CHAPTER SIX
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DEAL OR NO DEAL

EARLY NOVEMBER RAIN
pitter-pattered over Val's head as she stood behind the counter at Benny's Burgers, her shoulders relaxed and her hands thoughtlessly fiddling with a napkin dispenser, its corners corroded with copper rust. The space behind this counter had become the center of her small universe, where she spent countless afternoons and evenings since Jolene had lowered her metaphorical gavel and decided it to be so.

Her punishment ended a month or so ago, once Jolene's pity finally outweighed her anger. But Val liked working at Benny's, she liked (mostly) her customers and her one-sided banter with Chuck the Head Cook. Most of all, though, she liked having a paycheck every week. Extra pocket cash did wonders for a teen in these times, she came to realize, and it seemed to ease some of the financial tension off of Jolene's narrow shoulders.

Val pushed a stack of paper napkins into the spring-loaded opening of the silver rectangle in her hands and sighed in the direction of her co-worker-slash-best friend. "Jonathan, Leatherface would totally whoop Michael Myers' ass."

"How do you figure that?" The lanky teen had a rag draped over his shoulder and a plastic bin of dirty dishes tucked up underneath his lean arm, and his voice carried to Val from the other side of the counter.

She wasn't exactly sure when or how it happened. One day, they were distant acquaintances, unaware of either one's intricate and complex inner life. And the next, Jonathan was picking her up after school everyday, eating lunch with her on the bleachers that overlooked the football field, never tiring of her unrelenting drive to always be right or the way she sometimes seemed to like talking to Will more than him.

"He has a chainsaw," she argued, "duh." Jonathan's eyes rolled up to the paneled ceiling and he huffed. His nimble hands lifted dirty ceramic plates and bowls and empty glasses into his bin as he thought of his response.

"But Michael Myers is clever. Brains beats brawn, always."

"But...chainsaw beats brains," she said, as a matter-of-fact. Jonathan could only shake his head while giving the table a wipe down and actively fighting off a grin. "You know I'm right. Plus, the guy doesn't even run. Leatherface would catch him, and then wear his skin like flannel pajamas."

"That's gross," he commented around a laugh. Val shrugged, refilling the last of the napkin dispensers. They were lined up along the countertop, with tomorrow's salt, pepper, and ketchup, all ready for the late morning opening shift.

"What about Leatherface and Freddy Krueger?" A small, giggling voice asked from the counter, his endearing lisp capturing Val's sapphire stare. Val contemplated her answer, making a show of squinting in thought as she shared a competitive glare with Dustin Henderson.

"Freddy Krueger can get you in your dreams," Lucas Sinclair quickly said, "he would obviously win."

"Can Leatherface have his chainsaw in his dreams?" Thoughtful looks were shared between the four boys at Val's query. They had taken to tagging along with Jonathan when he worked afternoon shifts. Well, at least when they didn't have intense, hours long Dungeons and Dragons campaigns taking up their precious, pre-adolescent time. Maybe they enjoyed being around people who didn't make fun of them, people who didn't make them feel like outcasts or weirdos. Val could empathize. Mostly, though, they were there to haggle free french fries out of the big softy Benny Hammond.

"No chainsaw," Mike Wheeler declared, "that's an unfair advantage."

"Well, so is attacking someone in their dreams," Dustin argued back, his curls bouncing as he turned to look at Mike.

"What if Leatherface's mask scared Freddy so much that he peed his pants," Will asked with a laugh. They continued to discuss which horror movie big-bad would win against another, and Jonathan and Val shared good-humored glances as they diligently worked.

It was nice, finding solace in her new normal. School didn't scare her quite like it used to, now that she had someone to brave the halls with. The two freaks of Hawkins High School had formed an alliance, how poetic. But, facing the merciless crowds of sneering teens and bullies and the ever unrelenting Steve Harrington—who was always in the company of his teen movie villain wannabes—with a friend by your side didn't make it seem so impossible anymore. Especially a friend who got it. Who understood what it meant to be so far outside of the status quo that you might as well be in China. Yeah, Jonathan knew how to be that friend.

