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roanofarcc · 3 months

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PROJECT SUNSHINE CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN → THE FUNDAMENTALS OF CAPITALISM (AND CHILD ENDANGERMENT)

summary: steve harrington x oc

when another product of Hawkins National Laboratory escaped a long-survived nightmare alongside her sister, she crashed into one unsuspecting teenage boy and dragged him deeper into the dark mysteries that made up their hometown.

word count. 4.5k || masterlist || ocs moodboard

warnings: cannon typical violence, child abuse, horror, gore, and depictions of mental illness. parts of this story were written pre-season 4 release. cannon divergence.

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Steve knew that look on Dustin’s face. A conniving glint in his eyes; he was plotting something that Steve had a feeling would be outrageous, but at least this time it had nothing to do with some creature he found in a trashcan. The kid paced back and forth, making Steve dizzy, or maybe it was his lack of sleep catching up to him.

After getting Sunshine’s call in the middle of the night and racing to her house at the sound of her cracking voice, he couldn’t fall back to sleep. She had cried for a while, an awful sound that made his heart ache, and asked him to stay the night. He had no objections, in fact, even if she hadn’t asked him, he probably would have offered to camp out on her floor. There was no chance he would have left her after listening to the horrifying nightmarish memory that prompted her phone call. But she had asked him and didn’t let go of him, not that was complaining. It wasn’t too long after that she fell back to sleep, curled into his side with one hand on his chest. But Steve couldn’t sleep. His mind kept replaying her words over and over.

He knew there was nothing he could do to take back everything that had happened inside the Lab. He couldn’t undo what had already been done, and he hated it. But Sunshine had tried to reassure him in the morning, after she woke up, that she felt better. She said the nightmares happen, and all she could do was remind herself that all of it was behind her. It was wildly unfair, but that was the way of things.

Dustin’s mission was a good distraction, though, for Sunshine and Steve. It gave them less time to mull over the past, he supposed.

“The keycard opens the door but, unfortunately, the Russian with his keycard has a massive gun,” Dustin explained. “Whatever is inside that room, in those boxes, they really don’t want anything finding out. But there has got to be a way in.”

Steve leaned back in the cold metal chair in the back room of Scoops, their base of operation, and said, “I could just take him out.”

“Take who out?” Robin raised an eyebrow at him from across the table.

“The Russian guard.” Everyone just stared at him for a moment, and Steve felt defensive. It was one dude. Sure, he had a gun, big whoop. It seemed like nothing compared to a Demo-Dog. “What? I sneak up behind him, knock him out, and take his key card. Easy.”

Crossing his arms, Dustin scoffed. “Did you not hear the part about the massive gun?”

“Yes, Dustin, I did. That’s why I would be sneaking.”

The kid’s judgmental eyes were almost as bad as Robin’s. At least Sunshine didn’t look like she was judging him or doubting his abilities to knock out some dude.

“Please tell me this, and be honest, have you ever actually won a fight?” Dustin asked.

Unbelievable, Steve thought. “That was one time-”

“Twice,” Dustin corrected. “Jonathan, the year prior.”

Steve scoffed once more. “That doesn’t count.”

“Why wouldn’t it? Because it looked like he beat the shit out of you.”

Steve almost forgot that he saw Dustin a couple of hours after his scuffle with Jonathan. The two were on fine terms, now. They didn’t talk much but between Sunshine and Nancy, Steve and Jonathan were sometimes forced to hang out. After they got past the inevitable awkwardness of being in the same room together, they got along just fine. They had an easy middle ground they could tread on, the kids. But they certainly weren’t best friends by a long shot.

Steve thought back to that night and tried to not wince. He recalled Dustin, Mike, and Lucas’s younger, tear-streaked faces in the back of the ambulance before he tried to shake the memory from his mind.

“Besides,” Dustin continued. “If anyone here is going to ‘take someone out’ it's obviously Sunshine.” There was a sparkle of admiration in Dustin’s eyes as he looked at Sunshine. All of the kids looked at her like that, like she was some kind of superhero to them, understandably so. But Dustin and Max were especially fond of Sunshine. They looked up to her and Dustin had admitted to once having a crush on Sunshine “back in the day” meaning just before he met his camp girlfriend.

“Uh,” Robin hummed. All three of them looked at her, momentarily forgetting that she didn’t know anything about Sunshine’s abilities or anything about their monster-hunting endeavors. She was as clueless as almost everyone else in Hawkins, and they wanted to keep it that way. “Not that I don’t believe Danielle would put up a better fight than Harrington-”

“Hey!” Steve objected, knowing she was objectively right.

