Disclaimer: I do not own Stranger Things.

Chapter 2: The Boy

November 8, 1983

Hawkins, Indiana

Eight hours ago

Mike Wheeler was feeling more than a little conflicted. On the one hand, he shouldn't have any reason to be happy right now. Will was missing, there was a strange girl hiding in his basement, and to top it off, they apparently couldn't go to his parents for help with the latter problem because "bad people" were hunting this girl, and those people would apparently kill them all if they found her.

But on the other hand… as he was showing the girl, Eleven, around his house, he couldn't help taking a liking to her. She was strange, of course, but she was still just a kid – just like him, or any of his friends – and the fact that she was warm and dry now, instead of wandering around in the woods and getting soaked by the rain, was definitely a good thing. Lucas and Dustin had made it very clear that they thought helping her was a bad idea, but Mike couldn't bring himself to kick her out. Wherever she'd come from, she needed help, and he couldn't ignore that.

At the moment, Eleven (or "El", as he'd decided to call her) was wandering around his house, examining everything she came across with a calm, detached interest. After checking out the TV, she'd walked over to the fireplace, where the Wheelers had a number of family photos mounted: pictures of the whole family, as well as individual photos of Mike and both of his sisters. "Pretty," she murmured as she lightly touched a picture of Nancy.

Mike raised an eyebrow skeptically. "I mean… I guess?" He shrugged. "That's my sister Nancy. And that's baby Holly, and those are my parents." He walked a little closer, his lips twitching into a curious frown as he saw her focusing on the photos with an odd level of intensity. "What are you parents like? Do they live close? Or…" His frown deepened as he took a step closer and saw the look on Eleven's face: she was staring fixedly at a photo showing the whole family, particularly the part of him and Nancy. In that picture, he was in the front, and Nancy was standing behind him with one hand resting on his shoulder.

"Yeah… like I said, that's Nancy," Mike repeated as he stepped up next to Eleven to get a better look at the picture. "She's my sister; she's a few years older than me." He looked over at her, and his eyes widened as he saw what looked like the trace of a tear forming in the corner of her eye. "I… I'm sorry, is something wrong?"

After a moment, Eleven shook her head. "No," she replied quietly. "You said… she is your sister? Your older sister?"

"Um… yeah, she is," Mike confirmed, feeling increasingly puzzled. After a moment, though, a thought suddenly occurred to him that might explain why El would be fixating on his having an older sister. "Do you have a sister?" he inquired. When she shook her head numbly, he continued. "Then… a brother, maybe?"

El was silent for a few seconds after that, before she slowly nodded. "I… I think so," she whispered, her voice becoming a little more unsteady. "What's it like… to have a brother?"

You think so? Mike felt even more puzzled now, but he shrugged it off. "Well… I mean, I don't have any brothers, just two sisters," he admitted. "But as far as I know, older siblings in general… they're usually supposed to protect their younger siblings, to help them with stuff if they need it, and to keep them safe no matter what. My sister can be annoying sometimes, but… I think if something was really important, she'd help me with it, just like I would for her if she really needed my help with something important. That's how siblings work." Or how they're supposed to work, anyway, he thought with a bit of sourness, remembering how much nicer Nancy had been to him and his friends when they'd all been a couple of years younger, until she'd started high school and lost all interest in hanging out with them anymore.

El nodded, clearly thinking that over. "I see," she replied quietly. "Then… yes. I think I do."

"Oh!" Mike nodded understandingly. "That's cool. What's his name?" Remembering the tattoo on her arm, another possibility occurred to him. "Or… does he have a number instead, like you?"

El was quiet again for a moment, as she reached down and touched her arm through her sleeve, right over the tattoo. "Yes," she replied finally. "Seven." A faraway look entered her eyes, as if she was remembering something, and her lips twitched in a faint smile. "Number Seven."

November 8, 1983

Hawkins, Indiana

Now

Barb wasn't sure how long she stood there, staring around wildly at the surrounding trees, but it wasn't until her knees practically buckled that she realized she was exhausted. All of the adrenaline that had been surging through her veins ever since she'd seen the monster in the empty pool was wearing off now, and everything that it had been holding back – all of the panic and confusion and pain that she'd endured over the last few minutes – was now all crashing down on her at once.

