Archive of Our Own ^beta

It could have been anything, or nothing, that set it off. Maybe Steve was on edge, maybe Billy was on edge. Maybe Steve had made a comment, maybe Billy had made a comment. Maybe they both just needed it. Whatever happened, Steve finds himself shouting, “I saved your fucking life, asshole!” in Hargrove’s face. He sees, at first, the confusion. Billy doesn’t know what the fuck Steve’s talking about. Of course he doesn’t. Because he was tranq’d into a different dimension at the time (a better dimension, probably, since theirs was crawling with demodogs and Mind Flayers and whatever the fuck else).

Then Steve watches the realization dawn, understanding filling up Billy’s eyes, and it’s just at the moment Billy has his arm set to take his turn knocking Steve into another dimension. His grip on Steve’s collar relents. The tension in his mouth slackens. His eyes, steely blue of an impending storm, stay riveted like lightning to a grounding pole. But his fist drops, and Steve wonders if Billy really wanted to hit him at all. They don’t talk, didn’t even before The Incident, but now Billy talks at him less. Billy talks to everyone less, it seems like. This, this violence, Steve wonders if it’s not all just some kind of show. That’s not right. He thinks it probably is a show, but he wonders why.

“That so, Harrington?” Billy says, hands suddenly going from pulling Steve in, keeping him close, to pressing him back against the lockers. Then he lets him go entirely, leaving Steve unsteady in the wake of this shift.

“Yeah, it is,” Steve says. He wipes at his face like Billy had actually followed through with the hit. He envisions shoving Billy away. Doesn’t. Because Billy is watching him, closely, a smile on his face that says danger, but also amusement, and Steve doesn’t really know what he’s dealing with right now.

“Tell me what happened.” They’ve never talked about it, not one detail; Billy’s never asked, and Steve’s signed contracts. This is the first, and Steve wishes he could tell Billy, because, fuck, it would be nice to tell anyone, really. And while Billy doesn’t deserve an explanation, Steve is just nice enough that he would probably give him one anyway, if he could. “I can’t.”

“Uh-huh. You know, I saw a lot of fucked up stuff in that house, Harrington.” He’s not smiling now.

Steve can’t help but flinch a little. The one thing he can’t fault Billy for is, well, that. The Byers’ house had definitely been fucked up.

“It was fucked up,” Steve admits, and snorts at the surprise in Billy’s raised eyebrows. Because they’d agreed on something, maybe. More likely, because Steve doesn’t try to lie about it. “It’s just not what you think.”

Steve has always found the way Billy crosses his arms unusually distracting, the way the sleeves strain against the swell of his biceps, the way the muscles of his chest push up, which Steve can only see because Billy doesn’t know how to button a goddamned shirt, apparently, even when there’s still snow on the ground outside. Does it count as cleavage on a dude, what Billy’s chest does?

He doesn’t linger on it, but Billy’s smiling again. “Sure, it wasn’t. But I’m just supposed to believe you saved my life after you tranq’d me and stole my car?”

It feels, suddenly, like Steve has never met Billy before, because it strikes him how smart Billy is. Not just book smart (although he knows that Billy has mostly advanced classes, and he knows that Billy technically makes Honor Roll), but whatever kind of smart gives his eyes that edge that says, “I can see right through you.” Whatever kind of smart gives him some built-in lie detector. He hadn’t believed Steve’s lies that night, and he knows Billy won’t believe any now.

But Steve doesn’t need to lie. “Yes,” he says, and could be embarrassed by the emphasis, borderline desperation that Billy just believe him, please, fuck, that sneaks into his voice. Billy stays impassive--arms still crossed, face smooth, eyes clear--as he processes. Then, after a few seconds, he jerks his head in a nod. “Fine,” Billy says. “So I owe you one. What the fuck do you want?”

He says it like Steve asked for this, like he didn’t just blurt it out because he’s so tired and so fed up and he doesn’t want to taste blood in his mouth today. “I don’t know,” Steve says, taken off guard. What the hell kind of favor do you ask of Billy Hargrove? “I don’t need anyone beat up for me right now.”

To his shock, Billy laughs. “I can do more than beat people up, pretty boy.” His eyes say even though we both know you suck at it and could use the help, but his mouth, lips red and smooth (even with a scar through the bottom one where Steve supposes it gets split a lot), say things in a language Steve doesn’t read.

“Like what?” Steve barbs, offering a tentative smile back. He expects something like fixing cars or making things in shop class or driving like a fucking maniac.

What he gets is, “I could suck your dick,” and a nonchalant shrug.

Steve thinks he’s meant to laugh at the absurdity--obviously a joke--but he kind of chokes instead. “What?”

Billy isn’t fucking stupid so he doesn’t repeat himself. And, Steve notices, he’s not laughing. Instead, voice steady, eyes steady, Billy says, “It’s not a big deal.”

There’s something in there, if Steve had the brain capacity to think about it, about Billy maybe believing his life is only worth a blowjob (unless it’s one hell of a blowjob), but Steve can’t care about that right now. He looks at Billy’s mouth, so fucking red, his teeth dazzling when he notices Steve looking (because of course he does) and grins. It’s not, like, wolfish or lascivious (they learned that word in English last week, he and Billy, the English class they share) or anything. it’s almost… shy? No, maybe not, but genuine, definitely. It feels like seeing Billy, someone under this whole facade, for the first time.

“I… Thanks? But, uh, no.” Steve thinks that now Other Billy will come back, defensive and bristling and ready to swing that punch after all.

