Chapter Text
Billy doesn’t die.
They aren’t sure how at first. The Mind Flayer impaled him with five different tentacles. He should be dead. There was no way he could have survived an attack like that. No one could survive that.
And yet, Billy lives. Barely.
Max sobs on his chest until the paramedics arrive.
Steve pulls her away and lets her grip onto his waist, gently herding her out with the rest of the kids. Robin flanks him, her eyes flicking back to the flaming mall every few seconds.
“Can you,” Steve starts. He stops, because his mind is in a million different places at once and he can’t get a handle on his thoughts. “I don’t know, never mind. Are you okay?”
She nods at him before a paramedic directs her to an ambulance. “Talk later?”
He nods at her. The adrenaline leaves him all at once. “Yeah, later.”
Max’s grip on his waist goes tighter when another paramedic tries to peel her off of Steve. “Hey, hey, it’s fine. They just want to check you out,” he says.
Max looks up at him then, her face tear-streaked, and shakes her head. “I’m okay,” she says.
Steve gets what she isn’t saying. He shuffles after the paramedic, his gait awkward, and sits in the back of the ambulance with her.
He doesn’t say anything stupid like, “He’s going to be okay.”
Instead, he asks, “Do you want to go to the hospital after this?”
Max slips her hand into his and nods miserably. “He can’t die,” she says. “Not when we just got him back.”
Steve thinks distantly that if Billy lives, something has to change. Whatever weird hangups he’s got have to stop, because there’s a little girl who needs him. Billy’s an asshole on a good day, but it’s time to grow up
Steve wraps his left arm around Max and tugs her closer. He rests his chin on her head and says, “I know.”
Max dissolves into tears all over again.
The paramedic finishes checking them over and they’re free to go.
Hopper looks like he’s seen better days; he looks a little crispy around the edges, but he’s standing so Steve figures everything must have turned out alright.
El attaches herself to him firmly as soon as he comes into sight. “You’re okay,” she repeats, over and over, as Hopper palms the back of her head and says, “Yeah, kid, I’m okay.”
Joyce and Will are crying over each other. Johnathan pulls them into a hug as soon as he sees them.
Nancy has Mike by the arm, like she can’t stand to let him go. She’s bruised across the face and Steve’s face twinges in sympathy. He presses his fingers to the edge of his black eye. Nancy catches his eye and nods, firmly, once.
Steve catches Lucas and pulls him over to the group. The kid’s got a walkie in his hands and Steve thinks, all at once: Dustin and Erica .
“Hang on,” Lucas says into the walkie. “I’m sending someone to come pick you up.”
Lucas eyes Max for a second, like he’s taking stock of whether or not she’s hurt, and then continues, “I think we’re meeting at the hospital.”
“Okay,” Dustin says as the radio crackles. “Yeah, we’ll see you there.”
He doesn’t even make a crack about saying over after they’re done speaking.
This has been the shittiest day, Steve thinks. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt more exhausted. The kids are banged up. El’s powers are taking a sabbatical.
But they’re all alive, Steve thinks, and then, Never again . This never happens again.
He guesses he has Billy to thank for that; for buying them some extra time when time was running out.
Shit , Steve thinks.
The group divides up between Joyce’s station wagon and Hopper’s truck.
Steve says, “I’ll go pick up Dustin and Erica.”
Hopper claps him on the shoulder and asks Max, “You coming?”
Max stays stubbornly by Steve’s side. Hopper frowns, but nods, like he understands what Max isn’t saying. If she doesn’t go to the hospital right away, the longer she has to pretend that Billy will be okay.
Steve’s heart breaks for her.
Robin is waiting next to his car when he and Max get there. She hugs him immediately
“I didn’t expect my summer to go like this,” she says into his shoulder, “but if I had to be kidnapped and tortured by Russian spies, I’m glad it was with you.”
Steve huffs a laugh into her hair. Yeah, he’s glad too. “You coming to the hospital with us?”
She nods as they break. She looks down at Max, who’s still stuck to Steve’s side, and asks, “You want shotgun, or you wanna ride in the back with me?”