"Okay…" she breathed, swaying unsteadily on her feet and instinctively putting her good hand out to support herself on the nearest tree. "Just… just need to sit down for a second or… whoa!" That last word came out as a gasp as the boy scrambled to his feet and caught her before she could collapse, sliding one arm under hers so she could lean on his shoulder. He wasn't much steadier than she was, but by leaning on each other they both managed to stay on their feet.

Your mind is clouded. The weird, echoing voice in her head was softer than before, but she could still make it out. You need to rest.

"Yeah, no kidding," Barb muttered wearily, too drained at this point to question the fact that she could hear this boy's voice inside her head. She considered going into the house to see if anyone there could help, but quickly decided against it. Tommy H. and Carol certainly wouldn't be any help, and Nancy was probably way too wrapped up in Steve to pay attention to anything else at the moment. That wouldn't bother her too much under normal circumstances, since she knew Nancy was head-over-heels for the guy, but the fact that she'd just come extremely close to getting mauled to death by a monster meant that she really wasn't in the best mood right now.

Regardless, hanging around here just seemed like a bad idea in general, in case that thing managed to find another way to follow them out of that weird shadow-world and back into this one. They'd been lucky enough to get away from it once, but she had no intention of going through that again if she could help it. So their best option right now would probably be to get to her car and to get the hell out of here.

"Okay… c'mon," she breathed, nodding out towards the road in front of Steve's house. "My car's this way."

Still instinctively supporting each other, the pair made their way around the house and out down the driveway. Barb was limping on one foot now, as the ankle that the creature had grabbed was starting to ache, but she pushed the pain to the back of her mind. She could worry about that once she knew they were safe.

Unfortunately, since Nancy hadn't wanted to risk their being seen driving up to Steve's house, Barb's car was parked about three blocks away down the street, so it took a couple of minutes for them to get there. As she limped along the sidewalk, she kept glancing around warily, looking up and down the street and scanning the darkened treeline for any signs of the monster. To her relief, nothing showed itself, and they reached her car without any incident.

By the time they got to the car, Barb was shivering uncontrollably. Her clothes were still soaked from when the creature had yanked her off the diving board and dragged her through the pool, and in the cold night air they were quickly leaching the heat away from her body. The boy was shivering too, as the cold was probably even worse for him: at least she was fully dressed (albeit in wet clothes), while he didn't appear to be wearing anything other than a torn hospital gown, and he was still barefoot. It also sounded like he might be sick, as his breathing was labored and he kept coughing and rubbing his chest. Now that the crisis was over, he looked like he was even more exhausted than she was.

"H-here," Barb stammered as they reached her car, helping the boy over to the passenger's side and letting him lean against the side of the car. "G-gimme a second… to get the d-doors open." As she limped around to the driver's side, her hands were trembling so badly that she could barely get her keys out and unlock the door, but after a couple of failed attempts to line up the key with the lock, she was finally able to get the door unlocked. Yanking it open, she scrambled inside and unlocked the passenger's-side door as well, allowing the boy to clamber into the passenger's seat. As he collapsed into his seat, she frantically turned on the car and immediately cranked up the heater to full blast, sending a rush of warm air into the interior as they both closed their doors.

As soon as she felt the heater taking effect and the interior of the car began to warm up, Barb sighed heavily and leaned back in her seat, panting and shivering as the adrenaline rush that she'd been riding ever since she'd first seen the monster finally began to wear off. For what could have been five minutes or two hours, she just lay there, half-expecting to see steam rising from her damp clothes as they began to dry out, all the panic and pain slowly fading away. She might actually have fallen asleep for a few minutes, but she honestly couldn't tell.

Finally, she felt like she'd recovered enough to think clearly again. Her clothes were still damp, but she didn't feel cold anymore and her hands had stopped trembling. Other than a sore ankle, she felt a lot better now, so she was able to take stock of the situation. And that, of course, meant coming to terms with the reality of what had just happened.

