It's Dustin's storm cellar all over again. It's the junkyard, and that bus, and those dark, poisonous tunnels with death written all over them, and all of the nightmares afterwards. All hell is breaking loose, and Steve knows he can't do this again –
"Man, this is the awesomest thing ever! He is so cute! What are we going to name him?"
Steve tears his eyes from the creature at the table and looks at Dustin.
"We are not naming it – you're crazy! We have to kill it before it hurts someone!"
Dustin looks outraged.
"You're crazy, what's the matter with you? You can't kill him, it's a dragon! A DRAGON, Steve!"
"Yeah, a monster –"
"So? That doesn't mean he doesn't deserve to live –"
"Shit, what – what about us? Do we deserve to live? Because I'm sure you'll remember this moment right before it burns us to a crisp!"
Dustin scoffs. "He's not gonna burn us to a crisp."
"Did you not see what it just did?!" Steve yells, arms flailing. "Did you somehow miss the freaking ball of fire that almost blew a hole in my ceiling?"
"No, but if you'd just calm down, you'd realize that he's just a baby, and if we –"
"Yeah, and Dart was just a baby, before he grew up to become hundreds of bloodthirsty monsters who killed people!"
Dustin looks down, a hurt expression on his face, and Steve feels a twinge of guilt. All the while, the creature is sitting on the table, on the mess that is Dustin's ruined backpack, switching its gaze between the two of them with mild interest.
"This won't be like Dart," Dustin mumbles.
"How do you know?!"
"I just know, okay?"
"You just –"
Steve clamps his mouth shut. He forces himself to take a deep breath. He takes a step towards Dustin and puts his hands on his shoulders.
"Dustin," he begins, with a kind of gentle urgency, "this is a monster. Okay? A monster. We can't have monsters from the Upside Down running around again, okay, we can't do this again –"
"Maybe he's not from the Upside Down," Dustin says quietly.
"Shit, where else –" Steve begins and throws his hands up, his voice losing all gentleness. "It wasn't misplaced by the local pet store!"
"No, I mean…" Dustin shrugs and looks down.
He gazes at the creature on the table for several seconds, then looks back at Steve. His eyes are very bright.
"… Maybe he's a real dragon from our world."
"Oh come on!" Steve yells.
"He could be!" Dustin yells back.
Steve puts his hands over his forehead.
"Jesus. Look," he begins, voice trembling. "I don't know if like, all these monsters being real is your dream come true or something, or all that Dungeons and Dragons has finally addled your brain, but just read my lips: dragons don't exist in our world."
Dustin crosses his arms.
"Prove it," he says.
"What?"
"Prove to me they don't exist!"
Steve splutters, because what kind of a stupid thing is that to ask –
"You can't, can you?" Dustin asks, gloating.
"Of course I – they just – everyone knows – they–"
Dustin looks more and more victorious.
"Well you can't prove they exist, either!"
"Uh, HELLO?" Dustin motions to the creature on the table. It follows the movement of his arms with apparent curiosity, then makes a tiny chirping sound.
Steve stares at it for a moment, then he looks back at Dustin. He opens his mouth again, but nothing comes out. He blinks. There has to be at least some trace of sense somewhere in that curly head for him to appeal to, he thinks wildly, but words fail him. He sits on the couch and covers his face with his hands.
"Okay. Okay," he says, on the verge of hyperventilating. "I can't talk to you. You're crazy. You're crazy, and, and I… I need to talk to someone who's not you. Someone not crazy. I need to call Hopper."
"What? You promised you won't tell anyone!"
Steve raises his head. "I didn't know what I was promising! I didn't know you had a dragon in your backpack, you can't hold me to it –"
"You promised," Dustin says, unshed tears coloring his tone. "I thought I could trust you. I thought you were my friend!"
"Of course I am," Steve says helplessly. "This doesn't mean I'm not your –"
"No! Friends don't lie! And they sure as hell don't break promises!"
On the table, the creature gives a strange little noise. Steve jumps, then gets up.
"Dustin… just listen to me," he pleads. "This is a monster. What do you think can happen, we'll set it free in the woods? What the hell do you think we can do with it?"
Dustin looks down and shuffles his feet.
"I thought…" he begins, and mumbles the rest of the sentence.
"What?"
"I thought… You know, before he hatched…" He gives Steve a hopeful look. "I thought that maybe we could keep it here."
Steve starts to laugh.
For several moments, he's sure that's the most hilarious thing he's heard in weeks… but Dustin keeps gazing at him, and Steve hears the sound of his laughter grow increasingly hysterical.
"You're serious," he gasps out after a while, half laughing and half coughing. "God, you're actually serious –"
"You said yourself you have all these rooms you don't use!" Dustin exclaims, clearly indicating it is Steve's own fault this thought even occurred to him. "And your house would be so much cooler! Just think about it, you could be like all those rich people who keep peacocks – only instead of peacocks, it's a dragon, which is a billion times cooler –"
Steve falls back onto the couch and covers his face, gripping the roots of his hair.
"I can't believe what's happening to me," he moans, and he can almost feel the insanity creep at the edges of his mind, pulling at the minuscule amount of peace that tentatively settled there after Halloween, when suddenly, his hands drop. "Shit, is that why you're even here? Is that why you did all those things, washed the dishes and shit – just to butter me up, to try and guilt me into saying yes?"
"No, okay?" Dustin cries. "I'm here because you're my friend and you're sick. I swear. And I would've done all that stuff for you anyway. I just thought… If you saw what an awesome friend I am… you'd want to be equally awesome and do me this small favor."
"Small f-" Steve stands up. "Washing the dishes for someone who's sick is not the same as asking someone to hide a dragon in their house! Shit! What am I saying? Why am I even discussing this with you? I – I need to –"
"No, wait, Steve, please," Dustin says frantically. "Come on, just look at him. He's so small. We have to –"
"– kill it!"
"– take care of him!"
"Oh, I'll take care of him," he says, his mind suddenly clear. "I'll take care of him with the bat."
He bolts up the stairs, followed by: "Steve, if you hurt him, I'll never forgive you!"
He reaches his room in seconds. Once inside, he throws himself on the floor and grabs the nail-studded bat from under the bed, and the firm, familiar grip makes some of the fear a little bit more bearable. But then he realizes he's left Dustin alone with the monster, and his heart starts pounding like it's about to explode. Steve runs out of the room.
He stumbles down the stairs even faster than he went up, and god if something's happened he'll never forgive himself, but surely, surely the kid isn't so crazy as to –
What he sees in the living room makes his heart skip a beat.
A/N: Please let me know what you think so far!