Steve expects her to pick shotgun, but to his surprise, and possibly Robin’s, she chooses the back. Robin shoots Steve a wide-eyed look, then climbs in after her. Steve slides into the driver’s seat. He looks at the girls in his rear view mirror for a long moment before starting the car.
Dustin piles into the backseat beside Robin and lets Erica have the front seat. Steve turns his car back around toward town and starts their journey.
No time seems to pass at all until they arrive. He pulls into a space in the parking lot, near Joyce’s car. It’s empty, which means everyone has already gone inside. Everyone pauses in his car and Max, whose tears had dried up sometime between picking Dustin and Erica up and whispering back and forth with Robin, start anew.
Her sobs are ugly, hitching things too. Erica turns her wide eyes on Steve. Steve sucks his bottom lip between his teeth.
Max pushes against Robin a little. “I can’t go in there,” Max cries. “What if I go in there and he’s dead?”
Erica says, “What if Dustin and I go in first?”
Dustin looks down at the walkie in his lap and, to his credit, picks up on what Erica’s implying immediately. “Yeah!” He says. “We’ll go in and let you know if it’s safe to come in.”
Dustin hands his walkie to Max, who clutches at it gratefully. “Lucas will still have his walkie.”
Robin untangles herself from Max and says, “You guys probably need an adult to go with you. It’s weird if two kids walk into the hospital by themselves.”
Max scrambles up into the passenger’s seat as they make their way inside the hospital. She mutters something under her breath, over and over, but Steve can’t make out what she’s saying.
A few minutes later, the radio crackles to life. “Max, honey, are you there?”
Joyce’s voice spills out of the walkie, which neither Max nor Steve expect. Max fumbles the controls so Steve reaches over and presses the button for her. He says, “We’re here.”
“Okay.” She takes a second, maybe to steel her resolve or something, Steve doesn’t know. “Okay, Max? They’ve taken Billy into surgery. After the surgery is finished, he’ll go to the ICU for a day or so, and then he’ll have to stay at the hospital for a week before he can go home. He’s going to be okay. I promise.”
Steve knows that Joyce isn’t the type of woman to make empty promises. If she’s promising Max that Billy’s going to make it, she means it.
Max still can’t seem to speak, so Steve presses the button and says, “Thanks, Joyce. We’ll be there in a second.”
Max goes still. Her hair falls in a curtain around her face.
Steve isn’t sure if she’s relieved or panicking because he can’t see her expression. “Hey, hey,” he says. “You heard Joyce, he’s going to be okay.”
When Max finally looks at him, he realizes that she’s panicking. Shit.
Her eyes are wide when she stares at him, nostrils just barely flaring, and she looks like she might burst into tears again at any moment. “He can’t go home,” she whispers. “Steve, he can’t go home. Neil will kill him.”
There’s a lot to unpack there. Steve makes connections that he doesn’t like. “Okay, look, we have to put that aside for a second. We have a week to figure out what to do and we have people on our side, okay? Joyce and Hopper, right?”
Max exhales slowly and nods. “Okay. Okay, I’m ready to go in.”
The Party is hesitant to leave Max at the hospital.
Erica falls asleep slumped against her brother, and Lucas looks like he isn’t too far off either.
Mike stubbornly says, “Someone has to stay with her.”
Steve is -- Steve is nineteen. There’s no one waiting for him at home. He says, “I’ll stay. You guys go home. We’ll let you know if anything changes.”
Hopper seems okay with that plan. Before he goes, Steve asks if he can speak with him privately.
“Look,” he says, as soon as they’re alone, “Max doesn’t think that Billy can go home after this.”
Hopper rubs a hand over his eyes and eloquently says, “Goddamn.”
Steve nods because that’s exactly how he feels. “He’s eighteen. He doesn’t have to go home if he doesn’t want to.”
“Okay,” Hopper says. “We’ll figure something out.”
Steve doesn’t know why he’s trying so hard to help Billy Hargrove out. Billy has been nothing but an asshole to everyone he comes into contact with. Hell, he’s beaten the shit out of Steve. He threatened Lucas away from Max. He gets in fights all the time and flirts with people he shouldn’t.
But there’s got to be something redeemable in there, because otherwise he wouldn’t have stepped between El and the Mind Flayer. He wouldn’t have apologized to Max when he thought he was dying.