Under normal circumstances, Barb would probably have tried to convince herself that what had happened was just some kind of hallucination, because she would never have believed that what she'd gone through could possibly be real. Being attacked by a monster, dragged into some kind of… other world… and then being rescued by a boy who could apparently read her mind? Every part of that idea sounded certifiably insane.

But… She glanced over to the boy, who was still slumped back in the passenger's seat with his eyes closed, breathing raggedly and clearly still soaking in the warmth. Since he's real… that means the rest of it must've been real too. There was no way around that. Either she'd completely lost her mind and was still hallucinating, or it had all been real.

"You're not hallucinating," the boy whispered under his breath, his eyes still closed. He coughed again, pressing one hand to his chest as he winced in pain, and his voice echoed inside her head again. It was all real.

Barb stared at him for a long minute, before she nodded slowly. "…Right," she managed. "Thanks… I guess?" Knowing that she wasn't crazy was nice, but that also meant that some kind of inhuman monster really had tried to kill her, which was much less comforting.

Just the memory of the thing that had been stalking them, the phantom grip of its clawed hand around her leg and the sound of that clicking, bestial roar, made her shiver again, from fear rather than from cold. "What… what was that thing?" she inquired, shifting in her seat so that she could look at him more easily. "I…" She shrugged helplessly with one shoulder. "I've read biology textbooks at school and everything, but I've never seen or heard of anything like that before."

The boy's eyes flickered open, and he turned his head to meet her questioning gaze. "I don't know," he answered quietly. "I know that it's from that world, not this one. And it's smart – not as smart as a person, but smarter than most animals. But beyond that…" Another cough racked his body, and he winced again, rubbing his chest as his weird mental "voice" took over. Beyond that… I don't know. The first time I saw it was back before I first went into that world, and I didn't see it again until tonight.

"Got it." Barb couldn't help glancing towards the windows of the car, but they'd all been totally fogged up by the heater so she couldn't see anything outside. She couldn't suppress a nervous twisting sensation in her stomach, and she felt another twinge of pain from her sore ankle, where some bruises were already starting to form. "Okay, so… next questions. Who are you? And how can you… read my mind? Or… whatever it is you're doing?" She rubbed her temples, groaning under her breath as she felt the beginnings of a headache. God… how is this really happening to me? This felt like it was straight out of the comic books that Nancy's little brother liked to read, but that kind of stuff wasn't supposed to exist in real life.

The boy's lips twitched in a faint smile, and he shrugged. "I've always been this way," he replied. "I think it came from some kind of experiments, but I'm… not sure how it works. I just know that it does. It's like… asking how you can see, or hear, or taste. It's just a part of me. Always has been."

Barb frowned, thinking that over. "I mean… I guess that makes sense." She turned to look at him again. "You didn't answer the first part, though. Who are you? What's your name?"

The boy fell silent for a long moment. When he answered, it wasn't with words; instead, he raised his left arm, rolling up the sleeve of his hospital gown. Once the sleeve was out of the way, she could see a tattoo on the inside of his left wrist: the number 007, etched in black ink against his skin.

"Seven?" Barb's frown deepened, and her confusion was mixed with some concern. "That's your name?"

The boy – Seven – nodded, a pained look appearing in his eyes. Yes, his mental voice confirmed, before he continued verbally. "That's… the only name they ever gave me."

Even though she didn't know this guy, Barb couldn't help feeling a pang of sympathy in her gut at that. "I… I'm sorry," she murmured, before holding out a hand to shake. "My name's Barbara, but everyone calls me –"

"Barb," Seven finished, nodding with a bit of amusement in his eyes as he shook her hand. "Nice to meet you."

Barb was caught off-guard for a second, before it clicked. Right, he can read minds. Of course he knows my name already. She rubbed her temples in an attempt to suppress a headache as the realization that all of this was real continued to sink in, before focusing back on him. "So… how long were you in that place? And… where did you come from?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure." Seven shrugged. "Two or three days, maybe? There's no sunlight in that place, so I couldn't really tell, but it felt like it was about that long." He rubbed his eyes, leaning back in his seat. "And for where I come from… it's a laboratory, a few miles from here. I grew up there; I haven't been outside of it very often, except when they took me on trips sometimes as part of my training." He grimaced at that, clearly remembering something unpleasant?