This Billy, whoever he is, shrugs, drumming his fingers against his own arms. Onetwothreefour. Onetwothreefour. Onetwothreefour. Only four because his thumbs are tucked under his biceps. Steve wonders when Billy last smoked. Lunch, probably. “Fine,” Billy says, cool as could be, like he doesn’t care either way. Maybe he doesn’t. “Think about it, then. I don’t like owing people, Harrington.”

And he grabs his bag from the ground and leaves. Just like that.

 ***

Steve forgets about it, honestly. Billy Hargrove is not any kind of fixed point in Steve’s life (except when he is), so, frankly, Steve doesn’t think about him much. Okay, maybe he has a few thoughts about Billy’s mouth, notices the way his lips are so pink and so smooth, maybe notices it every damn time he sees Billy. And he maybe realizes that Billy looks really fucking young when he smiles despite the barely-there mustache and the weight he always carries on his brow when his face is otherwise relaxed. But Steve only notices in passing and his life keeps going without, thank fuck, any more completely upending discoveries or interactions.

Until, of course, it gets upended. Because why wouldn’t it?

New nightmare, same creatures, still with that fucking flower-head with the rot fetor when it unfurls and that Steve never, ever quits smelling, always stuck in the back of his throat. Steve doesn’t know how many of them there are, only that he’s inside with all the kids (why does this always happen to him? He just wants to be a good babysitter; why does the universe have to test him like this?) except El, the one person could actually deal with this but can’t because she, Hopper, and Joyce went to Indy for something. Steve has his bat, but he’s just one guy. And the kids all have something sharp in their hands--knives or firepokers or what the hell ever--that they’re more likely to impale themselves on than any sort of Upside Down creature and Steve is freaking the fuck out but can’t show it because the kids are freaking the fuck out and he’s supposed to be the calm one, the adult.

“Mike, radio someone!” he hisses. They’re in Will’s room (always the Byers’. Why? Why?) and the radio--walkie-talkie?--is right there.

“We’re all right here, Steve, in case you hadn’t noticed!” Dustin says, and Steve loves him, but he wants to strangle him.

“Try! It can’t hurt.” Better than waiting around to be eaten, wondering how he’s supposed to clear a path to his car by himself, because the only one of these nerds capable of being useful in a fight with him is Max, and even she looks shaken, at best.

So they radio, basically just turning it on--”Channel 6, Mike!” “I know that, Dustin!”-- and screaming incoherently. And there’s nothing. Nothing but empty airwaves, and they’re going to die.

“Jesus Christ,” a voice finally crackles through. “What the hell is going on?”

Billy goddamned Hargrove. Before Steve can process it, Max lunges for the radio. “Billy?” she shouts, the terror in her voice high and wobbly.

“Max? The hell are you? I’m at the Wheelers’ lookin’ for you and heard shouting on this… thing.” And, yeah, he is kinda half-whispering, like maybe he snuck downstairs to investigate.

Dustin launches into the technical name of the system. Steve still wants to strangle him, but also everyone else, at this exact moment. Although he is a little impressed that Billy figured out how to use the radio without any instruction. But of course he did, because Billy is fucking smart and never gets the credit he deserves for it, does he? Steve reaches out for the radio. “Give me that,” he orders, and Max reluctantly hands it over.

“Hargrove?” Steve says.

A pause. Steve can hear the surprise in the quiet. “Should’ve known,” Billy says, something wary and displeased in his tone. “Lemme guess. Byers’ place?”

With a hot flash that Steve can’t exactly place but that feels an awful lot like shame or embarrassment, he licks his teeth before answering, “Yep. Time to call in that favor.”

Billy goes through the trouble of sighing into the radio. “Should I bring fucking flowers?”

Miracle of miracles, Steve actually laughs. He’s going to die, but he laughs at Billy Hargrove’s stupid joke. The kids look at him like he’s lost his goddamned mind. He probably has. “Bring a gun, if you’ve got it.”

Another judging silence. “We killin’ somethin’ tonight?” There’s that wariness there still, like Billy wants to refuse. “That’s not really my thing, Harrington.” And, God, Billy probably thinks that Steve wants him to torture animals or do some ritualistic sacrifice in the woods. Fuck.

“Yeah, we are, but trust me, these things fuckin’ deserve it.” And if you don’t help us, we might all die, he thinks. Doesn’t say. Maybe he should say. The kids are all gesturing at him like he should say it, or something like it.

There’s still quiet over the line, like Billy’s thinking about saying no and walking away. There’s scratching at the front door. Max snatches the radio out of Steve’s hand. “Billy, please,” she says, nose scrunching like it pains her.

“Whatever the fuck is going on,” Billy says, and Steve can imagine the pissed twinge of his jaw perfectly, “I will kill everyone if anything happens to Max.”

“Max is priority, got it,” Dustin says, because Billy sounds serious.

“I’ll be there in five minutes. Don’t fucking die.”

It’s the longest five minutes of Steve’s life. Longer, even, than all those time-sucking tunnels, endless and squelching and Steve feels bile rising in his throat, higher and higher the longer they wait. There’s scratching at the walls, at the door, on the roof and they are going to die. Billy’s going to get here and they’ll be dead and there will be no one to give him an explanation so he’ll be twice gypped. And also probably dead himself.

There’s a terrible thud outside, a curdling, inhuman shriek, and Steve thinks, at first, that the front door has finally given way. A light shines dully through the bottom crack of the door, and Steve thinks it might be--

“What the fuck?!” There are no gunshots, but there is the sound of flesh giving way under tremendous force, and fuck. Billy just died and it’s Steve’s fault. Fuck. Fuck!