El and Max are talking when Steve returns to the waiting room. Steve doesn’t say anything as he sits in the seat next to Max.
“See you tomorrow?” El asks Max.
Max nods and returns the hug El offers her immediately.
El releases her and turns to Steve. She scrutinizes his face and then presses her fingers to the edge of Steve’s black eye. She does it so lightly he doesn’t even flinch.
“I’m okay,” he repeats for her. “Just a little bruised.”
“See you tomorrow?” She asks him.
He nods.
She hugs him too. One of his arms settles over her shoulders and he brushes back the hair from her face with the other. Unexpectedly, she tells him, “Thank you.”
Steve doesn’t know what he’s being thanked for, so he squeezes her tighter before he lets her go.
The surgery seems to stretch on forever. Max falls asleep slumped against him, which can’t be comfortable with the arm rest between them. Neither Billy’s dad nor his step-mom come to the hospital. He wonders if they’ve been notified, and thinks it’s probably better if they don’t come.
Steve’s starting to give into exhaustion when a nurse comes out. “Hargrove?”
Steve jerks up in his seat. “How’s he doing?”
He makes sure that Max won’t fall out of her chair and then walks over to join the nurse.
She eyes him briefly, because she knows he’s not related to Billy.
“Look, his dad isn’t coming,” Steve wheedles. “I’ve got his sister. She wants to see him. Hopper said it was fine.”
“Jim Hopper does not run this hospital,” she says, but her eyes soften regardless. “He’s out of surgery. He isn’t very lucid at the moment, but you can go see him in a second. The surgeon stopped the internal bleeding. He’s going to have to stay in the hospital for a week or so, but after that he can go home.”
Steve nods, because this is what Joyce told them before.
“He’s going to have difficulty breathing for a little bit,” the nurse continues. “He’ll need to avoid strenuous activities, like weightlifting, for six weeks at the very least. The incisions will heal over a couple months. He’ll have pain at first, but that should go away as he heals. If it doesn’t, he’ll need to see his doctor.”
“Got it,” Steve says. “Can I take Max to see him?”
“Sure,” she says, “but he may be out of it for a while.”
Max hovers at the door to Billy’s room for a long moment before going inside.
Billy watches her through lidded eyes.
The covers may have once been pulled up to his shoulders, but he’s pushed the sheet down to his waist and the bandages around his chest are on full display. There’s a chair next to his bed. Max rounds the bed slowly until she can sit on the very edge of the seat.
Steve hovers at the door, unwilling to step inside and break the moment between them.
Billy tracks Max’s movements carefully.
Max sets her hands on the side of the bed.
Billy’s movements, when he moves his arm, are sluggish, but he manages to fit his hand around the back of her neck to pull her closer.
“Why’re you… why’re you,” he slurs, “cryin’ over me?”
Max’s shoulders shake as she cries silently. She pulls Billy’s hand from her neck and presses her forehead against his knuckles. She abandons the chair entirely, leaning against the bed instead.
“If you die,” she says, breath hitching, “then I’m alone.”
They have shared history that no one else sees, Steve thinks. He starts putting the pieces together in his mind. Trauma binds people together in ways they don’t expect; Steve knows this first-hand with the group and the Upside-Down, but those were one-off experiences that happened on three separate occasions. He doesn’t want to think about the trauma Billy and Max have shared daily, relentlessly
Steve bites at his thumbnail and kicks his foot mindlessly.
Max scrambles lightly onto the bed next to Billy. There’s just enough space for her to lay down on her side beside her step-brother. His arm wraps awkwardly her shoulders and Steve knows his arm is going to fall asleep like that, but neither sibling seems to care.
“Thought I,” Billy says slowly, pausing to catch his breath and highlighting the oxygen cannula in his nose, “did pretty good there at the end.”
“You did,” Max breathes. “You really did.”
In a few minutes, she’s asleep.
Billy’s eyes flicker to Steve. “You gonna keep standing there like a creep?”
Steve looks out into the hall before he settles in the chair next to the bed with a sigh. Billy breathes like he’s run a marathon.
“Go to sleep,” Steve says finally. “I’ll keep watch.”