Robin rolled her eyes. “But there has got to be a way into that room that doesn’t involve anyone having to ‘take out’ a Russian guard.”

Sunshine quickly nodded in agreement. “She’s right. We need a safe way in or we’re not doing this.”

They all sat in silence for a few moments, thinking, but Steve had nothing. If the room was guarded and they needed a keycard to get it, it seemed like the only answer was to steal it from the guard who had it, which would require taking him out but that was probably a little too dangerous for them to do. A lot of things could potentially go wrong.

Robin suddenly shot up from her seat and made a bee-line out of the backroom, confusing everyone into quickly following her.

“Robin?” Steve called out just before she stuck her hand in their tip jar, stealing a handful of change and a couple of dollar bills. “What are you doing?”

She turned around with a smile on her lips and a look very similar to Dustin’s plotting gaze. “I need cash!”

“Half of that’s mine!” he argued, but she didn’t seem to care.

“I’m going to find us a way into that room.” She looked at Sunshine. “A safe way,” then returned her gaze to Steve. “In the meantime, sling ice cream, behave, and don’t get beat up. I’ll be back in a jiff!” She turned on her heel and ran out of Scoops, deadest on whatever her plan was.

“Well,” Dustin sighed. “What now?” He looked between Steve and Sunshine expectedly.

Steve shrugged. There wasn’t much to do until Robin returned. “Back to work, I guess.” He twirled his ice cream scooper in his fingers and took his place at the front counter. He and Robin had neglected their work duties in favor of becoming American heroes; he figured he should at least look like he was working somewhat so he didn’t get fired.

Sunshine leaned against the back counter, fiddling with her necklace. “Where’s Tamera?”

“Beats me,” Steve replied. “Robin said she called off for the next couple of shifts because of some family emergency or something.” He hadn’t seen Tamera in a couple of days. Robin seemed a little bummed to be stuck with Steve, but their Russian investigation seemed to ease some of Robin’s slight disdain for him.

Dustin, looking board at their current conversation, dug around in his pockets before he pulled out a small wad of cash- which he referred to as “emergency funds but only seemed to spend at the food court or the arcade. “While we wait, I’m going to get lunch. Come find me if she gets back before I do.”

That left Steve and Sunshine alone for the first time since that morning before they picked up Dustin. Her gaze had fallen out into the storefront, unfocused and far away. He moved beside her, gently bumping his shoulder with hers.

“You doing okay?” he asked. She pressed her lips into a thin line and nodded, not very convincingly. He didn’t want to push it, though. To brighten the mood, he made her a cup of her favorite ice cream and they sat in comfortable silence, watching the mall buzz around them.

It was kind of funny to Steve, how not a single person inside that building, aside from them, knew about the Russians potentially inside. No one knew about the monsters that had been in the woods. The people of Hawkins were completely clueless. Steve wondered how that felt, being left in the dark while the craziest shit occurred just under your nose.

Through the busy crowd, Steve watched as a figure zipped clumsy through it in a blur. For a second, he found himself rolling his eyes at some kid with no manners, pushing through people as they ran, but then the kid came closer and Steve realized that it wasn’t just “some kid” running right towards Scoops, it was Dustin.

He stood up straighter, confused as to why Dustin was hurrying. Robin hadn’t come back yet. Dustin barreled into the shop, wide eyes, and flushed cheeks without lunch in hand. Instead, his hand was holding something that looked like a piece of paper but he was moving too quickly to probably make it out. He didn’t stop as he rounded the counter, grabbing Sunshine’s hand, and dragging her straight through the door into the back room.

“Dustin!” Sunshine said, stumbling to a stop behind the kid. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

Dustin’s face was flushed, and his chest heaved. “I-I saw this suspicious dude by the fountain and I thought maybe he was one of the Russians we’ve been looking for. So I followed him and when I got closer, I realized he was…” He trailed off for a moment, wide eyes swimming with emotions that confused Steve. “He was taking pictures, which I-I thought was weird but then I saw what he was taking pictures of and…and, here.” He shoved a couple of Polaroids into Sunshine’s hands.

The subject of the pictures was Sunshine.

Steve peered over her shoulders at the pictures, all of Sunshine at different places in the mall on what he assumed were different days because her outfits were all different. “Why would someone be taking pictures of you?” A bad feeling knotted in his stomach, and by the look on Dustin and Sunshine’s faces, he wasn’t the only one feeling it.