“Billy?” Max screams, because of course she heard it, too. No response, only another squelch, and Steve’s going to hurl. He can’t really hear properly anymore through the ringing in his ears as he waits, bat held ready, for the monsters to finish with Billy and come for them. They’re going to fucking die, he already knows it, but he’s going to go down swinging to the last second.

Distantly, after a minute or so, Steve hears himself talking. “I’ll distract them. I’ll run. You guys get to the car. Lucas drives.” He fumbles his car keys out of his pocket, gives them to Lucas. Normally he’d choose Max, but she looks utterly shell-shocked, pale and blank. Her brother just fucking died while Steve cowered in a bedroom with a bunch of kids. And, like, it’s not a secret that Billy and “She’s not my sister” Max aren’t close, but there’s gotta be something there. Steve once heard Max saying, “He wasn’t always this bad,” and so he can only hope that Billy hasn’t always been such a jackass.

With a deep breath, Steve reaches for the door. Mike and Dustin are shouting, tugging at his sleeves, trying to pull him back, while Lucas focuses on Max, who can’t focus on anything. He twists the handle, shoves the door open, shakes off the hands on him and eases into the hall. He confirms that the light is from Billy’s headlights, softened through the drapes, but cut dramatically by moving shadows, things jumping and ducking and whirling in the distance between the car and where Steve stands. All strange, twisted shapes. Blooming shapes.

Except for one.

“Stay here!” Steve yells, then barrels for the front door.

Everything happens so fucking fast, but so slow, like the hum of a flashbulb camera. He finds Billy with a crowbar, swinging hard at the monsters that lunge at him. “Billy!” Steve cries, slamming a monster with his bat to break through the ring and press his back against Billy’s. He’s hot, his shirt damp. Steve notices these things in some way, but not any way that matters.

“Never was any fucking good at baseball,” Billy says.

Steve laughs, taking a swing at one of the monsters, feeling the impact all the way up to his shoulder, all the way into his bones, a horrifying and satisfying and awful jolt. “Liar,” he says. I’ve seen you. Sure, maybe just in PE, but if a sport does exist that Billy’s not good at, it’s definitely not baseball.

Billy grins, swinging his crowbar down hard. “I was talking about you, princess.” And that’s the end of the conversation as they press against each other, weave between each other. After a few hits from Steve’s bat, which, even with the nails, aren’t very effective on fully grown demodogs, Billy says. “Hit ‘em to me.”

Without question, Steve does, swings up hard and catches one in the ribs (or whatever its equivalent to ribs are) flinging it in front of Billy. Billy plunges his crowbar right into its rotting flower face, then brings the weapon down on its neck so hard that, if the crowbar were a blade, Steve has no doubt the monster’s head would roll. In any case, something splatters up onto Billy, but the monster stays down.

It takes hours. It takes minutes. It takes seconds that crawl by, one by one, mocking the way Steve’s heart pounds, each beat a surprise because he’s still convinced he’s going to die this time. So is his stomach, rolling with each hit. Regardless, everything zeroes down to this, to smashing the monsters, launching them to Billy, who finishes them off with brute force that would terrify Steve in any other situation, but now gives him something like security. Billy’s got this. Even if Steve gets his face eaten off tonight, Billy will get the kids out. Steve’s chest feels five times lighter, relief a buoy for all the dread crushing him.

Eventually, Billy brings his crowbar down, and then nothing else happens. They both stand there, panting and dripping sweat (and, in Billy’s case, some kind of goo), elbows cocked for their next swings, until someone--Dustin--shouts from the porch, “That was amazing!” while Mike shouts, “You got ‘em all!”

Immediately, Steve’s arms drop, the bat thwacking against the dirt. Billy, he notices, sinks to the ground, leaning back against the dented grille of his car. The crowbar slides from his hands with a thunk, revealing angry palms, red and blistered. Neither of them say anything, just breathe shakily. Steve should probably yell at the kids for being outside, but he doesn’t have it in him just yet. Instead, he watches Billy breathe, because Billy always remembers how to breathe and sometimes Steve doesn’t, so he watches and matches, inhale for inhale, the rise of Billy’s sweat- and goo-drenched chest.

“Billy.” They both look up at Max, arms crossed, face set, hair and eyes ablaze in the headlights. Like that, there’s no number of “she’s not my sister”s to make someone think she and Billy aren’t somehow related.

Without any warning, Max steps forward and jabs Billy in the shoulder with a fist. The impact has a solid sound, and Steve watches with horror as Billy… flinches. For that split second, Billy presses hard back against the grille, hands going lax where Steve expected answering fists, and he just takes the hit. “You’re not allowed to die,” Max says.

Maybe Steve misread all the signs, because as soon as he thinks Billy’s not going to react, he does. He lunges forward, faster than Steve can think right now, let alone react, and grabs Max’s arm, too hard. Slow, menacing, he pulls her down to the same level as him. “Maxine,” Billy says, and the unspoken, “you little bitch,” is clear as day. “That wasn’t a very nice thank you. I’ve taught you better manners than that, haven’t I?”

Max swallows hard. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, I have. So if you ever do that again, I’m going to personally feed you and your little friends to these things next time. Got it?”

They stare at each other for a while, poised like two angry cats about to scrap, before Max jerks at her arm. “Let me go.”

