Chapter Text
Steve doesn’t actually live all that far away and the streets are deserted so not ten minutes later they’re pulling into his driveway.
They don’t say a single word to each other the whole way, but that doesn’t surprise Steve in the slightest. He’s feeling weird. Like how he was feeling when the night first started, loose at the seams, on the verge of something.
“Parents?” Billy croaks, not bothering to even fucking glance his way.
Steve rolls his eyes. “Away.”
And, Jesus, the parents thing is a whole ‘nother can of worms. Steve’s not sure when it went from being left home alone on the weekends sometimes to only ever getting the occasional phone call from his mother letting him know she’s still alive. They straight up stopped coming home the second Steve turned eighteen.
Billy doesn’t like, respond, or nod, or anything, but they’re sitting right next to each other in a locked car in the dead of the night so Steve’s positive he heard him loud and clear and just happened to decide to be the jerk everyone knows him to be.
So he sets his jaw, swallows, gets out of the car and fishes his house keys out of his jacket’s pocket. He makes a point of keeping his eyes up front and pretending Billy isn’t there.
He unlocks the front door and lets himself in, flips the light switch on and takes off his shoes and his jacket and makes a beeline for the kitchen to go grab some water.
He says nothing to Billy.
He doesn’t call for him or ask him to come inside or otherwise acknowledge his presence.
By the time he’s done gulping down half a glass of lukewarm water and he steps back into the living room Billy’s just kind of standing there. Shoes off as well, for whatever’s worth.
Steve’s momentarily taken aback with how much it startles him, the sight of him with his stupid hair and his stupid clothes and his bloody knuckles standing right then and there in his living room, taking space the way only he can, only he could ever accomplish.
The guy was dead.
Fucking dead.
Buried six feet under.
“We gotta tell Max you’re back,” Steve says, and doesn’t really know what for.
It’s true. They absolutely have to. And if Billy doesn’t then Steve’s gonna, but still—his words have the effect he would’ve expected.
Billy snarls like a fucking dog, all bared teeth and wild eyes. “Shut the fuck up.”
“She deserves to know her brother’s back.”
“She’s not my fucking sister.”
And God, okay, there’s a pause there.
Steve thinks they’re a bit past that point. Way past Billy and Max denying each other, cursing each other, pretending the other doesn’t exist except to spit out threats in the other’s direction.
Even before the mall and the Russians and the Mind Flayer, anyone could see the subtle shift in their dynamic. They were still calling each other every name under the sun, sure, but day after day they seemed to grow more accustomed with the other’s presence. They seemed at ease, around each other. They looked like siblings. Asshole older brother and annoying little sister.
Billy stands his ground, but Steve can clearly see— something , going on, in that big head of his.
Regret, maybe. At his words.
Or at the fact that he either genuinely doesn’t want to tell Max he’s back from the grave or desperately wants to but has no fucking clue how to go about it. Steve wonders if Billy even feels like he deserves such a thing. Offering Max comfort, offering Max nothing but himself, and his presence, and his companionship, and receiving the same in return.
Steve grinds his teeth. Sets his jaw. “You know what, Hargrove?”
Billy looks at him, eyes blank.
“I was gonna give you space tonight because I figured—y’know, back from the dead or whatever, plus, you had a shit couple of days before the Starcourt thing anyways, even if you say you don’t remember it, but—fuck, we’re doing this right now.”
“What? Doing what?”
“We need to talk. We’re gonna—we’re gonna talk.”
And Christ, Billy makes face like he just asked him to stick his arm in a toilet bowl or something.
Steve huffs out, short, and sharp, and dangerously close to infuriated. “I’m making food,” he announces. “We’re gonna sit, and we’re gonna eat, and we’re gonna talk.”
Billy groans, head lolling back. “You’re such a fucking girl, Harrington. What else? We’re gonna braid each other’s hair? Or what?”
“Fuck off,” Steve says, in earnest, mostly because he’s kind of a little too worked up at the moment to think of a better response.
He turns on his heel and walks right back into the kitchen, heading straight for the fridge.
Of course, he’s kind of shit at grocery shopping so there’s only like, some of that weirdly expensive yogurt his mother likes and a whole bunch of rotten apples. And ketchup. He moves on to the freezer then, pulls out two frozen dinners of fried chicken and something that might have resembled a vegetable at some point.
He’s not surprised when he turns his back to the fridge and finds Billy having had followed him, standing by the doorway. He makes a face at Steve’s haul. “What’s that?”
“Food.”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Yeah. Yeah. Doesn’t look like it. Steve’s well aware those TV dinner things are objectively bad and could probably be considered a crime against the culinary arts, but Billy’s gonna have to deal.
He tears the dinners’ packages off and sticks them in the microwave, one on top of the other. Then he faces Billy, crosses his arms across his chest. “What do you remember?”
“Again with that, Harrington?”
