CHAPTER THIRTEEN
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     THE MORE TIME THAT PASSED, the more everyone was truly living life comfortably again. It had been about six months since all of the incidents at the lab and Lexie was truly happy to watch her sister, as well as her friends, get excited about something without having to worry about monsters or demogorgons first.

     The school year had finished up, and Lexie had made way too huge of a deal about Emily finishing up middle school. Emily said that everyone else had also finished middle school and that it didn't matter, so Lexie took that as a free invitation to invite all of her friends over to celebrate and have a big cake. She baked the cake, with the help of her mother and aunt, and she had invited Steve as well. The kids really did love him, plus he was right next door. She didn't mind having him around so much, either.

When the new mall opened, Steve had gotten a job there right after graduation at the ice cream place. Lexie was still a year younger, being Nancy's age, but she had also made a huge deal of him graduating. He had told her it was no big deal, a bit like Emily, but she wasn't about to hear it. She didn't throw him a party like the kids since she could sense he wasn't feeling it for sure, but she still forced a gift and baked goods upon him like any good friend.

She had been thrown off months earlier, when he had talked about his parents nagging him to be more involved at school again and how they thought he should go to the prom because he was graduating and all. It was almost funny to her, because his parents were almost never around and she hadn't even really met them. Long story short, they ended up going as friends.

Lexie realized that she was lucky to have Steve. As much as she had liked him initially, they had only known each other for a brief time when everything happened. Now, as she got to know him better, she was thinking that he was definitely one of her favorite people. Which, a few years ago, she would be surprised to know that she would ever be saying that about Steve Harrington.

So that day when he came to her door and asked her if she would like to be his prom date platonically, she had agreed without even thinking about it. Except then, afterwards, she was very much thinking about it all the time. And when they went, she realized that she very much had feelings for Steve.

They had been friends for months at that point and she was mortified to even think it. Because what if it ruined the one friend she had? And he was getting over Nancy, it would never happen. But all this talk in her head didn't change the fact that her stomach did somersaults when he was around and she loved every moment of his company.

That's also something that her past self would be shocked to find out.

Now, she was walking through the air conditioned hallways of Starcourt Mall, savoring the relief that she was out of the late June heat. The neon lights covered every part of her vision as she walked the familiar path to the Scoops Ahoy, book in hand.

When she entered, it was even more cold inside of the ice cream shop itself and Lexie smiled. She waved at Robin, Steve's coworker, in a friendly way. As Lexie approached the counter, Robin turned around and propped open the back door to yell through it.

"Dingus, your girlfriend is here!" she shouted, a smirk on her face as she did so. Lexie liked Robin, though she wished she could get to know her better. But that was always what Lexie wished because she wanted to be better at making friends and was never really sure how to do that.

She said something to this effect every time that Lexie came in, and Lexie couldn't tell how she felt about it. It reminded her on some level that her and Steve weren't going to happen. But a small part of her liked hearing it. Though, she wouldn't admit that.

Steve stepped out of the back, mumbling something about how she wasn't his girlfriend and Robin knew that but Robin simply nodded at him like she didn't believe that for one second. The parlor was empty, mostly since it was a weekday and it tended to be overall busier on the weekends. Usually, during the week, she could come and hang around for pretty much as long as she felt like it.

Lexie laughed and greeted him, "Ahoy." Steve rolled his eyes playfully and shook his head as they slid into one of the booths. She already knew what he was about to say. "As long as you have the cute little sailor uniform on, that's how it is."

"It could be worse," he admitted with a shrug, still smiling at her. "What's it gonna be today?"

"You already know, USS Butterscotch," she replied, opening her book and taking the bookmark out as he slid out of the booth. He shot a few finger guns at her and she laughed.

"You got it," Steve told her, walking back around the counter to the ice cream containers. Every single time she came in, he gave her free ice cream. At first, she refused because she didn't want to get him in trouble. Then, he told her he was allowed a free ice cream on his shift, so it really was okay for him to be doing it. After that, she had argued that she didn't want to steal away his free ice cream and then he said he was getting tired of looking at it all day so it was fine if she just had some. That had finally done it, but sometimes he would eat some ice cream with her, but she didn't say anything. She just thought it was really sweet.

He came back a few moments later, expectedly with some ice cream for the both of them.

"Which one are you having?" she asked.

"Poop Deck Peanut Butter," he replied without a second thought and Lexie laughed so loud that the customers that Robin was helping turned around to look at her. She covered her mouth for a second before grabbing her spoon and licking the butterscotch ice cream off of it.

"You're lying," Lexie decided, shaking her head and trying not to giggle loud enough for everyone else in the entire mall.