Billy does, and Max stumbles back. “Sorry I cared,” she says, throwing it over her shoulder like a knife. Steve can’t tell if it hits or not, only that the slope of Billy’s shoulders is too tired to straighten with that ugly, ugly anger that he wears like a broken-in jacket.

In the break of the intensity, the other kids run to Steve, surrounding him, crowding him, babbling about how stupid he is, leaving them like that, but how badass (Dustin’s word) that was. “You guys made killing those things look like an extreme sport! Like synchronized diving or some shit.” Steve lets them hug him, briefly, and then gently extracts himself. He needs… space, right now. He needs to not feel enveloped. But he gives them a tired smile. For now, their adoration drowns out the whirl of questions building in his head: Where did these things come from? Are there more? Did the gate reopen? Jesus Christ, is there more than one gate? Because just one was way too many. What do we do with these bodies? Will I ever fucking sleep again after this?

A hand lands heavy on his shoulder, startling him, and he blinks at Billy. Billy Hargrove, who once wrecked Steve’s face on this very property. His other hand grips the crowbar like he’s too tired to make a proper fist but too afraid to not. Then, very reasonably, Billy says, “Harrington. Don’t you freak on me now. We’re moving this party inside and you’re explaining to me what the fuck is going on.” He’s shaking. His voice is steady, but it’s bravado, and Steve admires that, that Billy can even dredge that up from somewhere, because Steve is, in fact, about to freak, and he’s been freaking since the last time reality split open and monsters bled out and he thinks he’s got exactly zero anything left to pull to cover it.

Billy squeezes his shoulder. “Harrington,” he repeats, glancing meaningfully at the kids around them. It’s obvious that they’re realizing that it’s not time to celebrate, picking up on Steve’s quiet panic and on the tenseness that Billy still hasn’t quite shaken from the brief interaction with Max.

“Yeah,” Steve answers, hoarse. “Yeah, that-- I’ll get you up to speed on the, um, the whole monster business… But we need to call Hop and Joyce first. They need to know--”

“On it!” Mike says, and darts inside. Never misses an opportunity to talk to Jane, that one. Will, of course, follows, then Lucas and Max, then Steve sends Dustin inside.

Finally, Steve and Billy stand out there, alone, in the glare of Billy’s headlights. Billy’s car rumbles steadily, ignited and forgotten, and Billy taps the crowbar lightly against his own calf, an unthinking motion.

“Harrington?” Billy says again, but quiet. Not for the first time, Steve wonders about Billy, about the person he really is. His voice aches with the fear he’s undoubtedly choking back, and this is not the reaction Steve expected at all. It’s so… normal. Not the reaction of someone extremely prone to violence who just got to whale spectacularly on some deserving monsters, which is exactly the person Steve expected when he’d begged Billy to come rescue them. No, Billy is terrified and shaking and sounds like he might fucking cry. And if he has to watch Billy Hargrove cry, Steve is going to cry, because he didn’t mean to bring another normal person into this mess and fuck up their entire existence with knowledge of an evil alternate universe that sometimes leaks filth into their own; he wouldn’t even wish that on Billy Hargrove. Steve had thought Billy was-- He wouldn’t have asked him to come if-- But those are lies, aren’t they? Steve was prepared-to-die desperate and he’d have asked Billy even if he’d known then that Billy would be fucked up about it, too.

Steve sniffs in response, wipes his nose. Please don’t fucking cry, he thinks, and doesn’t know if he means Billy or himself.

Billy blows out a hard breath, pushing a hand back into his hair. “I’m freaking out,” he says. And the plain, simple honesty of the statement --the definition of understatement, truly-- punches a laugh out of Steve. For a moment, Billy looks offended, hurt, but Steve says, “Me too. Look.” He holds up a hand, and Steve doesn’t even have a comparison to make for how hard it shakes. Steve’s grandpa had something called essential tremor, where his hands would shake and shake and shake no matter what, and Steve thinks that this, what his own hands are doing, is worse.

“Dude,” Billy says, and unhesitatingly takes Steve’s hand into his free one, even if it is damp with sweat (doesn’t matter; so’s Steve’s). “What the fuck?” Billy squeezes, hard, and Steve finds it strangely grounding. Unpleasant, as far as potential hand-holding goes, but exactly what Steve needs. He doesn’t even think about it when he squeezes Billy’s hand back, all of their knuckles white with the pressure. Billy laughs, a little manic, his eyes still so wide and--fuck--watery. He won’t quite meet Steve’s gaze, but that doesn’t hide it.

“Hargrove,” Steve snaps. Then, softer, “Billy.” Billy looks at him, laughter fizzing out, and Steve continues. “Listen. We have to keep it together, okay? There are five kids in there who need us. And… and I’m gonna explain everything, okay? But… fuck, we just have to keep it together. Can you do that?”

Billy’s breathing hard still. Maybe Steve is too. His eyes dart away. Steve watches Billy pull himself together like he’s following a mental checklist: he closes his eyes, sucks in a measured breath through his nose like he’s counting, then slowly blows it out through his mouth, just as calculated. Once, twice, over and over. Inadvertently, Steve finds himself breathing in the same cadence, at first in encouragement, because, yes, breathing is good. Breathing is great. Then because he finds himself shaking a little less.

When Billy opens his eyes again, Steve is watching him. It’s probably creepy, but Billy doesn’t say anything about it. He doesn’t smile, either. The panic lingers, obvious in all of Billy’s sharp edges, but it’s contained, maybe. For now, anyway. Steve looks down at their hands, still clutching each other, and it’s the only place neither of them is trembling. They’re two epicenters shaking apart and that one spot, where their earthquakes meet, vibrates at just the right frequency to stay steady. Or something. (Steve got a C+ in Earth Science. Billy would probably know, if Steve asked, but he’s not going to ask because talking about earthquakes or tectonic plates or whatever would be something a fucking crazy person would do right now.)

