when you were younger, too."

"'S not really your fault, Chief," Steve mutters. "I doubt I'd've come to you even if I had known. You'd probably've had to come pull whatever the fuck I was dealing with outta me, and that woulda just been painful for everyone involved, 'specially if you didn't know what you were getting into."

Jim sighs. "Maybe so, kid, but I'm still sorry I wasn't there for you, and I want you to know that I'd like to be here for you now. You don't have to take me up on it, alright, but the offer is open to you."

"Thanks, Chief," Steve tells him, and Jim thinks that maybe the kid is smiling a little bit, on the other end of the phone where Jim can't see it. He thinks maybe that's the point: that he can't see it, but he also thinks that he doesn't really know Steve well enough to be sure.

"That's the third thing," he announces, getting back on track, and Steve hums questioningly at him through the receiver. "Quit callin' me Chief, kid. You can call me Hop or Hopper or Jim, or whatever else you want, but Chief makes me feel like I've taken you in for speeding or petty theft or poisoning Merrill's pumpkin patch or something."

Steve snorts. "Alright, man, I'll work on calling you something else, but don't be surprised if you hear a lotta 'Chiefs.' Anyways, I gotta go. Henderson wants me to take him and the other shitheads to the Arcade or something. I'll see what I can find out about the escape plan, though, alright?"

"Alright, kid. I'll call you later," he replies fondly, and holds the phone up to his ear long after it clicks down.

The thing about his phone calls to Steve is that the kid manages to fill up the oppressive silence that comes at Jim from every fuckin' side down here. The Upside Down wants to swallow him whole; he can feel it. It wants to twist him up and tie him into knots and make him into all the worst parts of himself: it wants to turn him into the monster he is in his dreams, wants to weave him into this ball of fear and rage and murderous desire, wants to drive him crazy so that he fits in with all the deep, dark crevices; and the air that kills a man as much as the plants; and the people who have turned monster because they've let their bacchanalian, hedonistic, rotten instincts coalesce with their greed and all their shitty morals, and they've indulged in the repulsive behaviors that accompany such a complete loss of self.

It's terrifying to see what humanity can become if they turn to such unrelenting gluttony that the only thing they perceive as truly wrong is allowing the morals determined by civilization to get in the way; Jim thinks that the only thing that is more fear-inducing than being stuck in a world where everything is so completely upside-down (and isn't it funny that the kids have so aptly named the place without ever experiencing it themselves?) is being in that same world and feeling it as everything in it works, using its considerable strength, to drag him down with it.

The thing about the phone calls with Steve is that the kid manages to pull Jim out of that for a while; it's like every time Jim feels himself about to start slipping, he can call Steve and the kid'll pull him back to safety. Jim thinks that maybe it takes bravery to survive down here, or maybe it's sheer force of will, or both – Jim knows better than most that compressed into Will's tiny, waifish body is an insurmountable flow of courage, and an impressive desire to live – but if Jim makes it out of here not having lost his sense of self, it'll be Steve who saved him. It's hard to allow himself to sink into that wretched state of despair and disrepair when all it takes is a single phone call to remind him of all the good the world has to offer.

Jim's never been one for church or religion, and after Sara's death, he shut out all the lessons he learned at church back when his dad forced him to choose between Sunday School or, later, Sunday Service, and his belt. He thinks that maybe he believed in God after Sara was born, but seven years later, after Sara died and Diane left, he gave up on religion and focused on following and reinforcing the rules the States had chosen for themselves. He's been a little looser with them in recent years, he knows, but now seems as good a time as any to start following those rules to the letter again, and if he's gonna do that, he might as well add the Ten Commandments in, too. It's not like a little extra discipline'll hurt down here.

He heads back to the pantry in an effort to put this idea of discipline into play and makes it through about ten minutes of sitting before he decides to give up. He's restless, Jim decides. What he really needs is to do something. He can't just eat and sleep and talk to Steve all the time, even if all those activities are relatively safe. The only problem is that there's not much to do outside, either. He supposes he could try to read some of the books on Steve's shelves, but the lighting is terrible, and he had enough problems with the phone book; he can't listen to music because – wait. Maybe he can. He just has to find a phonograph somewhere in the house. He doubts that Steve has anything resembling good music in his record collection, but it can't hurt to look.

If he really needs to, he can always make the trek back to his trailer and find a reasonable vinyl, but he finds that he doesn't really want to leave the safety of the pantry any more than he absolutely has to.

Steve's record collection and player are fairly easy to find; Jim lugs everything back to the pantry and shuts the door behind him; he's not entirely certain how the Demogorgons' hearing is, and he doesn't want to get killed for listening to music. He sweeps his gaze over the small room, taking stock of the cans of food and bottles of water on the shelves. The vines have thus far stayed out of the space Jim has claimed for himself, but he thinks he can see their shadows poking and prodding at the space below the door; luckily, his matches and flamethrower are still functional if he's ever in need.

