Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Steve Harington isn’t a natural at compartmentalization.

He remembers when he was seven, and the class pet--a lizard named Stew--ended up passing away due to old age. Even though it was a very old lizard, and even though his teacher, Ms. Lewis, assured him that Stew had lived a very long and happy life, Steve couldn’t stop thinking about that damn lizard, and how it was alive one second and then it just wasn’t, the next.

It had bled into his entire life. He couldn’t sleep without thinking about Stew, and he never wanted to eat his lunch, even if he had Goldfish and Goldfish were the best. Even though he’d tried (and he really had tried, especially after his dad told him to stop crying and man up), he couldn’t just shove away his memories of Stew. 

Eventually, after two weeks had passed, it seemed like he could swallow it all. He was finally able to put Stew to bed, and Ms. Lewis told him that it was a good and a bad thing, that he couldn’t let it go until he’d worked it out.

“It might stop you from working in the short-term,” she’d said, “but you worked your way through it at your own pace, and it won’t haunt you. A lot of adults will shove everything away until it boils over, and that’s no good at all, Stevie.”

Steve remembers trying to listen to her, but getting distracted by the clack of her fake pearls ringing together, and by the coffee stains on her teeth. And he also remembers a passing, stray thought he managed to latch onto:

I’d much rather just work first, and think later. That seems better.

***

Rest assured, Steve becomes good at compartmentalization.

A fucking wizard at it, really.

***

Will Byers is determined to make sure that Billy Hargrove is okay.

They weren’t even sure if Billy’d pull through the first few hours. It had taken too long for the ambulance to get to the mall, and if Steve shuts his eyes and thinks about it, he can see the dim glow of Starcourt’s emergency lights, can smell the rotting, slimy gore that had been knitted together for the Mind Flayer’s body. And above all, he can remember the black goo oozing out from under Billy’s white shirt, Max sobbing and grabbing at Billy’s hands, checking for his weak, flittering pulse every few minutes, as Lucas and El had tried to calm her down.

Steve can remember his own hands pressing down on Billy’s wounds as Nancy and Jonathan had searched around for bandages, antiseptic, anything. Steve can remember the stressed, high notes of Robin’s voice as she tried to pull Erica and Dustin and Mike away from Billy, because if the worst happened, she didn’t want them to see. And Steve remembers Will right next to Steve, right next to El and Lucas and Max, applying pressure to the areas Steve couldn’t reach with a steady intensity.

(It’s a good thing that Steve only remembers these things when he wants to. If he let it spill out, if he thought about it too long against his will--

Well. He doesn’t know what he’d do.)

Somehow, somehow, Billy had survived until the ambulance arrived, and Billy survived the transport to the hospital, and Billy survived the first few hours when the doctors had been so baffled by the black stuff leaking from Billy’s body, by his injuries which looked like they’d come from a war zone instead of a mall in Hawkins, Indiana.

And now, Will Byers kept vigil by Billy’s bedside as often as Max. Which means that Steve keeps vigil by Billy’s bedside, too.

Steve doesn’t know why, exactly, he has to be the one to drive Will all the time, but he maybe gets it. He gets that Joyce wants to separate herself from everything that happened in Starcourt, wants to pull herself out of all the drama that had ruled her life for the last two years, wants to wrap herself up in Hopper, since she’d so nearly lost him that night. He gets that Jonathan is probably spending all his time with Nancy, and really, he should be. Will probably shouldn’t be so obsessed with making sure Billy was okay.

But he was, and the one time Steve pressed Will on it, on why he’d chosen Steve to drive him instead of his family, Will had only said, “I don’t want to worry them. And...they wouldn’t understand.”

Steve doesn’t entirely understand, and he is a bit worried, but he’s a damn good babysitter, and he’s grown a soft spot for Will, for how quiet he is and how thoughtful, and what Will wants, what Will needs, Will gets.

***

(Except, Steve does understand.

He gets that Will knows what it’s like to have a body that doesn’t feel like his own. And now, Billy does too, and Will wants to be there for him in a way that almost no one could be when Will woke up.

He gets why Will’s chosen Steve, of all people, to transport him to the hospital, to sit with Billy as often as Max does.

But Steve doesn’t think about those things. Steve works and moves and absolutely does not stop.

So he’ll say he doesn’t understand until he actually doesn’t, but he’ll keep driving Will until Will says to stop.)

***

Two months after El had closed the gate, after Nancy shoved a hot poker against Will’s torso until the shadow erupted out of him, they’d had a movie night at Steve’s house.

Ostensibly, it was because Mr. Wheeler had a business trip to Orlando, and Mrs. Wheeler and Holly had gone with him because Disneyland, but Mike and Nancy chose to stay in Hawkins because they were grown and had homework, and also because right after the Wheelers left, Nancy invited Jonathan over and Mike called the Party to plan something fun to do.

The “something fun” ended up being a VHS tape of Poltergeist in Steve’s basement and Never Have I Ever with hot sauce shots instead of actual shots because Steve wasn’t about to have six drunk tweens stumbling around his house, and Steve marveled at how this was how he spent his Fridays now, when before it used to be a parade of parties he never enjoyed.

Most of the kids drifted off around one in the morning, to the point that Steve felt comfortable enough to raid the garage fridge and grab a couple of Coors. He’d made his way upstairs quietly, nearly tiptoeing through his basement where a bunch of kids slept on the round, to his kitchen where he fiddled with the radio, leaning against the kitchen counter.

“Steve?”

Steve turned and found Will standing at the top of the basement stairs, pulling the sleeves of his sweater down over his hands and looking impossibly young for his age.

“Hey, what’s up? I thought you were asleep with the others?” Steve pulled the tab on one of the beers, taking a few swallows and wincing at the taste. He’d forgotten how bad they’d tasted, but the taste was never the point.

“I--” Will hesitates. “I opened my eyes, and it was, um, dark? Shit, I’m sounding like a two-year-old.”

Steve shakes his head. “It reminds you of the--of that thing?”

Will presses his lips together. “It’s stupid,” he says.

“It’s not stupid at all,” Steve says. 

Will nods, and hesitates. He leans against the doorjamb, and unconsciously rubs at his side, which has only just begun to scar from the poker jab.

“Do you--um, do you want a beer?” Steve asks. “Don’t ever tell Dustin I offered.”

Will snorts, but shakes his head. “I need…” he pauses. “I don’t know. And I don’t know if anyone--other than Eleven--gets it. But I don’t think I could talk to her, because...well, she’s been through so much, and I…”

Will trails off, and picks at his sweater again. He looks up quickly, and then back at his feet. “Sorry,” he says, “I should’ve just...said yes, or something.”

“No one ever lets you talk this much, do they?” Steve teases, taking another swig of his beer. “It’s okay, Will. I--”

He cuts himself off.

Will looks up, eyes wide. That kid picks up on everything. He’s too observant, Steve hates it. And damn, he’s a cute kid, despite that awful haircut. Could grow up to break some hearts.

“Shit,” Steve says, and stares up at his ceiling for a second. “Your body...it doesn’t feel like your own, does it? Like, if you do something similar to what sh--what that thing did to you, then it still has control. Like...even though it’s over, and it’s been over for a while, sometimes it feels like it’s happening to you all over again, and no one gets that you’re still going through it, really.”

Steve doesn’t look at Will, doesn’t look at all. Doesn’t want to look and see what he’ll find.

“I--yeah,” Will says. “I was, um, nodding. That’s...yeah.”

Steve drains his beer can, and pops open another one. “It’s fucked,” he says. “Everything’s all fucked.”

Then, because he remembers he’s talking to a thirteen-year-old: “You’ve got a good mom, though, and I mean--I know you’ll get through it. Yeah?”

Steve’s never been good with words. He looks at Will, tries for a reassuring smile. Will looks at him like he’s trying to see through Steve, right to the core of him.

“How did--I mean, how would you get yourself through something like that? Like, uh, what would you suggest?”

Steve shakes his beer in front of Will’s face with a slight grin. Will looks wholly unimpressed.

“Don’t think about it?” Steve suggests. “Like, try your very best, very hardest, not to fucking think about it. Or, like, extreme exposure therapy. Overdo it with darkness, and with cold, until it feels like it’s yours again.”

“Okay,” Will says, “Thank you.”

It’s clearly out of politeness, instead of any actual gratitude. Steve shrinks back a bit. “Look, I--I’m not saying I was made for, like...being a therapist. I just...I kind of...fuck, I kind of understand, even though it’s not--like…”

Steve wants to pound his fist into his head, to knock out some sweet, elegant words, something, anything, to help this tiny kid in front of him.

“I’ve got a night light in the upstairs closet,” Steve settles on. “I’ll put it in the basement. And I’ve got a space heater stored somewhere around here. I’ll say I run cold, if anyone asks.”

“Thank you,” Will says, with actual, real gratitude.

Steve scrubs a hand through his hair. “Just...don’t mention it.”

He’s not talking about the space heater or the night light, and they both know it.

***

“Steve,” Max says, as Will sits himself down in the chair next to Billy’s hospital bed.

Steve, who was in the middle of switching on his Walkman, pauses. “Yeah?”

“Can I maybe talk to you?”

“We’re...talking now?”

“She means alone,” Will supplies helpfully. He’s got a dog-eared copy of one of The Hobbit pulled out, and he’s flipping to the middle section. He’d just started rereading when Billy first came to the hospital.

“Sorry, Will,” Max says.

“Private business is private,” Will says. “Do your thing.”

Max gestures toward the door, and Steve nods, walking toward it. He’s...more than slightly confused, but that’s okay. It seems like these kids always keep Steve on his toes.

Max picks an empty waiting room, and sits herself down on one of the benches, Steve takes a seat opposite from her, raising his eyebrows. 

Max doesn’t waste time. “When Eleven was going through Billy’s memories, she found out a lot of bad things,” she says. “Like, shit you’d never admit to anyone.”

“I’m pretty sure everyone has that,” Steve says.

“His dad--my stepdad--he hits Billy,” Max says bluntly. “Pretty bad, is what El said. We talked to Hopper about it, but since Billy’s over eighteen and hasn’t reported anything, he said his hands are tied.”

“Shit,” Steve says, eyes widening. His stomach feels like it’s trying to eat itself. He thought that Billy was a dick, sure, but...but still. That’s sick.

“Yeah,” Max says, and for the first time, Steve’s noticed that she’s gripping her hands together so tightly that they’re staining white. Her hair is uncombed, loose and knotty, and her shirt is wrinkled and the same one she’d been wearing five days ago. “I don’t know if my mom knows. I really don’t wanna know, honestly. But...I can’t let Billy walk back into that, Steve.”

“I--wait, what does this have to do with me?”

Max grimaces. “I know you’re not friends,” she says quickly, “like, not even at all. But it’s a better shot than the Byers’, because he doesn’t even know them. And...well, we kind of noticed that your parents weren't home ever, so even if it’s just temporary--”

“They’re on business trips, Max,” Steve says, a bit harshly and a bit too defensively. Max raises her hands in surrender. “And besides, even if he doesn’t know Jonathan, he kind of hates my guts. Or, like, thinks I’m lame or pussy whipped or something.”

“Well,” Max says, “it’s not like he’s got any friends.”

Steve sighs, and has a strong urge to start massaging his temples. 

“Shit,” he says. “Fucking...shit.”

“Thank you,” Max says.

“God, I hate all of you,” Steve says, standing up. “And he won’t even say yes, and you know that.”

“Thank you,” Max says again.

“Yeah, well. No one deserves to get hit by their dad.”

Steve lets that truth sink in a little bit. “Fuck,” Steve says. “I need a drink. I’m gonna go.”

“Thank you!” Max shouts after him, as he pushes through the hospital doors into the blinding sunlight.

***

The thing about his parents was that he didn’t fucking care.

That was the thing.

Well, that and also the fact that they dropped by, like, once a year for a week or two before going off jetsetting again. Seriously, why did they choose Hawkins, Indiana, as their basis of operation when they clearly had the money to move their “home” anywhere?

But it’d been like that since Steve was old enough to catch the bus and go shopping alone, so Steve was used to it, was used to the weekly phone call that lasted less than ten minutes every single time. 

But Max pointing that out so casually--

Well.

But Steve was okay with it, so it was okay.

It was like he’d completely forgotten about it, shoved it off into a corner of his brain to gather dust, until Max had poked at it. A casual handwave of oh, by the way, we know your parents don’t love you.

But Steve was okay with it, so it was okay.

So okay that he called Robin as soon as he got home. 

“How would you feel about dinner at my place?” Steve asks.

“Um, what?” Robin asks.

“I can cook pretty well,” Steve says. “Ask Nancy, if you think I’m lying or whatever.”

“Steve, I thought we’ve been over this,” Robin says gently.

“Should I have framed it as ‘How would you feel about dinner at my place, you useless lesbian?’” Steve asks. “I thought it was inferred that this was platonic.”

“I was just checking,” Robin says. “You’re kind of clueless sometimes.”

“So dinner? Or no?”

“If I show up to a candlelit dinner, I will kick your ass,” Robin threatens.

“Noted,” Steve says, and immediately goes to find the old wax candles his mom had bought in Italy a couple of years ago.

***

“So, um,” Robin begins, “this was actually, like, surprisingly good. But I’ve got a couple of questions.”

“You always seem to,” Steve says, twirling more spaghetti around his fork.

Robin snorts. In the flickering light of the candles (Robin had threatened to slap him when she’d seen them and the single red rose sitting in the middle of the table), the angles of her face are sharpened, and the golden brown of her eyes seemed to melt and swirl around. Absentmindedly, Steve thinks that no girl on the face of the planet was worth Robin.

“Well, it’s not like we do dinner normally,” Robin says. “So I think I’m entitled.”

“Shoot,” Steve says, taking a huge bite out of the garlic bread they’d nearly demolished between the two of them.

“Why’d you call me?”

“Well,” Steve says, “I’d like to think that we’re friends.”

“We are,” Robin says, “but still.”

Steve sighs. “Max asked me to ask Billy to move in with me, when he wakes up.”

Robin blinks. “Isn’t he a dick?”

“Exactly,” Steve says, twirling his fork around. “But it’s not like I could say no.”

“Um, you absolutely could,” Robin says, gesturing with her wine glass. A bit sloshes over the side, and Steve winces as it hits the white tablecloth. “You’re not a slave to a bunch of fucking teeny-boppers.”

Steve sighs. “It’s complicated, and I can’t really get into it because it’s Billy’s shit, not mine,” he says delicately. “But he doesn’t have the best home life, and I think Max might be right. It’s not like he’d say yes to me, but I’ve got to offer.”

Robin presses her lips together. “What about your parents?” she points out. “You can’t exactly explain away the fact that there’s a fucking delinquent living under their roof, when they come back.”

“If they come back,” Steve corrects quietly.

Robin’s eyes widen, and she nearly slams down her wine glass. More red wine spills out over the tablecloth, and Steve groans and says, “watch it,” but Robin says, “What the fuck are you saying, Harrington?”

Steve sighs, and stands up, clearing off dishes. Robin says, “Harrington,” but Steve presses his lips together and blows out the candles, flicking on the kitchen lights. “I’ll talk about it,” he says, “because I think I want to, but only after I get more wine, and do the dishes.” He pauses, and then adds, “also, throw the tablecloth in the laundry, because you’re a goddamn menace.”

Robin doesn’t laugh, but then again, Steve doesn’t expect her to.

***

“Shit,” Robin says, eventually, leaning back in her rickety pool chair. 

Steve shrugs. He’d steadily progressed from pouring out full glasses of red wine, to just taking swigs out of the damned bottle, and he still feels in-too-deep for this conversation. Like he’d dived into his own pool at the deep end, and then forgotten how to swim.

“I feel like I know all your shit now,” Robin says. “I’m like...a Steve Harington trauma expert.”

Steve laughs. “Not all of it,” he says, waggling a finger at her. “Gotta keep some for, like...intrigue, or whatever. Personal...mystery? What word am I looking for?”

“I have no fucking idea,” Robin says, leaning forward. Her hands are cupped around her wine glass, which has been empty for a little bit now. “What do you mean, I don’t know all of it? Parental neglect, top-secret government shit. We’ve been drugged by Russians together, Steve, how could I not know all of it?”

Steve feels like he might’ve made a misstep. Robin looks a bit concerned. Steve takes a swig from the bottle of wine. The taste is heavy on his tongue, slightly vinegary. Steve’s always liked the cheap shit better than his mom’s Italian reds that she drops off when she visits.

“I dunno,” Steve says, “I think I was just being dumb or something.”

“I think you weren’t,” Robin says, oddly serious.

“Do you want more wine?” Steve asks. 

“Probably shouldn’t, if I’m gonna drive home,” Robin says.

“Just crash here,” Steve says. “We’ve been over this. I’m, like, the fucking man of my own house.”

“Why’d you even get the job at Scoops if you just live in a mansion by yourself?”

“I said my dad made me get it,” Steve says, “but I really just wanted to know what it’s like to have my own job. I wanna, like, actually be self-sufficient. I don’t wanna feel like a baby or whatever.”

Steve pauses for a second. “I don’t even think I’ve ever admitted that out loud,” Steve says, and eyes his wine bottle mock-seriously. “Is this the truth serum that the Russians pumped us full of?”

“If it is, will you tell me what else you’re hiding?”

“Who says I’m hiding anything at all?” Steve asks.

“You. Like, two seconds ago. Stop trying to be mysterious or intriguing or whatever.”

Steve groans, and cuts his gaze away to the swimming pool. Looks at the low diving board, the kidney shape of the pool. The glistening, chlorinated water sloshing against the tiled sides. 

Unbidden, he sees the pool spreading full of bright, crimson blood. He sees a shadow sitting alone on the diving board, nursing a cut hand.

“Fuck,” Steve says, and drops his wine bottle.

It shatters against the concrete, and Steve curses again as Robin scrambles up and away from the mess, and Steve laughs a bit mirthlessly as the glass sprays outward and the bright red of the wine seeps into the concrete. He covers his head with his hands. 

“Sorry,” Steve says. “Forgot where I was, for a second.”

Then: “Haven’t actually done that, for a while.”

Robin nods slowly, and nimbly avoids the mess of the wine bottle to come to Steve’s shoulder, rubbing it slightly. “Let’s go inside,” Robin suggests. “We can clean up your dumb mess in the morning, but I think we should go inside right now.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “yeah, you’re--definitely right.”

When he looks up at Robin, it almost seems like a shadow has passed over her face. Her eyes, usually melting golden-brown chocolate, seem sad and hard in the moonlight. Steve hates it. Steve hopes she’ll never look at him like that again.

It makes Steve remember why he doesn’t open up to people.

And why he doesn’t open up to himself, either.

***

In the morning, Robin helps him clear up the glass with a dustpan and pour bleach on the concrete, and she bites at him with all her sarcasm like she’s trying to make up for last night.

Steve snaps his towel at her in retaliation, and makes her crepes.

Steve can almost pretend he’s okay with losing his shit last night.

Chapter Text

Steve pulls up to the Byers’s house at four thirty, and honks the horn.

He’s not late, which is kind of a first for Steve. He always gets caught up with job searching, or trading banter with Dustin, or procuring ice cream for Erica (just because Scoops is closed doesn’t mean she’s let up on his end of the bargain, the psycho). 

Will is ready to go, though. Usually, Steve has to wait a bit for Joyce to kiss Will goodbye, and for Jonathan to hug Will long and hard, ‘just in case’. But Will is out on the porch in the millisecond after Steve honks his horn, and is inside Steve’s car within the next one.

“Antsy today,” Steve says, moving the gear stick to reverse.

“Billy woke up,” Will says, and then bites down on his lip. “And I don’t really know what to say to him.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and feels a strange mixture of his heart soaring and sinking at the same time. 

“Steve?” Will says. “What do I say to him?”

Steve sighs, and takes the turn out of the Byers’s driveway more slowly than he usually does. He’s absolutely stalling, and he knows it. 

“I’m not sure,” Steve says carefully. “I’m not good with words.”

We’re treading dangerously close to territory I’d like to never speak about again, is what Steve wants to say. “You’ll be better at it than I am.”

“You helped me,” Will says, softly. “Knowing that someone even kind of gets it--it was helpful for me.”

Steve clears his throat. Fidgets his hands a bit on the wheel. “Maybe start with that,” he says. 

Will nods. Then he says, “I know you don’t like talking about it. But...I think I know what happened? Vaguely. And. Just know it’s a two-way street. For talking, I mean. That’s what my mom always likes to say.”