Steve thinks they’ll stand there all night, breath ghosting in the cold night air, illuminated by Billy’s headlights, until Dustin bursts through the front door of the Byers’ house. “Steve, are you planning to die of hypothermia now? Haven’t you had enough risk for one night?”

Then Mike: “Jane says they’ll be back in an hour; she sensed something a few hours ago and they turned back then.”

“Good!” Steve says, smiling for them, because he’d do anything for them. He was pretty sure he was going to die for them tonight. He’s still pretty sure he would have--and probably in vain--if Billy hadn’t shown up when he did. “Hey. Go put on some coffee,” he shouts to the horde of children at large. “And warm up some leftovers or something. I’m starving.” He’s not hungry at all, the thought of food right now makes him nauseous, but it’s something decidedly normal that the kids can do while he and Billy finish… whatever the hell it is they’re doing out here. The kids turn back into the house, Will lingering just a little longer than the others, staring at something. Steve follows his gaze and finds Billy’s hand still crushing his, his crushing Billy’s. Before he can think to say something, or even to react at all really, Will ducks back inside. Whatever. If that’s something Will ever wants to talk about, then he can bring it up. Steve cannot deal with one more goddamned thing right now, especially if it’s less catastrophic than the Upside Down being rightside up again.

“Let’s go,” he’s says to Billy, giving his hand one more squeeze. They drop their hands, but they sure as hell drag their weapons with them.

 ***

Between Steve and all the kids, it takes an hour to tell the story--the real, full story-- to Billy. Somehow, they’d all mutually decided to leave out the specifics of Jane and her powers without agreeing to beforehand, so the storytelling is a little awkward at points, where they fumble otherwise obvious wording or go suspiciously vague. Billy notices, his eyes tightening, but he doesn’t press. What he does is smoke and smoke and smoke until the ashtray Max grabbed for him from the living room is practically overflowing, and no one says anything about it. And when they finish, Billy just leans back in his seat, closes his eyes, and smokes some more.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Mike finally demands. He sounds… weirdly furious, as if he resents having to tell Billy the full tale despite Billy having just saved all of their asses.

After releasing a truly impressive cloud of smoke, Billy flicks his eyes, sharp as knives, to Mike. He clicks his tongue once. “What is it you want me to say?” And, wow, Steve had said to play it cool, but Billy could be an ice sculpture right now.

“I don’t know!” Mike bursts. “Anything!”

Billy takes another drag. “I need a minute to process, kid. That was… a lot.”

Mike opens his mouth again, but doesn’t get the chance to say anything. “Cool it, Mike.” Max, sitting close to Billy’s side, glares across the table.

For his part, Steve sips his coffee, letting it play out. He shouldn’t drink coffee. He already won’t sleep for a month after this, maybe three months, and he’s already jittery. Coffee is the last thing he needs, but he’s so fucking tired and it’s bitter and warm and helps remind him that he’s not dead, so that’s something.

After another minute of contemplative smoking, Billy finally blows smoke toward the ceiling and stubs out his cigarette. For the first time since they’ve sat down, he doesn’t immediately go for another one. He does lean forward, putting his elbows on the table in front of the food only the kids have touched. “So, the big takeaway here is that there’s some… alternate universe sci-fi shit happening, and the monsters from that universe are... spilling into ours. Is that right?”

“That’s the gist of it, yeah,” Steve says first, because he can see the kids gearing up to launch into more detail that Billy doesn’t need. Billy likes to cut to the chase, he likes to sift out the details and latch onto the main point and follow the thread to the logical end. Steve wonders how the hell he knows that, then thinks that maybe sitting next to Billy in English, courtesy of their alphabetically related last names, has taught him something, even if it’s not much English.

Billy runs a hand through his already wrecked hair and gives a little chuckle. “That’s fucked.”

A startled chuckle burbles from Steve’s chest in response. He smiles at Billy. “Yeah, it really is.”

A moment of silence--extra heavy, considering Steve has never heard these kids not making noise--weighs over the room for a moment, and then Billy leans back again. “Okay. So. Chief Hopper will be here--” he glances at the wall clock across the room--”any minute now, I guess. And the Byers’ aren’t here yet because…?” He hones in on Will, who has been off-and-on staring at Billy like he hung the fucking moon. Which annoys Steve a little bit, although he supposes Billy did save the day or whatever and deserves maybe a little hero worship just this once.

“Mom went with Hop and Jane. Jonathan is out with Nancy.”

Billy quirks an eyebrow. “Date night?” And although what he said is completely innocuous, Will blushes a little. Billy snorts with amusement. “Something like that, then,” he answers his own question. “Alright. Here’s my suggestion: we all stay here, just in case anything else goes bump tonight. The kids go to sleep now--” There’s an immediate chorus of protest, but one mean look from Billy, who keeps talking over them, and they all shut up-- “and Steve and I explain what happened to Chief Hopper when he gets here.”

When they’re sure Billy’s done, they start talking over each other.

“That’s so unfair--”

“We’re not little kids--”

“How can we just sleep after--”

“Who are you to just--”

“Or!” Billy says, slamming a fist lightly on the table. Still enough to startle them all into silence, Billy’s mouth pulling into something like a smile. “Or, I can load you all up in my car and take you home, slumber party over.”