"Hang on… a lab?" Barb's eyes widened as the only logical conclusion came to her. "You mean Hawkins Lab? The big place that the Department of Energy runs on the other side of town?"

Seven nodded. "Yes," he confirmed hoarsely. "That's it. I think I was born there, although… I don't remember. My memory has… gaps. Parts missing." He winced, rubbing his head. "But that's where I escaped from. That thing, or another one like it, broke into that lab, through a hole like the one we went through. It killed one of the scientists there, and everyone else ran, so I tried to escape. But Father and the guards cornered me, and the only way I could escape was to go through the hole that it made. So I did, and I came out… in that place." He shivered. "After that, I started wandering around, trying to find a way out, another hole that I could use to get back to this side. But I couldn't find any… until I found you."

Shit… Barb's eyes were wide and startled as she listened to his story. It sounded crazy, but under the circumstances, it made sense. But… If he hadn't been close enough to hear me screaming… Her stomach turned at the thought of what that thing would have done to her if he hadn't been there, and she put a hand to her lips as she had to fight back a surge of nausea.

"We're safe for now," Seven assured her, glancing at the fogged-up windows. "Like I said before, when that thing is close, I can sense it. It's like…" He frowned, thinking for a moment. "Like… a pressure on my mind, or a buzzing feeling. Not like anything else I've ever felt. So I can tell when it's nearby." He shrugged. "And it isn't now. It must have given up once we got back through the hole."

"Right." Barb managed to calm her stomach and nodded shakily. "Well, that's good. But, just in case…" She looked around again, unable to see through the condensation on the windows, but she couldn't shake the feeling that they were far too vulnerable out here, alone on the edge of the forest. "I think we should get out of here. We can go to my house; it's not too far from here. We'll be safer there, and you'll be able to get some rest." She looked back at him, feeling a rush of sympathy when she saw just how exhausted and hungry he looked. "And we've got plenty of food and water there, since I'm sure you could use that. If you really spent a couple of days in that place, you've gotta be hungry and dehydrated." Her expression softened a bit more, and she met his eyes again. "Okay?"

Seven's eyes widened in what looked like surprise. He looked at her with an unreadable expression for a moment, before nodding slowly. "…Okay."

Fortunately, it didn't take long for Barb to drive across town to her house. Thinking ahead, she turned off her headlights as she was coming down the block, so her parents hopefully wouldn't see her parking as she pulled slowly into the driveway. They had been under the impression that she had gone to the assembly that had been held at the high school that evening for Will Byers' disappearance, and that she would be spending the night at Nancy's house afterwards, so they wouldn't be expecting her to come home until tomorrow. As a result, she was going to need a way to explain why she was home early, and she would also need to get Seven into the house without her parents seeing him (since his presence would bring about a lot of questions, none of which she was prepared to answer right now). Fortunately, since her house was only one story, the latter was the easy part.

"All right, here's the deal," she explained quietly, keeping an eye on the house to make sure that neither of her parents had seen or heard her pulling into the driveway and that they weren't going to come out to investigate. "My room's on the other side of the house; if you go around that side and around to the back of the house, it's the first window you'll see. I need you to sneak around and wait there for a minute, while I go in and tell my parents why I'm home." When his eyes widened in alarm, she quickly shook her head. "No, no, I'm not gonna tell them about what actually happened or anything! I was just supposed to spend the night at a friend's house tonight, so my parents will want to know why I came home instead, and I'll have to come up with a story to explain that. That's all."

Seven thought that over briefly, and then nodded. "I understand," he agreed, before his frown deepened and he locked eyes with her. "But, please… don't tell them about me. It's not safe."

Barb felt a chill run up her spine at that. "What do you mean?"

"The people who raised me… the people I escaped from." Seven's eyes narrowed and he grimaced, clearly recalling some unpleasant memories, before he shook it off and focused intently on her. "They don't know where I am. Right now, they think I'm still in that world, not here. As long as that's the case, we're safe. But if they find out that I'm alive, they're going to want me back. And if they find me here…" He nodded to her and to the house, before he raised one hand, forming a gun-shape with his thumb and his index and middle fingers, and placed it against the side of his head to mime a gunshot. The deadly-serious expression on his face never wavered. "Get it?"