“I don’t know,” Dustin said. “But it was some dude who looked like…” Something shifted in his expression. Steve wasn’t sure what happened, but the look that flickered in Dustin’s eyes made him look a lot younger, smaller even, like an actual kid and not some smart-ass who had the answers to impossible questions. “I mean…t-they didn’t look exactly the same. But they…when they…”

Sunshine dropped the photos on the table before she grabbed Dustin by the shoulders forcing him to look at her and not at the ground. She spoke in a calm, gentle voice. “Dustin, hey. Deep breaths, okay?” He nodded and tried to inhale and exhale slowly, evening out his breath in tandem with Sunshine until he was a little more calm. She smiled at him, encouragingly and brushed a couple of rouge curls from his forehead affectionately. “Who did he look like?”

“The suits and the blood and-” Dustin cut himself off, squeezing his eyes shut. Steve stepped behind Sunshine, a pit in his stomach as he watched Dustin.

“Kid, slow down. You’re all right,” Steve reminded him. He sometimes forgot just how much the kids had been through. He had been with Dustin last fall, but not the year prior. He had no idea what Dustin and the other saw or went through while looking for Will and hiding El. It wasn’t often that any of the kids showed how affected they were by it, not in front of Steve anyway. It became easy for him to forget that they were, in fact, just kids who had faced down monsters and other awful things that haunted them just as it haunted Steve. It made Steve feel nauseous.

“At the middle school, after El talked to Will and we were waiting, the people from the Lab found us,” Dustin started, his chin trembling slightly as he tried to paint on a brave face that Steve saw right through. “They were in suits and had guns and they tried to take El away. But she…she made their brains come out of their eyes and-” he stopped and winced at what Steve assumed was that memory replaying in his head. “I know they’re gone, or, they’re supposed to be. I don’t know. Maybe he was Russian, the guys taking the photos? But regardless of who he is, it can’t be good if he’s taking pictures of you.”

Tears glinted in Dustin’s eyes but he blinked them away and ducked his head. Sunshine was quiet for a moment, but Steve could tell she was thinking of what to say. She wound her arms around Dustin, pulling him into a hug that he took to immediately.

“What it is, whoever it is, we’ll figure it out, okay? But right now, let’s just focus on what we’re in the middle of. Let’s get into that room and figure out why Russians are in Hawkins. Then, we’ll deal with whatever those pictures may mean.” She was trying to make him feel better, but Steve had a feeling she was also trying to figure out how to steer Dustin away from whatever business was going to happen with the man taking photographs of Sunshine.

Steve’s jaw ticked as he peered out the back-room window, checking for any weirdos in suits lingering. That was the last thing they needed, the last thing Sunshine needed. The universe just loved dishing out problem after problem, didn’t it?

“Okay,” Dustin agreed. “But let’s stick together when we’re inside the mall from now on, okay? No one, especially you, goes anywhere alone, even if you’re a better fighter than us.”

Sunshine smiled softly and nodded, and Dustin gazed at her with the hope that they’d work everything out. Steve hoped, for all of their sakes, they did, and soon.

...

Sunshine was a mess of jumbled feelings and nerves. She felt drained and a little hollow as she stared at the two photographs of her in the back room of Scoops. The longer she looked at her slightly blurred figure, the less she recognized herself.

With a heavy groan, she dropped her head on the table and closed her eyes, trying to shut down her brain long enough for it to clear up so she could properly focus. She had no idea why things started to slip out of her control so suddenly. One moment, she’s enjoying the summer with a crush on a boy and spending a much-deserved normal time with her siblings. The thing she knows, she swarmed with worry regarding Luke and his drawing of the future, feeling guilty about her parents' concern and having to lie to them, trying to figure out why the hell Russians are in Indiana, dealing with a resurgence of hellish nightmares that toyed with her deepest fears, and now someone was stalking her at the mall.

She wanted to scream, but she didn’t want to freak out any of the customers Steve was serving at the front counter.

Her mind wandered back that morning, wishing she was still in bed with Steve at her side. Sunshine had actually gotten some sleep after he came over. It was nice, having him there and willing to listen to her. They woke up in a fit of soft smiles and flushed cheeks, despite the nightmares and tears shed a couple of hours prior. If they had stayed like that for just a little longer, maybe they would have prolonged their current issues by just a little. But it was no use. Sunshine had to deal with what hand the universe had dealt her, no matter how unfair it seemed.

Robin returned, excited and out of breath as she barreled through the door. Sunshine quickly shoved the photos into her bag and watched as Dustin and Steve trailed behind Robin, gathering around the table. She unrolled a large map and slapped it down with a satisfied smile.

“It’s fascinating what twenty bucks will get you at the county recorder’s office,” Robin said. “Starcourt Mall: the complete blueprints.”

Sunshine gazed at the map, the corners of her lips upturning just slightly. “Impressive,” she said.