Dustin flings an outraged hand at Steve. “Steve! He’s not our real babysitter! Tell him that he can’t just… just… trample on your sacred right of command like this!”

Billy’s eyebrows raise at sacred right of command, and Steve shares an amused look with him. “No, I think I agree.” He sips his coffee.

More outbursts, but again Billy quiets them. “Teeth brushed and in bed in ten minutes or I’m making Steve call all of your parents to say you’ll be home in twenty.”

Grudgingly, throwing glares at Billy (except for Will) and betrayed glances at Steve, they all push up from the table and stomp toward the single, overworked bathroom down the hall.

“That was the most impressive thing I’ve seen all night, honestly,” Steve says, watching them go and reaching for a cigarette from Billy’s pack on the table only after he’s sure they won’t see him. “I really need to work on my ‘cut the bullshit’ face.”

Again, Billy snorts softly. “Fuckin’ kids. I thought Max was a handful.”

“Max is a handful.” They’re all individual handfuls, and together they’re impossible.

Billy shrugs, but something like pride crosses his face. “Wonder who she learned from.”

With a smile, Steve says, “Lord help us all if she follows in your footsteps.” He knows immediately that it was the wrong thing to say. Billy’s face, somehow unbroken after all the shit they’ve talked about for the past hour, now crumbles into something dark, eyes equal parts haunted and determined. He looks like if something touched him too hard he’d crack. Fragile. Fuck, Steve thinks. Here they’d been having a… a what? A fucking bonding moment? Two consecutive hours of not wanting to beat each other’s faces in? Steve isn’t sure what to call it, and he isn’t sure if he should be mad at himself for strolling casually onto a landmine in the middle of it or upset with Billy for being a walking, talking minefield. Steve’s too fucking tired for this right now. Dealing with the Upside Down has already wrung him out once before, and just when he thought he’d managed to start filling himself up again, here it is, wringing him out a second time, sucking even more casualties into its fucked up vortex--

“She won’t,” Billy says, fierce, and Steve had nearly lost the thread of the conversation. “She won’t be like me.”

Steve shrugs, pulling a long drag from his cigarette. He breathes out the smoke before he says, “You’re not so bad, when you’re not being a complete asshole.”

There it is, a sharp grin. Back on track, then. “There’s a kiss with a fist if I ever heard one.”

The phrase, for some reason, freezes Steve, hand outstretched over the ashtray. He looks up to find Billy watching him, head tilted sideways. God, he’s a wreck: covered in dirt, bruised as always, stubble past five coming in, blonde curls frizzed and tangled and matted. But his lips are still so, so red and smooth and scarred and his eyes… Well, Steve notices for the first time they’re almost more gray than blue, aren’t they?

In the space where Steve’s response should have been, there’s now tension. Familiar, definitely, but also novel in that Steve can sense it for what it is now. They watch each other, the cigarette throwing tendrils of smoke between them. Steve has this crazy vision of leaning forward, of sucking the haze out of the air so he can just see Billy’s face plainly. Across the table, Billy’s eyelids droop heavy, but his eyes flash alert beneath. He looks like Steve feels: so fucking tired, but too tired to sleep.

“You think you could train one of those?” Billy suddenly asks, and Steve realizes that their thoughts diverged on completely different tracks. Here he was, thinking about Billy, about how he vacillates between two completely different versions of himself and one of them Steve knows and kind of hates, and the other he doesn’t know very well but thinks he might like. And Billy, like a rational person, was thinking about the fucking monsters they’d put down tonight. Although his question maybe says that he’s not-so-rational.

Steve snorts. “Did you miss the part where Dustin hand-raised one and it still ate his cat?”

Billy chuckles under his breath, more in disbelief than humor, shaking his head. He runs a hand over his face, then grimaces, almost like he’s noticing how filthy he is only now. “What even is this?” He scratches at some dried goo on his arm, and Steve thinks he probably looks just as nauseous as Billy when it comes off like a giant scab.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Is there a shower here?”

“No,” Steve says. “The Byers actually bathe in the creek down by the woods.” He smiles.

Billy leans over and hits his shoulder, but he’s smiling a little, too. And Steve thinks, finally, there it is. The smile that makes Billy look like an actual eighteen-year-old in an eighteen-year-old’s body. “Bathroom?” he asks.

“The room with the toilet,” Steve says, gesturing vaguely down the hallway.

Billy goes, still smiling, and Steve feels a shocking lightness is his chest, has since Billy showed up. He should absolutely be tripping-over-himself insane about all of this right now, maybe even upset about Billy being one of the small group of people who know now, but really, it’s been… good. Yeah, fine, it’s been good having Billy here.

“Bed. Now,” he hears Billy mandate in the hallway, and Steve grins around the butt of the cigarette. When he hears the shower running, he sighs and leans back in his chair. Maybe… However it started, however things played out, it will be okay in the long run.

*** 

Things are… sort of okay. “Leftovers,” Jane says when she gets to the Byers’ with Hop and Joyce. Everyone is more baffled by that one innocuous word than with all of Billy Hargrove at the kitchen table. When Jane came is, she’d stared at Billy for twenty unblinking seconds before nodding in approval, and that was that.

“The gate is closed. They can’t get back.” Hopper translates, apparently stressed enough to take Jane’s judgement call about Billy as good enough for now.

“So we’ve just got to--what?--hunt them?” Steve asks.

Hopper looks him dead in eye, takes a truly magnificent pull from his cigarette, and says, “Yeah.”