Barb's stomach turned, and she tasted bile in the back of her throat for a second at the thought of what he was implying. Holy shit… The fact that this guy had apparently been held prisoner inside Hawkins Lab for most of his life was scary enough on its own, but if the government really did send people after him, and they found out that she had been hiding him here… Images of what could happen to her and her parents flashed through her imagination in vivid, horrific detail, sending an icy rush of fear coursing through her body. The monster that had attacked them had been terrifying enough, but this brought that fear surging right back.

Clearly reading her thoughts, Seven's expression shifted, becoming more downcast, and he nodded soberly. "I… understand if you don't want me to stay," he spoke up, his voice quiet and subdued now. "I don't want to put you in danger. I should probably just… go somewhere else." He closed his eyes for a moment, before unbuckling his seatbelt and reaching for the door handle.

"Wait!" Barb's hand instinctively shot out and grasped his arm, before she even realized that she was moving. Seven froze on contact, looking down at her hand and then back at her with surprise and confusion in his eyes.

"Don't… don't go." She shook her head, feeling a weird tingling sensation in her stomach as their eyes met. "You don't have to leave. It's okay." She sighed, shaking her head. "I mean, it's not okay that this is happening to you, because this whole situation is majorly fucked up, but… it's okay for you to stay. At least for now, until we can figure something out."

On some level, she couldn't help feeling annoyed with herself for feeling so strongly about this – Really, Barb? First you couldn't leave Nancy alone even when she told you to, and you almost got eaten for it, and now you're doing this? – but she couldn't help it. This was just who she was, on some fundamental level. If she cared deeply about someone, or she saw someone who really needed help, she had to at least try to help them. And looking at this guy, who'd saved her from a monster and was apparently being hunted by the same people who'd kept him locked up for his entire life… she couldn't bring herself to let him walk away without doing whatever she could to help him.

"But don't worry, I'm not gonna tell my parents about you," she assured him. "They probably wouldn't understand anyway, honestly." She chuckled softly, before nodding towards the house. "Okay, so like I said, you go around that side to the back and wait by the first window. I'll go in, come up with an excuse for why I'm home early, and then I'll go to my room and let you in." Her cheeks flushed when she realized that she was still holding onto his arm, and she quickly let go. "All right?"

Seven had been staring at her with a mixture of conflicting emotions warring on his face, but eventually, he nodded again. "Yes," he agreed. "Thank you."

While Seven slipped off around the outside of her house, Barb limped up to the front door. She unlocked the front door and glanced over just in time to see him disappear around the corner, before she opened the door and ducked inside.

As she'd expected, her parents, John and Marsha Holland, were both seated on the couch in the living room. They'd been watching the news, but they both turned towards the door with confused frowns as she shuffled into the house. "Barb?" her mom questioned. "Weren't you sleeping over at the Wheelers'? Did you decide to – oh my god!" The startled exclamation came when she got a good look at Barb: her soaked clothes, the way she was swaying unsteadily due to her exhaustion and the pain in her leg, and the dried blood that was smeared around her nose. "Are you okay?!"

"I… yeah, I'm okay," Barb replied, leaning against the wall to take the weight off her increasingly-sore leg as her mom sprang up from the couch and rushed over to her. "Seriously, Mom, I'm fine. It's not as bad as it looks."

"What happened, sweetheart?!" Her dad had also scrambled to his feet by now, and he hurried over to them. "Did someone hurt you?"

"No… no, it was an accident." Barb shook her head, taking a second to catch her breath while mentally running through the cover story that she'd come up with on the drive back from Steve's house. "When Nancy and I went to the assembly, the school parking lot was full, so we had to park a few blocks away and walk. After the assembly was over, we were walking back to the car, and…" She managed a weary, breathless laugh. "Somebody's sprinklers went off right as we were walking past them; we both got soaked, and I slipped, twisted my ankle and smacked my face on the sidewalk."