Steve nearly swerves off the road.

“It’s so far behind me, it’s like it didn’t happen,” Steve says quickly, and tells himself to keep his eyes glued to the road, keep his hands stuck to the wheel. “I remember--um--everything, but. I’m unaffected. So. There’s that.”

Will looks unconvinced, but Steve switches on the radio, effectively drowning out any attempts at conversation.

***

(Sometimes, it feels like happened to an entirely different person.

Like, Steve knew the specifics. He knew the rough touch of someone exploring his body against his will.  Of pushing, of trying to struggle and squirm out of the unwelcome, roaming hands, and of it not doing a damned thing, and of a laugh that was shrill and a bit cruel, as she said, “Come on, you’re not a fag, are you?”

But he felt miles away from that. And he should, because dozens of girls came after, and then Nancy Wheeler, and then the Upside Down and fucking everything else.

If it feels like it didn’t happen to him, if it feels like it happened to someone different--

It’s almost like it didn’t happen to him at all.)

***

When Steve pulls into the lot behind the hospital, he cuts the engine and says, “Wait a second, Will,” as Will starts to push open the car door.

Will obediently sits back down in his seat. If it were Dustin, Dustin would already be halfway up to the hospital. Will’s the opposite of the headache that Dustin is, though. “What’s up?”

“I just...want you to be careful,” Steve says, carefully. He twirls his car key around the key ring, and his leg is bouncing up and down, outside of his control. “Billy’s a dick, you know that, and. Your intentions are good, but I don’t know if he’ll appreciate that. I don’t wanna take you back to your mom if you have a split lip, or like, tears in your eyes.”

“Jonathan used to say that you’re a dick,” Will says.

“What--well--okay, that’s different,” Steve says, “because I was, and...well, it takes one to know one, yeah? Not saying that Jonathan’s a dick, but--okay, like, Billy’s a major dick. Like, full-on jerk mode. That sounds...wrong, but you know what I--”

“Steve,” Will says, cutting him off, “if you changed because of the Upside Down, then I think that Billy can, too.”

“Billy’s dangerous,” Steve says. “I’ve got the scars to prove it.”

“He’s tied to an IV and in a hospital bed,” Will says. Steve glares at him.

“I know,” Will says, softening a bit. “Max talks about him, sometimes. But I’ve got to try, okay? And he seriously can’t beat me up in a hospital, so this is the safest place to do it, and the safest time.”

Steve sighs, but his bouncing leg finally stills He pops open the car door. “Fine,” he says. “But I’m coming with you.”

“You always do,” Will says cheerily, and hops out of the car.

***

“What about her?” Dustin asked, pointing at a girl waiting for her popcorn.

It was early March, and Dustin had dragged him to the movie theater to see some new horror movie or whatever. Ms. Henderson was going to kill Steve if Dustin had nightmares again, but the kid was relentless.

“Stop pointing out girls like that,” Steve hissed, slapping down his arm. “Keep it up and I won’t buy you your stupid Swedish fish.”

“You need a girlfriend,” Dustin said sagely. “Or else you’ll lose all your mojo.”

“My what?”

“Swagger,” Dustin said, “Suave...sauveness? Suave-ity? Popularity doesn’t matter, Steve, but popularity with the ladies--”

“You’ve never had a girlfriend,” Steve said. “I’ve had, like, twenty.”

“And yet you’re going through a dry spell, and my mentor, who’s supposed to teach me how to pick the ladies up, is ladyless. The girl at the counter is pretty, so you should flirt with her. Show me how it’s done,” Dustin said, pushing Steve forward a couple steps toward her.

She was still about twenty feet away, but even from that distance, Steve could see a dealbreaker. “She’s got red hair,” Steve said. “I don’t do redheads.”

“What? Since when?” Dustin demanded, eyebrows creasing.

“Since always,” Steve said. 

“Um, why? She’s gorgeous, Steve.”

“I just,” Steve shoved his hands deep in his pockets. Rocked a bit on his feet, and took a step back from her, almost without realizing. “I just don’t. Not a fan, I guess.”

The girl at the counter leaned in a bit to talk to the concessions worker, flicking a smile. Steve could almost hear Dustin drooling over her, but the guy leaned forward to talk to her, too. He had nice feathery hair, and really bright blue eyes that Steve could see from across the theater.

“Besides, she’s that worker’s conquest, anyway,” Steve said. “See? The one with the really nice biceps. She’s clearly into him, and I can’t cut in like that.”

“Really nice biceps?” Dustin asked, and Steve looked down to see Dustin giving him a searching glance.

“What?” Steve asked, coloring a bit. “I’m allowed to admire another guy’s workout routine.”

“...Right,” Dustin said, and then glanced down at his watch. “Shit, we’re gonna miss all the previews, come on, Steve. We’ll talk about your weird bias against gorgeous redheads later.”

“They’re the previews, ” Steve said, as Dustin dragged him by the wrist down the movie theater hallways.

“How am I supposed to know what movie to watch next?” Dustin asked.

“You’re insane,” Steve said. “Certifiable.”

“Yeah, yeah, you too.”

***

Billy was still fucking tan after being stuck in the hospital for three weeks. Steve absolutely hated him.

Steve’s shoulders were sitting too high up, close to his neck, and he kept reaching for his bat even though there’s no way he’d be allowed to carry it into the hospital. When Billy turns to look at Steve and Will, Steve just wants to get the fuck out and take Will with him.

Billy’s eyes are glittering marbles. Steve never knew how he did that--make his eyes look like fucking kaleidoscopes, what the fuck--and he narrows them as Steve slouches in, Will leading the way. It’s not even like Billy could beat him up from the hospital bed--the dude’s got bandages swathing his entire body--but he could give Steve a raincheck, and Steve didn’t want that. 

Steve really, really wants his bat, though.

Will, the motherfucker, walks right up to Billy and says, “I’m Will Byers. Jonathan Byers’s little brother. Max and I are friends.”

Billy stares coolly at Will. “Zombie boy,” he says. “I remember.”

His voice is croaky, probably from him being in a fucking coma. Sweat seemed to be gathering on his golden, tanned forehead, and his hair is knotted and stringy. He tries to sneer at the both of them, but it’s a withered, weak expression, like he can’t muster that kind of emotion. 

“Harrington, what the fuck are you doing here and why did you bring the freaky undead twerp?” Billy asks, all croaky and monotone. Steve tenses, because no one should talk about Will that way. “Listen, Hargrove--”

“I asked him to bring me,” Will cuts in. “I was--I wanted to talk to you, because I understand what happened to you.”

Billy blinks, long and slow. His hospital gown is blue-and-white checkered, and Billy’s started to sweat through the flimsy, light fabric of it. 

“I know you remember,” Will says quietly. “Everything that happened, while the Mind Flayer had you. Because the Mind Flayer had me, too. That’s how--that’s how I knew that it got to you.”

Billy jerks his arms so fast that the IV nearly rips out of his wrist. He’s clenching his hands into fists, Steve realizes, and even as Steve steps back, Will steps forward. Steve’s starting to think that Will’s just as much of a headache as Dustin, just in a different way.

“Not a lot of people are going to understand,” Will says. “And I know I’m younger than you, but if...if there’s anything…”

Will risks a glance backward, and Billy follows his eye line. Steve feels his skin turn clammy, and again, Steve is fucking jealous of Billy’s tan. He could hide behind that, but when Steve turns pale, everyone fucking knows, Jesus Christ.

Billy doesn’t say anything for a while. He turns his head up toward the ceiling, and Steve sees his throat working. Steve thinks he maybe sees Billy’s eyes become over-full, like tears might be gathering at the base of them, but by the time he turns to look back at Steve and Will, his face is as expressionless as when the Mind Flayer had been in control.

“Get out,” Billy says. His fists are clenching under his thin bed sheet again. His chin is jutted forward, just like it was before he’d beaten the shit out of Steve.

Will tries to take another step forward, but Steve presses a heavy hand onto his shoulder.

“Come on,” Steve says. “We should go. ”

Miraculously, Will listens, albeit with more hesitation than Steve would like. 

Steve keeps his hand on Will’s shoulder as Will shuffles out of the hospital ward.

As they leave, Steve can feel the burn of Billy’s gaze on his neck.

***

“Hey dingus, you’ve got a weird child here again. What the hell, do you run an orphanage or something?” Robin called from the front counter.

Steve frowned, even as he pushed his cap back onto his head and headed out of the backroom. Dustin was still at his weird science-y camp, so why would one of them come alone--?

It was Will. Of course it was Will. Steve’s throat constricted a bit, and he rounded the front counter, eyes glancing up and down Will, trying to spot blood or tear stains or some shit. 

“Hey Steve,” Will said. “I’m good, don’t worry.”

Steve glanced back up, and saw Will trying for a smile. He did seem physically fine, but his face looked strained, like he’d tried to swallow something unpleasant. “Where are your nerd friends?” Steve asked. “I thought Mike had you on a leash, or something.”

“Yeah, well,” Will said. A shadow seemed to pass over his face. “Can you talk? I mean, I know you’re at work…”

“It’s good,” Steve told Will. “Robin, I’m taking my fifteen.”

“You already took your fifteen,” Robin said, crossing her arms. 

Steve looked up at her, and put his hand on Will’s head intentionally. The kid was going through a growth spurt or something--soon he wouldn’t be able to do that anymore. Jesus, Steve hoped that the kid wouldn’t be taller than him. “Well, I’m taking another fifteen, then,” Steve said, trying to sound firm.

Robin groaned, but grabbed up her scoop. “I’m the only competent employee around here,” she said, but turned to meet the next customers, so Steve figured it was all right.

Steve led Will to a booth at the far back of the ice cream place. “Is this about the--you know, Mind Flayer? Because I can find somewhere more private--”

“No, it’s just…” Will groaned, and shoved a hand through his hair. The kid should get rid of the bowl cut, it made his face look like a live imitation of a UFO or some shit. “All Mike and Lucas want to talk about are, like, girls, and their girlfriends, and it’s the same for Dustin, and…”

“Oh,” Steve said, and felt some of his muscles relax. He leaned back. “Do you want pointers? Because I’ve been trying to help Dustin, but it’s not exactly working.”

“No, not that,” Will said. “No offense, but I think I’d go to Jonathan.”

“He...does seem to have a better batting average,” Steve admitted. “But he’s only batted once, in my defense, so I don’t know if it counts in the same way.”

Will rolled his eyes, and Steve suppressed a strong urge to cuff the kid around the head.

 Will's face went back to being strained too fast, though.

“It’s just…” Will pulled his knees up, crunching himself up in the booth. Steve’s muscles tensed again. “I don’t care about all that stuff,” Will said. “And it makes me feel weird. And like, my friend group is already weird, so what if I’m too weird for my own friend group?”

Steve sighed. “That really does suck,” he said. “But...well, I’m not sure if I’m the one to talk to about all that?”

Will nodded. “I know,” he said. “But I didn’t feel comfortable talking to anyone else about it.”

Steve felt his chest go a little warm, at Will feeling comfortable to talk to him above everyone else. But still… “Have you considered talking to Mike or Lucas about it?”

Will shook his head. “It’s...I think it’s me that has the problem, not them.” Will bit down on the inside of his cheek, and then, suddenly, he said, “My dad used to call me a faggot. A lot.”

Steve didn’t know much about Lonnie Byers.

That didn’t stop him from wanting to punch his lights out.

“My dad called me that, once or twice,” Steve said slowly, feeling like he was walking on uneven ground. “And I used to use it as an insult for other guys, because I thought it was okay. It wasn’t, though. But, shit, Will...just because you don’t like girls right now, it doesn’t automatically mean that you’re gay.”

Will opened his mouth, and then he closed it again. He unfolded his legs, setting them back down on the ground.

“Hey, dingus, your fifteen’s up!” Robin called. “And I need help, so get your butt over here.”

Will took a deep breath. “Thanks, Steve.”

“Was there anything else?” Steve asked. He felt a weird tension in the air, one that he wasn’t sure what to do with. “Because if you think you’re--I mean, that’s--”

“I’m good,” Will said, and slid out of the booth.

“That’s okay,” Steve finished.

Will looked back at Steve. He looked so young under his dumb bowl cut. “I’ll see you later, Steve,” Will said. His face looked less strained, though, so that’s something.

Steve nodded, and darted back to the front counter, grabbing a spare scoop and a cone.

“Mint chocolate chip,” Robin told him, and Steve nodded, opening up the freezer.

“And that was a good thing, that you told your friend,” Robin added.

Steve froze up a bit. “Could everyone hear us?”

“Nah, probably just me,” Robin said, and when he turned to her, she had a weird, relaxed half-smile on her face. “I’ve got ears like a bat.”

***

“So is Will your favorite now?” Dustin demands.

Steve blinks, and nearly drops the pizza boxes he was carrying into the kitchen. “What?”

Dustin crosses his arms, and honest-to-god pouts. “You’re always driving him somewhere, or hanging out with him,” Dustin says. “Where are you two even going?”

Steve sets the pizza on the kitchen counter, and says, “What are you, five?”

“I’m allowed to know what two of my best friends are doing,” Dustin says. “You’re breaking the bro code.”

Steve tries his very best not to groan. Jesus, his best friends really are a group of children now. One of whom is staring at him with a look suspiciously close to betrayal. “I’m not breaking any code, because I didn’t agree to any code, first off,” Steve says, “and second, it’s not what you think.”

What Steve would give to not sound like he was a husband defending himself to a jealous wife.

Dustin squints his eyes at Steve. “What I think is that you and Will are hanging out without me,” Dustin says. “So I don’t exactly know how I could be wrong, Steve.”

Steve walks over to put his hands on Dustin’s shoulders. “Will’s not my favorite,” Steve says, “because I don’t have favorites.”

Steve hesitates, and then adds, “Will already has an older brother, so I can’t take up that space in his life. Instead, I take up that space for a sibling-less asshole with curly hair and a very suspicious brain.”

Dustin doesn’t say anything, but the smile that keeps threatening the corners of his mouth tells Steve that he finally said the right thing.

Steve pulls off Dustin’s baseball cap and tousles his hair a bit. “C’mon, don’t just sit there, help me set up for your dumb friends,” he says.

“If being your little brother means I have chores--” Dustin begins.

“You’d still deal with it, because I’m the coolest person you know,” Steve says seriously.

Dustin sighs and slumps his shoulders dramatically, but he heads to Steve’s pantry for the napkins anyway.

***

When Steve and Dustin first started hanging out, Steve didn’t quite know what to make of it.

Dustin was a weird kid; anyone with a brain could tell that. All loud and floppy-haired, and missing bones because of that disease he was born with. (“It’s not a disease, it’s cleidocranial dysplasia,” Dustin kept telling Steve. Loudly. “It means I can bend really easy, but my teeth come in weird, or like, not at all. I’ve got to go to the orthodontist a bunch, it sucks.”)

But he was also smart, way smarter than Steve had ever been. For Christ’s sake, Dustin could help Steve out with his calc homework. (“You’re in a standard class, so they take it easier on you anyway,” Dustin would always say, which wasn’t fair because it was hard for Steve, goddammit.) And there was just an odd sort of charm about Dustin--a gravity that pushed people toward him, to listen to him, even if he was super goddamn annoying sometimes. 

So Steve started picking Dustin up from school, and acting as transpo to the Wheelers’, or the Sinclairs’, even the Byers’. Ms. Henderson started inviting Steve over for weekly dinners, and afterward she’d serve them shortbread cookies and Dustin would force Steve to go through his entire hair-care routine with Dustin until Dustin could push his moppy curls up into something halfway presentable.

Hanging out with an eighth grader should’ve been too annoying for Steve. Steve should’ve wanted to save his own free time, smoke some weed alone in his house or crash parties or whatever else he did when he didn’t hang out with some glorified tweens.

But now, his big house felt empty and cold, and Steve kept jumping at moving shadows, even his own. Sometimes, Steve would jerk up from sleep with a racing heart and a fading memory of the nightmare. Everyone at school seemed to be made of paper, talking about things that don't mean anything and moving like marionettes from class to class.

Dustin and his weird friends were different, though. Dustin lit up with bright neon colors whenever Steve was around, like he’d been waiting for Steve and was excited that Steve was there. And Dustin never wanted to talk about the Upside-Down in the same stark, brutal way that Nancy did. When Dustin talked about it, it was a glance, a reference, a “oh yeah, remember when a lizard tried to eat all our faces off?” 

It made Steve feel grounded in himself. 

And hanging out with those kids...it meant that he could watch out for them, watch over them, maybe. Make sure that they didn’t jump at moving shadows, that they didn’t feel empty in big, empty houses.

Metaphorically speaking.

(Once, when Steve dropped Dustin off at his house, Dustin said, “Thanks, love you, man,” and then he’d frozen up, so suddenly it was almost comic.

Steve stopped breathing for a minute, and said in a tight voice, “Yeah, love you too, dude.”

Dustin had unfrozen, unstuck, and flashed Steve a grin as he slammed Steve’s car door shut.

It had taken a while for Steve to pull away from the Henderson’s house, though.

(And no, it was not because he couldn’t remember the last time someone had said love you to him, and actually meant it.) (Steve would swear up and down that it had been car trouble that made him idle at the curb for too long, when Dustin asked the next day.))

***

Somehow, Steve had forgotten that Dustin couldn’t fucking let things go .

He’d thought that he was in the clear. He really had. The kid had seemed normal enough through dinner. He’d snagged too many garlic knots, and gotten into a debate with Lucas about some dumb sci-fi movie with aliens in it or something.

As they’d settled into Steve’s den, though, Dustin had turned to Will and said, “So why’re you stealing away my older brother?”

Steve’s eyes suddenly felt like they were about to pop out of his head. “Dustin,” Steve says, at the same time Will says, “You...don’t have an older brother?”

“Sure I do,” Dustin says, waving an impatient hand at Steve. “Mi hombre. No, that’s not right. Mi...hermano. That dude. With the hair.”

“Dustin, I said that affectionately, not like we’re actually blood-related,” Steve tries.

“Yeah, but it’s the same difference!” Dustin protests. “And Will over here is trying to hog you, and I deserve to know why, especially since you evaded all my questions.”

“I wasn’t evading your questions, I was just--not answering them. Because privacy is a real thing, dickwad,” Steve says.

“Wait, I’d like to know, too,” Mike says. “Because you’ve been MIA for weeks, Will.”

He says it like he’s accusing Will of something, but then again, he always sounds angry when El isn’t around. (Not for lack of trying--Mike tried to convince Hopper to let El come over to Steve’s house tonight, but he’d only glared and muttered “over my dead body, ” so that had been that.)

“I didn’t think it was a big deal,” Will says, rubbing at his neck. “And, like, I just figured Max had already told you guys, and we weren’t talking about it.”

Max looks up. “Oh, yeah,” she says casually. “Will and Steve have been visiting Billy in the hospital.”

Dustin blinks. “That is...not what I expected.”

“Why, though?” Lucas asks. “I mean...he just woke up. Like, I get Max, but…”

“I just.” Will flushes a bit. “I kind of--understand. What he might be going through. And so I was worried about him, and I asked Steve to drive because...well, because I didn’t want to worry my mom and Jonathan about me freaking out over Billy Hargrove in the hospital.”

“Oh,” Mike says, and has the grace to look slightly sheepish. “That...makes sense.”

“And I figured it was Will’s business,” Steve says, “so I didn’t mouth off about it, unlike some other kids probably would’ve.” He’s definitely not glaring at Dustin.

“I just wanted to know!” Dustin says. “A man has a right to knowledge.”

“A man, ” Lucas says.

“Shut up,” Dustin says.

“There’s another thing,” Max says, making unflinching eye contact with Steve. “Billy’s gonna move in with Steve after he’s released from the hospital.”

Steve feels like putting his head in his hands. He feels like that a lot, around these kids. “You can’t just try and force something out of willpower,” Steve says.

“He’s what now, ” Dustin says.

“No. No way,” Lucas says, and immediately gets a slap on the shoulder from Max.

“I promise that I’d ask,” Steve says. “But that absolutely does not mean he’ll say yes.”

“He will, eventually,” Max says.

“He hardly wanted to talk to me and Will when we visited a few days ago.”

“He’s like that,” Max says. “But he’ll come around, because underneath all that fucking brawn and tan, he’s a human being.”

Seeing the skeptical looks around her, she says, a bit furiously, “He is. El said so.”

Then: “Probably, anyway.”