“I need to know what you remember. People don’t just randomly come back from the dead, okay? I think you know that. So, if this has something to do with the Mind Flayer—if you like, feel like you may still be possessed or something, you need to tell me.”
“What, so you can break my skull with your nail bat?”
“No, shithead. So we can take the thing out of you.”
And, well, Steve says it just like that because that’s exactly what he meant to say and exactly what he would set out to do, if Billy were in fact still under the Mind Flayer’s control.
But Billy hesitates, blanches. “You can do that?”
“Do what?”
Another second of hesitation, a look on his face like he’s not all the way in the moment. “Take it out. Is that something—? Something I could’ve—?”
He cuts himself off.
Says nothing more.
Steve stands up sharp, feels his fingers twitch. “You do remember.”
Billy looks away.
The seconds tick by. The microwave beeps.
Steve takes the trays out and sets them in kitchen island, mostly just to give himself something to do that isn’t overanalyzing every single little twitch of Billy’s.
Of course he remembers.
There is no way in hell he couldn’t remember the days and the days and the days in which Max and El and the rest of the children noticed his strange behavior. In which he grew violent, out of control. The times in which he was made to do things he never would’ve done.
And then that very last moment. Buying them time.
Saving El.
Saving them all.
Next time Steve glances up, Billy is all queasiness, staring at the poor chicken. “I’m not eating that,” he announces, and it absolutely is highly questionable food, weirdly soggy as it is, yes, but Steve would bet good money Billy’s distraught expression has nothing to do with it.
“Yeah, okay,” Steve murmurs.
He looks around the kitchen until he spots a ripped open box of granola bars on a high shelf. He takes a couple out, tosses one in Billy’s direction.
Billy catches it, doesn’t make a single move, after.
“Billy,” Steve starts, gentle, patient. “I know it may not seem like it, but, uh, I’m—I’m sorry, if that means anything. I’m sorry you got caught up in this shit.”
Billy’s eyes flick up to meet his and stay there, even if he still doesn’t say a single word.
“I wish I could’ve been there,” Steve says, caught up in a spell. “To help you out, I mean. The kids did the best they could but—yeah. Shit, I don’t know if me being there would’ve even changed anything, but—maybe if we could have gotten to you sooner? I don’t know.”
Billy licks his lips. Doesn’t stop looking at him for a second. “Careful, Harrington,” he says, after a moment. “It’s starting to sound like you care.”
Steve huffs out a quiet noise that’s not quite laughter but very well could be.
He kind of does care, is the thing. He’s sick of all of the Upside Down shit. He’s of the firm belief that no one should, under any circumstances, ever wind up the way Billy did.
(Maybe especially not him, with his ridiculous outfits and his untamed smiles.)
“I crashed the Camaro,” Billy says, slowly, slowly, slowly.
An offering, a test, a confession.
Steve sucks in a breath. “Yeah?”
Billy carries on. “By the steel mill. I hit something big. I never saw it, but—it grabbed me and dragged me inside. Next thing I know—”
And he freezes.
Says nothing.
Steve’s pretty sure he knows exactly where that sentence was headed—but still, he wants to hear it. Needs to hear it. “That’s when it took you, isn’t it? When it flayed you.”
Billy shrugs, right shoulder up, right shoulder down.
He’s halfway to pouting, eyes wet.
“Shit, Billy,” Steve says, feeling ill.
Billy remembers being stalked and preyed on by the absolute nightmare that that creature was. He remembers fear. Wondering if it’d kill him, end him, right there and then.
“What—?” Steve starts. “What, uh, what else do you remember?”
No response. Billy’s just not so great at talking.
“C’mon, man, just—we can skip all of July if you want to but we need to figure out why you are back. It’s important. If the Mind Flayer is still around then we need to—we need to be prepared.”
“That’s the stupidest name I’ve ever heard,” Billy mutters, almost absentmindedly.
“What?”
“The Mind Flayer . Who thought of that?”
“I don’t know. The kids.”
“The kids,” Billy echoes. “Right.”
“Yeah,” Steve says. Not what he would’ve named it either. “But, Billy. You—you do get what I’m saying, right? You understand why we can’t just let this go?”
Like a flip was switched, Billy’s expression turns into something venomous, an exhausted snarl. “What the fuck do you want me to say, Harrington?”
“I don’t want you to be mad,” Steve says, somewhat desperately. “I don’t—I’m not trying to like, offend you, or anything, but people don’t just randomly come back from the dead , okay? I just—”
“What?”
“I’m just trying to help.”
“I don’t want your help,” Billy says. “I don’t—”
A pause. Long, and low, and muted.
Then: “Fuck, this was a bad idea.”
And then he turns around and walks away.
Just like that.
Steve scrambles after him, losing precious seconds when he knocks his hip against one of the island’s stools and nearly face-plants, making a sharp left towards the front door as soon as he’s out of the kitchen. “Hey!”
Billy’s marching ahead, walking through the living room.
“Hey, you idiot! Where—”
“Fuck off, princess.”