So that’s how it starts. It continues with Steve and Billy (and Nancy and Jonathan and Hop, but Steve and Billy always stick together) hunting demodogs like it’s their job. One night, in the glow of Billy’s headlights, Billy shoves Steve out of the way of a toothy flower headed right for his face, brings his crowbar around, and stands panting over an unmoving monster. Billy says, “Owe me one, Harrington.”

“What? Then you owe me like three!”

Billy keeps a piece of paper in his glovebox, a series of hashes labeled only “favors” in tight, neat script at the top. He updates it after every fight, but never scratches out any tallies. Just keeps adding to them, like the number of times they could have died without each other is something worth keeping track of. Maybe it is.

Billy keeps surprising Steve: he laughs and it’s not a tight, mean sound; he shows up when Steve calls, over and over again, no matter how bruised  or shaken from the last time; he doesn’t love the kids, not like Steve does, but he cares enough to keep them out of harm, to scold them when they do dumb shit like use each other as bait to execute a half-baked plan, to sometimes buy them all shakes when they’re too quiet because, yeah, it was kind of fun at first, like a video game, but almost dying gets old, it isn’t cool and heroic like in the movies, you can’t pop two coins into the machine when you’re out of lives to keep going.

But overall? It’s… it’s good. Solid. It seems like This Billy is better, and, slowly, he’s replacing Old Billy. He and Steve start hanging out outside of monster hunting, outside of ferrying the kids to dnd night. New Billy surprises Steve by how much fun he can be, how smart, how witty, how interesting. There are facets to Billy Hargrove that Steve didn’t think could exist, and Steve finds himself seeking them out.

Before they know it, it’s mid-December. Every tree lining the streets has lights strewn on it, every truck in Hawkins has pine needles in the back from shuttling trees, and every store in town is playing Christmas music.  

Steve fucking hates Christmas. Not the lights or the music or anything like that. For him, Christmas goes like this: his parents come home, host their stupid annual party, and then leave again the next morning, leaving Steve a few wrapped packages under the tree (usually clothes in the wrong sizes that he can’t even return because his parents are mortally offended by gift receipts or something). It’s all too much and not even close to enough, more infuriating than if they just didn’t come home at all.

Wading through the sea of tuxes and slinky black skirts, Steve heads toward the stairs, a bottle of champagne held neatly behind his back. Sometimes at parties, his mom shoots him this look that says, “Find somewhere else to be for a while,” and nothing makes Steve happier. So he smiles and nods and charms his way to the stairs and has his tie loosened before he hits the third step.

At the top of the stairs, the bottle nearly slips through his fingers. His door is still closed, but the light is on inside, peeking out from under the door. He knows he closed it, knows because he triple-checked. He may have left the light on, but he knows he didn’t leave a blunt burning in there and he can smell it from the hallway. The last thing he needs is one of his dad’s business associates getting high, wandering around and finding Steve’s bat, asking about the reddish tinge to the wood, asking, “We killin’ somethin’ tonight?”

Heart a heavy drumbeat against his sternum, Steve walks up to the door. He hadn’t seen anyone come upstairs, but he thinks, now, much too late, that he definitely should have locked the door too. Any tipsy lady snooping for a second bathroom could have wobbled in there.

Before he even pushes the door open, he says, “Excuse me,” trying to imitate his dad’s eviscerating, “Frankly, I’m disappointed, Steven,” tone. “You’re not supposed to be in he--”

“Calm down, pretty boy.”

The muscles that had been winding tight, fight or flight, suddenly release. It’s like Steve can breathe, really breathe properly, for the first time since before the party started. “Thank Christ it’s you,” Steve says, stepping into his room and closing the door behind him. Locking it, this time. Although, now that he’s thinking about it, “How did you get in here?”

Billy, laying on Steve’s bed, smoking with his head tilted back, gestures lazily to the window, and Steve has to grin. How many windows has he climbed in before? “Trying to get into my pants, Hargrove?”

“You wish,” Billy says, offering the joint as an invitation. Steve takes it, slipping his jacket onto the back of his desk chair before laying down beside Billy. Instead of taking the rolled paper, Steve grabs Billy’s wrist and guides his hand so he can take a deep pull. “I think I fucking love you,” he says with the exhale.

Sometimes this happens: one of them says something that should be casual, should be laughed off, and neither of them laugh. It happens now, leaving a too-intense pause where anything else should be. Steve’s cheeks light up, suddenly, with a heat that creeps up from deep in his chest. He knows Billy can see. It kind of makes him want to die. But Billy doesn’t seem to notice, really. Or, if he does, he doesn’t say anything about it.

Instead, Billy says, “Your old man a hardass?”

Steve gives a tiny sigh of relief. “Kind of. Sometimes. I don’t know, why?”

“My old man… he’s real oldschool. Believes that, if you don’t follow the rules of his house, you don’t get to stay in his house.” Billy, for the first time, tilts his head to look at Steve, but the angle is wrong, like he’s trying to hide something. So Steve reaches out, tips Billy’s face the rest of way but can’t hide his shocked suck of air, can’t help the empathetic squeeze in his gut. The bruise is wide and set deep into Billy’s jaw, a terrible, cool blue against the warm gold of Billy’s skin.

He doesn’t know what to say, so he skims his fingers over the still-blooming edges of the bruise, watches the flutter of Billy’s eyes. “Stay here,” Steve says.

“Steve, it’s Christmas Eve. You’ve got your family and your party--”

“Fuck them. I want you to stay.” It comes out shockingly fierce. Steve starts self-immolating, a fire raging in his ribcage, filling him up with so much smoke and heat, heat, heat.