***

After Steve had his face pounded in like meat, Billy didn’t talk to him for four months.

Steve liked it better that way. He’d been barely able to walk for weeks after what Billy had done. Joyce Byers had had to comb through Steve’s hair for pieces of the plate that Billy had smashed over Steve’s head, what the fuck.

The fierce, animal way that Billy had fought--like he was an animal himself--it was something that Steve could remember, and not just in the ache of his bones and muscles. Ever since that fight, Steve saw Billy as a stalking predator. Something to keep distance from, something to never engage with.

So Billy didn’t talk to him, and that was better. Steve tended to duck around corners just to avoid Billy’s impenetrable stare with his glittering eyes in the school hallways, anyway.

After four months, though, Steve accidentally ran into Billy. Or, walked into, rather.

He was picking Dustin up from the arcade, and he was too busy making fun of the kid pouting over arcade games to watch where he was going.

He’d walked into a solid wall of muscle as he’d pushed open the door, and immediately tripped over his own feet as he scrambled back. He put a hand out in front of Dustin, and looked up to find Billy’s catlike, squinty eyes staring back at him. “Shit,” Steve said, without really meaning to.

“Harrington,” Billy said. His voice usually had an uneasy lilt to it, but right then, it was completely monotone.

“Hargrove,” Steve said. “I didn’t mean to run into you like that, I promise.”

“I know,” Billy said. “I was just here to pick up Max.” He didn’t move from the doorway.

“Okay,” Steve said, and maneuvered himself to stand completely in front of Dustin. The kid, for once, blessedly didn’t say anything at all. “If that’s all…”

“I didn’t mean to go at you as hard as I did,” Billy said, just as monotone. “That was shitty of me.”

Steve didn’t move a muscle.

Billy nodded once, like Steve’s lack of reaction was good enough for him. He stepped around Steve and Dustin, and said, “See you around, Harrington.”

(That was the last thing he’d said to Steve, before the hospital room.)

***

The kids always fell asleep before Steve, when they slept over.

It was nice to wander around a full house. It almost felt like he had a family that he was watching over. It made his breath come easier in the dead of night.

Dustin seemed to be waiting for all the other kids to fall asleep, though, because as soon as Will’s breathing finally evened out, just after two a.m., Dustin grabbed Steve’s arm and led him to one of the guest rooms. (The kids always preferred falling asleep in a huge heap in a common space, rather than just taking a bedroom for themselves. Weirdos.)

“You can’t just let Billy Hargrove move into your house,” Dustin says. 

Steve runs a hand through his hair. “You should talk to Robin,” he says. “You guys tend to agree on a lot.”

“He beat the shit out of you, ” Dustin says. “You’ve actively avoided him for a year.”

“Not actively,” Steve says.

“I’m serious, Steve,” Dustin says.

“So am I!” Steve says. “Look--Billy’s not in a good situation, and I promised Max to at least try. There’s no way he’s gonna say yes, you know that.”

“Of course I do,” Dustin says, “but...look, you’re obviously scared of the asshole, and I don’t blame you.”

“I can push that down,” Steve says, sitting down on the bed.

“I don’t know if that’s the best solution, here,” Dustin says. “Especially since Billy’s an asshole and you don’t owe him shit.”

“Look, I’m good at compartmentalizing my shit,” Steve says. “It’s almost like it doesn’t happen, if I just tell myself to ignore it. So like, sure, I’m a bit scared of Billy, but also in another sense, I’m not. So, that’s almost the same thing as me not being scared of Billy.”

“Dude,” Dustin says, “You can’t just Schrodinger’s Cat your way out of trauma.”

“Who is Schrodinger, and why does he have a cat?”

“How do you not know--okay, that’s beside the point,” Dustin says. “The main point here is that no matter what, Billy’s an asshole and you don’t owe him shit, and apart from that, sometimes I get worried about you, Steve.”

“I’m completely fine,” Steve says, a bit reflexively.

“Steve,” Dustin says. “Pretending that something didn’t happen isn’t the same thing as it not happening. Even I know that.”

“I’m asking Billy to move in with me,” Steve says stubbornly. “If anything, you’ve convinced me.”

“Oh my God, you’re impossible . ”

“Yeah, yeah, you too.”

Chapter Text

So Billy says no.

Actually, to be precise, he narrows his eyes at Steve, and says, “What the fuck, Harrington? Are you on something?” and then a very decisive, “Hell fucking no.”

Steve shrugs. “I promised Max I’d try,” he says, “so my job here is done.”

He turns to leave--it’s fairly easy, he never actually sat down in the plastic chair beside Billy’s hospital bed. Made him feel uneasy, and within punching range, for that matter. Not that Billy’d get in any good swings in his condition, but Steve’s sure that Billy would sure as hell try. So Steve stood a good five feet away, and pretended that it was out of distaste for Billy rather than any cold fear gripping at his chest.

It was ridiculous, honestly, that Steve was still wary around Billy after so many fucking months. Steve was usually better about this shit. 

(But Billy’d smashed a plate over his head, for fuck’s sake. In front of a bunch of kids who wouldn’t fucking shut up about it for days afterward, just so they didn’t have to talk about the other terrifying things that happened that night.)

“Wait,” Billy says, and Steve turns back around, cocking an eyebrow. As long as he looked impatient, unimpressed, he’d feel that way, surely.

“Why would Max want me out of the house?” Billy’s voice is flat, but his pupils are blowing wider, eyes glittering and intense.

“You’d have to ask her,” Steve says. But then, because he’s not an asshole, he says, “I think it’s probably because she cares about you, even if you don’t care about her. Have you even talked to her about it?”

Billy doesn’t respond. Doesn’t even move a muscle.

Steve blows out a long breath. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay, that’s--yeah.”

Steve leaves quickly after that, before he can say anything else dumb, like the shit and I’m sorry and I’m sure it’s not what you think sitting on the edge of his tongue.

(In the parking lot, Steve presses his forehead into his steering wheel for a second.

He’d wanted to comfort Billy Hargrove in there, for a split second. 

Still kind of does.

And that’s just. Fucked.)

***

“God, he’s such a fucking idiot,” Max says, throwing her hands up in the air dramatically.

“Didn’t you expect this?” Steve asks.

“Doesn’t stop him from being any less of a fucking idiot,” Max says, running a hand through her hair. El watches her from the bed, and says, “You’re stressed.”

“Yeah,” Max says, and throws herself on the bed next to El. “I don’t want him to have to come back here.”

Steve shifts. He’s taken a seat on a stool in the corner of Max’s room, and it’s uncomfortable, as uncomfortable as he fucking feels in Max’s room. He’s pretty sure he sees a bra draped across her wired bed frame, and a poster of that guy from Sixteen Candles is tacked up next to her calendar. Her bedspread is white, but has pink flowers speckled all across it, and there’s a ragged teddy bear smushed into the space between her bed and her bedside table. It’s a girl’s room, a very young girl’s room, and Steve is way too old to be in here, even if Max says it’s the only private place to talk. Steve tries to stand up, and almost slips on her skateboard stashed in the corner next to him.

“Have you visited him since he woke up?” Steve asks after regaining his balance.

Max looks up. Her red hair is draped over her face like a curtain, and the way her eyes peek out from under it--Steve feels a cold shiver race up his spine against his will. He shoves it back down easily enough. “I...well, once,” she says. “I was there when he woke up, but I...I didn’t, and I don’t know what to say, especially since he knows everything now. I don’t wanna...I don’t wanna say something wrong.”

“He thinks that you want him to move out, because you’re scared of him now,” El says, picking up on where Steve was headed immediately. “Because of the Mind Flayer.”

Max freezes for a moment. “Shit,” she says. Then again, for emphasis. “Shit.”

She bounces off of her bed, ties her hair up into a ponytail, and grabs at the skateboard next to Steve. Steve stares at her. “What are you doing?”

Max throws open her bedroom door. “I have to go see Billy,” she says. 

“And you’re just going to skateboard all the way to the hospital? It’s fifteen miles away.”

“The bus isn’t due for another forty minutes,” Max says. 

“I can drive you, you know,” Steve says. “I’ve got a car and everything.”

Max blinks, and then sets her skateboard down in the doorjamb. “I wasn’t really thinking,” Max says. “I just...I really need to see Billy. Now. I’ve gotta explain to him that I don’t actually fucking hate him.”

“Okay, cool,” Steve says, pulling his keys out of his back pocket,“Let’s go. El, come on, I can drop you off at Hopper’s after we get to the hospital.”

***

“You drive too slow,” Max announces as Steve stops. At the stop sign. At the end of her street.

Her leg is bouncing up and down, and she’s worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Billy’s survived without you visiting for a couple of days, now,” Steve says. “I’m sure he can survive another twenty minutes.”

Max leans her head against the car window and taps her foot against the dash. She’d called shotgun, which was slightly unfair, since El didn’t even know what shotgun means . “I just...I wasn’t thinking,” Max says. “We haven’t even been on good terms or anything, but after listening to what El saw…” Max sucks her cheeks in, and then blows them back out. “I don’t want him to think that I hate him, anymore. And I don’t want him to hate me.”

“His last happy memory was when he was seven years old,” El pipes up from the backseat. When Steve glances up at his rearview mirror, he can see her eyes staring at him. Steve focuses back on the road quickly. “I know what it’s like to...to live without happiness, and it’s not good. So.”

Steve, a bit unbidden, thinks about his big, echoing house and the kidney-shaped pool that he didn’t like to look at in the dark. And then he stops thinking about that, because Steve was perfectly fine, and has been for a while, thank you very much. “We’ll get there soon,” Steve promises Max. “Faster than if you’d tried to skateboard there, by the way.”

Max starts to worry her lip again. “But then what?” Max asks. She’s shifted in her seat a bit. Sitting upright now, shoulders pushed back and puffed up a bit.

“You talk to him,” Steve says.

“No, I mean , what happens when he comes home?” Max asks. “The hospital bill’s gonna be huge. Neil’s already fuming about it, there’s no way we’re gonna be able to pay for it with his shitty health insurance. I’m worried about when he comes home.”

“It’s not gonna be pretty,” El agrees.

Steve’s grip tightens on the wheel. He can feel Max’s bright blue eyes staring at him, trying to chip away at him. “I already asked Billy once,” he says. “I can’t insist on anything.”

Max deflates a bit. “I know you can’t,” she says. “I just...I wish there was some way we--I--could help him.”

“You can’t help someone if they won’t accept help,” Steve says. “If you try to, that person’s probably gonna punch you in the face. Which I don’t want. Just saying.”

“I know,” Max says. Her eyes are still burning a white-hot blue when Steve turns to look at her, though, a fierce kind of determination that tells Steve that she’s going to get her way, no matter what.

***

Steve really only meant to drop Max off at the hospital. She knows the bus schedule, after all; she’s used it all summer, and Steve made sure she had enough quarters for the ride home. And anyway, it’s a private conversation that she’s supposed to have with Billy. Steve is not interested in interrupting that.

But there’s something. There’s something. A tug deep in his chest that makes him idle in his parking space, even after El clambers over the middle console to take the passenger-side seat.

“Steve?” El asks quietly. She doesn’t know him well, and he doesn’t know her well, and so Steve can never tell if she’s naturally quiet, or just wary of him. “Are we going to my home?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, even as he puts the car in park. “We definitely are. Yeah. Yup.”

El’s eyebrows meet in the middle of her forehead, but she only says, “Okay,” and snaps her seatbelt in place.

Steve bites down on his tongue, and turns to look at the hospital. It’s a big ugly gray slab of a building. They’re parked outside the Intensive Care Unit, even though Billy was moved to another unit after waking up. Steve had started to park near the ICU as a force of habit due to Will’s frequent visits.

Steve thinks about the blood that had spread out across the floor of Starcourt. Billy’s blood, mixed with the black sludge from his body. He thinks about the huge holes in Billy’s chest and sides that would inevitably leave massive, rippling scars all over his torso. Every time a stitch was slid through Billy’s body to knit him up, every time fresh bandages were wrapped around those terrible injuries, every second Billy spent in recovery on that stupid hospital bed...it cost money. 

If a man who hated Billy had to pay those medical bills, it meant that Billy would have to pay it back to that man, somehow. The scar tissue alone is going to be ugly. All red and angry and crusted-over. If mottled bruises were added to that horrifying collection...it makes Steve’s stomach turn over.

Steve thinks about Billy’s flat voice when he asked why Max wouldn’t want to visit him. He thinks about the wild desperation of Max, with her skateboard, trying to reach a brother that she hadn’t given a fuck about a few weeks ago. 

He thinks about what El saw, and for the first time, he wants to see it himself. He wants to piece it all together, instead of just leaving it-- and Billy-- alone.

“Steve?” El asks again, just as quietly as the first time.

“D’you think that someone’s told Billy that they loved him, recently?” Steve blurts out.

“What?”

“I--sorry, that was--” Steve shakes his head. “Yeah, I’ll take you home in a sec.”

Steve leans over and pops open the dashboard, grabbing out his checkbook. “There’s just something I gotta do first.”

***

They’re halfway back to Hopper’s cabin when El says, suddenly, “You’re scared of him. Billy.”

Steve stops humming along to the old Blondie song pounding through his speakers. “Is it that obvious, or is that something else you can pick up with your,” Steve wiggles his fingers, “weird shit.”

El wrinkles her nose at him. “Max mentioned it,” she says.

“Oh,” Steve says. “Didn’t stop her from guilt-tripping me into asking Billy to be my roommate.”

“You helped him,” El says, “with the bills. Why?”

Steve shrugs. “Because I could?”

“That’s it?” El asks. It’s not passive aggressive, though. It’s genuinely curious. Like she’d be okay with it, she’d try to understand, if Steve swore up and down that that was the only reason.

Maybe that’s why, instead of Steve saying, “Yes,” or “I don’t know,” he says, “I think I get Billy better than I thought I did.”

El nods at him, and Steve feels a weird sort of friction in his chest. A need to say something, a need not to say too much. A need not to step over his own lines, maybe. 

“I...I think I built him up in my head,” Steve starts, “as someone...who was, like, unreachable. So that I could stay at angry at him for beating the shit out of me. But he’s a fucking human being, and one that I--” Steve catches himself. “He’s someone with a past, like the rest of us. Nance used to say this one thing about a book we had to read in English-- Catcher in the Rye. She said that it was bullshit, actually. Because everyone has their own thing going on, and that isolation is actually what causes people to act phony, because when someone’s alone, all they’ve got is themselves. And I really didn’t get it, because I got a C plus in that class, but. I think Billy might’ve been acting phony, all this time. Because he’s alone. And I...and no one deserves to be alone, um.”

El nods, slower this time.

“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you,” Steve says.

She tilts her head. “No,” she says. “Do you?”

Steve laughs. “I guess not.”

“But you’re going to try and help him?” El asks.

“You’re hung up on this,” Steve says, and takes the turn into the dirt road leading up to Hopper’s cabin faster than expected. In his defense, he is a bit distracted.

“I didn’t know that someone could feel that bad outside of a lab,” El says bluntly. “Max says that he won’t accept help, but he should. When I did, I felt better.”

Steve presses his lips together.

He wants to tell her that it isn’t that simple. That there are other things to consider, other parts of Billy that weren’t as clean as just an innocent child that got beaten by his dad. 

El had been entirely blameless when she’d escaped, and Will had been completely blameless, and so she probably associated all the victims of the Upside Down as good people put in bad positions. Hell, she’d seen all the sympathetic parts of Billy through his memories. She saw how he viewed himself, and it probably convinced her that Billy was someone worth saving.

But Steve wasn’t so sure about Billy, though. In fact, he’d been pretty sure that Billy was a demon up until he’d marched into the hospital with his checkbook, so.

But his view of the entire situation felt more cloudy than before. Like things had suddenly gotten so tangled up, Steve couldn’t find himself agreeing or disagreeing with El about it. Because sure, Billy had some shitty memories, but everyone did. Everyone cast themselves in a sympathetic light. But there’s an anger in Billy, a searing kind of anger that Steve had felt when Billy had caved his fucking face in.

But there was also something else. Something that El saw. Something that Steve had seen, too, in Billy’s dedication to show no fucking emotion at all. A weird kind of fear, maybe, seeping through the cracks.

Steve didn’t think Billy could feel fear.

His brain felt all mushy and twisted up.

What would Nancy have called it? She’d used it in an essay or some shit before.

A...a peregrine...no, a paradigm shift.

So, yeah.

Steve doesn’t really say anything else to El. The dirt road to the cabin is a short little path, and soon he pulls up next to Hopper’s truck and says, “All right, beat it, kiddo,” like an old fucking man, and returns the tiny smile that El gives him as she unbuckles her seatbelt and hops out of Steve’s car.

***

The thing is.

The fucking thing is.

The way that Steve deals with stuff is by boxing it up. Like he’d told Dustin, he’s fucking good at compartmentalization. Labeling something good or bad, and then shoving it away. Like a beehive stuck up in his brain that sometimes sends stinging thoughts at him, but for the most part leaves him alone unless he or someone else pokes at it.

It’s the only organized part of him. There are clothes strewn all across his room, and his high school essay always “lacked proper structure” according to Ms. Peterson, and God forbid if he ever matches his socks. Even his thoughts tend to ramble, switching from one subject to the next, never quite sticking to the point well enough. Fuck, when he was being tortured by Russians, there was half of his brain that was worked up over the ticket/tow job he’d probably get over being illegally parked.

But yeah. Compartmentalization. 

Steve is damn good at deciding whether something is good or bad, and he’s damn good at ignoring or avoiding all the bad things.

Up until recently, Billy Hargrove had been A Very Bad Thing.

It was one thing to drive Will to see Billy. That was a favor he was doing for maybe the most vulnerable kid on the planet. And it was a very similar thing, to ask Billy to move in with Steve. That was another favor to another kid that he’d become a quasi-babysitter for. 

Steve could roll with those things, because they were things that the kids wanted Steve to do, not things that Steve actually wanted to do. Steve was pretty good at rolling with whatever someone else wanted him to do. It’s why he’d walked into the Byers’s house to apologize to Nancy and ended up fighting off an interdimensional monster with a spiked baseball bat, and why he’d gone to give flowers to Nancy and ended up...fighting off interdimensional monsters with a spiked baseball bat.

(Steve should quit trying to apologize to Nancy.

But then again, he’d helped Dustin with a secret Russian code instead of slinging ice cream this summer, so Steve’s in too deep now.

Also, he doesn’t talk to Nancy anymore.

...Hopefully that means he won’t have to fight off any more interdimensional monsters.)

Anyway, Steve’s point is that he never actually tried to help Billy Hargrove by himself, never changed his opinion of Billy in any way. To Steve, Billy remained that asshole who made Steve feel helpless, made Steve hobble around for weeks on end. Steve never sought out Billy, because Billy was a fucking evil person who would make Steve’s life worse .

And now, Steve visited Billy alone, once, on behalf of Max, and now he was empathizing with Billy and paying his fucking medical bills.

Jesus Christ.

It makes Steve feel off-kilter. His balance is shot now. Because Billy was a bad thing, a thing that Steve couldn’t interact with because he made Steve feel vulnerable and hurt and also like he was about to be throat-punched.

Billy was a bad thing, and his dumb redheaded babysitter was a bad thing, and the Upside Down was a very bad thing.

But Billy wasn’t a bad thing.

Billy was in a hospital bed, and his dad hurt him and he was maybe a person instead of a demon, and maybe the Upside Down caused some good things too, like Dustin and the rest of his kid friends, and maybe his babysitter--

No.

Steve was not going there. 

Not right now, and also very hopefully never.

***

So he’s meant to be meeting Robin at some coffee shop in an hour so that they could go over the wanted ads together.

He’s not sure when they decided that they were gonna get a job together. It definitely makes it more difficult, because they’re looking for two job openings instead of one, which is why they’ve been doing it for fucking weeks and still haven’t found anything.

But they’re looking together, because apparently they’re now attached at the hip, employment-wise, and Steve has to be there so that they’re looking together, instead of separately. And more than that, Steve wants to be there, wants to elbow Robin every time they see a pretty girl walk in, wants her to make fun of his hair for the fucking fiftieth time in an hour.

But Steve’s head feels so shaken up for what seems like no reason at all.

He pulls into his driveway without realizing that he’d gotten home. He walks through his house, thinking he’s going to go upstairs and grab a new shirt, and ends up in the dining room, pulling open the liquor cabinet. 