And, yeah, okay, that lovely little nickname will always make Steve’s blood boil.
He reaches Billy in no time, gets a hold of his bicep in not such a gentle grip and spins him around forcefully, angrily, sharply. No kindness in his touch.
For the second time in the space of an hour, they end up standing stupidly close to one another.
“You’re not making this easy on me,” Steve hisses, with all of the vitriol he can muster, half-whispering for no reason at all.
“Wasn’t trying to,” Billy replies, easy as that.
And he’s matching Steve’s tone, too, quiet but charged.
Steve sort of—loosens his grip on Billy’s arm. Lowers his palm but doesn’t really let go of him, his fingers lightly looped around Billy’s elbow.
He’s afraid Billy’s going to march out if he lets go.
He’s afraid he won’t ever get to look into the blue of Billy’s eyes again if he lets go.
Billy’s breathing heavy, maybe still in the brink of tears but momentarily distracted by the scene Steve’s making, by that weird turmoil of exasperation and sudden sympathy he’s feeling—loyalty, maybe, an understanding no one could quite match, something like mercy, kindness.
“I’m trying to help,” Steve says, truly a murmur now, desperate.
He’s feeling maybe a little pathetic, too, begging Billy Hargrove to talk to him.
“I can’t believe you, pretty boy,” Billy says, hazed, dazed, standing way, way too close. “What’s even in it for you, huh? If you help me?”
Steve swallows, tightens his grip on Billy’s elbow. “Uh, well, that thing doesn’t come back and ends life as we know it, for one, but—shit, am I not allowed to like, not want you to be possessed and die a violent death? What the hell, Hargrove?”
Billy exhales, heavy, looks away for the first time in what feels like a really long time.
Then—something funny happens.
And Steve knows about funny things. The weird and the unreal and the plain bizarre.
He’s fought monsters. He knows a kid with superpowers. He was randomly declared the king of Hawkins High in junior year for like, no reason other than he has nice hair, a pool, and can do a keg stand. He’s still friends with his ex.
This is something else.
Billy turns back around and plants one on him.
A kiss.
A fucking kiss.
Billy Hargrove kisses him.
It’s weirdly possessive, rough. One of Billy’s hands shoots up from out of nowhere and cradles Steve’s face—clutches, more like, holds him in place for that very first second in which Steve startles and tries to squirm away.
His lips feel foreign, rough , rough, rough, rough, rough.
It’s hardly kissing. It’s just a smack of the lips, clumsy and frantic and anguished and the exact opposite of what Steve would've expected had he ever given it thought, and after a second or two Billy’s just kind of standing there, unmoving, holding his jaw, part of his neck, stubble rubbing against Steve’s own—like maybe he didn’t fully think things through when he decided to kiss him and is now deadly unsure of what to do.
And Steve—he sort of, short-circuits.
It’s a thing.
He’s got issues.
His mind can’t really comprehend the situation, can’t make sense of the fact that Billy Hargrove is kissing him. There’s the gay thing. Is Billy gay? Is everyone gay these days? Steve needs to talk to Robin, like, yesterday. But then there’s also the fact that it’s Billy Hargrove .
Billy, with his ridiculous outfits and his untamed smiles.
Billy shifts minutely, bottom lip rubbing against Steve’s mouth. A sensitive drag, chafed, hot, an acute feeling Steve cannot ignore.
Then Billy licks into his fucking mouth.
Licking. Actual licking. Wet and messy and gross.
And, well, Steve’s only human.
There’s a noise, there, that he makes, high pitched and disgustingly needy.
Steve melts into Billy touch.
His knees buckle, his lips part—and then Billy’s there . He’s all over. He sticks his tongue down Steve’s throat, kissing, kissing, kissing, hot, and wet, and messy, and angry, and Steve’s gasping, whining, kissing back . He’s got no fucking clue what is happening or how they got to this point but he’s dizzied with it, he’s crazed, he’s kissing back like his life depended on it, eyes shut and fingers buried in Billy’s curls, and then he’s tugging , tugging at Billy’s hair, biting at Billy’s lip , and Billy gasps a delicious, wounded sound, and—
And Billy pushes him back, hard.
Not like, in a sexy way.
Steve stumbles, the back of his knees hit the couch and he ends up dropping down, nearly falling off the thing with the force of Billy’s shove.
When Steve looks up, Billy’s got a sneer on his face.
“Fuck you, Harrington.”
A sneer, and—something. Something else.
“What?”
“Fuck you,” Billy calls back. “ Fuck you. God, I hate you.”
“ Wha —no, Billy, what?”
And yeah, yeah, okay, Steve’s brain kinda feels like mush at the moment, what with the warmth of Billy’s touch still lingering all over, with the sudden heat pooling low in his stomach.
But— what?
“Fuck off, Harrington. See you never.”
And there Billy goes, walking away.
And like, who says that, anyway? Billy’s so fucking dramatic.
“Hey—no!”