Jim flips through the records, making a face at a good chunk of Steve's collection. It's not that the kid has bad taste, except… well, he kind of does. At least, the music is shit by Jim's standards, but he realizes that a lot of the kids are listening to this crap now; not everyone can have taste as cultured as Jim does. He has to flip through several Duran Duran albums, some music from The Police, Wham!, Madonna, and Hall & Oates before he manages to find anything even remotely decent – they aren't Jim Croce, but Loggins & Messina and Dan Fogelberg are good enough.

So he puts the music on, and it's got an interesting quality to it. Instead of sounding, like, round and full of life, like he was expecting, it sounds kinda flat and lifeless. It's interesting how the Upside Down manages to suck the life out of everything, even pre-recorded music. And it must be the Upside Down itself, too, because Steve's voice doesn't have that dead quality to it when they talk; maybe that's because Steve's still in the real world, and Jim is stuck down here, where everything hates everything else and itself.

With that lackluster performance on the music side of things, Jim resigns himself to trying to sleep some more. Something he's noticed is that everything is less satisfying here: music is less, food has muted flavors, water isn't as thirst-quenching as he's used to, and sleep leaves him more exhausted when he wakes back up.

No wonder the people-turned-monsters turned to such extreme forms of self-fulfillment. If Jim has to stay in this life-sucking place for much longer, he might join them, 'cause he certainly won't have the will to beat 'em for much longer. With that in mind, he finally succumbs to sleep, whose weak and insubstantial arms threaten to drop him at any moment.

"We have been waiting for you," Jane says disapprovingly. She is holding the hand of a tiny blonde girl with big, blue eyes. He chokes on his own breath at the sight. He thinks that this is a nightmare: this representation of what he wants most in the world that will be ripped from his grasp. He squeezes his eyes shut, but the image has burned itself onto his retinas, and there is no escaping it.

When he opens his eyes again, Jane is frowning at him. "You did not know I was here," she deduces, and Jim shakes his head. Her mouth falls open around an "Oh."

"'Oh' what?" he asks.

"You are asleep," she tells him. "I am here in your dreams."

"You were last time, too," he agrees.

"Oh," she says thoughtfully, and then, "Steve says you want to know how you will get out."

"That would certainly be nice," he replies, looking at her curiously.

"I will open the Gate at Steve's house," she tells him, "and you will walk out."

"That… is a terrible idea."

"Yes."

"I thought Steve said your telekinesis isn't working anymore. How are you going to open the Gate without it?" And how is that the first thing that comes out of his mouth when he has other, more pressing concerns?

Jane watches him solemnly with her dark, dark eyes. "The first time I opened it, I only touched the monster. The Upside Down opened its own Gate. I do not need telekinesis to open the Gate because I am not the one opening it. I only contact it."

"Okay," Jim drawls, "but the Gate didn't close itself the first time, either. When you made contact, you were the one who had to close it. How're you gonna close it again without your powers?"

Her shoulders sag. "I won't."

Jim stares at her incredulously. "So you're just going to leave the Gate open so that the Upside Down can spill out into the world? That's insane!"

"Halfway happy," she tells him sadly.

"What?" his eyes narrow in confusion.

"A… compromise," she explains. "The Upside Down wants to be open. It also wants to keep you. We want the Upside Down closed, but we also want you back. So we open the Upside Down and it is halfway happy when it is open but does not keep you, and we are halfway happy when we have you but the Upside Down is not closed."

"Okay, no. That's more like the Upside Down is three-quarters of the way happy and we are one-quarter of the way there. This is a terrible plan, and we need to think of something else, alright Jane?"

She shakes her head vigorously. "There is nothing else. We will find a way to close the Gate later, but we get you out first."

"Or you could just leave me here and keep the Gate closed. That way you are happier than the Upside Down is, and you don't risk the entire world just to save me."

"No," she says firmly.

"C'mon, kid, you know this is a bad idea. Please, try to think of something else. There has to be another way." And why the hell is he advocating to stay in the Upside Down longer?

"Dad," Jane says, and looks down at where she is standing beside Sara, holding her hand. "Please?"

"Please, Dad," Sara echoes quietly, looking up at him with her huge blue eyes. "For us."

"You manipulative little –" shit, he finishes in the privacy of his own mind.

Jane looks at him smugly, like she thinks she's won. This, Jim knows, is why Sara is here. This is why she's drudged up the memories; she's trying to manipulate him into going along with her ludicrous plan, and he's ashamed to say that it almost worked. Fuck. She knows how to play him far too well.

"No," he tells her firmly. "Figure something else out, kid. That's final."

Jane scowls at him, and between one breath and the next, she's gone.

(Between one breath and the next, Jim has changed from man to monster, and Jane and Sara are back, trying to reason with him as he attacks them for no reason.

He wakes up with a scream trapped in his parched throat, and he shivers and shakes his way through his food, and trembles his way through a song on the phonograph, and does not call Steve.)