And when his job at the hardware store fell through, she was quick to get him a spot at Benny's. Val was no stranger to growing up with a single mom, who worked herself to the bone and gave up her life and sacrificed her health to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. Joyce Byers, as far as Val understood it, was a diligent and caring mom, but had so much on her plate that it was always just on the verge of shattering. Jonathan's job at Benny's kept their little family from collapsing in on itself. Plus, the totally selfish perk of working alongside your best friend didn't hurt either.

But what was Val's life if it didn't get complicated?

"Alright, free-loaders," Benny grunted from the doorway of the kitchen. "Time to hit the pavement." While his words seemed callous, his tone was affectionate, and he gave the young boys a slanted smile. They chimed with groans and protests, but stood to gather their things all the same. They politely thanked him for the free fries and ice cream, and moved towards the door that would lead them to Jonathan's car, racing to see who got shotgun. While Benny collected the tills to be counted, Val and Jonathan quickly washed up the night's dishes, the unintelligible grumbling from Chuck making them giggle, his withered hands already sweeping his trusty mop across the tiled floor.

"You need a ride Val?" Jonathan asked, peering over his shoulder at Val as she untied her apron.

"Nah, Buddy's stopping on his way home from the station," she said with a wave and a gracious smile.

"Alright," Jonathan lifted his own apron over his head and hung it beside Val's, their front pockets littered with pins and stickers of bands and movies and funny little characters. Jonathan's leaned more towards his angst-y side, The Smiths and The Clash littering as much space as Benny allowed. While Val's was mostly little sayings like BITE ME and MY SARCASM GUN IS LOADED. She spared a second to smile at them. "I'll see you tomorrow," he said in parting, sending her a wave through the serving window, where she still stood by the apron hooks.

"See you tomorrow!" Her eyes followed him through the front door, where he slid into the already packed car, Dustin in the front seat grinning animatedly.

"You ever gonna tell Jo about him?" The question came from over Val's shoulder, and when she turned around, her eyes narrowed pointedly, Benny was leaning in the door jam of his office with his arms folded paternally across his broad chest.

"She knows about him," Val was quick to argue.

"But she's never met the kid." His scoff echoed along the hallway and reached Val with a bite. "You can't keep him a secret forever, Val."

"I know that. I'm just...waiting for the right time is all." Benny nodded slowly, unconvinced.

"It's been almost fifteen years, I'm sure your mom's head won't explode if she finds out you're friends with the Byers."

"It would just be so much easier if I knew what happened," Val commented casually, careful to gauge Benny's micro-expressions from the corner of her eye.

"Ah," he quickly said, not giving anything away, "I already told you to go to your mother about that one. I am not the person to ask, you hear?"

"Benny-y," Val begged, following behind her boss as he turned back into his office, his hands held up. It had become a sort of game, Val's attempts to figure out what exactly happened between Jolene and Joyce, why exactly they haven't spoken in fifteen some years. But Benny's lips were as tight as they come, and Val was starting to realize that her pleading just might be futile.

"Nope," he quelled her whining with a sharp pop to the end of the word.

"I just don't get it. Why is it such a big deal?"

"It ain't," Benny replied, "which is why you should just ask your mom." Instead of responding, Val groaned and plopped into the softness of Benny's couch, the spring in the cushion bouncing her back into place. "And tell her about those Byers boys. It's already been too long."

"Yeah, yeah."

—

The next morning, as Val collected her belongings for school behind the closed door of her room, Jolene sat at the kitchen table with their phone wedged between her shoulder and ear. Various almost-due and overdue bills littered the space before her as she artfully planned out when and how she'd be paying them. "I'm telling you, Karen, I think she has a boyfriend."

"Oh, I'm sure she'd tell you if she did," Karen assured her. Jolene's eyebrows were set low as she listened to Val shuffling around in her bedroom, sure that the teen couldn't hear.