For the second time, Steve shoots up and scrambles after Billy. For the second time, he reaches him before he can so much as blink. They’re getting dangerously close to the front door, though. So—Steve does what any sane person would do and blocks the archway leading to the foyer with his body. Super smart choice. Not childish at all.
“Move out of the way.”
“ No ,” Steve says, and means it. “No, I—no.” Then—voice small, high pitched, sounding constipated even to his own ears. “What just happened?”
Billy. Looks. Away.
Set jaw, unreadable expression.
Steve—he needs a cigarette. He definitely needs a cigarette. And a cold shower, maybe. Or something, because—well. He shifts a little, adjusts his stance. That’s the start of a hard-on right there.
Billy Hargrove gave him a hard-on.
That’s just great.
He can’t decide what Billy’s angle even is. What he’s planning. What he’s thinking. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you Billy Hargrove’s always been a little too obsessed with Steve Harrington, king of Hawkins High. Steve knows. Everyone knows. But wasn’t that because Billy wanted to be top dog?
Because he was the new kid, and he wanted to prove himself?
Because Billy enjoys making people squirm?
“Are you—” Steve starts, and faux whispers the next part, as if someone’s randomly going to pop out of nowhere and barge in on them, listen to his words. “— queer? ”
Billy’s eyes do something then. A somewhat hurt, way too real expression flashes across his face, paints his pretty features with anguish. He looks at Steve like he’s searching for something.
Then, nothing.
“Shut up, Harrington.”
Tired, with no bite. Resolute.
It’s like talking to a brick wall.
Steve feels like live wire. He’s getting desperate. “Fine. Fine. If you don’t want to talk about—that, then fine. You come on to me and I pretend it never happened, sure, why the fuck not. We’re still not done, though, you asshole. The—the Mind Flayer. You coming back. Let’s talk about that.”
Billy scoffs, huffs out an angry noise.
He tries to walk past Steve but Steve stands firm, doesn’t let him through.
He still feels warm all over, feels the chaff of Billy’s stubble against the side of his mouth. “Just, just answer some of my questions, man. Then you can go. Or stay here. You can lock yourself in the guest room and pretend I don’t exist for all I care.”
Billy says nothing.
But he doesn’t scowl. Doesn’t jerk his eyes away from Steve’s.
He’s really not sure what the hell he’s supposed to do if Billy won’t just fucking talk to him. He’s gonna be real pissed if the Mind Flayer’s back and kills them all and they never saw it coming because Billy’s allergic to feelings.
“Please, Billy? Just answer my questions. It’ll be a minute.”
Another beat of absolute nothingness, blank eyes, vacant expression.
Then Billy sags, defeated. He turns on his heel and wanders deeper into the living room. “You have a minute, pretty boy.”
And—okay, okay, first of all? Some nerve calling him pretty boy right after fucking kissing him. And shoving him. Steve has no fucking clue how his night came to this but he’s getting more and more fed up by the second. He’s just like, not going to think about the kissing. No. Nope. Totally going to ignore the fact he’s vaguely turned on now and is kinda wondering how Billy’s stubble would feel someplace else. Nothing to examine there.
He takes a deep breath. Puts both palms on his hips and very deliberately doesn’t move an inch from his spot, blocking Billy’s only exit. “You crashed the Camaro,” he starts. “What else?”
Billy looks at him with such dead eyes.
“More like something crashed into me,” Billy drones in a monotonous tone, voice deep, expression empty, empty, empty. “Smashed the windshield. I got out and that thing dragged me into the mill.”
“Mill?”
“The abandoned steel mill. Brimborn. That’s where it was nesting.”
Not too far from where Steve found Billy wandering about in the middle of the road.
And come to think of it—Nancy did tell him they thought there was something going on in Brimborn’s Steel Works but they never got around to checking it out before the mall thing. After, there wasn’t a reason to. No point in visiting a hazard zone if the Mind Flayer’s gone.
“Okay,” Steve says. “Then what?”
“Then it possessed me.”
“How?”
Billy’s eyes flick up to meet his.
He doesn’t say a word but Steve can see it clear as day: he absolutely does remember but doesn’t particularly feel like sharing.
It’s not like Steve even needs to know that specific piece of information. He’s heard it from Dustin a thousand times, the shadow monster shoved its way into Will’s mouth, yadda, yadda, yadda. He’s pissed, though.
He stands his ground. Says nothing.
Billy huffs out something harsh, rises right to the bait. “It fucking stuck one of its meat tentacles down my throat, Harrington. Took its sweet time, too.”
“Then what—it let you go? The kids said you showed up to work.”
Billy grunts. “Showed me a fucked up vision with like, a clone or some shit. Asked me to build it an army or whatever the fuck.”
“Jesus, what?”
“A clone. I don’t know. Looked like me.”
“Like— you .” Steve echoes, awkwardly. He has a hard time picturing it. Billy two times over, those pretty eyes of his staring into something like a mirror or something like hell.