"Oh, honey!" Her mom's eyes were wide and horrified as she fussed over Barb. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"And is Nancy okay?" her dad added.

"Oh, yeah, Nancy's fine," Barb replied flatly, rolling her eyes despite herself. She loved Nancy like a sister, but under the current circumstances and with her leg hurting more by the minute, she was feeling more and more annoyed with her friend for the part that Nancy's actions had played in the night's events. "Her clothes got wet too, but she didn't slip or anything, so she's not hurt. We figured I should come home instead of spending the night over there, just to be safe, so she got a ride back to her house from a couple of her other friends." She felt a little guilty, since she had been Nancy's ride to Steve's house and Nancy wouldn't have anyone to drive her home now, but she reminded herself that Nancy had explicitly told her to go home before she'd gone upstairs with Steve. She didn't want me to drive her home, so she can figure that part out herself.

"And yes, Mom, I'm okay," she continued. "My nose isn't bleeding anymore and it definitely isn't broken, and my ankle doesn't feel like it's really hurt either; it's just sore." She sighed and summoned up a weary smile. "Right now, I think I just need some aspirin, a hot shower, and sleep. In that order."

Inwardly, she was really hoping that her parents would buy that, since she needed to get to her room alone so she could let Seven into the house before he froze to death outside. Luckily, that seemed to do the trick, and her parents exchanged a brief glance before nodding. "All right, sweetheart," her mother agreed. "Take a couple of aspirin and a nice hot shower, and then get to bed. Hopefully you'll feel better in the morning. But if that ankle is still hurting tomorrow, we'll have to take you to get it checked out, to make sure it's not broken or sprained."

"Sure, Mom." Barb's tired grin widened a bit, and she suppressed the urge to roll her eyes again. "If I'm not feeling better in the morning, I'll let you guys know. But right now, I promise I'm fine."

Finally satisfied that their daughter wasn't seriously hurt (and after she'd assured them that she didn't need any help getting to her room), her parents returned to the couch, and Barb limped out of the living room and down the hallway to her bedroom.

Her room wasn't what you would call "pretty", but Barb had never really cared about that. What mattered more to her was that it was comfortable, and it certainly qualified in that regard. The walls were a plain brown color, and the floor was covered by a thick, soft, dark-green carpet. Her bed had thick, soft blankets and numerous pillows, chosen both for comfort and for warmth, which had often come in handy during the many sleepovers that she'd had with Nancy over the years.

As soon as she was in the room and her door was closed and locked, Barb hurried across to her window, unlatched it, and yanked it open so she could look outside, while keeping the light off for the moment so nobody outside could see what she was doing. Sure enough, Seven was waiting outside, crouched down a few feet away and pressing up against the side of the house in an attempt to avoid detection by anyone who might be looking out a window in one of the neighboring houses. The sight of him huddled down like that, shrouded by his tattered hospital gown and shivering again, wrenched at Barb's heart, and she immediately leaned outside. "Hey!" she whisper-yelled, speaking as quietly as she could while still making sure he could hear her. "C'mon, get in here before you freeze!"

Seven must have been lost in thought or more tired than she'd realized, because despite his apparently being able to read minds, he clearly hadn't realized that she was there until he heard her voice. His head snapped up, and he tensed for a moment before he recognized her. A wave of relief swept across his face, and he pulled himself to his feet.

Fortunately, since the Hollands' house was only one story, the window was low enough that Seven didn't even really need Barb's help to climb through it. Clambering inside, he practically collapsed onto the end of her bed, a sigh escaping his lips as he slumped onto the soft blankets.

Barb quickly closed the window to keep all the warm air from escaping the room. She stepped around the bed and turned on her bedside lamp to illuminate the room, before she also sank back onto the bed, sitting down and leaning back on her hands so she could take the weight off of her sore ankle. After taking a minute to rest (while resisting the urge to collapse into the blankets and pass out), she turned to look down at Seven and grinned wryly. "See? Told you it would work."