He grabs a half-full bottle of dark rum, some vintage shit that his dad had in there for show. The last time he’d used it was at a party that he’d thrown himself. 

Steve’s so different now, it’s a fucking miracle that he recognizes himself in the mirror.

Steve considers the bottle for a second. Considers trying to pull himself together, considers meeting Robin on time.

Steve considers Billy Hargrove’s sparkling, deep-set eyes, and then plants himself on the couch, taking huge mouthfuls of the rum that was too shitty for being so old and expensive.

He turns on the large television settled on the console. Flicks through, finds an old Jeopardy episode. Then he turns it off. Considers crossing the room to switch on the radio, then takes a deep drink out of the rum instead.

He feels messed-up, out of place somehow. He isn’t sure why, but he’s pretty fucking sure it had something to do with the fact that Billy Hargrove wasn’t a demon and it was fucking up his mind a bit.

Steve closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Settles himself deeper against the couch cushion. A flash of red sparks across his vision, maybe a trick of the light, but it makes him feel uneasy, unsettled. 

He takes longer, deeper drinks out of the rum, and then finds that it’s all dried up, somehow. Steve groans, and pushes his head against the couch.

“Fuck,” he says, in the dark and quiet of his empty living room. “Fucking...shit.”

***

It may take minutes, or it may take hours in the limbo of Steve’s living room.

But somehow, he falls asleep.

***

She’d had bright red hair. Like, fire-truck red. The kind that only comes from a bottle, and she’d told him it was naturally curly, but she straightened it out every morning. Her hair always looked crunchy to Steve, all big and dry and teased up.

She wasn’t exactly pretty. Her eyes were too small and squashed in, her nose bulky and sprayed with dark freckles. She filled in her eyebrows too much and wore push-up bras, and it wasn’t until later that Steve wondered why she did that when she was just hanging out with him.

His parents used her as their babysitter all the time, so that they could go to dinner parties, matinees, dates, anything that took them out of the house. She was a twenty-something, had put an ad in the paper because she wanted some extra cash while going to community college. Steve was newly eleven, still wearing Batman pajama pants and eating PB&Js out of a bear-shaped lunch box.

His parents were never home, but Shelly always was. She’d pop popcorn with him, and make fun of him while he tried to do his homework, and watch reruns of M*A*S*H  with him because they both liked Hawkeye, both thought that Klinger was hilarious. Steve didn’t know whether he liked Shelly, but she was steady, and she was there, and sometimes she let him eat ice cream for dinner, so he decided she was all right.

It was a late Tuesday night when Shelly put her hand down Steve’s Batman pajama pants.

Steve had squirmed away as the M*A*S*H theme song played over the television screen, had squeaked out, “What are you doing? ”

She’d grinned, wide and weird, and Steve realized that one of her teeth was twisted around in her mouth. Steve shook his head, had backed up a little more, but she’d squeezed hard enough for it to hurt, and she’d said, “What, something wrong?”

Her eyes turned a little dark, and with her charcoal eyeshadow, it made her look like a ghoul. “I thought boys were supposed to like this. Unless you’re a faggot. Are you a faggot, Stevie?”

Steve shook his head, and then shook his head harder. “Please stop,” he’d whispered, because sure, he knew about this. Knew what she was doing. He’d caught his parents a few times, had learned sex ed.

But that was different from this. From Shelly staring at him, full of anger, full of force, and Steve doesn’t want this. He’d thought he was supposed to want this. Sometimes the girls didn’t want this, and that was bad, but this was different. Was there something wrong with him? There had to be.

“Just relax,” Shelly said, and pinned him into the couch cushions. “It’ll be okay. I’ll make you feel good, and you’ll like it, because boys like it and you’re not a faggot, Stevie.”

Steve had gasped, had turned to the M*A*S*H episode. Hawkeye was saying something to Father Mulcahy  about honor. He bit his lip. Shelly stroked him, pulled his pajama pants down further.

“Do you like it?”

“Yes,” Steve had whispered, and had shut his eyes up tight, and gritted his teeth.

He liked it.

He had to.

***

Steve wakes up feeling gross, and also with a horrible ringing in his ears.

Steve groans, and sits up. It’s dark in his living room. None of the lights are switched on, and the windows reflect the black of the night sky. Steve leans over and flicks on the table lamp, wincing at the sudden light. The room feels wobbly and dizzy. It clearly hasn’t been long enough for Steve to sober up yet.

The digital clock on the side table informs him that it’s nine in the evening. Steve buries his head in his hands, and is surprised to find that his cheeks are wet with tear tracks. Fuck, he’d been crying.

Steve doesn’t cry. And Steve doesn’t cry in his sleep.

It’d been so long since he’d even seen Shelly’s face in his mind’s eye, much less in real life.

And now he was dreaming about her.

“Fuck,” Steve groans, and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.

He didn’t know how, but it was definitely Billy Hargrove’s fault. Billy Hargrove caused his meltdown, so Billy Hargrove caused his nightmare. That fucking prick.

At least the ringing in his ears is gone.

In another one of God’s cruel tricks, the ringing picks up again. A harsh bell sound--

His doorbell. Someone’s ringing his doorbell.

That must’ve been what had woken him up. 

Steve stumbles off the couch, and wipes at his face angrily until it’s probably blotchy from hand marks. Better that then looking like he was spending his time recreationally sobbing, though. It’s only a few feet to the front door, since it’s connected through the hallway. Steve yanks open the door, bracing himself against the frame, and says, “Yeah?”

It’s Robin. Her arms are folded in, and she’s standing with her hip cocked out to the side, like an angry parent. As soon as the door opens, she says, “What gives you the right to stand me up?” like she’d been practicing the right tone to convey her level of disappointment all the way over to Steve’s house. She probably had.

She breaks quickly, though, saying, “Holy shit, have you been crying?”

“What? N-no,” Steve says, scrubbing at his face again. “Definitely not. A hundred percent no. I’ve been...not crying. Laughing. Crying from laughter. But not from sadness. At all.”

Robin opens her mouth slightly, raises her eyebrows. “Were you watching Old Yeller?” she asks. “Dustin said one time it came on while you were channel surfing and you cried like a baby.”

“I’m gonna kill that kid,” Steve says, shaking his head. "I've got a bat full of nails. I could do it."

Robin sighs, relaxes her posture a bit. “No, but seriously, are you okay? You missed our meeting, and I thought you were hanging out with the twerps, but Dustin called to ask me about music recommendations and said you hadn’t been over all day. And I tried to call a few times, but it kept going to voicemail.” 

“I--yeah, I just fell asleep,” Steve says, and leans his head against the doorframe too. “Sorry, we could try tomorrow or something?”

“Yeah,” Robin says. There’s a wrinkle forming in the middle of her forehead. “Wait, Steve, are you drunk? You smell like alcohol.”

“Maybe a bit,” Steve says.

Robin puts her hand on Steve’s arm. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asks. “For real. You look kind of...wrecked.”

Billy fucking Hargrove. Steve swears to God.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Old Yeller and rum, what can I say?”

“You said you fell asleep,” Robin says.

“W--yeah, and…” Steve sighs. “I just...I’m fine, Robin, I swear.”

“Can I come in?” Robin asks. Kindly. Like she’ll actually listen to Steve’s answer. He slumps against the doorframe a bit more.

“Not tonight,” Steve says. “Okay? I’ll see you tomorrow. I swear.”

Robin presses her lips together. Rubs at the skin of her right hand with her left. “I don’t wanna--” she cuts herself off. “Fine,” she says. “But I will see you tomorrow, okay, Harrington? You ditch me again, and your ass is grass.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Steve says.

Robin nods, and then quickly, so quickly that Steve couldn’t stop it if he tried--she wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him in for an awkward half hug. Steve has to pull himself away from the doorframe, has to remind himself to wrap his arms around her to get the hug to actually work. His brain, foggy and muddled and rum-drunk, can’t begin to fathom how they’d gotten into this position.

“Take care of yourself, okay?” Robin mutters into his shoulder. 

“Yeah,” Steve says. His throat feels wrong. A bit numb. A bit clogged. “You too.”

Robin nods, and just as suddenly as the hug happened, it stops. She steps away from Steve, and turns on her heel, hurrying back to her car. Steve watches her from the dim lights of her porch, watches her climb into her beat-up Ford and back out of his driveway, headlights flashing on the other McMansions in Steve’s suburb.

Only after Robin drives away, only after Steve can’t see the distant pinpricks of her taillights, Steve closes his front door.

He rests his forehead against it, and tells himself that he needs to pull himself together. Tells himself that he’s okay, and everyone he loves is okay, and that’s enough.

Then, because that doesn’t fucking work, he goes back to the liquor cabinet.

Tonight, he’ll get drunk, until he can’t even remember Billy’s glittering eyes and him bleeding out all over Starcour mall, can’t remember the lotus shape of the Demogorgon’s jaws, can’t care whether his parents are at home or in Paris or whatever. Tonight, he’ll get so drunk that he can’t remember Shelly’s name, much less her hair color.

And tomorrow, Steve will meet Robin for coffee and help wanted ads.

And tomorrow, Steve will be just fine, thank you very much.

Chapter Text

“You look like shit,” Robin tells Steve bluntly as he rubs at his eyes for the fifth time in two minutes. “Have you been sleeping?”

Steve opens his mouth to tell her that yes , he had, in fact, been sleeping, and it was rude to insult people’s looks--and instead, yawns. Robin leans forward, wrapping her hands around her tea and quirking an eyebrow.

“Well, that’s what coffee is for,” Steve says. He lifts his mug up and takes a long drink out of it, ignoring the jitters in his hand as he places it back on the table.

“You’ve had about a gallon of coffee in under an hour,” Robin says. “With cream and sugar.”

“And I’m awake, and functioning!” Steve gestures at the newspapers spread across the table, each scribbled over with red pen to mark possible job openings. “I think that the movie rental job might be good, and it looks like they need as much help as they can get. What do you think? You seem like someone who likes movies too much to be healthy.”

“Steve,” Robin says. “I’m only going to ask this once, and I want you to answer me properly, okay? No bullshit. Are you okay, and do you need to talk about it?”

Steve drops his head toward the table. He reads a few of the newspaper headlines without reading anything at all. A Smiths song blasts through the diner’s shitty speakers, and the music sounds tinny, unreal, far away. Or maybe it’s just Steve who feels far away.

It’s been two weeks since Robin had showed up at Steve’s doorstep, and Steve genuinely thought that he’d be fixed, by now. He’d done everything right, the next day; he’d met Robin for coffee in the morning, and then he’d driven the kids around to different houses, and then he’d come home and watched a few made-for-TV movies. He’d fallen asleep on the couch halfway through a stupid rom-com.

He’d jerked awake forty-five minutes, heart pounding like a motherfucker after dreaming that Dustin had been torn apart by the Demogorgon.

The next night, he dreamed that it was Will bleeding out on the floor of Starcourt Mall. Only this time, Will died, crying and writhing and screaming. 

The night afterward, it had been Shelly again.

So yeah, Steve’s been avoiding sleep until he needs to pass out, and sleep comes over him so hard and heavy that he wakes up with a headache and no memory of dreams, only a faint, disquieting feeling of something being wrong.

But other than that, everything’s fucking peachy.

“Steve?” Robin asks again.

Steve holds his mug so tightly, he could almost hear it creaking. He wondered if he could squeeze the mug enough to make it crack, make it shatter, destroy it completely and ground the shards into powder. He wondered what kind of strength that would take. 

Steve didn’t have it, that was for sure. Maybe Billy fucking Hargrove did; his right hook was incredibly strong.

“Not really,” Steve breathes out. “But you knew that.”

“I did,” Robin says. Steve doesn’t dare look up. He doesn’t want to see what her face looks like, right now. “Is it because of the Upside Down? Or the Russians?”

“Sure,” Steve says, and trails his finger along one of the wanted ads. It was for gardening, and Steve didn’t even like gardening, but he’d circled it anyway because it paid above minimum wage and offered a lot of hours and Steve knew that Robin needed enough money to support herself and her mom, who already worked two jobs but was struggling with their mortgage. Steve didn’t even think about those things when he’d first applied for Scoops Ahoy. He’d just wanted flexible hours and a discount on some ice cream.

 Job searching had felt so easy when it was just him, when there was nothing riding on it.  Now there was a lot, but only for Robin, and Steve needed to pull himself together and help her out and stop being such a fucking asshole.

“Steve,” Robin says. “I said no bullshit.”

Steve pushes away the papers. He feels like something’s gnawing at his chest, trying to get at his lungs and his heart. He still doesn’t want to look at Robin, but he forces himself to, stares at her waiting, patient expression and her hard grip on her cooling tea. Steve tries to force everything down, tells himself to man up. 

He runs his hand through his hair, smooths the wrinkles out of his shirt.

“There’s a lot of stuff,” Steve says, trying desperately to sound confident, cool, put-together. “But I’ll figure it out. It’s okay, Robin. I got this.”

Robin looks unconvinced. “If you change your mind,” she says.

“I trust you,” Steve assures her. “But I really do have this. I can get myself under control.”

“Sure,” Robin says.

“Hey,” Steve says. “No bullshit. Really.”

Robin purses her lips. “Okay,” she says. “Fine, I believe you.”

She doesn’t really, and Steve can see that in the way she’s rolling her eyes and muttering “he’s such an idiot,” under her breath. 

But Steve will convince her.

Steve broadens his shoulders, and sits up straighter, like a man.

 Because he is a man.

***

When Steve was eight years old, his favorite song was “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Steve doesn’t remember the first time he’d heard it, actually. Maybe he’d been at Tommy’s house, or maybe it came on at the grocery store. His parents weren’t fans of music, and usually drove him to school without turning on the radio.

The song was like an earworm, though. It only took the once, and Steve was nodding his head along to it as did his homework. He walked in rhythm to the beat of the rock part. He’d vocalize the guitar parts in the shower, shout out Galileo! and answer himself with Figaro! 

He was humming the song at the kitchen table one night, kicking his feet against the legs of the table, scuffing the sides of it.

His mom had paused in reheating the lasagna from a few days ago. “What have I told you about that, Steve?” she’d asked.

Steve had giggled, and started to sing, “Mama, ooh! Didn’t mean to make you cry.” He’d smiled a big, toothy grin at her, but his feet stilled against the table.

She’d frowned, a dark, odd expression flitting across her face. “Where did you hear that song, Steve?” she’d asked. Her voice was careful and higher than normal.

Steve said, “I dunno, but it’s my favorite! Is it your favorite, Mom?”

She’d walked primly across the kitchen, stilettos clacking on the stone tiles, and took a seat across from Steve at the table. “Popular music isn’t good for your brain,” she’d said, her voice still careful, still high. “It simplifies things. And sometimes, it teaches you bad morals.”

Steve frowned. “Bad morals?”

She folded her hands carefully, pursed her lips to make sure Steve knew that she was being serious. “The man who sings that song is a queer, Steve,” she said.

“What’s a queer?” Steve asked.

“Someone who does bad things for attention,” she said. “A sinner. I’ll tell you more when you’re older, Steve, but I don’t want you singing that song again, okay?”

“But it’s my favorite, ” Steve said.

“Not anymore,” she said, clipped and terse. The microwave beeped, and she smoothed down her skirt. “I’m going to get your father for dinner,” she said. “And Steve?”

“Yes, Mom?”

“I hear you singing that song again, and you’re grounded. No allowance. Do you understand?”

Steve sank down in his seat. “I understand.”

The next day, when Steve found his feet tapping out the rhythm of the guitar solo, he set his jaw and stomped too fast and out-of-sync until he couldn’t even remember what the guitar solo sounded like.

He needed enough money to go to the movies with Tommy, and he wasn't going to screw that up over some stupid song that was apparently really bad.

***

Walking up to the front desk of the hospital, signing his and Will’s names onto the visitor sign-in sheet, leading the way down three hallways and up two flights of stairs to Billy’s hospital room--Steve’s done this enough over the summer that it’s become automatic, just a piece of everyday life.

This time feels different, though.

Will had insisted on going one last time to see Billy. According to the doctors (reported secondhand from Max), his wounds were healing well, and he was in remarkably better condition than what could have been expected. He’d have prescriptions, antibiotics, painkillers, and would need to come back in a few weeks so the doctors could remove the stitches, but apparently the doctors felt confident enough to discharge Billy soon. Tomorrow, now.

Well, either that, or Billy had cursed at them until they started working on his discharge papers. It was really anyone’s guess.

After receiving the news, Will had marched up to Steve, expression set, and asked Steve for one last visit to the hospital.

Will hadn’t been back since Billy had completely shut him down. Steve thought it was delusional to try again, but here they were nonetheless.

Staring at the door to Billy’s room, though…

Steve had paid for Billy’s stay. Anonymously, of course, and maybe word hadn’t gotten out yet. Maybe Billy didn’t even know. Max hadn’t cornered Steve about it yet, and he was positive that she would once she knew, once Billy told her.

But if Billy did know, and if Steve showed up to Billy’s bedside again, well.

There were overtones there that Steve certainly didn’t intend. And even if Billy didn’t read into that, Steve was still pretty sure that Billy didn’t take too kindly to charity. Billy probably didn’t take too kindly to anything.

Maybe Billy hadn’t figured out that Steve was the anonymous donor. 

It really would be so much simpler if Billy was just a meathead who took things at face value.

But of course he fucking wasn’t. If Billy knew that his bills had been paid off anonymously, it wasn’t exactly hard to put two and two together. And again, the fucking overtone thing. 

At the very least, Billy would want to know why Steve had bothered to pay for the hospital stay. And Steve really didn’t have an answer for him. At least, not a straightforward one.

Steve’s heart is beating so hard and fast, it feels like it’s trying to dent his ribcage.

“Steve?” Will asks. “Are we going in?”

“‘Course we are, kiddo,” Steve says, sucking in a deep breath. “Your wish, my command.”

Steve’s discomfort didn’t matter. Not over what Will wanted.

Steve rolls his shoulders back, sets his eyes hard. And he pushes open the hospital door, beckoning in Will with a grand, ridiculous gesture to make him laugh.

***

Steve had never been a great student.

It took him a while to learn things. At least, that was the general consensus of his schoolteachers. And his dad...well, he wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t that angry about it, either. Used to just say that Steve needed to grow up and start taking school seriously, and then his grades would get better. And anyway, everything before high school didn’t matter, right?

Steve never tried to argue with his dad, never said that he was already trying his best and that sometimes math just wrung his brain out like a wet towel, that sometimes words started floating off the page and twisting around when he tried to concentrate on reading. 

His dad wouldn’t want to hear it, anyway, and so most of his teachers figured that Steve was just lazy and didn’t take the time out to learn the material.

There was one teacher he had, though. She was his sixth grade teacher, and she had these hazel eyes that twinkled and glittered when she looked up toward the light. She was young, fresh out of college, and insisted that her students call her Jeanie instead of Ms. Fullbright. Said it made her feel better, younger. She had long blonde hair that she parted in the middle, and wore loose jeans and old high school tees on casual Fridays.

Everyone loved Jeanie. She offered lots of extra credit and brought in homemade cookies when she had to make them take tests. She was everyone’s favorite, Steve’s included.

One Monday, right before the bell rang, Jeanie pulled Steve aside.

“Stevie,” she’d said, “I’ve called your parents about setting up a meeting, but they haven’t returned my calls yet.”

Steve frowned. “Have I done something wrong?” he’d asked. He knew that he’d made the second-floor boy’s bathroom flood because he and Tommy had tried to flush whole apples down, but in his defense, Tommy had claimed that the toilets had blades that would cut the apples up, which was absolute bullshit and Steve had been proven right, and also he was pretty sure the school still didn’t know who had done it, so he’d thought he’d been in the clear.

“No, no, honey,” Jeanie had assured him. “I just want to make sure they’ve gotten my messages. Can you ask them when you can, Steve?”

Jeanie smiled at him, wide and bright. She smelled like lemongrass, and she wore no makeup at all. Sometimes, Steve thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, such a departure from Shelly that he could hardly believe that they were both humans, both women. 

“There’s a test I’d like you to take,” Jeanie said. “One I think that will help you with school, yeah? You told me that sometimes words get all mixed up in your head. I think there’s something we can do about it, but I need your parents to give permission so that the school can administer the test for you.”

“Okay,” Steve said, bouncing on his heels. “I’ll tell them the next time I see them. Can--can the test really explain why I don’t read good?”