No one mentioned clones last year.
This is a new thing.
“That’s fucked up, man,” he ends up saying, somewhat aimlessly.
Billy barks up a startled laugh, a short, crude sound.
Steve looks at him. Lets his eyes wander over the expanse of his body, denim clad thighs and sun kissed skin, frizzy curls and barely constrained emotion behind ocean blue eyes.
He’s still clutching that damn granola bar like his life depended on it.
Did he actually kiss Steve while clutching that thing? Sharp plastic digging into Steve’s hairline, Billy’s palms? Steve didn’t notice. He absolutely did not notice. He was a little preoccupied elsewhere at the moment, what with the burn of Billy’s touch and whatnot.
And—Steve’s not exactly sure what’s going through his own mind at the moment. He’s scared shitless the Mind Flayer might be back. He still feels—like he’s drifting. He’s tense and exhausted and hasn’t had good night of sleep in months and he’s got no fucking future in sight and Billy Hargrove is standing in front of him and Billy Hargrove is a person, underneath it all.
He’s no saint. He’s no devil.
He had something horrible happen to him.
Steve’s heartbeat picks up its pace. He chews on his cheek. “Were you, um,” he doesn’t know how to put it, how to ask the question he wants to ask. “Awake? I guess? Or like, aware , I don’t know. When it—I mean, when it needed you to—?”
“Are you fucking trying to ask me if I was in the driver’s seat for all of that shit?”
“Uh, no? You were possessed , Billy. I know you weren’t. I just meant, like, I don’t know, fuck. I just wanted to know how much you remember like, after it took you.”
Which—he definitely does not need to know, Steve realizes with a start.
He just happens to want to know.
Turns out Billy is a person, just like him. Doesn’t he deserve—compassion? Something? Anything ?
But Billy’s lip keeps wobbling. His jaw is snapped shut, teeth grinding painfully.
“Wanna know what happened after it asked me to build it an army, Harrington?” Billy says, and Steve absolutely does want to know, but he doesn’t like Billy’s tone, doesn’t like sudden sharpness that his words take, the emotion behind the faint tremor that seems to travel through him. “It’s like you said, it fucking let me go. Put me back next to my car and sent me on my merry way.”
“Oh—okay?”
“So I went home,” Billy continues, barely pausing in the first place. “I carried on like normal. I felt like shit but I figured I must’ve made the whole thing up, right? Because monsters don’t fucking exist, right? So next day I go to the pool and I’m burning up and I have this fucking urge to drink bleach and then that Wheeler bitch is all up in my business and I want to kill her, Steve. Kill her. I wanted to grab her by the fucking hair and bash her head in until she stopped moving.”
Steve says nothing. Pictures the scene, wonders if he means Nancy or her mom. Thinks of Holly , wandering about around the pool while that thing made Billy into its puppet.
Billy’s entranced at this point, doesn’t seem to care one way or another if Steve’s even listening.
It’s the first time he’s ever called him by his name.
“I didn’t, obviously,” he says. “She’s still kicking, far as I know. But I wanted to. Then I feel like I’m going to fucking die and fucking—” he laughs, a wet sound, terribly unhappy. “Fucking Heather follows me back to the showers. What a stupid bitch. I got that urge again. To hurt her. And you know what I did?”
Steve knows. He knows because he happens to know Heather Holloway’s gravestone is three rows down from Billy’s, lined up right next to her mother’s and her father’s.
“Billy, I—I get it, okay? We can skip this part.”
But Billy’s got his mind set. He’s laughing again, faint, and miserable. “I put her in the trunk, Stevie. I tied her up and put her in the Camaro’s trunk like some kinda psychopath. I brought her to the mill, wrapped her up all pretty. She screamed the whole time through. She was fucking scared .”
“Billy—”
“Then I made her do the same thing to her parents.”
“Billy, that wasn’t you.”
“That’s the thing, pretty boy. It was me. It—fuck, it wasn’t like it was forcing my hands. It was in my head but it—it was me ! It was me that chose the people and brought them to it! It wanted me to do it but it was—it was me. ”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“What the fuck do you know?” Billy blurts, and he’s nearly shouting now, loud, angry. There’s a single tear slipping down his face. “You weren’t there! You didn’t see me do half the shit I did! I brought it so many people . I did everything it asked of me.”
“Because you were possessed? What are you even—”
“It wanted me to kill Maxine,” Billy says, voice icy-cold, tears slipping freely now that they’ve started coming. “I would’ve done it. I was going to kill her friend.”
And Steve takes a breath there, because—well, fuck.
That’s both the part he was actually around for and the part he thinks he can more or less understand. It’s guilt, Billy’s feeling. Steve knows a thing or two about guilt.
“You didn’t kill her, you asshole,” he says. “You barely even hurt El. You saved her. You fucking fought mind control to save her.”
But Billy shakes his head side to side to side.