"I don't know," she sighed, "it's just–I mean, she never needs me to drive her to school anymore. She says she walks, but she leaves way too late to get to school on time. Someone has to be picking her up. And why wouldn't she want me to know who it is if it's not a boy?"

"Teens are secretive," Karen mused, sounding distracted.

"Yeah..." Jolene teetered off, her mind running a mile a minute. Val, in all her years of getting into trouble, had never kept Jolene this far out of the loop. Between working at Benny's and going to school and spending obscene amounts of time off with who-knows-who on the weekends, the mother and daughter duo rarely get more than the odd few hours at night to see each other, to talk. Questions always danced on the tip of her tongue, waiting to be asked, but Jolene couldn't ever find the right angle to approach such a subject. And it all started the night of that God forsaken party, in a closet with that God damned Steve Harrington, no less. "I wanna ask her, but you know how that goes."

"Oh, don't I."

"I asked Buddy, but it's rare that he even knows what day it is, let alone what's happening with Valerie."

"She'll tell you when she's ready."

"Yeah," Jolene said with a sigh, the sound of Val's bedroom door creaking in the early morning silence of their house, her boots scuffing along the hallway. "You're probably right."

"Bye, mom!" The teen yelled over her shoulder as she walked through the kitchen and towards the back door, a banana plucked up from the bowl on the counter as she went.

"Wait, Val," Jolene quickly said to halt Val where she stood, putting her hand to the phone so she wasn't yelling into Karen's ear. "Don't you want a ride to school? It's cold outside."

"Uh," she stuttered with a crease growing between her eyebrows, "no, no, I'm fine. I like the fresh air."

"Alright." A pair of melancholy eyes stared up at Val. "Well, I'll see you later, then."

"See you later!" Suddenly, Jolene had a harder time seeing the little girl that Val once was. Where she used to expectantly hold her hand out towards her mother, she now turned away with confidence. That feeling of pride that was somehow stamped out by sadness hit her in the chest, twice as hard as the day Buddy shipped off to the police academy all the way in Fulton County.

Maybe she was being melodramatic, it was only a ride to school, afterall. Maybe this was an insignificant moment in the grand scheme of the Fairchild family. But, it felt monumental to Jolene. And as she watched her daughter leave through the backdoor of their kitchen, she tried not to fixate on how quickly she'd grown up. It was as if she had sprouted into a young woman overnight.

"Sorry, Karen," she said into the phone, clearing her throat of the wad of emotions that had gotten clogged there, "what were you saying?"

—

"Stop, you have to measure it first. You'll make it explode or something if you add that much."

"Well, feel free to jump in anytime. You know this stuff is basically Russian to me."

"English is basically Russian to you, Harrington."

"Keep it up, Fairchild. I'm this close to just dumping the whole bottle in and blowing us both up."

"No one is blowing anyone up, yeah?" The lab partners' eyeline drifted from Steve's unsteady grasp of their beaker to the contemptuous glare of their science teacher. Smoothly, Steve shot her a wide, toothy grin, as if without so much as a thought.

"Wouldn't dream of it, Mrs. Fowler," Steve said, that boyish charm of his smoothing out the wrinkle between their teacher's eyebrows. She gave the pair a nod before continuing between the aisles of desks, momentarily distracted by another group's attempts at this week's chemical bonding experiment.

"Nice going," Val huffed, her eyes rolling up to the panel-tiled ceiling. She was quick to grab the beaker from Steve and use her shoulder to push him to the side. "Move."

"So bossy," he grumbled, indignant, "a please wouldn't kill you." His arms folded across his chest as he watched her work thoughtfully.

"We don't know that." Focused eyes didn't move from the beaker while she carefully measured and poured, the liquid hovering over their bunsen burner turning from its dull, orange state to a dazzling shade of opaque crimson. "There. See what happens when you follow the directions?"

"You interrupted me before I could get to that part."