Robin beamed before she uncapped a marker with her teeth and drew a dot near the center of the map. “This is us, Scoops.” She drew a line across the paper until she reached a room and circled it. “And this is where we want to go.”

Steve looked over the map for a moment before he said, “I don’t see a way in.”

“There’s not.” Robin pulled back the map to reveal another one underneath it. “That is, if you’re talking exclusively about doors.”

Dustin gasped. “Air ducts!”

“Exactly! It turns out this secret room needs air like any other old room. And these air ducts lead all the way…” She drew another line, weaving it through the air vents to show a clear path from them to the secret room. “Here.”

With Robin’s discovery, they got to work on the next phase of their mission. Steve snagged the toolbox from a shelf of supplies near the back of the room and popped off the vent high up on the wall that led into the air ducts. He then shined a flashlight into the dark duct, trying to judge the height and width of it, seeing if one of them could wriggle their way inside. Steve was too broad, Robin had slight claustrophobia, and Sunshine also wasn’t too keen on crawling through tight spaces after her and El’s escape through the drainage tunnel from the Lab, which only left Dustin.

“I don’t know man,” Steve sighed. “It’s super tight.”

“I’ll fit,” Dustin insisted. “Trust me. No collarbones, remember.”

Robin raised her brows. “Excuse me?”

Steve jumped down from the ladder to let Dustin test out the vent. “Oh, yeah. He’s got some disease. Chry, uh, it’s chrydo…something. I dunno. He’s missing bones and stuff so he can bend like gumbo,” Steve tried to explain, but not very well. Through, in his defense, Dustin didn’t talk a lot about the disease he had. The other boys in the party had explained that it was somewhat of a sensitive topic for Dustin, considering the bullying he received from kids at school. It made Sunshine’s blood boil, but Lucas had said that it had gotten better at school for them; more so, they had learned how to block out the nasty things kids said and lean on each other a little more. Plus, it wasn’t like the party was scared of bullies anymore; they had much more horrifying things to fear now. Some kids calling them names lost weight when they had saved the world and outsmarted monsters from other dimensions.

“You mean, like Gumby?” said Robin.

Steve pursed his lips, shaking his head. “I’m pretty sure it's gumbo.”

“Steve!” Dustin yelled, hanging halfway out of the vent. “Shut up and push me!” With a roll of his eyes, Steve obliged and took a couple of steps up the ladder, taking Dustin by the legs and trying to shove him further into the vent. “Not my legs, dumbass. Push my ass.”

An exasperated groan sounded from Steve. But Dustin was not having it, he was fairly determined to get himself in that vent, despite the rather small-looking fit of it. He yelled at Steve once more, “Touch my butt, I don’t care!”

Standing beside Sunshine, watching the interaction between Steve and Dustin unfold, Robin snorted. “You really put up with them all of the time?”

“Yeah,” she replied, both exasperated and fondly. No matter how odd their relationship was, Sunshine would not trade it for the world. She adored both of them, even in their oddest moments.

For probably too long, Dustin tried to wriggle his way into the vent, but it did not look promising.

From the front counter, Robin had done an impressive job ignoring someone ringing the bell over and over again until a voice broke through Steve and Dustin’s bickering.

“Ahoy, sailors! All hands on deck!” The bell was rung again, again, and again. Robin’s eyes twitched. “Come on, get over here and serve me some samples!” The voice stuck Sunshine as familiar. She peered through the crack in the window and saw the youngest Sinclair sibling at the counter, looking through the crack as well, right at them.

A small gasp sounded from Robin, and Sunshine watched as the wheels turned inside her head, a plan coming together as Robin’s eyes shifted between the young girl demanding ice cream and the vent Dustin was failing to squeeze into.

Turned out, all it took was some light persuading from Erica Sinclair to take a look at the vent. She recognized Dustin and Sunshine as “one of Lucas’s loser friends” which Dustin took in full offense, but Sunshine found amusing. And she had been visiting Steve and Robin at Scoops all summer, haggling them for free samples, so Erica wasn’t hesitant to agree. She stood at the foot of the ladder, looking up at the vent with her hands on her lips for a long moment before she turned to the group with narrowed eyes.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” she said.

Robin asked, “You don’t know if you can fit?”

“Oh, I can fit. I just don’t know if I want to.”

“Are you claustrophobic?” asked Dustin.

Erica scoffed, seemingly offended that he would ask that. “I don’t have phobias.”

Dustin sighed but refrained from snapping back. “Okay, then what’s the problem then?”

“The problem is, I still haven’t heard what’s in it for Erica.”