Over the course of the next half-hour, Barb was able to get herself and Seven cleaned up. Her parents were still in the living room, so she'd set to work as quickly as she could, wanting to have everything taken care of before they decided to go to bed. After taking a couple of painkillers to mitigate the pain in her ankle, she turned on a nice warm shower: not too hot, but enough that it should help to warm them both up. She'd sent Seven in to shower first, setting out a soft towel for him and telling him to let her know when he was done using his powers, while she slipped into her parents' bedroom to find some clothes that should hopefully fit him.

Luckily, she'd been able to find some options fairly quickly: an extra set of pajamas (just a plain black shirt and black pajama pants) that her dad didn't wear very often, plus a set of extra clothes (a shirt, boxers, jeans and socks) that he hopefully wouldn't miss. She'd probably have to buy some more clothes, depending on how long they needed to keep Seven hidden here, but she could start worrying about all of that tomorrow. If she tried to deal with everything at once, she was pretty sure her brain would explode, so she was just focusing on one thing at a time.

Once Barb had gotten the clothes back to her room, she settled down to wait. It only took a few minutes before a mental call of Done echoed through her brain, alerting her that Seven was finished in the shower. Grabbing the pajamas that she'd found for him along with a set of hers, she ducked back out into the hall, moving as quietly as she could so her parents wouldn't hear her, and tapped carefully on the bathroom door before she opened it a crack and passed her dad's pajamas inside, setting them on the counter for him. She caught a brief glimpse of the shower door sliding open before she quickly pulled the outer door closed again, her cheeks flushing involuntarily as it fully dawned on her that a strange boy had just taken a shower in her house. She'd had plenty of sleepovers at her house before, of course – with her childhood best friend Robin Buckley when they were kids, and with Nancy many times over the years since they'd become friends in sixth grade – but having a guy spend the night in her room was something that she'd never done before, especially without her parents' knowledge.

I mean, it's not like he's some guy from school or anything… she rationalized in her mind for a second, before she scoffed and rolled her eyes. Oh, no, he definitely isn't a guy from school. He's a fugitive with superpowers who escaped from Hawkins Lab and saved me from a monster, and I'm harboring him in my house because some kind of shady government organization wants to capture and/or kill him. Much better.

She was so lost in thought that the bathroom door suddenly opening again came as a shock, and she flinched back before she saw Seven standing in the doorway, haloed by steam that was drifting from the shower. He'd dried himself off and was now wearing the black pajamas that she'd found for him, which didn't fit him perfectly but looked a lot more comfortable than the torn hospital gown had been. Thank you, his voice murmured in her head, using his powers instead of speaking out loud to keep the noise to a minimum. I feel better now.

Barb chuckled, her cheeks still feeling unusually warm. "Well… that's good. I'm glad." She jerked a thumb back towards her room, then nodded past him into the bathroom. "Okay, so… just go make yourself comfortable, and I'll be back as soon as I'm done in there. We can start figuring out what to do next in the morning."

Seven nodded, and she saw the warmth in his eyes. "All right," he whispered, speaking aloud this time. He stepped out into the hall and shifted to one side so she could slip past him into the steam-filled bathroom, before heading back to her room.

Since she'd had him leave the water running so her parents wouldn't get suspicious, the shower was still hot, so Barb quickly stripped off the cold, damp clothes that she'd been wearing all night and hopped in. She didn't always take long showers, but in this case she relished the feeling of the hot water pouring down over her, the warmth soaking into her entire body from head to toe and leaching away the chill that had been running through her body ever since she'd gotten dragged through Steve Harrington's pool and pulled into that terrifying shadow-world. That, coupled with the aspirin finally taking effect, meant that she was feeling much better by the time she reluctantly shut off the water and wrapped a towel around herself to dry off.

One of the main reasons why Barb liked keeping her hair fairly short, instead of growing it out like Nancy or some of the other girls at school, was because it was a lot more manageable this way. Instead of having to wrap her hair up in a towel or anything elaborate, she was able to dry it off fairly quickly, and she could brush it back into shape without too much trouble. Once she was nice and dry, she pulled her soft, dark-blue pajamas on, loving the feeling of dry, warm clothes after the frigid misery of the past couple hours. Gathering up her still-damp clothes and taking the aspirin bottle with her in case she needed another dose of it when she woke up in the morning, she headed back to her room.