She’d smiled, and messed up his hair. Shelly did that, too, but Steve always felt like taking a shower afterward. When Jeanie did that, his heart kind of exploded, but in a good way. “I think so,” Jeanie said. “It’s not your fault, okay? And it doesn’t make you any less smart. You’re really smart, Steve.”

Steve blinked. “You think so?”

Jeanie nodded. “Academics aren’t everything,” she said. “And you’re hardworking. That takes a certain level of intelligence that a lot of people don’t have. You keep at it until you get it, and that’s what makes you smart.”

Steve’s eyes widened a bit. No one had ever told him that before. Shelly usually made fun of him when he got the wrong answer on his homework, and his mom just sighed and put away his tests.

Jeanie really was the best person in the world.

Steve darted forward and wrapped his arms around her. “Thank you,” Steve had said.

Jeanie had laughed, rubbed a circle into Steve’s shoulder. “Talk to your parents, okay?”

“As soon as possible,” Steve said.

Two days later, when his parents finally came home from their trip up to Maine, Steve broached the topic to his dad. 

“She’d said I was smart,” Steve said excitedly, “and that whatever the test’s supposed to tell me, it’ll help me with strategies to get me to read better.”

He’d really thought that his dad would be happy about it. All he’d ever wanted was for Steve to be successful, and Steve was finally getting a teacher who said Steve was smart, that all he needed was a little help.

Instead, his dad had shrugged off his suit jacket and sent Steve a withering look. “Did she tell you that this test would land you in Special Ed?” 

Steve felt his stomach drop down to his knees. “What?”

“Or some kind of equivalent,” his dad had sniffed. He was a tall man with a sharp nose and a close-cropped beard. The kind of man that made you feel unkempt, just because everything about him was straight lines and ironed shirts and rolled-up sleeves with perfect cuffs. “She wants to diagnose you with a learning disability.”

“She...she didn’t mention that.”

“It’s because she’s manipulative,” his dad said simply. “Tried to get you on her side, so that she could guilt trip me and your mom into letting you take that test. But I know better, Steve. You don’t have a learning disability.”

“I mean...I mean, reading is hard for me,” Steve said.

His dad had given him another withering glance. Steve had shrunk back, had felt like backing up until he hit a corner. “I know you don’t have a learning disability,” his dad had said, “because you’re a Harrington. Men don’t have learning disabilities. Harringtons don’t have learning disabilities. If you’re having trouble in school, it’s because you aren’t trying hard enough. And if your dyke of a teacher tells you different, you set her straight. Don’t let her fool you.”

“Okay,” Steve said. “You’re right, Dad.”

His dad had given him a razor-thin smile, and then headed up to his home office, probably to drink some scotch with the door locked.

When Jeanie asked if Steve had talked to his dad, Steve said, “He wasn’t open to it,” and ignored her concerned frown. If Jeanie wanted to pawn him off to Special Ed...well, maybe she wasn’t that great after all. 

Lemongrass wasn’t even a particularly nice smell, anyway, even if it was better than Shelly’s citrus perfume. And Jeanie should probably wash her hair more, sometimes it was a bit greasy-looking.

His dad was right. His dad was usually right about everything, he was a successful businessman with a huge house, and his word was reliable, according to a lot of his coworkers. More reliable than Jeanie’s, surely. 

Steve just needed to work harder.

Steve studied for ten hours before the next reading comprehension test.

He got a 79, and his mom had sighed the same old sigh and stuck it in a desk drawer to gather dust.

***

Billy’s sat up in his hospital bed, torso supported by his hospital pillow and wadded-up blanket and sheets shoved behind him. There are dark etched-out circles under his eyes, and he’s reading some book with the cover bent back and a bunch of the pages dog-eared, because he has to fucking mistreat all of his property. He’s glaring down at his book, and keeps on thumbing through it, going back and forth, not really ever paying attention to the page he’s actually on.

Steve raps his knuckles against the door as he swings it open, holding it long enough for Will to walk through. Billy looks up, and a bunch of expressions steal across his face, and Steve’s not sure if he likes any of them. He definitely stares at Steve for a bit too long as he shuts his book and flings it down at the end of his bed. Steve frowns as he spots the familiar orange cover and the cramped typeface of the title.

“ Catcher in the Rye, seriously?” Steve asks. 

Steve leans against the wall and puts his foot up against it, crossing his arms across his chest. Like he’s cool, nonchalant, and also gives no fucks, especially not about Billy.

Will, instead of taking his normal seat next to Billy’s bed, moves a bit closer to Billy’s bed. Ends up standing near the base of it, hands behind his back. From Steve’s angle against the door, he can see Will wringing his hands, gripping at his knuckles so tightly he’s draining all the color from his own skin.

“Shut the fuck up,” Billy says, eyeing Steve and literally paying no attention to Will. Steve fidgets his fingers against his arm, bites into the side of his cheek. Billy shakes his head, and says, “What fucking else am I supposed to do here?”

“You’re a cliche,” Steve says, and then shuts himself up because he’s fucking goading Billy. Nancy was fucking right, he really was an idiot.

Billy looks at Steve again for an uncomfortably long moment. Looks him up and down, like he’s fucking checking him out. Steve looks down, to the right, stares at the pink plasticy linoleum floor speckled with dirt and probably blood and bile and shit. 

When it’s clear that neither of them are going to say anything else, Will says, “I know this might not make a difference. And I know you probably would think it’s weird to, like, commiserate with me on mind control. Because it is weird, but.”

Will takes a breath. His shoulders are set, and his eyes have turned steely. He looks a lot like his mom, under the harsh lighting of the hospital. He’s even jutting his lip forward, like Joyce does when she’s getting serious. “I remember Bob Newby’s death,” he says suddenly.

Steve’s foot drops from the wall.

“I wasn’t even awake for it,” Will says. “He was dating my mom, and they were in love. And he risked his life to save my friends and to save me, and he got ripped apart by some demodogs from the Upside Down. That’s what we call the dimension, that’s where the Mind Flayer came from. And my mom grieved, she grieved for months, and she was so sad and wouldn’t talk about, and I couldn’t tell her that I remembered him dying. I remembered clawing into his body, and um. I remember this--detached glee. Not happiness, but just this relief, to be killing and burning. And I know that wasn’t me. I wasn’t even awake. But I remember it anyway, and I don’t know what to do with that.”

Steve takes a step forward, almost without realizing it. He has to stop his hands from reaching out for the kid. To do what, he doesn’t know.

But Will’s fine. He’s not crying, he’s not shaking. He’s standing in the middle of the hospital room, looking at Billy like he’s daring Billy to look away first. Will’s not even a kid, right now. The look in his eyes. No one could mistake him for some dumb kid.

And Billy. Billy’s staring at Will with his glittering eyes like kaleidoscopes, mouth slightly open and whole body tensed. Billy looks like someone’s frozen him. Just. Hit the fucking pause button. 

Slowly, he closes his mouth, and gives an almost-imperceptible nod. He settles back on his makeshift cushions, and looks down at his hands. 

“I’m sure you’ve got a bunch of stuff like that,” Will says. “And all of us know about the Upside Down, so. In case you ever...I get that it’s not how you work, but everyone needs some kind of support system. Someone who understands, I mean.”

Will waits for several long moments. Just waits. His face doesn’t give away anything at all, except for the small, apologetic half-smile of his mouth. His eyes are hardened, but they aren’t mean.

Billy works his jaw. His eyes are like hard marbles, but his fingers are tapping out a fast, frantic rhythm against his thighs. For the first time, it doesn’t feel like his presence is clouding the hospital room. He doesn’t feel bigger than Will or Steve, even though he really is bigger than the both of them. He’s just someone in a room with two other people. He doesn’t smell like cigarettes or old leather, he doesn’t smell like Billy, because Billy’s been in a hospital for weeks on end and now he smells like antiseptic and the iron tang of blood from closing wounds. Steve’s eyes rake over Billy’s face, and for the first time, he notices that Billy’s sparse facial hair has grown out more, and there’s a five o’clock shadow dusting his jawline. 

Billy just looks like a fucking person, just like Steve and Will.

Will breaks from the trance first. He bows his head a bit, scuffs his Converse against the floor, and says, “Good luck, Billy,” and heads for the door so fast that by the time Steve is following him, the hospital door is already swinging shut behind Will. 

Steve reaches out and catches the door, but before he can step through it, Billy says, “I know what you did, Harrington,” and Steve sighs and releases the door, letting it land against the doorjamb with a loud crack.

He turns back to Billy, who has managed to paint a dark smirk across his face. There’s something off about it, though. His eyes aren’t twinkling like they should.

“I don’t fucking do debts,” Billy warns. “If you expect me to pay up, somehow…”

“That doesn’t matter to me,” Steve says. Billy’s eyes turn stormy.

“I’m not a fucking charity case,” Billy growls out. “I know Max told you about my dad, but that gives you no fucking right--”

“Just take the goddamn money, Billy,” Steve says. He suddenly feels so tired that a headache’s beginning to blossom between his temples. He turns away from Billy, and curls and uncurls his hands into fists. “Consider it a welcome present to this shitty fucking sci-fi life, I don’t really care. I just didn’t want you to fucking die when you got back to your house because I already had to keep you alive once and I don’t wanna do that again, okay? God.”

Steve grabs the doorknob and opens the door again. 

And then, because apparently he can’t shut his goddamn mouth, Steve says, “If your dad does try to fucking kill you when you’re discharged, just suck up your goddamn pride and come to my house.”

Steve hears the rasp of breath as Billy opens his mouth, probably to bite out some kind of response, but Steve slips through the door without glancing back and heads back down the hallway.

***

Steve isn’t sure when, exactly, his opinion on gay people changed.

He remembers the absentminded disdain he’d had. How he flung the word faggot at kids he didn’t like, because his dad had called him a fag whenever Steve didn’t do his chores properly, or when he wore a pink shirt, or when he fussed too much over his hair. (And he remembers Shelly pulling him closer to her, telling him that he wasn’t a faggot and this was his way to prove it, but that was fine, he was fine, and he wasn’t a fag, he proved it over and over and over again.)

Hell, he’d called Jonathan Byers queer during those two awful weeks when Will Byers went missing and everything Steve knew was turned on its head. So it was as recent as that, that he’d seen guys with dyed hair and thought fag, seen girls with pixie cuts and thought dyke. It was that recent that he’d flung those words at people to get a rise out of them, used them as cutting insults.

It was just something that was taboo. Guys didn’t like guys, girls didn’t like girls. People who said that they did just did it for attention, and they were sinners. Steve wasn’t a particularly religious guy, but he couldn’t separate gay people from the label of “sinners” somehow. 

It felt...inexplicably wrong. Like clothing that was a size too big. Something that didn’t fit quite right with everything else that Steve knew.

But then Steve learned what Wrong was. He’d fought off Wrong with a spiked baseball bat, he’d seen Wrong open its lotus jaws and scream at him with a throat full of teeth. He’d been brought down into a tunnel full of Wrong, of rot and decay while bleeding and only half-conscious, and he’d tried to fight off Wrong for a bunch of kids he’d only started talking to two days ago.

He’d watched Wrong speak with Billy Hargrove’s voice, watched a monster made of human gore stab its way through Billy Hargrove’s chest and almost kill him.

And suddenly, people liking other people didn’t actually seem so wrong, anymore.

Wrong felt like a pit in Steve’s chest. It felt like cold water settling into his lungs, and it felt like an itch in his veins, like all his blood was trying to crawl back into his heart at once and make it burst. It felt like a belly full of worms, all writhing and squelching. It felt like sinking into quicksand. 

(It felt like Shelly smiling at him with her twisted-up tooth poking out of her mouth.

It felt like Steve staring at Billy for the first time, looking at his half-buttoned shirts and golden-white skin, and thinking, without meaning to, he’s pretty.)

What wrong didn’t feel like was Will crunched up in a booth, swishing the words around in his mouth like mouthwash but never actually able to spit them out. It wasn’t Robin picking at threads on her work uniform and not being able to meet Steve’s eyes as she admitted a crush on Tammy Thompson.

Steve’s opinion had changed without him realizing it. He’d reordered his world view without realizing.

And Steve was alright with that. It took him one step further away from the dick he used to be, anyway. And that had to count for something.

It also took him one step closer to Robin, to Will, to all of his friends that he had now. And that wasn’t a bad thing at all.

***

The drive back to the Byers’ house is quiet.

Will is all doe eyes again, wearing a shirt slightly too big for him and somehow looking like he was drowning in it. Steve wonders where he packs all that gumption. If he’d used it all up in Billy’s hospital room, or if his muscles and bones were just made of steel. 

As Steve pulls up to their small ranch house, Steve flounders for something to say. Whether he should just give a normal “see ya,” or if he should say something--anything. Something comforting, or at the very least, useful to Will.

“Thanks for the ride,” Will says. “And thanks for going back with me.”

Steve nods, and puts the car in park. “That was--what you said,” Steve begins. 

“You don’t have to--”

“It was brave,” Steve says. “To just. Put it out there like that. It was really brave.”

Will shrugs. “I meant all of it,” he says. “Including the part about the support systems, Steve.”

Steve drops his head down to look at his lap.

“No--just,” Will takes a deep breath. “Dustin says you’re looking terrible now, and Robin asked me about you a day or two ago. She radioed in just to check on you. I don’t know if what’s going on with you is big or small, but it clearly matters to you. So you should try and talk through it. When I finally talked to Mike about the Upside Down and the Mind Flayer...it felt better than just thinking I was going crazy.”

“I’m fine, though,” Steve says.

Will gives him a rueful smile. “Then so am I,” he says. He moves to open the car door.

“When’d you become the adult here?” Steve asks. He’s only half-kidding. “I thought I was the one over eighteen.”

Will’s the one to drop his head down, this time. He sighs slightly. “I really wish I wasn’t,” he says. “I just wanna play Dungeons and Dragons, but.” He rolls his shoulders back and looks up again. “Here we are, I guess. So here I am.”

Will pops open the car door and steps out, head held high and muscles full of steel.

***

Steve only tries to tell his dad about Shelly once.

His dad had just flown in from a conference in Milan. His mom had gone with him, and they’d been gone for eight days, so Shelly had volunteered to help watch the house while they were gone, which meant that she’d lived with Steve in the same house for eight days.

Eight days.

Steve’s dad came back because he had a board meeting in Hawkins, but his mom had wanted to stay. Something about mimosas with a friend, or maybe a designer. So it had just been Steve and his dad for dinner, and his dad ordered in Domino’s because Steve and his dad loved it but his mom always complained about empty calories and too much grease.

It was meant to be a grab-your-own kind of dinner, because his dad was not into sitting down and rehashing their days without Steve’s mother around to force it. Plus, his dad was jet-lagged from the long flight, and he had a meeting the next day. Steve really only meant to pass through the kitchen, pick up a slice of pepperoni and sausage, and try and catch a rerun of Happy Days.

But seeing his dad leaning against the kitchen counter nursing a beer instead of Shelly--it made Steve’s heart settle back in his chest, in a way it hadn’t in eight whole days. Steve finally felt the goosebumps settle back down on his arms, and the cold shock of fear that had been running through his chest disappeared without a trace.

So Steve cleared his throat, and said, “Um, Dad.”

His dad said, “Yes?” on a long exhale.

Steve rocked on his heels, and then reminded himself to stop. His dad didn’t like nervous tics, said that real men didn’t get nervous, didn’t show fear. “Shelly...um, she…”

Mortifyingly, Steve felt tears pricking at his eyes. He looked down and bit both of his cheeks hard enough to draw blood. His dad didn’t like tears. His dad wouldn’t listen to Steve, if Steve was crying.

“Spit it out, son,” his dad said. His voice was developing a harsh edge to it. Steve looked up to find his dad scrutinizing his face. When his dad got angry, it was like his skin turns to marble, with how taut and stoic his whole body became.

Steve, in that moment, got a flash of...something. Shelly saying you’re not a fag, are you, and his dad lecturing him about how Harringtons don’t have disabilities, and in that moment, Steve backed down.

Because Harringtons don’t just get--

Harringtons don’t let people take advantage of them, the way that Shelly had. 

At least, that’s what his dad would’ve said.

That, and why didn’t you like it, and do you not like women?

Steve couldn’t handle that. Didn’t know if he knew the answers for himself. 

And none of that would get rid of Shelly.

What Steve wanted was to get rid of Shelly. He wanted her gone, wanted her erased, wanted her to never ever have happened, never wanted her hands near him, never wanted her looming over him with her bright red hair and twisted-up tooth.

“Steve,” his dad said. “I’ve had a very long flight, so if you wouldn’t mind--”

“Yeah,” Steve heard himself saying. “I mean, yes, sir. I was just thinking about it, and Shelly--she’s okay and everything, but it seems an awful lot of money to have her babysit me for such long periods of time. And I’m sure we can handle that kind of money, but wouldn’t it be easier if I was allowed alone when you were away?”

His dad stared at him.

Steve did his best to maintain eye contact. His right hand, without him realizing it, began to grab at the extra fabric of his Batman pajama pants.

“You think you can handle that kind of responsibility?” his dad asked.

Steve forced himself to stand up straighter. “I know I can.”

His dad nodded. “Okay,” he said. “If you’re so confident, then I trust you, Steve.”

Steve nearly fell over out of relief. “Thank you,” he said. “I won’t disappoint you. I’ll be responsible.”

“Good,” his dad said. “I never really liked Shelly, anyway.”

Me, either.

Steve is eleven and a half when he gets rid of his last babysitter.

(He’s the same age when his parents start leaving for months on end, instead of days.)

***

If Will Byers is made of steel, then Steve must be made of, like, uncooked noodles or some shit. Flimsy, breakable. A bit useless.

Still edible, though, Steve thinks nonsensically.

He pushes himself up into a seat and flicks on the lamp next to his bed. A glance at his clock tells him that it’s past two a.m. Steve had only managed to fall into a fitful sleep after midnight.

Steve scrubs a hand across his face, and pulls his knees up to his chest. His eyes keep sliding over to the walkie-talkie that Dustin had gifted to him, laying face-down on his desk. Steve hardly ever used it, but he feels a wild, untameable need to right now.

But he shouldn’t. Because that’s stupid, and Steve can separate dreams from reality.

If only his brain hadn’t chosen to recreate Barb’s death, only this time with Dustin.

It had been Dustin sitting on the end of Steve’s diving board, back toward Steve. And Steve had been running toward Dustin, not so much as yelling his name as feeling like it was being ripped from Steve’s throat, but the Demogorgon had darted it, too fast, unfairly fast, and then Dustin was scrabbling against a pool filled with undergrowth and fleshy vines, like that fucking tunnel, and he was crying and screaming and there was nothing that Steve could do --

Steve grabs the walkie and punches down on the talk button, saying, “Dustin, Dustin are you there?”

Steve waits a moment, heart in his throat, but there isn’t a response. Probably because Dustin was asleep, like he fucking should be.

Steve leans against his desk. He doesn’t even remember lunging across the room for the walkie. He feels breathless and limp. Steve presses a hand against his forehead. Despite the near-two hours of sleep, he feels even more tired than he had been when he’d first fallen asleep. 

He should be better than this. Why isn’t he better than this?

Fucking flimsy and breakable. Steve punches his fist against his desk.

“Steve? Was that you?” 

It’s Robin. 

Steve sighs. “Yeah, yeah it’s me,” he says. “Switch to three. I don’t wanna wake any of the babies.”

He punches in the radio channel, but by the time he gets there, Robin’s already talking. “-rything alright, Steve?” she’s asking. “Why’re you calling for Dustin in the middle of the night?”

Steve wants so badly to be a man. 

But he’s just fucking made of uncooked noodles.

“I had a nightmare,” Steve admits. In a very small voice. “That Dustin died. And I couldn’t--but I’m fine now. I don’t know why I can’t handle this now. I had everything...I’m working on it, I can handle it.”

Robin’s quiet over the radio, for a moment. The static of the radio fills Steve up with an odd, unsteady kind of energy, and he starts tapping his foot against the floor, starts rocking on his heels.

“Steve,” Robin says eventually. “I’m awake right now, because I dreamed we were in that hell elevator again. The one that dropped us to the Russian’s secret base. I was convinced we were going to die then, and in my dream, we wouldn’t stop falling, and all I could think about was how I was gonna die in my stupid ice cream work uniform.”

Steve takes a deep breath, and for the first time since he woke up, it feels like enough. Like he doesn’t have to suck in more air.

Has he been hyperventilating?

“Shit,” Steve says.