"Right," she mused. Cautious hands turned the knob of their burner and the absence of the subtle heat made Val sigh. Tension fizzled between her and Steve, and it crackled quietly in her ears. Things between them hadn't really changed in the months since the night of that stupid party. Steve still hung around with his idiot friends and acted like Lord DoucheBag, while Val continued to find enjoyment in the small moments where she was able to shove him off of that pedestal he so happily perched on.

"So, I have to ask," Steve suddenly said after a moment or two of silence, wincing as if his own thoughts were causing him pain, "are you and Jonathan Byers, like...a thing?"

"What?" Val couldn't really say that the question itself caught her off guard because that had become sort of a hot topic around their small high school. The two outcasts had been spending so much time side-by-side, after all, one never very far behind the other. But, when Val looked at her best friend, really looked at his twinkling, amethyst eyes and shy smile, she struggled to see romance. If anything, the thought made her a bit queasy. So no, the question wasn't what threw her, but the person who posed it all but made her fall out of her chair. "No."

"Okay," he said with a shrug, turning his eyes down to the worksheet that was resting underneath his poised pencil. Although, it remained blank save for his name scrawled at the top.

"Why?" Suspicion reflected in Val's eyes as she regarded her lab partner, her eyebrows hanging low in a deep furrow. Steve shrugged again, still looking at the table of their shared desk.

"Just good 'ole curiosity, I guess."

"Hm," Val hummed, still unconvinced. "Are you and Nancy Wheeler a thing?" Air quotes danced around the term, and despite Val's attempt at serving Steve a spoonful of his own medicine, he only sighed. It was true that the rumors of their courtship—is that what it was?—had spread much faster than the hallway gossip of Val and Jonathan. They were seen together at last Friday's football game with his arm slung around her shoulder. And when they went to Big John's afterwards, they disappeared to Steve's car and weren't seen for over 20 minutes, or so Val had been forced to hear all week from various loudly chittering teen girls.

"Eh, sort of."

"Sort of?" Val gave him a befuddled glare. "What is that? Douchebag for going steady?" Steve finally looked up, and his expression teetered between amused and affronted.

"Geez, take it easy, will ya?" He huffed and crossed his arms defensively, leaning back in his chair. "I want to be a thing, she just...isn't making it easy on me."

"Well..." The mousy teen struggled for something to say, unaware that Steve Harrington was even capable of such feelings. Did he actually like this girl? The same girl that he's been hanging around with since September? Since the night of Jimmy Lockwood's back to school party, where she clung to his side like a frightened doe in an open meadow? Val wasn't sure she'd ever see the day. "Good."

"Good?" A scoff flew from Steve's throat and he looked at her with incredulously narrowed eyes.

"Yeah, you need someone to knock you down a peg or two. And if little miss Nancy Wheeler is the only one willing to do that, then..." She trailed off with a shrug.

"Hey, trust me, I have no pegs to stand on as long as you're around," Steve muttered indignantly around a huff, and Val shot him a satisfied, Cheshire-cat grin. She wasn't totally sure if she believed it, since no matter what she did or said one day, Steve would come in the next with a cocky grin, shining with a resilience that rivaled the indestructibility of a diamond. But still, the sentiment—no matter how much sense it didn't make if she thought about it for too long—made Val's chest bubble triumphantly.

"And that's just the way I like it."

"Jesus... You really do enjoy seeing me suffer, don't you?"

"Can you blame me?" The question brought Steve a second of pause, who seemed to truly consider it with a pensive shine to his dark eyes.

"No. I guess not."

Their conversation fell to a hum, and soon enough, the teacher was back at the front of the classroom to discuss the final result of the lab experiment. Val struggled to listen, Steve's words echoing around in the hidden parts of her mind. I want to be a thing, she just isn't making it easy on me. Was that all it took? One girl comes along and isn't as under the Harrington Spell as the ones before, and his world is shifted on its axis because he actually has to try?