Taken off guard, Billy blinks. “Okay, Steve. I’ll stay,” he says, and Steve’s name feels like a bomb going off, blasting all rational reactions out of Steve’s mind. So he leans forward and takes another hit before collapsing back against his bed, no longer touching Billy at all because he’s afraid of what he’ll do if he doesn’t break contact.

There was a time, before Billy was his friend but after Billy brought Steve’s attention to his lips, that Steve thought about this exact scenario. Well, not exact, but similar: having Billy Hargrove in his bed, having him high and easy and so, so beautiful. The bruise is a surprise, the circumstances shitty, but Steve still feels the kicking in his chest, the fire in his lungs, and he… he doesn’t know. What to do. How Billy feels. How he feels. He thinks: Billy is my best friend. He thinks: don’t fuck this up.

But this is different. New. This isn’t like being friends with Tommy, who laughs and says, “That was a little gay, Stevie,” when he’s supposed to. This is Billy, who never reacts the way you expect and then bites you for getting it wrong. Steve doesn’t want to get bitten. He really doesn’t want to get it wrong.

“I guess I owe you,” Billy says, blowing smoke at the ceiling. “I don’t like owing people.” His eyes are way too goddamned blue when he slides them toward Steve. “What do you want?” Steve thinks Billy’s trying to be clever, or cute, or… or something. But the undercurrent of his voice aches. Aches like he notices when Steve doesn’t laugh and say, “That was a little gay, Billy.” Aches like maybe he’s thought about Steve as much as Steve has thought about him. Aches like he already expects Steve to say, “No, thanks.”

What Steve wants, what he really wants, is too much to say. Too much for both of them. So instead he says, “I want to finish that blunt. And then I want to finish that champagne.” The light goes hooded in Billy’s eyes, disappointment, maybe rejection, smothering it. So Steve steels himself, takes a deep breath, trains his eyes on the ceiling. “I want… I want to quit pretending. With you. You… You’re my best friend, but we both know…” He clears his throat. Tries again. “We both know.”

Approximately fives years pass, the only sounds them breathing and the crackle of the tension filling the room. Then Billy says, “Steve. Will you look at me?”

Steve does and wonders how it can be so easy and so hard at the same time. Billy opens his mouth and it’s obvious that the words escape, float away on the smoke. Then Billy swallows, grimaces. “I know,” he says, sending Steve reeling with some trippy mix of relief and mortification, the world tilting the wrong way on its axis. Then he adds: “Me too.”

Honestly, Steve doesn’t even know if they’re admitting the same things here. Communication, Nancy taught him, is not Steve’s strong suit. But he and Billy are both moving in the same direction, he thinks, and that’s more than Steve had hoped for, more than he thought he’d ever get with Billy. It makes him bubbly, giddy, and he smiles big and dopey. Billy smiles back, weirdly shy, and Steve reaches out to trace his lips, red like cherry wine. He sort of feels like he can’t breathe, but also like he doesn’t need to anyway. He feels like he needs to know everything about Billy’s lips: how soft they are, how firm, how warm, the sounds they release, how they move against his.

Billy stays still while Steve rolls to face him, still just barely ghosting over his lips. No breath touches Steve’s finger, but Billy doesn’t look scared when Steve flicks his eyes up to the rest of Billy’s face. He looks… enraptured, eyes wide like Steve’s an angel come to announce that Billy’s the Virgin Mary or some shit. He also looks like the high is starting to set in, so who knows?

After a few more seconds, Billy finally whispers against the pad of Steve’s thumb, “You gonna kiss me, Steve?”

“I think so, yeah,” Steve answers, voice a matching whisper although he doesn’t know why.

But Steve doesn’t kiss him. Not right away. He just revels in this, that he gets even this, touching Billy without blood on their hands, without violence still coursing in their veins even if they weren’t being violent with each other. It’s tender and novel and Steve can’t stop touching, now that he’s allowed. He slides his finger down Billy’s chin, along his jaw (skirting the bruise), over an eyebrow, down his nose.

“What are you doing?”

“Shh,” Steve says, drags his fingertips to Billy’s neck, glides them over his adams apple, into the dip of his throat, down his always-exposed chest. “This is when you knew?” He presses two fingers into Billy’s chest, just like he did that night months and months ago, nightmares ago, lifetimes ago.

Billy shakes his head.

“When?”

Again, Billy opens his mouth and says nothing. After he makes a little sigh, he says, “The moment I saw you.”

Steve stops. Looks up. Billy is watching him so closely. A month ago, Steve would have said that Billy’s face is impassive. Now, he sees so much. Billy’s nerves, his fear, his embarrassment, his joy, his hope, his… his love.

And Steve has to kiss him. He feels clumsy, like he’s never done it before, like it’s too soft and too hard all at once, but Billy grabs Steve’s collar anyway, crinkling it beyond repair in his fists, and pulls him close, so it mustn’t be too terrible. Good enough that they get lost in drinking each other in.

The smell of burning interrupts them.

“What the--?”
           
“Shit!” Billy snatches the joint up from the blanket on Steve’s bed, slaps at the singed circle to keep it from spreading. Then he leans back and takes a long pull. “Guess I owe you another one.”

Steve smiles, still way too blissed to care about the burn in his blanket or the smoke that his parents are going to give him so much shit for later. “We’ll just add it to the list,” he says, and kisses Billy again, because he can. Because he’s owed.