“Yeah,” Robin says.

“Do you wanna...maybe get dinner again sometime? And wine. Like, a fuck ton of wine,” Steve says. He’s still rocking on his heels.

“Definitely,” Robin says. “I can’t do the next few days, I’ve got an aunt coming to town, but maybe Friday? If that works for you?”

“Yeah, that works,” Steve says. “Goodnight, Robin."

“Sleep tight,” Robin says.

Steve snorts, and shuts off the radio.

***

He doesn’t get any more sleep that night. He was too keyed up to even try.

It’s still one of his better nights, though.

Chapter Text

Friday Night: 10:02 p.m.

As it turns out, your life can change in a lot of ways.

The first time Steve shotgunned a beer at a party while Tommy cheered him on, and Steve felt loose for the first time since he was a little kid--the first time Steve felt settled in his own skin, since he didn’t know when. That was life-changing.

The first time Steve had seen Nancy Wheeler in AP Environmental, blue eyes twinkling and hands staining with ink as she wrote out flashcards for the test--that was life-changing.

Walking into the Byers’s house with a practiced apology speech sitting on his tongue, and leaving knowing that monsters are real-- obviously that was life-changing.

Dustin asking Steve about his hair-care, and Steve realizing that he was just some dumb kid who was as uncomfortable in his own skin as Steve was--that was life-changing.

Steve’s life has changed so rapidly, and in so many different ways in the span of eighteen years, that sometimes Steve thinks you could populate a town with all the people that he used to be.

Yet somehow, stupidly--Steve had thought he had reached the end of it. Like life had gotten so weird, there was nothing else that could change him out. Nothing else could touch him, alter him in some kind of irrevocable way.

And yet, sitting on the edge of his downstairs tub, sponging off blood and applying ice to Billy Hargrove’s virtually naked body--well.

That was definitely life-changing.

***

Monday Morning: 9:04 a.m.

The sound of Steve’s home phone is shrill and screechy, and Steve absolutely hates it.

It’s so loud that it seems to ricochet through the walls of Steve’s house, through Steve’s brain, interrupting his thoughts. He stumbles down the stairs and into the kitchen, bumping into the staircase and a few walls along the way.

I really need to sleep, Steve thinks. He picks the phone up off its cradle, and almost immediately drops it.

“Hello?” Steve says. He wraps his finger around the phone cord, stretching it so that he can sit himself down at the kitchen table. His legs nearly give out as he sits down, which is ridiculous. He’s sleep-deprived, he hasn’t run a fucking marathon.

“Hello, dear!” 

“Oh,” Steve says. “Hey, Mom.”

“No need to sound so disappointed,” she teases. Steve can hear the wide smile in her voice, in the way she shapes her vowels. She always sounds so happy on the phone. “Your father has back-to-back business meetings today, so I thought I’d check up on you.”

“Thanks,” Steve says flatly, and then winces. He bites down on both of his cheeks, and then says, “Sorry, Mom, I just--stayed up too late last night, I think.”

“Oh, I know how it is for young kids like you,” she says. “Drinking with Tommy and Carol again?”

Steve tips his head back and glares at the overhead light fixture until there are spots in his vision. He’d reminded her just last week that he didn’t talk to Tommy or Carol anymore. Hadn’t for over a year.

“Got it in one,” Steve says on an exhale.

His mom giggles. A high-pitched tittering sound that scrapes at Steve’s ears. Steve bites down on his cheeks again, so hard that he starts to taste blood. 

She sounds so far away from the woman Steve remembers from his childhood. A cold woman with pale skin and high cheekbones, who wore stilettos around the house. When he’d draw pictures of his family as a little kid, he always drew a frown on her face, with red crayon to match the color of her lipstick.

“Well, London is wonderful, as always,” she says lightly. “So much high-end fashion. I’ve been shopping for days, Steve, and there’s still so much more to buy. It is rainy, of course, but I bought this lovely umbrella with a mahogany handle, and it makes me feel so glamorous. A stranger said I looked like a movie star the other day, like Elizabeth Taylor, and it was so wonderful of him to say so. He had this velvety brimmed hat on, and so I was thinking of buying one for your father--his birthday is coming up soon, of course. Last year we spent it in Florence--of course, you remember, don’t you? I brought you back that wonderful red from a sweet vintage vineyard on the eastern outskirts of the city. Perhaps we can move to Florence--well, I know we can’t, but a woman can dream, can’t she? 

“Ah, but Hawkins is such a lovely little town, even if it is a bit sleepy--and nowhere to shop, of course. And you have your friends and all your girlfriends. You picked that up from your father, you know. He used to be so worried that you were--well, but then you weren’t, and you’re so grown-up and responsible now! Even if you insisted on a gap year before college. You will apply this year, won’t you? Someplace with a good business school. As soon as they see the name ‘Harrington’ they should be rushing to let you in, even though your father and I weren’t exactly pleased with your grades during high school. But you’re so charming, that certainly demonstrates some acumen, all you have to do is apply yourself a bit more--and of course, it may be my fault. Your father is always calling me an airhead, but always in the most loving of ways. And he isn’t wrong, of course. He rarely is! 

“Oh, look at me, chattering on again. I suppose it’s because this part of London is so isolated, and I’ve been shut in all day. Your father always likes some peace and quiet when he comes back to the rooms, as well, so I might be a bit starved for conversation. Anyway, how are you? How is that job you landed--the one with the sailor theme, I think? You’re repairing fishing nets or something, right?”

“Um, slinging ice cream,” Steve says sheepishly. “It had a sailor theme, though. Scoops Ahoy. ”

“Oh, yes,” his mother says. Her voice has dropped slightly, but she picks it back up right away, sugary tone light as she says, “I’m so glad you tried out menial, work, of course! Really helps you understand how the other half lives, and I’m certain that will come in handy with your future business endeavors. Indiana State has a fairly good business program, yes? Your father and I have been talking, and if he puts in a good word, maybe makes a charitable contribution, then you may be offered a spot. It may be shooting a bit high for you--your father’s words, not mine--but I have faith. Of course, then you’d have to transfer--graduate from a nicer university just for the name, something like Purdue or Fordham--but from there, you’d be set up great for grad school. Your father is skeptical of your work ethic, but since you’re working Ice Cream Ahoy, I’m sure it’s much improved. You won’t prove me wrong, will you?”

“Of course not,” Steve says, dropping his head down into his hands.

“Wonderful,” his mother says. Then, “Oh, look at the time! I promised Marion I’d meet for afternoon tea. Why did I call again…? Oh, yes. Your father has wired more money to your bank account. He mentioned that you were spending less per month, even with your own job. He sounded proud, Steve! Keep up the good work. I really have to run now. This has been a lovely conversation, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I mean, yes. Bye, Mom.”

“Goodbye!” 

And just like that, the line goes dead.

Steve sets the phone on the table next to him, and buries his head into his arms. The phone drones next to him, a reminder to set it back in its cradle.

Steve stays still and listens  to the drone for ten minutes before he moves to put it back.

Maybe he should just cut the phone lines to his house. That’d save him from listening to it ring.

And also save him from phone conversations like the one he’d just had.

Jesus Christ.

***

Monday Morning: 11:23 a.m.

After his mom’s call, Steve drinks three cups of coffee consecutively and then stretches out on his sofa, flicking on the television to see if he can pick up a rerun of Cheers or something.

It feels like he should be doing  more. Going on a run, maybe, or seeing a new movie in the downtown movie theatre. Sometimes when he used to get bored, he’d drive around in his car, find an old abandoned parking lot and smoke some weed. Go into town and try to find a date. See if he could con his way into an old dive bar.

Lately, though, his entire life has been the kids. Driving them, dropping them off, letting them spend the night at his house. Homemade dinners with Mrs. Henderson and Dustin, and, more recently, finding ice cream to drop off at the Sinclairs’ every Thursday. Without all that, Steve feels like there’s nothing to do besides sit on the sofa and toggle between TV channels. Never mind the fact that the thought of getting up, of pushing himself to do more than stare up at his ceiling, feels too much. His mind is swirling around and around and around, but his legs feel leaden, stuck to this fucking rose-patterned sofa.

Steve still can’t find a damned episode of Cheers. He keeps switching the channels, index finger pressing out a steady rhythm on the remote, hardly letting more than a few lines of dialogue pass by as he keeps searching, until suddenly--

Hawkeye’s face fills the screen. 

Steve fumbles with the remote, and drops it on the floor with a crack that’s much too loud.

“Fuck,” Steve says, somewhat belatedly.

They never show M*A*S*H reruns anymore, not since it ended. But since it was a Monday--since there was nothing else on--

Hawkeye mutters something about Crabapple Cove, of wanting to go back. He’s always on that shit.

Steve tries to tear his eyes away from the screen, and turns to see Shelly grinning down at him.

“Come on, Stevie,” she says, and reaches her grimy hands toward his jeans. It’s then that Steve realizes that her hands are covered in the fleshy undergrowth of the Upside Down.

Her smile is twisted, spiked, oozing with black sludge.

Steve scrambles backward, mouth shut. He wants to say something, anything-- wants to fucking scream, wants to punch and push and--but Shelly--she never liked that, never let it go down easy--

Her fucking twisted tooth is covered in black sludge, and she keeps fucking reaching toward him--

Steve lands on the ground hard. He feels the sharp edge of something press into his back. The remote.

The TV shuts off.

Steve swallows. Forces himself to take deep, slow breaths. He hadn’t realized that he’d started to breathe so hard.

He peels himself up off the floor. His back is full of sharp pain from hitting the remote like that. He sits himself down on the edge of the sofa and pushes his hair back, and then again. 

His heart can’t calm down.

He’s fucking hallucinating, now.

“I’m going fucking crazy,” Steve mutters to himself. Absurdly, ridiculously, sticky thick tears are building up in his throat, near his eyes. He pushes his fingers into his eyes, and he feels the slide of tears down his cheeks. “I’m just...going crazy.”

He laughs to himself, but it hurts around the clog of tears in his throat. He pulls his knees up to his chest, and feels the shudder of his lungs as his laughter fades off, turns into the choked sounds of tears. He feels oddly detached from it all. He’s hot, and a headache is building up, but other than that, he’s not entirely sure why he’s crying.

He just knows that he is, and he isn’t quite sure how to stop it.

And then, to top it all off. The cherry on the fucking cake.

The phone starts ringing its shrill, screechy ring again.

***

Monday Morning: 11:41 a.m.

The phone rings out two times. Steve can tell because every time the answering machine clicks on, there’s a little huff of frustration from the other line before the punch of a phone hanging up.

On the third try, Steve picks up on the second ring and says, “What, Dustin?”

“So you were ignoring my calls,” Dustin says. 

Steve’s breathing still hasn’t evened out. It comes in and out in ragged gasps, and Dustin asks, almost accusingly, “Were you on a run?”

“Some of us enjoy physical exercise,” Steve says. He starts to rub circles into his temples. His headache doesn’t seem to want to go away. “I run a lot. You know that.”

“And I still don’t understand it,” Dustin declares. “Anyway. Lucas and I want to head to the arcade, do you feel like driving?”

Steve considers it. Considers driving to the Hendersons’ house, or the Sinclairs’, and picking them up and driving them. 

He can’t even imagine trying to paste on a smile right now.

His head is throbbing too much.

The image of Shelly--

“No,” Steve says.

There’s a pause over the line. “What?” Dustin asks.

“I just…” Steve sucks in a deep breath. “I can’t today. That’s all.”

“Oh,” Dustin says. “Are you sick? My mom makes okay chicken noodle soup--”

“It’s not that,” Steve says. “I just--not today, Dustin.”

There’s a sound of scratching. Maybe Dustin scraping his feet along the floor. “Are you all right?” He asks, eventually. “You haven’t been looking too hot.”

“I’m fine,” Steve says reflexively.

“Steve--”

“I’ll take you out for waffles tomorrow,” Steve says, squinting his eyes shut. “Or lunch or something, right? Just. Not today.” 

If Steve opens his eyes right now, he thinks he’d see Shelly again. And.

He just. Can’t, today. 

Those horrible Italian reds are calling his name.

“Is there anything else?” Dustin asks.

“Nothing,” Steve swears. “Nothing that concerns you. I promise.”

“...Okay,” Dustin says. “I guess Lucas and I can take our bikes. And we’re doing waffles tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Steve says.

“I’ll be at the Sinclairs’,” Dustin says. “So it’ll be Lucas, too.”

“No problem,” Steve says. “Love you, little buddy.”

“You too,” Dustin says. 

Steve nods, and only afterward realizes that Dustin can’t see him.

It’s okay, though.

Dustin’s already hung up the phone anyway.

***

Monday Afternoon: 2:13 p.m.

Steve starts out slow.

Just a drink every hour or so. 

His mom’s Italian reds taste as flowery and expensive as he thought they would.

***

Monday Afternoon: 5:15 p.m.

The room’s getting a bit dizzy, and he’s wobbly on his feet, but he feels loose. 

He switches on the radio, and horrible synth pop starts blasting through the speakers. 

Steve closes his eyes. Somehow, it makes him feel dizzier.

He thinks about Shelly. He thinks about Nancy slurring bullshit at him.

He thinks about growing up in this empty house. Thinks about how he’ll get so old, and maybe no one will notice. 

I’ll be eighty tomorrow, Steve thinks, and he’s not sure what it means, but it’s enough to get him crying.

***

Monday Night: 7:26 p.m.

Steve vomits and realizes he’s probably had too much.

Way too much.

He’s crying, still.

Since he hasn’t eaten much (anything at all? Steve can’t remember) today, it’s just stomach acid and bile and all the wine. 

His throat burns as he lays down on the bathroom tiles.

***

Monday Night: 11:34 p.m.

Steve decides to try and sleep it off.

He keeps his bedside table lamp switched on and lays down on the outside of the covers. When he closes his eyes, the warm glow of the room casts an orange glow over his eyelids.

Steve takes deep, slow breaths, and reminds himself to uncurl his fingers, toes. Relax all his stiff bones.

It takes forever for him to fall asleep.

***

Monday Night: 2:06 a.m.

“You’re not a fag, are you?”

“Come on, Steve.”

Steve wakes up with a strangled gasp.

“God fucking damn it.”

***

Tuesday Morning: 11:43 a.m.

Whenever Dustin and Lucas stay the night at each others’ houses, they always stay up until three a.m. because they don’t understand the concept of a reasonable bedtime. Teenagers, Steve swears to God.

That also means that they sleep in so late. Steve purposely doesn’t leave his house until 11:30 a.m.

It gives him more time to drink a lot of espresso and do his laundry. He fiddles with his hair a little bit, but it’s not important if he’s just gonna be hanging out with Dustin and Lucas.

He does consider breaking out his mom’s concealer for the dark bruises underneath his eyes, though. Just because Dustin likes to ask questions, because no one ever told him how goddamn annoying he is, and that he should mind his own business.

He doesn’t, only because he’s not entirely sure how to use it, and he doesn’t wanna show up wearing makeup. That would definitely raise some questions, probably some taunts.

When he pulls up to the Sinclairs’ house, Dustin and Lucas are already sitting on the front steps, which is a bit of a surprise. Along with Erica, oddly enough.

All three of them make their way to Steve’s car as he pulls up into the driveway. Dustin takes shotgun, and Lucas slides into the backseat. Erica taps at Steve’s window until he rolls it down.

“You do look like crap,” Erica says. Steve frowns.

“Gee, thanks,” he says. “Is that it? Do you want to get pancakes?”

“And spend more time with those nerds?” Erica asks, nodding at Dustin and Lucas. “No, thank you. I’m just here to remind you about ice cream delivery.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve says. “Thursday, four o’clock. I’ve never forgotten.”

“You’ve been late,” Erica says.

“Fine, I won’t be this time,” Steve says wearily. “You know I don’t actually work at Scoops anymore?”

It’s a tired play, and Steve knows it.

“A deal is a deal,” Erica says, like she always does. “I snuck into your freaky Russian underground base, and now you have to hold up your end. I’ll see you Thursday at four.”

She turns on her heel and walks purposely back up to the house. Her Hello Kitty sneakers squeak as she walks.

“Your sister is terrifying,” Steve informs Lucas as he backs out of the Sinclairs’ driveway.

Lucas nods solemnly. “She’s a menace.”

***

Tuesday Afternoon: 12:07 p.m.

Steve had never been to a Waffle House before he started hanging out with kids much too young to be his friends.

He usually hit up the local diners next to the plaza. The ones that tended to be a bit more expensive, but at least their eggs couldn’t be confused with industrial-grade rubber. Even Robin, who once called crepes “too fancy to be eaten,” wouldn’t go near a Waffle House with a ten-foot pole.

Still, it’s Dustin’s favorite, and Lucas seems to love it, too. So that’s why they end up at the Waffle House next to the freeway, even though Steve is pretty sure he’ll get a norovirus from his water glass alone. 

(Seriously, there’s a greasy thumbprint on the inside of the glass that wouldn’t wipe away with Steve’s cheap paper napkin. What the hell. )

The waitress comes by to take their orders, and when Steve says he’s okay, just some coffee please, Dustin frowns hard at him. Even Lucas stares at him disapprovingly.

As the waitress walks away, Dustin leans over and grabs a chunk of Steve’s forearm, pinching it between his fingers. Steve yelps and slaps Dustin’s hand away. 

“Dude,” Steve says, “What are you doing?”

“Just as I suspected,” Dustin says, completely unfazed. “There used to be more meat on those bones.”

“What,” Steve says, “are you doing?”

“You’re losing weight,” Dustin says. “It’s not a good look.”

“I never order anything here,” Steve says, “if that’s what this is about. Because I don’t want to contract a terminal illness from this disease den that you call a restaurant.”

“Now that’s just sacrilegious,” Lucas says.

Dustin snaps his fingers. “Focus,” he commands.

Steve frowns at Dustin. “Dude, we’re not cats, ” he says.

“That is a bit rude, Dustin,” Lucas says, cocking an eyebrow. 

“You look like shit, Harrington, and you won’t tell me why,” Dustin says. “I thought we were over the whole secret-keeping thing when you told us about Will’s visits to Billy.”

“What--okay, first, I didn’t tell you anything, you literally annoyed Will into telling you,” Steve says. “And second--I’m fine.”

“You seriously can’t expect us to believe that,” Lucas chimes in. “You look like a dumpster fire. Which someone decided to take a piss in.”

“Rude,” Steve says. “Why are you here, by the way? Don’t you spend all your time obsessing over Max nowadays? You and Dustin never have sleepovers anymore.”

Lucas shrugs. “She broke up with me.”

“ Again? Isn’t that the second time in two weeks?”

“This time it was because I asked her why she was spending all her time with Billy, because he’s a dickhead,” Lucas says. “She said if she ‘had to explain, then it means I don’t understand her.’ Which is true, I don’t understand her,  because she hasn’t explained . She used to hate Billy, and he’s kind of the worst. I don’t know why she’s done a one-eighty.”

“I’m sure she has her reasons,” Steve says, although he does wonder if he should talk to Max about it. He doesn’t know her well, but it seems like she’s freaking out about this whole Billy situation.

Isn’t everyone, though?

It’s so fucking exhausting. What Steve would give to not have been kidnapped by Russians, or greeted by Monster and Post-Monster Billy. Life was so much simpler back then, as absurd as that seems to be.

“She probably does, because Max is too good for Lucas and everyone with half a brain can see that,” Dustin says, which earns him a shove into the wall next to the booth, courtesy of Lucas. “But if she doesn’t explain her reasons for breaking up with him--if she doesn’t open up to the people who care about her--then how can Lucas help her? All she’s doing is making Lucas feel like shit for not being able to.”

Dustin, while making this impassioned speech, maintains very, very intense eye contact with Steve.

Steve sinks into the booth a little more.

“I mean, that’s kind of true, but also--” Lucas lets out a yelp of pain, cutting himself off. “That was my foot, you asshole!”

Dustin leans forward, elbows on the table. “Steve,” Dustin says. “I’ve fought evil Russians with you. I’ve fought demo-dogs with you. You’ve walked me through the elaborate process that is your hair. Tell me, what is going on, and what can I do to help?”

His voice is demanding, but the crease of his eyebrows over his eyes makes him look young, desperate. Steve rubs at his collarbone. He opens his mouth, not entirely sure what he’s going to say--

“I’ve got your coffee for you, sir!” The waitress says cheerily, sliding a jumbo mug across the table and filling it to the brim with hot, black coffee. She leaves a plate of creamer cups next to the mug, and says, “The food’ll be out in just a second.”