As Mrs. Fowler warned the class about an upcoming test (a third of your grade, everyone, which was said with a narrowed glare towards Steve) Val couldn't decipher the emotion that had fallen down into the pit of her stomach. Would Nancy Wheeler be the one to successfully change the douchebag that is Steve Harrington? Would he get a thump on his head that's hard enough to turn him back into her Stevie? Most likely not, Val reminded herself. And hoping that it would was only going to sow seeds of disappointment. No matter how much he might sweeten his words with sugar or hide behind civility or allow Val to feel like she has the upper hand, Steve Harrington would still be the boy who turned his back on her and laughed cruelly as he did.

The signal for the end of first period chimed loudly, and Mrs. Fowler reminded her students once again of the big test coming up next Friday as everyone gathered their things to move on to their next class.

"Hey, uh, Valerie?"

"Yeah?" Val was distracted as she answered, so she didn't notice the way Steve fiddled with his bookbag, uncharacteristically unsure of himself.

"Um, well, do you think that maybe—I mean, you're so good at this stuff, uh, and I'm so, just terrible at it, and I barely know what's going on half the time, ya know?" At his reluctant stuttering, Val's head whipped around to see Steve standing before her, struggling to even look her in the eyes. "So, I guess I was wondering, maybe, you know—if you wanted to, that we could, maybe, study...together?" His voice teetered off a little at the end, and he almost winced as he waited for her response, like he was preparing to be struck.

"You want to study...with me?"

"I mean, yeah! Why not?" He chuckled, as if the uncertainty that had been dancing around inside his head was now spilling out of his mouth.

"I could think of a few reasons," Val mumbled thoughtfully.

"This isn't—" Steve cut himself off with an exasperated sigh, "this isn't like that, okay? I can't fail this test. If I do, then I'll have to retake Chemistry, and my dad'll kick my ass." It was said with a flippant laugh, but there were very few people that knew just how true that statement was, and Val happened to be one of them. Despite this, that distrustful grip on Val's chest wouldn't allow it to sway her.

"What about your sort-of girlfriend? She's smart." 

"Nancy is smart, but she doesn't, uh—"

"She doesn't know that your a dumb ass, yet?"

"Yeah," Steve nodded with a sigh. Although, Val highly doubted that Nancy Wheeler, as smart as she was, didn't already know that Steve Harrington could be a total moron when he chose to be. Perhaps she was just nicer about it than Val, more forgiving. But it was hard to allow him that grace when Val knew that he wasn't always such an idiot, that he was capable of more than that but was rarely pushed to try. "And I kind of wanna keep it that way for a little bit longer."

"And what's in it for me, if I so graciously decide to help you?"

"Um, well, you'll get the satisfaction of knowing that I'm a few brain cells smarter than I was."

"Steve..." Val chided in warning, eyeing him warily.

"Okay, okay. Well," he paused in thought, the classroom they stood in now vacant save for Mrs. Fowler, who sat behind her desk staring tiredly down at a stack of papers, "how about free rides anywhere you want for a...a week?"

"A month."

"Okay," he quickly agreed, as if he were afraid that Val would retract the statement altogether, "a month. Deal."

"Deal." Free rides around Hawkins for a month wasn't exactly the sweetest of deals for Val, especially since Jonathan never seemed to mind hauling her wherever she needed to go. But she had to admit that having that power over Steve might be...fun.

A ride to The Hawk at eleven? Done. A trip to Sal's record store during the newest episode of Dallas? You got it. Early Bird special at Melvald's, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? No problem. Yeah, she could have fun with that.

"But, if I still fail then you can forget about it," he tacked on, noticing the gleeful glint in her devilish eyes.

"You won't, I promise," she assured him, already cooking up the perfect way to ensure that Steve will retain everything he needs to know. "I have a fail-proof, tried and true study method."

A / N
Well there's chapter six!!
Did it make up for not having any Steve in the last chapter??
I hope so.
A bit of a time jump into November, so things will start picking up soon.
What are your theories about Jolene and Joyce? I'd love to hear!
If you're a veteran HELLRAISER reader than you might already know...
Anyways!
if you like this story than you should check out my other Stranger Things fic: FIRE!
Thank you and happy reading!