Steve shook his head. "Nah, dead serious," he confirmed, pointing toward the board that listed all of the current flavors. "Unfortunately." She squinted to read it and found it a few flavors down. Before she could even stop herself, she was laughing so hard that she almost snorted.

"That's terrible," she let out with a grin.

"It's kind of funny when someone has to order it," he pointed out. "That goes for most of them, honestly."

"Hey, can I have some of your Poop Deck Peanut Butter?" Lexie asked, gesturing toward his cup. He contorted his face in mock reflection with his eyebrows scrunched like he was truly thinking really hard about it.

"Only if I can have some of your USS Butterscotch," he decided in an exaggerated bargaining tone.

"Deal."

Lexie scooped some of the peanut butter out of his cup with her spoon and he did the same with hers. She knew they probably sounded like idiots with how ridiculous the names of the flavors were, but she didn't care.

"So what are we seeing tonight?" Steve asked her through a mouth full of ice cream.

"The Goonies," she replied with certainty. It was her turn to pick the movie that they saw. "It's been out for a few weeks and I don't want to wait to see it."

"The Goonies it is," Steve agreed, stealing another bite of her ice cream. She raised her brows at him in warning and raised her spoon, threatening to take more of his. He shot her a challenging look back so she scooped out another bite of the peanut butter. Steve didn't put up a fight. "Is that the one about the kids under the ground?"

One of her favorite things that he did was get the plot of movies wildly wrong yet somehow right at the same time.

"Yeah, it's that one," she confirmed. He had gotten the point.

He gestured to the book on the table with his spoon.

"What are we reading now?" he asked, noticing that it was a new book and her bookmark wasn't very far in at all yet. When he said 'we,' what he really meant was that Lexie was going to read the book and she was going to give him a recap of it, usually like this over ice cream.

"The Hobbit," she answered, taking another bite of his ice cream. His face scrunched up in confusion as he took another bite of hers.

"What the hell is a hobbit?" Steve inquired in a baffled voice.

"They're tiny little dudes with hairy feet," she explained, holding up the book and giggling at his confusion. "It's a fantasy."

When she put the book down on the table, he grabbed it and looked at the cover curiously. He flipped through it casually and even though Lexie knew that he didn't get it, he would still eagerly listen to her talk about it and explain it to him regardless.

"What's this?" he asked, nodding down the open book in his hands where her handwriting was scrawled in the front cover and on some of the introduction pages. He flipped to find a little bit in the back cover as well. Lexie grabbed the book from his hands swiftly and closed it, shaking her head. She could feel her cheeks getting warm and red, which she hated.

"It's nothing," she dismissed. They had finished the ice cream and she checked her watch, grabbing her bag and putting the book under her arm. "I told Iris I'd help her out at the bakery in a little while, so I should head there now since I took the bus."

"Okay," he said, glancing at the book and then proceeding to stack their ice cream cups to clean them up. "I'll see you later."

"See you later!" she told him over her shoulder, waving and smiling while she hustled out the door.

__________

Lexie was elbow deep in dough when the door to the bakery jingled. She looked over at Iris, who was deeply focused on shaping the dough into what was going to be croissants.

"I'll get it," she told her, rinsing her hands off in the sink before stepping out into the main store behind the counter. She wrinkled her eyebrows in confusion. "Hopper?"

He also looked confused when he saw her there. "I was looking for Iris," he explained.

"Iris!" Lexie shouted, knowing that she would come out easily. And she was correct, a few moments later she emerged from the back with flour and a smile on her face.

"Jim," she greeted, giving him a brief wave. "What's up?"

"Uh, I guess I can ask the both of you for advice," he decided. He stepped up to the counter so that he was as close as possible and looked over his shoulder a few times to make sure it was just them in the store. "What do you do if your daughter won't leave the door open just three inches when her boyfriend is over and you keep catching them—"

He was interrupted by the sound of both Iris and Lexie laughing loudly. They truly didn't mean to, but the situation was amusing and his panic over it was very endearing.

"Okay, okay," Iris breathed, gathering her composure. "You want them to keep their hands off each other, but the truth is, they're not going to stop doing that."

"They'll stop doing that if I kill Mike Wheeler," Hopper replied, his face showing no signs of joking whatsoever.

"You're not going to kill Mike," Lexie said, shaking her head and crossing her arms. He wasn't sure why her advice mattered, it was surely an accident that she was here when he arrived, intending to talk to Iris.

"I can tell you, it was never a problem with these ones," Iris told him, pointing her thumb in Lexie's direction. Lexie crossed her arms and aimed her eyes at the floor. Iris put her hand on her shoulder and squeezed. "As in, totally responsible, always. Or, if they were doing any of that, I certainly didn't know about it."