“I hit Max,” Billy says, urgent, desperate. Steve gets the feeling he’s saying it for his own sake, gets the feeling he needs to say it and for someone to hear it. “I hit her bad. She fucking passed out. I don’t—I never—”
He stops, looks up at Steve with large, large eyes.
“That wasn’t you.”
“It was me.”
Billy might just be the single most stubborn person Steve’s ever met.
He prepares to tell him so, but Billy beats him to it—makes some sort of aborted movement and seems to realize he’s still holding the stupid granola bar , drops it unceremoniously to the floor right there and then, no effort whatsoever.
The tears don’t stop coming.
He looks heartbroken.
The mere idea of it—that Billy fucking Hargrove can be made to look like that, it makes Steve’s blood boil. Makes him want to go back in time and stop all that shit from ever happening, as impossible as it seems.
“No one blames you,” Steve says, instead of screaming. “It wasn’t you that hurt Max.”
Billy laughs, that wet, humorless sound. “What the fuck does it matter? I’ve always been a bastard to her anyway.”
That’s a different thing. That’s a completely different thing Billy’s talking about. And Steve doesn’t even know what the hell he’s supposed to reply to that, because—well, no lies there. Billy’s always been a goddamned jerk to everyone and anyone.
But, somehow—
Steve knows there’s more to it.
No one can hate everything, everyone . Billy’s a goddamned human being just like them all. Max mourned him, wears his stupid leather jackets everywhere.
(And Steve thinks of picking Max up to drive her to school and seeing that bruise on her face, thinks of her stifling sobs, her saying it was nothing.
Thinks of Billy’s frantic words just now, that look in his eye.)
He’s not entirely sure this is where Billy’s mind was going, but he can take a wild fucking guess. He purses his lips, swallows. “You’re not your father.”
Billy looks up at that, sharp, and mean, and so tired.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“I just—fuck, I don’t know.”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Steve thinks about backing off. The Mind Flayer thing—? He needs to know. For everyone’s sake. This, though? None of his business. But then again, they’ve come this far. Max is his friend. Billy is—whatever the hell he is. The guy just stuck his tongue down Steve’s throat.
What’s one more thing?
“Billy—c’mon, man. You know what I mean. Half the town knows it.”
Blank, dead eyes. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Steve sighs. “It’s just, your dad—your dad’s a jerk, right? Mine too, honestly. But I’ve heard some stuff and yours seems—I don’t know. Worse. Bad.”
Billy says nothing.
But it’s not like before. It’s not like he’s being a stubborn asshole for the sake of being a stubborn asshole. It’s like he genuinely can’t bring himself to answer. Like he doesn’t have the words.
That wide-eyed look paired with the half dry tear tracks is a little more than Steve can handle.
“Does he—hurt you? Hit you?”
Billy’s breath stutters.
Steve can hear it all the way from where he’s standing. It’s this little hiccup, a torn gasp. He seriously doubts Billy even realizes he made any noise at all.
Steve snaps his eyes shut for a second or two, runs a hand through his hair. Because that’s it, isn’t it? That’s all the confirmation that he needed. Billy’s dad smacks him around. Ain’t that fun? Ain’t that great? It makes him angry . Angry . So impossibly angry.
Because Billy is so—big. Too damn big for Hawkins. That’s the only way Steve can put it into words. Bloody knuckles and too sharp smiles, the single most annoying person Steve has ever met. Billy is so many things at once, and fucking Neil Hargrove thinks he can hurt him—thinks he’s got the fucking right to hurt him—? Make his breath fucking stutter like that?
“Shit,” Steve says. “Fuck. Billy .”
“Shut up.”
“Max too?”
A beat.
Heavy.
But then Billy is laughing something bitter, a small puff of air. “What, Neil’s perfect little girl?”
And his voice comes out thick, heavy with emotions too great to describe.
Steve understands all at once he’s got another piece of the puzzle. One Billy himself doesn’t have—he’s blurting it before he’s fully thought it through: “He hit her, too.”
Billy stops dead in his tracks.
“What?”
“Max—she, um, a couple weeks ago, she—she had this bruise on her face and, she didn’t say it outright, but—” But what? She burst into tears and said something about Billy Steve couldn’t, for the life of him, understand , muffled in between hysteric sobs as it was?
He’s got no fucking clue what happened, that resulted in that bruise.
“What?” Billy says, sharp and desperate. “What, Harrington?”
He doesn’t know exactly what happened, but he’s got a pretty good idea. And—he’s been begging Billy to be honest this whole night, hasn’t he? He can do the same in return. “Look, I’m not—I’m not sure, okay? But she had a shiner and she got super sketchy about it and she had me drive her to the arcade or like, random places after school for like two weeks after that and—I don’t know. Just a feeling, man. She said she fell off her skateboard.”
Billy looks at him. Eyes wide open.
Mind surely going a mile a minute.
He breathes out heavy and suddenly he looks—defeated. Shoulders hunched and eyes cast downward, like everything he had ever thought to be true is crumbling before his very eyes.
