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“You do realize I can do this myself, right?” Billy’s voice inquires, but it sounds so small and far away that he might not even be aware of saying it.
“Yep. Which is why I’m doing it,” Steve replies, pressing a cotton ball onto the tip of Billy’s chin. His partner lets out a small hiss under his breath, but doesn’t flinch away. The bleeding doesn’t stop with just one; soon, Steve has a whole pile of pink, bloodied cotton balls on the bed beside him.
There are a smattering of other various bruises along Billy’s body that he hasn’t had a chance to smooth over, but his face took the worst of it.
“Sorry,” Billy says in a strained, hushed whisper after Steve’s been staring at him for too long. He must be uncomfortable with the attention, but Steve’s been trying to rectify that as of late.
“It’s fine,” is all Steve can tell him, because it really is. He enjoys being able to take care of Billy like this, even if he’s frustrated he can’t stop it from happening. Furiously frustrated.
Once he’s done strapping a bandaid over Billy’s chin, he addresses the rest of his face. It’s all just small cuts and nicks, really, but that doesn’t make it any better. When he’s all done he sits back on his haunches, watching Billy lean back onto the wall behind his bed.
Billy’s dad is already gone; had left a few minutes ago. Steve had been ready to spend the rest of the afternoon with the kids, but after a terse call to his house that he had thankfully intercepted before his parents could, Steve couldn’t really care enough to go to them.
There’s not much Steve would do.
Sure, yeah, he could go to Hopper, but he doubts Billy would want that. There’s something weak in admitting to needing help, and Steve gets that. Went through it for far too long himself to subjugate someone else to having to ask for it.
Thus, it was against Billy’s protesting and half-hearted bitching that Steve drove himself here, turning the radio up loud and being terribly obnoxious to anyone he drove past. He had knocked on the door, and Max had let him in, all narrowed eyes and tough frown.
She’s still standing just past the mostly closed door to Billy’s bedroom, probably listening to their quiet banter as he cleans the wounds up. Steve’s gotten awfully good at telling that sort of thing. Max’s mom is also somewhere in the house, because he had heard her sullen voice calling to Max to see who it was.
“There,” Steve murmurs, and ducks in to press a fleeting, quick kiss on Billy’s nose, which had remained mostly unharmed.
Billy just stares at him listlessly, but the vacancy of his mind is slowly fading and becoming more cognizant with each second. Steve’s proud of that, in a weird way, and his stomach thumps pleasurably when Billy places a hand around his wrist. It’s grounding for both of them.
They stay there, like that. Billy’s hand enclosed around his wrist. The faint sound of their breathing mellowing out the tense air. A shift against the wall where Max is.
“Good?” Steve whispers when a length of time has passed and he thinks Billy’s almost all there.
“Yeah,” Billy says.
“You sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Really?”
“God, yes, I’m pretty sure I’m good now, Harrington,” Billy groans out, rubbing at his forehead but stopping when he hits a bruise that’s already forming. “Can we go?”
“Whatever you want, Billy,” Steve murmurs helpfully. He doesn’t care enough about anything else right now to give a fuck. They could go to the moon for all Steve cared.
And they do. Well, they don’t go to the moon, but-
Steve leads Billy out of the house, keeping their fingers interlocked and passing Max as they leave. She’s perched against the wall, and her arms are crossed. Steve thinks that they’ll get by without having to confront her, but as they turn to leave, she speaks into the rift.
“Can I go with you?”
It’s not the words itself that make him pause. It’s just that there’s a childish power, lean and terrifying, behind her words. When he glances back at Max, her mother is peering around the end of the hallway, and Steve feels like he’s at some sort of metaphorical crossroad where none of the paths are the right one.
As it is, he just sighs. Squeezes Billy’s hand, and rakes his other through his hair. Billy won’t be any help on this sort of thing, so Steve just shrugs.
“Sure,” Steve says. “Just don’t mess up my back seat, kid.”
Because for all that he has his kid- two, he had two to take care of now- she hung out with them, so. She’s a part of that by default? Or something. Steve doesn’t really want to think about it; just opens up the door and tugs Billy forward.
Fumbling with his keys, Steve opens up the passenger door and corrales Billy into the seat, brushing a casual hand through his messy, blonde hair before shutting the car door. Max clambers into the back seat and has enough sense to keep her feet off the leather.
It’s weird, seeing her when he looks in the rearview mirror. He’s used to probably literally anyone besides her, at this point, despite the fact that she’s the one closest to and in-the-know on his personal life.
There isn’t even much of a personal life to begin with. Just him and Billy, one person starting and stopping where the other begins, chasing the desperate promise of happiness. Max can’t really compute into that equation as easy as she probably wants to, but Steve won’t do anything about that. There’s only so much he’s willing to go out of his way when his partner is in such a tentative state.
He drives aimlessly for a while.
Steve knows that Billy likes watching the world go by outside the window, listening to the soft sound of music and sometimes even Steve’s singing. He would feel to awkward to do the singing that was more on the verge of humming, but he can’t stop himself from reaching out onto the center console and gripping Billy’s hand.
They’re in full view. Raw, and pure. There’s nothing better than this.
He drives, and drives, and drives. Drives until his foot feels loose on the gas pedal and his left hand slips down to the bottom of the steering wheel. Max must’ve fallen asleep sometime during the ride, because she’s curled up, legs drawn up to her body tightly. Billy’s drifting on the edges of consciousness himself, and his eyelids keep fluttering. It’s cute, and feels sorely intimate.
Steve tries not to think about Susan Hargrove, stowed away in her home like a thing to be kept. He’ll feel sorry another day.
“Steve?”
He glances over again. Billy’s looking at him through hooded eyelids, and the bandages stuck to his face stretch as he talks.
“Yeah?”
Billy’s quiet for another few seconds before he says, “Thank you.”
And really, Steve couldn’t ask for more.