“Thank you,” Steve says, tearing open three creamer cups and pouring them in. Piping hot coffee splashes out over the sides, stinging Steve as he reaches for the sugar canister and doles out a large amount of sugar into his mug. “I really needed this.”

“Of course!” She says, and heads back toward the kitchen.

Steve takes a huge mouthful of coffee. Despite the fact that it tastes rusty somehow, and also that it’s so hot he can feel the roof of his mouth burning, Steve still sighs. “Oh, thank God,” he says, after he’s drained half of it.

“Steve,” Dustin says.

Steve sighs and wraps his hands around the steaming mug. With hot coffee coursing through him, a shocking burst of energy--Steve feels better. He tells Dustin so. “I think I really just needed coffee.”

“What you need is sleep,” Lucas says.

Steve ignores him. “It’s nothing you can help with,” Steve says. “I promise. I just gotta do this on my own.”

Dustin sinks back in his seat. His shoulders droop.

Steve clears his throat. “So, anyway,” Steve says, turning to Lucas. “How are you planning to get Max back?”

Lucas sits up straighter. His eyes begin to gleam. “Funny you should ask that…”

***

Tuesday Afternoon: 1:42 p.m.

Because Steve has learned his lesson about Dustin, he’s not surprised at all when Dustin won’t budge from the passenger seat, even though they’re idling outside of his house.

They’d managed to avoid talking about it more at Waffle House, but Steve wasn’t dumb. He’d learned his lesson: Dustin wasn’t fucking giving up. It was evident in the gleam of Dustin’s eyes, and the way that he pushed half his hash browns closer and closer to Steve until Steve took a few reluctant bites.

Lucas had kept up a half-hearted stream of chatter about his plan to woo Max (involving a VHS of The Karate Kid, new skateboard stickers and a lot of begging on his knees), but Dustin had refused to fill in the gaps of the conversation, which left longer and longer spaces in the conversation as Steve attempted to give some stilted, ill-fated advice to Lucas (such as, for instance, maybe not trying to annoy her with gifts until she forgave him). (“But it’s worked before!”) (“Maybe there’s a reason why she keeps breaking up with you.”) (“You couldn’t hold onto Nancy! Why are you trying to give me relationship advice? I’ve won Max back fifteen times already!”)

Dustin had wolfed down his waffles and tapped his foot until the check was paid for and they started shuffling back to the car. And then he had jiggled his leg and cast suspicious, narrow-eyed glances at Steve as they dropped Lucas off, and Steve made the U-turn to go to the Hendersons’.

Steve  thought that Dustin would start talking on the drive over, but apparently, Dustin decided to gather his thoughts. So instead, there had been a tension in the air only broken up by The Clash and Madonna. Dustin genuinely started rubbing his chin before Steve pulled up on the curb next to his house. It was horrifying.

When Dustin refuses to move, Steve helpfully reaches over and opens his door for him. Dustin shuts it right away, and Steve sighs. So he really is doomed.

“All right, get it out of the way,” Steve says, waving a hand impatiently. “What do you have for me now?”

Dustin sucks in both of his cheeks, and then puffs them back out with a little pop. He reaches underneath his baseball cap and itches at his mop of curls. “Take me to a party with you,” Dustin says.

Steve’s world tilts to a little to the right. Just out of confusion.

“Um, what?”

“I know you like to party,” Dustin says carefully. He’s talking slow, like Steve does sometimes and can’t remember all the words he needs. But Dustin never forgets words, the kid’s a stupid little genius. “And since I’m getting older, I’m old enough to go to your parties with you now, Steve. So it makes sense.”

“It really doesn’t,” Steve says blankly.

“You’re my mentor, right?” Dustin says. “Consider this a…mentoring facet.”

“This is really not where I thought this conversation was going,” Steve says.

Dustin taps his nose. “So what’s the answer?”

“No,” Steve says. “Are you crazy? Like, have you gone fucking crazy.”

Dustin doesn’t so much as deflate. The tyke was expecting this response, and was prepared to fight. Oh God. 

“I wouldn’t drink anything,” Dustin says patiently. “I’m just. There to observe. You wouldn’t have to worry about me, I wouldn’t get into trouble.”

Steve’s stomach turns over. “Oh, there’s plenty of trouble you could get into,” Steve says darkly. A dweeby kid at a full-blown house party? What the fuck.

“Just think about it,” Dustin says, and opens Steve’s car door, finally. “Also, my mom wants you over for dinner on Wednesday. You in?”

“Uh, sure,” Steve says, feeling so much like he’s lost the plot. “But I’m not taking you to a party.”

Dustin winks, shuts the door, and runs up to his house.

“I’m not ,” Steve repeats dully. “What the fuck. ”

***

Tuesday Afternoon: 1:46 p.m.

Steve’s not taking Dustin to a party.

Why the fuck does Dustin want to go to a party?

Where did that come from?

First it was all oh Steve, you look like shit, and then it all turned out to be...some elaborate ploy to get Steve to take Dustin to a party?

The plan was fucking nonsensical.

“I’m not taking Dustin to a party,” Steve announces to his still-idle car.

He should probably move away from the Henderson’s curb.

The kid was thirteen. And he said he didn’t wanna drink, only “observe.” What did that mean? Did he wanna perform science experiments on them? Just people-watch? Make fun of all the stumbling drunk people? Make fun of a stumbling drunk Steve?

Dustin didn’t care about popularity, or house parties, or any of that shit. Neither did Steve now, for that matter. Why does Dustin all of a sudden want Steve to be his party plug?

Steve’s brain feels like it’s melting.

He puts the car into drive, and yanks the wheel so hard away from the curb he’s pretty sure he leaves tire tracks on the pavement.

He feels like banging his head against the wheel.

And the worst part?

As stupid as this whole fucking thing was, Dustin was going to insist.

Because he couldn’t take no for an answer.

Even if that was the only fucking possible answer to give.

“What the fuck, ” Steve says. And then again.

Because it bears fucking repeating.

Steve stops at a stop sign automatically, and knocks his head back against his headrest.

“Please let Dustin be kidding,” Steve begs, to a God he doesn’t believe in.

“Please let him just fucking let something go. For once. Oh, my God.”

***

Wednesday Night: 6:11 p.m.

“But Steve,” Dustin says, doing his best impression of a toddler getting denied candy.

“I said no,” Steve says, not even bothering to look up from his borrowed comic book. “This is confusing, Dustin. I thought Jean was supposed to be a good guy?”

“She is, but that’s what the storyline is about,” Dustin says. “She’s called Dark Phoenix, because she’s evil now. Didn’t you read the other ones I lent you?”

“Sure,” Steve says. He actually had. Even though most books were hard for him--his eyes just couldn’t focus on the words properly, or something--it was easier to focus on the comic books. All the bright colors, different fonts. The text boxes were short and sweet, and the drawings were cool as shit, even if Steve would never admit that to Dustin.

Still, Dustin huffs impatiently, as if Steve hadn’t. Steve hides his smile behind the comic.

Then, accusingly, Dustin says, “You’re trying to change the subject, aren’t you? Son of a bitch.”

“It nearly worked,” Steve mutters, closing the comic book and setting it on top of Dustin’s desk. Well, on top of one of the science textbooks that Dustin’s “borrowed” from the library. His desk--his room, even--is cluttered as hell. So many abandoned half-projects littered with cables and wires, and old toys crammed onto shelves and in random corners. Clothes are scattered all over the room, and Dustin’s walls are becoming papered with random posters that he’s picked up. It’s like the clutter is fucking migrating to the walls, since Dustin is running out of floor space.

Dustin flops onto his bed, knocking over a fresh pile of laundry onto Dustin’s floor. It’s not like Steve’s the neatest person in the world, but he still winces as the laundry adds extra layering to the clothes already acting as a quasi-rug. 

“Have you ever considered cleaning up?” Steve asks. “ I know your mom must have an aneurysm every time she walks in here.”

Dustin waves a hand dismissively. “That’s not important,” he says, squirming onto his stomach so that he can make direct eye contact with Steve. He’s narrowing his eyes to convey how serious he is. It just makes him look like he can’t see properly, but Steve does his best to look like he’s taking Dustin seriously. He moves his feet from their resting place on top of a stack of Dustin’s desk and sets them on the floor, accidentally stepping onto some of Dustin’s t-shirts in the process. He even leans forward, elbows on his knees, and matches Dustin’s expression, squinty eyes and all.

“Stop making fun of me,” Dustin says. His eyes narrow even further. Steve has to bite back a laugh. “Why won’t you take me to a party?”

“Other than the reasons I’ve given you already?” Steve asks, shifting back. “Come on, Dustin. This isn’t up for debate.”

“It is if your reasons aren’t valid,” Dustin says.

“What happened to ‘social status isn’t everything,’ and ‘you have to enjoy the people you hang out with’?” Steve asks. “You can’t have it both ways, Henderson.”

Dustin opens his mouth, and then shuts it. He starts to pick at his nails. “That was relationship advice, this is different, ” Dustin says. “And besides, you didn’t take it anyway. So that’s a moot point.”

“I don’t know what ‘moot’ means, but it’s definitely not that,” Steve says. “Robin and I work better as friends, okay? Just leave it alone.”

“Fine,” Dustin says. “Then tell me why you don’t want to go to a party with me.”

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. Rubs at his eyes. He’s too tired for this. He can feel the dark circles under his eyes like an ache. “Leave that alone, too. You’re not even in high school yet, just. Calm down. You’ll get there.”

“I’m not too young,” Dustin says. “Nancy said you’ve been going to high school parties since you were twelve, you can’t fucking pull that on me.”

“Nancy said--when did Nancy say that? Why the hell are you talking to my ex-girlfriend about me?”

Dustin looks away from Steve, toward his nightstand stacked high with old notebooks for a second. Then he turns back to Steve, expression firm. “She said it a while ago,” Dustin says. “Right before you guys started dating. I wasn’t asking her about you, I promise.”

Steve leans back. His head is swimming. “So you--you’re just using an insult that my ex used against me, to try and guilt-trip me into this? That’s not a good move, Henderson.”

“You guys weren’t exes then, ” Dustin says, which is not the fucking point. “All I’m saying is that if you entered the party scene that young, then I can, too.”

“It’s not like it was a fucking good thing that I did that,” Steve says. “No one should be doing that shit that young, okay Dustin? The only people who do that are people who are fucking--messed up.”

Steve runs a hand through his hair and looks down. “The answer is no, okay?”

“But Steve,” Dustin says, more gentle than before. More timid, this time. “You’re going to all these parties alone, and I want you to have someone there with you.”

Steve jerks his head back up. “What?”

“The sleep loss,” Dustin says, waving his hand. “You always look hungover as shit. You don’t feel like hanging out anymore. You won’t tell me what you’re doing. I’m not dumb, Steve.”

Steve stands up abruptly, so fast he has to put a hand on the desk to steady himself. There’s something--burning at the base of his throat. His veins feel hot, somehow. “You think I’m--partying?”

“I know I’m not cool,” Dustin says, and there it is. The hint of steel in his voice. The flash of hurt in his eyes. “But I’m your friend, and you shouldn’t block me out like that. I asked Robin to start going with you, but she said I didn’t know what I was talking about. But I do, okay? You need to stop treating me like a baby. I can be there for you. We’ve fought monsters together, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t trust--just let me go with you, okay? Stop trying to fucking protect me.”

Steve laughs, but it sounds like a cough. He’s nearly vibrating. Angry. He’s fucking. Angry. At Dustin.

“You really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Steve says, leaning forward. He kicks at Dustin’s desk. “You think that’s it, do you? That I’m partying, and I don’t have any fucking friends to go with me, and I don’t tell you about it because you’re a fucking loser. That sound about right to you?”

Dustin scrambles up from his stomach. Sits up ramrod-straight. “No, Steve--”

Steve kicks harder at Dustin’s desk. “No, don’t,” he says, and looks at Dustin. His gaze is stony, and Dustin leans back, palms up. “I fucking get it. I’m just some--douchebag you happened to befriend. And I’m so fucking stupid, I don’t know how to handle myself, and I don’t respect you. I fucking get it , Dustin.”

The room is too small, and sweltering, and Steve needs to get out. “Tell your mom I’m sorry, and something came up,” Steve says. 

“What-- Steve, just let me speak, you asshole,” Dustin says. “That’s not what I--”

“I’m going,” Steve says, decides. He snatches his car keys up from Dustin’s desk. “Got so many fucking parties to go to.”

“Steve, you’re a fucking idiot,” Dustin says, pushing himself off of his bed. He tries to get in Steve’s way, jabbing fingers and trying to block his way as Steve makes his way to Dustin’s bedroom door. “Just listen to me.”

“I’m bullshit,” Steve says. Spits, more like. “You’ve made yourself clear.”

Dustin stills. “You can’t just use that--”

But Steve’s out of his room, and out of the house in the next split second.

He’s not sticking around for that.  

Not for anything in the world.

***

Wednesday Night: 10:17 p.m.

The phone rings so fucking much, Steve leaves it off the hook. 

He also stashes the walkie in the basement closet, and then moves upstairs to his room.

He thinks about getting drunk. 

But that’s just what Dustin would expect him to do, isn’t it? 

It leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

Fucking Henderson. Ruining fucking drinking for him.

He should, though. 

If he’s just some douchebag who hits up too many parties--if that’s all people see him as, he should just. Fucking go for it. Lean into it. Become bullshit. Finally prove Nancy (and now Dustin) right.

Someone who doesn’t give a fuck. Who lost their virginity at eleven and liked it. Who went to parties at twelve, not because they were trying to forget about shitty babysitters and empty houses, but because they were one of the cool kids, precocious in their popularity. Who fucked dozens of girls not to forget about how they liked boys’ smiles and Shelly’s twisted one, but because they were just that suave and loved pussy that much.

Steve thought that that perception would leave him behind when the Upside Down happened. That someone would see through it, that maybe he wouldn’t have to force himself into that mold, anymore.

God fucking damn it.

Steve lays down on his bed. He’s shaking. Thinks there’s a gnawing in his chest, a huge yawning emptiness building up. He’s too tired to cry.

He’s too tired to pretend, tonight.

Steve doesn’t even try to sleep.

He just stares up at his ceiling until the sun rises.

The insides of his cheeks are bitten raw when he finally pulls himself out of bed, and he doesn’t even remember doing it.

***

Thursday Afternoon: 3:39 p.m.

Steve wakes up from a dreamless nap for the first time in weeks.

There’s a steady throbbing between his eyes, though, and it sullies any relief he feels when he sits up. There’s a sharp stabbing pain in his shoulder, since he’d slept with it crunched close to him. He rubs his eyes, checks the clock, and groans, flopping back onto the bed.

In any other circumstance, he’d be relieved that he managed to get three hours of sleep in. Uninterrupted, even.

But now he’s going to fucking late for the ice cream drop-off.

He hasn’t even gotten her fucking ice cream, yet.

Steve stays on the bed for a moment or two, just mourning what his life has become. 

Then he forces himself up, and stomps downstairs to grab his keys.

***

Thursday Afternoon: 4:19 p.m.

When Steve pulls up to the Sinclairs’ house, Erica is already waiting for him with death in her eyes.

Well, maybe Steve is imagining that part. But she certainly doesn’t look happy.

Steve grabs the bag full of two gallon-sized containers of ice cream, and hops out of the car, making his way up the little path toward her seat on the porch. As he approaches, Erica says, “You’re late again.”

“I know,” Steve says. “I overslept. But I do have your ice cream.

Erica cocks an eyebrow, oddly reminiscent of Lucas. “Overslept?” she says. “You look like you haven’t slept in months. The only thing separating you from the whole serial killer vibe is a couple of showers.”

“You’re biting the hand that feeds you,” Steve says, shaking the bag. “Literally.”

“I didn’t even think you’d show up,” Erica says as she grabs the bag. “Seeing as you broke up with Dustin, last night.”

“Shut up,” Steve says. His headache is fucking splitting, and he doesn’t want to think about any of that right now. He just came to drop off some fucking ice cream.

Erica fixes him with a thoroughly unimpressed glare. “I don’t care,” she says. “As far as I’m concerned, your weird friendship with Dustin is none of my concern.”

“Great,” Steve says.

“ But he wouldn’t shut up about how worried he was, when it came to you,” Erica says. “He literally drew up a list of anything and everything that could be wrong with you. I had to listen to him whine for hours about you on Monday, and again on Wednesday when he came over here. I don’t want him ruining any more of my days, Steve.”

“Then why isn’t he here?” Steve asks, rubbing at his throbbing temples. “I know he asked you if he could be.”

“I didn’t want him jeopardizing my ice cream,” Erica says. “So I didn’t give him permission.”

Erica’s gaze turns harder, somehow. She leans up on her tiptoes, and pokes him in the chest. “He’s insufferable, Steve,” she says. “Figure your stuff out, and talk to him.”

“I’m angry at him,” Steve says. Because he is. He can feel the embers of it in his lungs, in the tightening of his fists.

“I don't care,” Erica says. “Fix it. It'll make my life easier.

"Now, get out of here. Penny’s supposed to be here at 4:30, and I can’t have you hanging around here, ruining my street cred.”

***

Thursday Night: 7:08 p.m.

Steve doesn’t want to think about Dustin, about what Erica said, but it keeps intruding into his thoughts, breaking up any other coherence in his brain.

Because sure, Dustin was worried. That much was evident.

Steve may be an idiot, but he’s not blind. Dustin’s constant mother-henning, his begging for Steve to take him to a party with Steve--Dustin was concerned that Steve was partying too much, was getting out of conrol.

But the anger doesn’t stem from that.

It’s more this--burning, close to his heart. Like acid reflux.

It’s Dustin’s assumption of who Steve was.

Like Steve hasn’t changed. Like Steve is still Douchebag Steve Harrington, only now with some love for Dustin. Like Steve wasn’t more than that. It was like Dustin was seeing Kiddy Pool Steve, not Ocean Steve.

Which was fucking--Steve didn’t have any deep edges, or anything like that. But. He thought he had some ragged, threadbare corners. Things that discerned him from his old life. Things that made him different, more than just a guy concerned with the best party, the best social status marker. Sure, he still was prejudiced against some of those things. There were residues of Douchebag Steve Harrington, but that wasn’t wholly who he was. And Steve thought that Dustin could see that.

Could Steve really fault Dustin for not being able to?

Steve thought that they were--tighter than that. Like, they really got each other. Was that so fucking stupid? Why couldn’t he see that Dustin still had these assumptions about him?

And it was just. It was like Dustin was calling Steve plain. Just like paper. Like bullshit, and fuck, Steve couldn’t even think that word without thinking about Nancy slurring over the word, eyes dark and more real than anything he’d ever seen from her.

Steve didn’t know what to do with that. Didn’t know if it was right that he was angry over that.

He just knew that he was, and he wasn’t ready to confront Dustin about that.

Especially since, somehow, some way, that fucking fourteen-year-old had become his best friend.

Seriously, what the fuck was up with Steve’s life.

***

Friday Night: 9:31 p.m.

Steve’s two drinks deep with Robin, and he’s pretty sure that he loves her.

Just in, like, a friend way. As in, she’s the fucking coolest person he’s ever met. Steve tells her so, multiple times.

Robin rolls her eyes and says, around a mouth full of pizza crust, “I’m just listening to you, I’m not solving the Cold War, Steve.”

“You’re solving my Cold War,” Steve says.

Robin leans over the pizza box and flicks Steve on the forehead. “You can’t be that drunk yet, dingus,” Robin says.

Steve shrugs. “Drinking on a nearly empty stomach,” Steve says.

Robin frowns at him, and Steve holds his hands up. “It’s not that I’m avoiding food, it’s just that--I’m forgetting about it. My brain’s only fucking so big, and so I just. End up missing things, sometimes.”

“Like how you forgot about our dinner until I showed up on your doorstep?”

“This whole fucking fight with Dustin is taking up eighty percent of my thought capacity,” Steve says.

“We haven’t gotten around to that, by the way,” Robin says. “And that’s the most pressing thing, not the fact that Billy Hargrove is making you lose your chill over the Upside Down shit because he’s messing up your thought--file cabinets? Is that what you called it?”

Steve flops back, and ends up blinding himself with the overhead lights. Steve shuts his eyes tight, cursing the too-bright fixtures stuck in his basement. Some inane television movie is blaring on the screen, muted. It provides an oddly ethereal backlight for Robin and her wide, unimpressed expression. A corner of her mouth is smeared with pizza sauce.