Max is too good a skater to hurt herself like that. She’s not such a great liar.
So Billy breathes out heavy, like it pains him to do so. And then, to Steve’s horror—he starts crying, crying —not like before, angry tears spilled in the heat of the moment, no, these are real tears, angry still but striking in their earnestness, and Billy fights it all the way through—a choked up kind of weeping, stilted breaths and swallowed down pants.
“Shit, Billy,” Steve murmurs, and he goes to him.
It's the easiest thing in the world. He’s never really known what to do when people cry their hearts out in front of him, always worried he’s going to end up doing or saying the wrong thing, but now, though? It’s easy. It’s easy. It’s the most natural thing in the world.
He crosses his living room in three long strides, reaches Billy in no time.
“Hey, no,” he says, rubbing Billy’s back. “No, no. It’s okay.”
Billy huffs out something mean. Very visibly holds his breath, tries with all of his might to stop the tears from falling, tries to jerk out of Steve’s hold—
And Steve gets it. He does.
He gets the feeling Billy’s not only crying for Max but for himself as well, for the whole shitshow of a situation that they’re in. Miraculous resurrections and blood on his hands. Monsters, the supernatural and the terrifyingly ordinary.
“Here,” Steve says. “Here. Sit.”
And Billy goes along with him, lets himself be led and sits down next to Steve, presses two frustrated palms over his eyes, pushes down hard.
“Fuck,” he hisses. “ Fuck .”
Steve gives him a moment. Doesn’t stop rubbing Billy’s back in soothing motions, couldn’t if he tried.
(And does Billy lean into his touch? The slightest of movements?
Well, that’s for Steve to obsess over later.)
“I might be wrong,” Steve says—because it’s true. He could be wrong. Maybe Max did fall off that damn skateboard after all and all he accomplished is making Billy cry .
But Billy shakes his head side to side. “Hell no. That shitbird couldn’t lie if her life depended on it. And—” a flick of the eyes, nervous, painfully sincere. “And you don’t know him, okay? He’s— fuck . You don’t know him.”
Steve’s heart constricts.
There’s this very specific way in which Billy says him . Fear, and trepidation, and resigned unease. He pronounces that single syllable like he’s speaking about something bigger than himself, something he couldn’t ever hope to understand. To hide from. Dear Dad or God or whatever.
Steve’s own dad is a jerk. Always has been, always will be. It’s one of those things he’s always been vaguely aware of, even when he was too young to understand certain things. He’d make his mother cry. He’d make Steve cry. But he’s never been— that .
He’s never raised a hand on him.
“No, I—I don’t. I don’t know him,” Steve says, mumbles. He sighs, then. Wishes he had more to offer than some poorly thought-out words. “I met him once, you know. At Melvad’s. He asked me if I was queer.”
Billy tenses.
He just does.
And Steve sort of realizes he asked Billy the very same question minutes ago and chances are his old man has been asking it long before Steve was ever in the picture.
Because Billy is queer, isn’t he? Queer enough to stick his tongue down Steve’s throat.
(And maybe Steve is queer enough to allow him to do so? To kiss back ?)
Steve realizes he’s tensed too, frozen to the spot. And he was rubbing Billy’s back before, which means he ends up just sort—holding him, spread palm across the other boy’s back.
He draws back, puts a little distance between them both.
And then a moment goes by and then another moment goes by and then Billy laughs , a little bitter, a little cruel. “Yeah, because that’s the worst fucking thing anyone could say to you, ain’t it, Harrington? Lord forbid anyone thinks you’re a queer.”
And that’s just not true. So so so so so not true, and Steve’s a mess of a person and he doesn’t know what he wants, who he is, but there are a couple things he knows for certain and this is one of them.
“Hey, no.”
But Billy shakes his head. Doesn’t even bother with an answer.
“Billy,” Steve says, but Billy won’t look at him. Won’t turn his damn head and let Steve see those ocean blue eyes, California sunshine in every inch of his being.
And Steve really, really doesn’t know what he wants.
Doesn’t know anything .
All he knows is Billy is warm and real next to him, and he’s crying, and Steve doesn’t ever want to see him spill a single tear ever again, doesn’t ever want to be the reason why his eyes harden and his breath stutters.
He gets an idea then, a potentially terrible, terrible, horrible idea. It gets his heart racing. There’s no stopping it. He leans into Billy’s space, lays a palm on his knee—and Billy does look up at that but doesn’t do much of anything so Steve carries on, getting closer and closer and closer.
“Can I—?” he asks, trails off. Doesn’t know what it is he’s asking for.
It doesn’t seem to matter either way.
Billy’s exhausted, clearly. After Starcourt and the day’s events and the emotional turmoil Steve put him through. He’s got the tear tracks and the ruffled hair. He keeps staring at Steve like he’s looking for something, like there’s something he wants .
Steve wants too.
It’s a startling realization. He wants.