Ice cream was the perfect bribery. Erica hadn’t said no or yes, but she agreed to at least hear them out as long as Steve constructed a series of her favorite ice cream treats, for free, to eat while Dustin and Robin explained their plan to her.

Sunshine lingered at the front counter with Steve. She wasn’t a huge fan of the whole idea. She hadn’t even liked the idea of Dustin crawling through the vents into that room, where they had no clue what was being kept in it. There were too many variables she couldn’t control, and she did not like not being able to have some control over any potentially dangerous situations. Erica was even younger and smaller. What if they miscalculated and someone was guarding the room? What if something happened to Erica?

“I don’t know about this, Steve,” Sunshine signed, fixing her eyes on their group seated in one of the booths.

“It’s not ideal, but she’s our best bet,” he said.

“She’s ten years old,” Sunshine argued. “I don’t know if sending her, blind, into a secret room that requires armed guards is smart. Maybe we should just take all of this to Hopper before we’re in over our heads.”

All of her nerves and worries were stretched too thin as it was. Sunshine felt herself spiraling, sinking deeper into an undeniable paranoia as she sat on the back counter of Scoops. Her gaze wandered out onto the food court, wondering if that man was back, snapping photos of her at that very moment. She knew she wasn’t lucky enough to have some average creep watching her; it had to be connected to the Lab. The thought made her feel sick. She had told Dustin they’d figure it out after they solved their supposed “Russian invasion” but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t worry about it. What if it was someone from the Lab? Watching her, waiting for…something? What if she wasn’t the only target? She had three siblings to worry about too.

Sunshine felt her chest tighten and constrict with every awful thought that entered her brain. She almost missed Steve finishing crafting Erica’s sundae before he stood in front of Sunshine. He placed a cold hand on her bare knee.

“We’ll be able to watch the room from the roof to make sure no one shows up unexpectedly. But the guards won’t be there tonight because there’s no new shipments coming in. Erica will be able to sneak in, open the doors for us, and that’ll be it. We’ll snoop around and figure out what they’re keeping in there, then we’ll take everything we know straight to Hopper,” Steve said, trying to ease her worry, but it wasn’t working. “Erica will only be alone for five minutes tops.”

“A lot can go wrong in five minutes.” From what Sunshine had learned, the entire world could threaten to end in only five minutes.

Steve squeezed her knee. “It won’t,” he insisted. “And who knows, maybe the Russians are smuggling tubs of ice cream, nothing illegal or world-ending.”

A small smile crept onto her lips. “You don’t think they have USS Butterscotch over there?”

“I don’t think so. It’s probably hot contraband in those parts, they have to steal it straight from the source.” They laughed, lightly before Steve grabbed Erica’s sundae and nodded his head toward the group. “Come on, let’s go negotiate with little Sinclair.”

They squeezed into the booth as Dustin asked Erica, “Don’t you love your country?”

Eric jammed her spoon into the sundae, eyes narrowed and set in unwavering confidence that seemed to run in the Sinclair’s blood. “You can’t spell America without Erica,” she said before taking a large bite of ice cream.

They all sat in that for a moment. Dustin nodded slowly. “Um, yeah, oddly enough that’s true. So, don’t you do this for us. Do it for your country.”

“Oh, I just got the chills!” Erica said, making Dustin beam with a moment of hope that his speech worked. “From this sundae, not from your speech.” Dustin’s shoulders slumped. “Do you know what I love most about this country? Capitalism. Do you know what capitalism is?”

Everyone at the table nodded, except for Sunshine, who shook her head not expecting to be the only person to do so. It wasn’t her fault; learning politics or the economy wasn’t exactly high on her list of things to learn after being essentially held captive for ten years. There were a lot of things she was still figuring out, but she supposed ‘capitalism’ should be moved up on the list if a ten-year-old child knew more about it than her.

“It’s a free market system,” Erica explained. “Which means people get paid for their service depending on how valuable their contributions are. And it seems to me that my ability to fit into that little vent is very valuable to you all. So, you want my help? Then this USS Butterscotch better be the first of many.” She pointed her spoon between Robin and Steve. “I’m talking free ice cream. For. Life.”

Robin and Steve exchanged a silent look between themselves, contemplating Erica’s request and probably questioning whether or not putting their jobs on the line was worth it. With a defeated sigh, Steve nodded. “Fine, you got yourself a deal, little Sinclair.”

And their plan was officially set in motion.

Tagged. @sattlersquarry , @leptitlu , @drunkengodsofslaughter

#stranger things #steve harrington #steve harrington x oc #steve harrington x original character #steve harrington fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #dustin henderson #erica sinclair #robin buckley #stranger things 3 #stranger things fic

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