"This is besides the point," Lexie interrupted, trying to divert the conversation back to the core of Hopper's problem. "She won't leave her door open when Mike's over?"

Hopper nodded in an exasperated way, as if he was reliving the moment over and over again.

"Just talk to her like a person," she went on simply. Hopper gave her an incredulous look and she nodded in confirmation. "Really. Try and respect the fact that she can make her choices, but try to let her see your side of it. Like equals."

Iris nodded in agreement. "If you try and stop them from doing things, they'll find ways to do them anyway," she added. "Kids won't stop doing the things they want to do."

Hopper just looked at them for a second and nodded like he wasn't sure about how to do that at all. Lexie could tell that this had been stressing him out. She went over to one of their pastry cases and grabbed a pair of tongs, retrieving a donut that was one of her personal favorites, and put it into a bag for him.

"Here," she said, handing it to him over the counter. "On the house."

"To the joys of parenting," Iris told him, pouting at him with a grin and returning to the back room.

"Thanks," he sighed, waving goodbye and telling Lexie that he'd see her the next day for her shift at the station. She bade him goodbye and told him yes, she'd see him tomorrow.

Lexie returned to making dough and her and Iris worked in comfortable silence for a few minutes before it was broken by her aunt.

"You don't have to stay all day, I'll finish things up here," she assured Lexie. "Unless you need a ride home."

"No, Steve's going to pick me up, don't even worry about it," Lexie told her, pulling her hand off the dough for a moment to wave her hand at her aunt. Iris looked at her and smirked, nodding herself.

"Okay." She paused and worked for a moment before she spoke up again. And Lexie could tell what direction she was going with it. "What are you guys going to do?"

"We're seeing The Goonies," Lexie answered, passing the dough that she was finishing up over to where Iris was placing the fully formed croissants on trays. "He keeps trying to convince me to see the special preview of Day of the Dead, but..."

Iris was watching her with a huge smile and Lexie slowed her words and narrowed her eyes. "What?" she demanded. Iris shrugged at her and turned her attention to the croissants.

"Nothing."

__________

A few hours later, Lexie was waiting on the sidewalk for Steve to come pick her up. Downtown Hawkins was practically a ghost town now. Barely any cars were parked there like there used to be, signs about meetings to save the area were plastered on every lamp post. The laundromat was closed, Melvald's was just about on the verge of closing. Everything they had was marked fifty to seventy percent off, advertised in big, red letters in the window.

It made her feel kind of sad, and sometimes worried for her family's business. She knew that nothing in the mall was really a competitor, but she worried about a lot of things she probably didn't need to worry about.

Steve pulled up and Lexie entered the car immediately, trying not to think of how desolate the street was becoming.

"Hey," he greeted, smiling at her. He was no longer in his sailor uniform — he had gone home and changed before coming to get her.

"Hi," she said, fidgeting with the book in her lap a little bit. She smiled once she realized that he had put in a Madonna tape that he had gotten to keep in his car because she liked it. It warmed her up from the inside out.

He started driving to the movie theater in the mall and they were uncharacteristically silent, Madonna filling the air instead.

"You know you can tell me whatever, right?" he said suddenly, looking over at her briefly. "Like, you already know pretty much the worst and most embarrassing things about me, so nothing you tell me could get any worse than that, honest."

Lexie glanced over at him and turned her head in slight confusion. Of course she knew that. She felt comfortable with Steve in a way she didn't with other people. Was he really that bothered about the book thing earlier? Maybe she had left a bit abruptly.

"But also you don't have to tell me anything, either," he clarified a few seconds later, putting one of his hands up after a few seconds of silence.

Lexie smiled at him a bit and looked down at her book. "It's just some of my own stuff that I write down in the books when I come up with it," she explained to him, shrugging and feeling herself getting red again. "It was no big deal. Sorry about earlier. I was...embarrassed because nobody else knows about that."

Saying out loud was honestly embarrassing for her, too. It was something that she had always done and hadn't thought much about since she usually had a book with her, but he was the first one to notice and say something about it.

"What?" he asked, like he was truly disbelieving in this fact and drawing out the word for a few seconds too long. "Nobody else?"

"No," Lexie confirmed, nodding, trying not to feel nervous about the conversation.

"I had no clue," Steve marveled, glancing over at her curiously. "That's not embarrassing, that's really cool. And I'd love to see it if you, uh, ever wanted to show anyone."

"Well, thanks," she told him, turning to look out the window so that he wouldn't see her go bright red. "Speaking of, I'm a few chapters into The Hobbit."

Steve grinned. "Alright, hit me with it," he encouraged.

"So there's this village –"

"Where the hobbits live?"

Lexie laughed and nodded.

"Yeah, where the hobbits live. And there's this one..."