He inches into Billy’s space the tiniest bit closer. He lifts up a palm and runs it through those curls, tames the stray pieces he had messed up before, back when Billy decided to kiss him.
And so he does it then.
He kisses him.
And it’s—different. So different than it was before.
Slower, for one. A lot less aggressive.
Billy hesitates for all of a second before getting on with the program, and Steve doesn’t know why , but he finds it infinitely surprising that Billy lets him lead the pace.
That he lets his eyes fall shut, his shoulders drop.
That he trusts Steve enough for this.
There’s not a single trace of urgency. It’s just Billy, and Steve, kissing .
Soft, close mouthed. Breathy. It seems to go on and on and on. When they finally part it feels like they’ve crossed some sort of line. Like there’s no coming back.
He twists back around, leans back on the couch.
Billy does the same.
And—he fights off a smile. Something half crazed, damn exhausted as well, because this god forsaken day has been a journey and a half but Billy is sitting next to him, shoulder to shoulder, their palms mushed up together where they meet in between their thighs.
And Billy still looks somewhat tense, yes, but it feels like a different kind of tension, like something Steve’s feeling himself, something, fragile, something new and nerve wracking and impossibly exciting. And then—
“I woke up in the mill,” Billy says, unprompted. “I remember everything up to the mall, and then I just—woke up there. I don’t think the Mind Flayer is still in me. I don’t know. Maybe it’ll want me later but I don’t think it’s in me now.”
Steve blinks. “Oh, is that it?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“Oh my god, Billy,” Steve says, groaning, letting his head loll back. “That’s literally all I wanted to know. Why didn’t you tell me that from the beginning?”
Billy’s got a hesitant smile on his face when he turns to look at him, the both of them with the back of their heads on the couch’s backrest. His smile is infectious, so bright.
“Gotta make ‘em beg, princess.”
Steve snorts. Kicks at him, his socked foot hitting Billy’s calf.
Billy flails around for a moment but ends up letting him get away with it, laughing as well.
It’s such a quiet moment, after the night they’ve had.
“Hey, um,” Steve says, after a moment. “Is this okay? It’s just, ah, a lot, I guess? I get it if you want to lock yourself in the guest room and pretend I don’t exist, the offer still stands. I’m not gonna be mad or anything.”
Billy works his jaw, doesn’t really meet his eyes. And, those eyes of his look maybe a bit shiny, like he’s still holding back tears. “Newsflash, asshole,” Billy says, careful, tense. “I don’t want to pretend you don’t exist. I want to stay here.”
And somehow, somehow , that’s what breaks him. Not the literal years of interdimensional monsters and running for his life, not losing Nancy, not the Russians, not half his town getting mauled, not the— miraculous resurrection , no.
It’s Billy, eyes wet, saying what he’s saying.
Acknowledging him.
Steve’s stomach does a flip.
He looks down and finds through it all, their hands are still mushed together, their shoulders are still brushing, his calf is still resting against Billy’s shins.
He feels warm, all of the sudden. He feels like giggling.
And he’s not sure what possesses him to do it, but he flips his palm around and holds Billy’s hand in earnest, fingers intertwined. He squeezes, once, and when he looks up, Billy’s still staring straight ahead, immobile, an expression Steve can’t quite decipher taking over his face — a little disbelieving, a little distrustful, a lot caught off guard.
But Steve, he doesn’t let himself be discouraged.
He watches Billy, watches as he seemingly holds his breath for a frankly impressive amount of time, watches a he breathes out, heavy, dubious, skeptical, holding himself in a way that makes it clear he’s never been one to place his faith in someone else, someone to want, and get.
Steve squeezes again, for a little longer this time, delightful seconds, and Billy squirms, blushes, pink high against his cheek bones.
Steve settles into the couch, smiles big, and goofy, and stupid. “I’m so fucking glad you’re not dead,” he says, twisting his body into Billy’s space, not really touching just yet but giving in to that sudden need to be close, close, close.
Billy waits a beat, then two, and then grunts instead of deigning Steve with an answer. “Whatever,” he mumbles, as if he genuinely couldn’t care less whether he lives or dies.
And the thing is, Billy is and always will be a bit of an asshole but—just now, minutes ago? He let Steve see inside of him. He let Steve see just how tight he holds on to his hurt.
“I mean it,” Steve says. “If that thing wants you back I swear to god I’ll kill it myself, I’ll— I’ll beat it to death with my own fucking hands if I have to—or with like, my bat, or whatever. Or maybe not because that thing was fucking huge and almost killed us all but, y’know.”
And Billy chooses that moment to look at him for the first time in minutes, frowning all like, no, I do not fucking know, Harrington, what the fuck.
Steve scoffs, rolls his eyes. “I just—I’m glad you’re here, Billy. I really am.”
He’s exhausted, strung out, happy . Isn’t that crazy? Happy . And he realizes, with surprising ease, this is one of those moments he’ll want to hold on to forever and ever and ever.