Seven was still awake when she got there, but to her surprise, he was sitting on the carpet at the foot of her bed. He was already looking up when she came in, clearly waiting for her but presumably ready to duck behind the bed if they heard her parents coming. He looked a lot better than he had when they'd first arrived at her house: he was visibly relaxed, there was more color in his face now, and his breathing was coming more easily, without the incessant coughing that had been plaguing him earlier. Clearly, getting warm and getting out of whatever fucked-up atmosphere existed in that "other world" had been helpful for him.

On the other hand… Barb frowned. "Why are you…" She indicated his current sitting position with a wave of one hand. "…on the floor?"

Seven blinked, looking fairly confused. "I… I assumed you wouldn't want me to take your bed. And…" He rested one hand on her carpet, feeling it, before he shrugged. "This is fine. It's much more comfortable than the room where I slept in the lab."

That calm, matter-of-fact statement hit a lot harder than Barb had expected. Before she had time to think about what she was doing, she shook her head. "No. Uh-uh, I don't think so." She walked over until she was standing right in front of him, and then held out a hand to help him up. "After all the bullshit that you've been through over the past couple of days, you're not sleeping on the floor tonight. Plus, I've had plenty of sleepovers with my friend Nancy here, and my bed's more than big enough for two people. So it's fine."

Seven stared up at her for a long moment, visibly shocked, before his expression softened. Slowly, almost tentatively, he reached up and took her hand, letting her help him up and then stepping back into the corner of her room, leaning back against the wall.

Barb's cheeks flushed pink again, but she forced herself to ignore it as she hung her damp clothes up in her closet to dry off, before she balled up Seven's torn hospital gown and stuffed it under her bed, hoping to make sure her parents wouldn't find it. Finally, she pulled back the blankets and slid into bed, motioning for him to do the same. It's not a big deal, she insisted to herself, even as her blush deepened when Seven slowly climbed in under the blankets on the other side of the bed. It's just like having Nancy over for a sleepover. You have nothing to be embarrassed about. To make matters worse, she knew that Seven could probably hear everything that she was thinking, but she was able to stay calm. She reached over and clicked off her bedside lamp, casting the bedroom into darkness, but there was enough moonlight coming through the window that she could still make out her surroundings. She deliberately stayed on one side of the bed, giving him enough room that they both had a decent amount of personal space and they could both sleep without touching each other.

As they both settled down into the bed, their heads resting on the pillows, Barb's embarrassment began to fade as her exhaustion came surging back to the surface. This time, she didn't bother trying to resist it; she'd done everything that they could do for tonight, and they could figure everything else out in the morning once they'd both gotten a good night's sleep.

Although her eyes were rapidly growing heavier, one thought did occur to Barb as she lay there, just a random point. "Y'know… if you're gonna be here for a while, I should probably call you something other than 'Seven', right?" she murmured drowsily. "Just in case we need to introduce you to anybody else?"

Not a bad idea, Seven's echoing mental voice replied, sounding just as sleepy as she felt. What do you suggest?

"Well…" Barb considered for a moment, before she shrugged. "I mean… my name's Barbara, but I use 'Barb' 'cause it's easier and I like it better. So, if we did that for you… maybe we could call you 'Sev'? Short for Seven?"

Seven – Sev – thought that over briefly, before she dimly saw his chin rise and fall in a nod. All right.

"Cool." Barb smiled a little as she felt her conscious thoughts slipping quietly away. "G'night… Sev." With that, her eyes drifted shut, and she sank into the warm, blissful darkness of sleep as a last telepathic message flickered through her mind.

Good night, Barb.

Notes: And there we go!

So, just to clarify in case anybody's wondering: yes, this OC "Number Seven" is replacing the canon "Seven" from the Season 4 flashbacks. He definitely isn't the same character, and like with Kali/Eight, his powers are distinct from Eleven's. We'll be seeing more of his backstory and of his past interactions with El as the story continues to unfold.

Next time, Barb & Sev continue to bond, and Nancy Wheeler becomes suspicious about what happened to Barb after the party. Stay tuned!