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“Listen, kid, you’ve done your part. All of you have. El and I will finish this, you know we will. It’s time to go home before someone gets hurt.”
Dustin freezes and turns on Hopper.
“Kid?”
Steve swallows. Judging by the furious and surprised look on Dusin’s face, the man had treaded onto thin ice.
“Yeah, kid.” Hopper goes on, clearly not realizing he hit a nerve, “You better damn well listen to me, because-”
“No.” Dustin says loudly, forcefully. He looks at Hop with venom in his eyes, “I stopped being a kid the second one of my best friend’s was taken and held captive in an alternate dimension. Mike, Lucus, Will, El, Max… None of us got to be kids. Kids don’t go through the things we’ve gone through, or see the things we’ve seen. They don’t end up possessed, experimented on, or in comas. They don’t watch the people they love bleed out in their arms. They don’t go to bed every night terrified of who’s next.”
Steve feels his heart drop to his stomach. It hurts somewhere deep in his soul that these kids have been through so much. He was supposed to protect them. Protect Dustin, at the very least. But here they are at the end of the world and they’ve all been through far more than their years should allow.
“So don’t you dare call me kid.” Dustin finishes, his eyes shining with angry tears, “I don’t have the luxury."