“Isn’t it time for you to share shit?” Steve asks weakly.

Robin shakes her head. “I just told you about how much I hate my dad because he’s so homophobic. It’s your turn, asshole. Do you need more wine?”

Steve shakes his head. He takes a deep breath, and tries to figure out the right sequence he wants to say things in.

“I just--changed,” Steve begins. “Like, I know I used to be horrible and boring and popular or whatever. I only thought about surface-level shit, which was probably better, because I can only handle that stuff--but I’ve been forced to deal with other stuff, for a while now, and I think it’s made me a better person. And I thought that Dustin saw that--I thought that Dustin saw who I was now, and that’s why I was so down to be his friend, even though he’s, like, two. And then he just...assumed I was going to parties. Stupidly. And he thought I wasn’t telling him because I thought he was too lame to come with me. It just dawned on me that I had another role to play for Dustin, when I thought that I didn’t.”

Robin leans forward, resting her elbows on the coffee table. “I think I get what you’re saying,” she says. “But--Steve. You told me that the fact that Billy didn’t fit in the right box was fucking up your brain, because you relied on expectations and categorization so much. And I get that Dustin is smart, but he’s also just a teenager. He might also be used to black-and-white. And he may not have even be thinking like that--it may have just come across that way. When he called me, he was so worried, Steve. He outright begged me to start going to parties with you, Steve. I bet he knows there’s something more to it, even if he got the first part wrong.”

Steve squeezes his eyes shut. “You’re right,” he breathes out. “You’re right, and I’ll talk to him soon, tomorrow, about it. I just…”

“You used that popular-kid thing as armor,” Robin suggests. "And you wanted Dustin to see through it, because you're tired of hiding, and now you're worried that he hasn't."

Steve shrugs.

“You used it for so long, though.  Since you were--what? Eleven? Twelve? I can’t even begin to understand why you would start going to parties that young. Was it your parents?”

No, Steve thinks. 

It was red crunchy hair, and Dubble Bubble bubblegum, and a voice harsh and angry, as angry as the movements she made to get him on top of her, to get him--

Steve sits up fast, and Robin says, “Steve?” and Steve shakes his head, and he’s not sure what, exactly, he’s going to say to her, he’s not sure it’s her in front of him and not Shelly, and then--

A tinny bell sound echoes weakly down to the basement living room.

Robin frowns. “What was that?”

“The doorbell,” Steve says. “We should probably--it’s probably Dustin.”

Steve squares his shoulders. “I should apologize.”

Robin smiles at him. “I’m proud of you,” she says.

Steve nods.

His heart is shuddering in his chest, but he knows what he has to do. So he’ll do it. 

For Dustin.

Robin was always preaching about honesty, anyway. And what was that thing that Eleven always said?

Friends don't lie.

Yeah.

Maybe Steve'll try that, for once.

***

9:47 p.m.

It’s not Dustin.

Steve blinks. “You’re not Dustin,” he says, which is the stupidest thing to say.

Billy is leaning heavily on Max, who is struggling to support him, going by the trembling of her arms and legs. Her eyes are wide, wild, and Billy’s head is lolling from side to side. He’s wearing a flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off, and there are deep bruises forming all along his biceps.

“Please,” Max gasps, and Steve reaches over and slings Billy’s arm over his shoulders, heart beating like a jackhammer.

Because Billy is--

Billy is a mess. Billy is fragile, and Billy is bleeding, and this is. Steve was never meant to see this. No one was meant to, not beneath the old leather jackets and the rolled cigarettes and Old Spice cologne--

“Charity offer still available?” Billy mumbles, between split-open lips. Blood is running down his chin.

“Holy fuck,” Steve says. “I--yes. God. Holy shit.”

***

Saturday Morning: 2:34 a.m.

It’s official.

Steve Harrington and Billy Hargrove are now roommates.

God help Steve.

Chapter Text

Steve’s not sure if Jonathan remembers when they were best friends.

Granted, it lasted for an hour, at best. Steve’s not sure why he remembers it so vividly, to be honest. But whenever he thinks back to first grade, it sticks out in his memory, demanding his attention.

Jonathan had been this floppy-haired, quiet kid in clothes way too big for him, and he’d only had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch on the second day of school. He’d sat himself down in the corner of the cafeteria, far apart from all the other kids.

Steve had noticed that he only had a sandwich, and he remembers thinking about how sad that was. He had a sandwich and a Jello cup and a baggie of Goldfish, and he wondered if that extra stuff was because his mom loved him more than Jonathan’s mom loved him. If that was true, then Steve felt sorry for Jonathan. Jonathan deserved some Goldfish, and a mother who loved him.

So Steve decided to fix that himself. He stood up from where the rest of the class was eating, and walked over to Jonathan.

“I’m Steve,” Steve said.

Jonathan stared up at him through his floppy hair. “I know,” Jonathan said.

“I have Goldfish,” Steve said, sitting down criss-cross-applesauce in front of Jonathan. “Want some?”

As it turned out, Goldfish was Jonathan’s favorite.

And that Bugs Bunny was Jonathan’s favorite cartoon character, same as Steve.

“It’s like we were destined to be friends,” Steve declared, coaxing a tiny half-smile from Jonathan.

During recess, they played on the swings, and Steve asked Jonathan if his mom loved him.

“Just because you didn’t have a big lunch,” Steve said quickly, noticing how quickly Jonathan’s face dropped. “If she doesn’t, it’s okay. I can bring more Goldfish every day, so we can share.”

“She does,” Jonathan said.  An odd shadow passed over his face, but it could be a trick of the light as Jonathan swung higher and higher. “She’s just busy. I got a new brother recently, and my dad doesn’t help with him at all. She has to do it all--my lunch and picking me up and looking after Will, so she’s acting like a dumb b--dumb, is what my dad says. But she really does love me.”

“Oh,” Steve said. “I don’t have any little siblings, but I always wanted some.”

“Why?” Jonathan asked, scrunching up his nose. “All they do is cry and poop all day.”

“But they’ll grow up, and then they’ll wanna play with you,” Steve said. “Like we grew up, right? And then I wouldn’t be alone when I play.”

“Doesn’t your mom play with you?” Jonathan asked. “My mom did. Or she did, before she was busy with Will.”

“No,” Steve said. His stomach churned uncomfortably, so Steve started kicking his feet down into the ground to slow himself down. “She never even wants to take me to the playground and play with other kids. She says that proper women don’t go to playgrounds, even with their kids. I think she just wants to drink wine at home, though.”

Now it was Jonathan looking at him oddly. Steve hurried to correct himself. “But she always packs Goldfish,” he said, “which is my favorite, and she knows it. And since it’s your favorite, I’ll ask her to pack even more so we can share.”

“Once my mom is less busy, I’ll see if my mom will take you to the playground with me,” Jonathan said. “And Will can come along, and we can pretend that he’s your brother instead of mine.”

The two boys beamed at each other, and Steve suddenly became convinced that this boy, with his too-big t-shirt and crooked smile, was going to be his best friend. 

It lasted until Steve climbed into his mom’s car, waving an enthusiastic goodbye to Jonathan.

She frowned. “Is that Lonnie Byers’s kid?” she asked.

“That’s Jonathan,” Steve said. “He’s really nice. He’s gonna be my best friend.”

His mom turned to look at him. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “No, sweetie,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

Steve blinked. “What do you mean?”

“He’s the son of a bad man,” his mom said. Her smile was still painted on, but Steve privately thought it looked freaky on her face. Like it didn’t belong there. “And sons take after their fathers. You should socialize with other kids. Like Tommy, your classmate? He and his mom go to the same church as us, remember?”

They hardly ever went to church, because his dad never wanted to wake up early enough on Sunday mornings for the services. Steve couldn’t remember the last time they’d actually gone to the Presbyterian Church that his mom was always talking about.

Steve didn’t say that, though. Because his mom’s weird smile would turn into a frown, and that was even worse, because that meant timeouts.

“I don’t think Jonathan likes his dad very much,” Steve said, instead. “So maybe they’re different than other fathers and sons are.”

His mom only shook her head. “It’s genetics,” she said. “You and Jonathan Byers will stop being friends. Okay, Steve? I know you don’t like it, but it’s for your own good.”

The next day at school, Steve refused to look at Jonathan, even though he kept trying to catch Steve’s eyes.

Making his mom angry was always no good. And Steve wasn’t about to do it on purpose.

At lunchtime, though, Jonathan didn’t have any Goldfish. Again.

Steve considered it for a moment, and then tucked his baggie of Goldfish back into his lunch bag. 

When it was time for recess that day, Steve waited for all his other classmates to line up next to the wall of cubbies, before taking the very rear of the line. When they started filing out of the classroom, Steve scanned the wall of cubbies, zeroing on Jonathan’s cubby with his threadbare gray backpack.

As he passed by the cubby, he tossed the baggie full of Goldfish into the backpack.

When he finally got to the playground, he sought out Tommy, determined to become friends with him.

Steve pointedly ignored Jonathan, sitting alone on the swingset, waiting for him.

***

Robin stays the night on Friday, because she’s apparently the best person that Steve has ever had the pleasure of knowing.

“My mom won’t care,” Robin said, shrugging. “She doesn’t know that I’m friends with you, because she’d be worried that I was fucking you. So you’re Becky from band, and you’ve been having a lot of boy problems.”

Steve snorted. “You wish I was Becky from band,” he’d said, which had earned him a slap on the shoulder from Robin.

“The real Becky has buck teeth and supports Reagan, for your information,” Robin said. “I have standards, Harrington. And anyway, you do have a boy problem, so we should focus on that. ”

They’d managed to get Billy to the bathroom, and had helped him strip to his boxers. There were these mottled, horrible bruises swelling up on his chest, not just his shoulders and arms. Not to mention the dark, black red blood that had started to crust on his yellowing hospital bandages. 

Robin made a face when she’d seen Billy’s grimy bandages, and she’d disappeared for a moment, before reappearing with cling film. At Steve’s confused, slow blinks, she’d said, “We need to keep those poor excuses for dressings dry.”

Although Billy was conscious, he was silent as Steve and Robin dumped Billy into the tub and carefully wrapped his torso in plastic wrap. Max had followed them into the bathroom, but hung near the sink, hands gripping the sides of the basin so hard that Steve thought the ceramic might crack underneath her knuckles. 

Billy refused to make eye contact with Steve or Robin. He kept his knees bent, like he was trying to curl in on himself, but his arms hung limp in the tub. When Steve turned on the tap, Billy jumped and pulled himself forward in the tub, a dark frown forming on his bruised lips. 

Steve leans forward, palms facing up, and notices that Billy has a black eye, on top of fucking everything else.

“Do you think you could have a concussion?” Steve asks. He keeps his voice purposely neutral. He’s pretty sure that Billy would try to take him down if he used any kind of soft voice with Billy, no matter what fucking state he was in.

Billy shakes his head. “No way,” he says, grimacing. He still won’t look at Steve or Robin.

Robin turns to Max. “Is that true?” 

Max shrugs. Tear tracks are streaking her face, and she won’t stop looking at Billy. “I--I don’t know,” she says, “When we got in the car, he said no hospitals, so I took him here, and I just--it was so bad. I hope so. I don’t know.”

Steve sighs. His hands are shaking without his consent, and he can’t stop cataloguing Billy’s bruises. Can’t stop trying to compare it to when Billy had hit him.

 He grabs a washcloth from the cabinet above the sink, and sticks it under the lukewarm water pouring from the tap before handing it to Billy, who grabs it slowly, with stiff arms. The bathwater welling up around Billy’s body is already swirling with red sluggish blood and black grime.

“Okay,” Steve says, “We’ll get you washed off, and then I’ll drive you to the ER.”

Billy’s head jerks upward. His eyes are dark and shadowed, made darker underneath his swollen black eye. His jaw twitches as he grits his teeth. 

“No fucking hospitals,” he says. 

“It’s on my dime,” Steve says, crossing his arms. “You look like shit, and there’s no way your ribs aren’t bruised, maybe even broken. Did you know that broken ribs can cause punctured lungs? Which can lead to death. I’m not letting someone die in my fucking house.” Again.

“I’m not your goddamn charity case,” Billy insists. He can’t even sit upright in the tub, and he’s having to resort to leaning awkwardly against the side of it. The washcloth Steve had handed him to wipe himself down with sits limp and useless in his fist. “I’m not going there again, okay, Harrington?”

“You’re in my fucking house,” Steve snaps. His voice is coming out harder and more twisted than he’s used to. “I call the shots, and you look like you’re gonna pass out and forget how to breathe because of your fucking dad.”

“I look better than you did when I used you as my fucking punching bag. You’re a wimp, how can you call yourself a guy, much less a fucking king?” Billy spits between bloodied lips.

Steve curls his hand up so tightly he can feel his nails biting into his skin, breaking into his palms and leaching out blood. “How the fuck are you still on that? We’re not even in high school anymore. You’re a goddamned deadbeat and so am I, this has nothing to do with fucking--social status, or former social status. You’re in my house, asshole, why the hell won’t you go to a hospital?”

“I’m not going back there, even if it means I die in your McMansion,” Billy says, so quickly and viscerally it stops Steve short.

Robin clears her throat, and Steve jerks his neck to look at her. He’d forgotten that she was even here, but she was, leaning against the tub, eyebrows lifted high on her face. Steve looks at Max, and she seems much more resigned than Robin. Probably from years of dealing with Billy’s bullshit.

“That,” Robin says, jerking a finger between Steve and Billy, “is getting us nowhere.”

“If Harrington would just listen to me--”

“Shut up,” Robin says, and ignores Billy when he tries to talk even louder over her. “Do you have any broken bones?”

Billy scowls at her. “No.”

“And you’d know?”

“He’s hit harder before,” Billy says.

“But he did break your stitches,” Robin says, gesturing to the dark bloodstains on his bandages. “And you need a doctor for that, no matter what your argument is.”

Billy says, “I’ll risk it.”

“Infection?” Robin asks. “Bleeding out? I’m not going to, and Steve sure as hell won’t. In fact, he’s hellbent on doing the opposite of what you’d like, it seems to me.”

Billy says to Steve, “Your girlfriend is a fucking bitch.”

“I don’t care that you’re a mess,” Steve says, eyes narrowed, “I will beat you up. And I’ll target all the places your dad did, just to make it hurt more.”

“We’re not dating,” Robin says, completely unbothered, “And you’re angry because I’m right. If you’re nervous that your dad will find you, we can register you under a different name. And Steve’s paying for it, so he won’t know.”

“I don’t give a fuck about my dad,” Billy says. He looks absolutely pathetic and hideous, wrapped in plastic wrap and dirty bandages and chest-deep in brown bathwater. “I just don’t want to go back there.”

“Why the hell--”

“Is it because of the Mind Flayer?” Max asks suddenly, taking a step forward. Her eyes are still blown wide, just as wild as they had been when Steve had seen her at his doorstep.

Billy flinches without meaning to, and the hot, angry blood that had been pounding in Steve’s ears recedes a bit. Steve sighs, and unfolds his arms. “Dude,” Steve says, “You just spent weeks at that same hospital.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Billy says, but he won’t even make eye contact with Steve. He’s staring down into his disgusting bathwater.

“D’you want me to call Will?” Steve offers. “He could meet us there.”

“Your freaky premature twink friend?” Billy asks, sneering. “Fuck you.”

“We’re going to the hospital no matter what,” Steve says, and turns to Robin and Max. “I’m gonna grab my keys.”

“Fuck you,” Billy says with more intensity this time.

Steve rolls his eyes, and runs to get his keys from their hook.

***

To be clear: Tommy H was always kind of a dick, and Steve had always known that.

And Steve had always tolerated it, because he was kind of a dick, too.

Steve hadn’t realized what his reputation had become until Tommy had told him at their sophomore year lunch table, wearing a huge shit-eating grin. 

“Carol heard Valarie Saunders crying in the girls’ bathroom near Ms. Netherby’s classroom,” Tommy said, clapping Steve too hard on the shoulders as he threw himself into the seat next to Steve’s. “She get herself some action from lil’ Harrington, then?”

“What?” Steve asked, stabbing a piece of chicken. Or what looked like chicken. He was never sure, when it came to cafeteria food. “Just because Valarie Saunders is crying, doesn’t mean it has to do with me.”

“Oh, come on,” Todd piped up from across from Tommy. He was on of the kids on Steve’s varsity basketball team. “We all saw you and Val going at it at Nate’s house party last Saturday. What else could she be crying about?”

“Her fault for picking Steve,” Tommy said airily. “She knows he’s a player."

“What--I’m not a player,” Steve said.

Tommy and half of the kids at their lunch table take a moment to simultaneously look at Steve. Steve blinks.

“Dude,” Todd said, “You’ve been getting pussy since middle school.”

“And you haven’t stayed with a girl once,” Tommy added in. “Wish I could’ve been that way. Carol gave me a handjob once in eighth grade, and I’ve been trapped with her ever since.”

“You’d be dead in a ditch somewhere without Carol,” Steve said without missing a beat.

“You’re right,” Tommy said. “And I’d never be able to pull like you. Especially all those older girls. Must be that pretty face of yours.”

“So I’ve been told,” Steve said, suddenly stiff. He shifted in his seat and tried not to think of Sh--of her, not that it mattered, because she wasn’t important . She wasn’t .

Tommy grinned, nonplussed, and held up his milk carton. “To Steve Harrington, Most Valuable Player, and King of Hawkins High!”

So that had been that.

It’s not as if Steve had been doing it on purpose, though .

He just--

Never associated sex with intimacy, or relationships.

It was something that seemed--weird, to him. He couldn’t imagine the force behind sex combined with the gentle caresses seen in rom-coms. All sex he’d had had been transactional.

A girl found him cute, so he fucked her, and then she was satisfied, so they didn’t talk.

Simple as that.

But apparently, that meant that Steve was an asshole.

So Steve leaned into it.

Because he already ran with the athletes, his social standing was better than average. And so he acted more aloof. Goofed off in class more. Spent more time drinking with Tommy and Carol, instead of writing English essays.

It was easy, for him. So he figured that this was who he was. Who he was meant to be. Some player heading towards being a burnout, having fun and way too much sex along the way.

(Never mind that he never exactly sought out sex. It just...always seemed to find him.) 

(And Steve the Player, King of Hawkins High--he couldn’t say no to it. That would be inconsistent with everything else that he was supposed to be.)

But then, there was Nancy.

The first time he’d ever seen her, he’d just transferred into AP Environmental two weeks late into the semester, after charming the pants off his guidance counselor. It was either that or stay in PreCal, and he’d already managed to fail two pop quizzes and get detention from Mr. Peterson three times.

He’d walked into the classroom, and immediately caught eyes with her.

She hadn’t been wearing any makeup, and her hands had been stained with blue ink as she diligently copied down notes into flashcards. She’d been wearing this lacey white sweater, and her hair was brushed and loose around her shoulders, accentuating the diamond shape of her face and her jaws. Her doe eyes looked him up and down, burned with recognition and something else, before she turned back to her notes.

It was the first time Steve had ever felt something stirring in his stomach. Something burning, a need to get closer to her--a need to touch her, Steve realized.

Nancy had been something innocent but sensual to Steve. Something that he cupped in his hands, something he drank long and deep from. Something he lost himself in, in her gentle hands and words and the deliberate way she maneuvered herself and her delicate body. 

Something Steve needed to have, needed to want. He’d liked her. He’d really liked her, in a way that he’d never liked anyone before.

So when Tommy called her a bitch, when Tommy called her a whore and referred to her like he’d referred to all the other girls that Steve had been with--that’s when it hit Steve. Not for the first time by any means, but in a more meaningful way. An uppercut that had managed to leave him winded.

Tommy was a fucking asshole, and he always would be.

And Steve didn’t like that.

And Steve didn’t like himself, either.

When he left Tommy and Carol behind in that alleyway, Steve likes to think that he left behind a lot more, too.

(Steve hopes. Steve hopes that he left behind a lot more, too.)

***

“Do you need anything?” Steve asks awkwardly. He’s hovering near the doorway of the guest bedroom, and he has an inexplicable inability to place his hands anywhere naturally. He keeps holding his hands in front of him like a prayer, and then slung behind his back, and then jammed into his front pockets. He never fully realized how weird hands were, and how to use them in regular conversation. What the hell has he done with them for eighteen years?

It’s a testament to how strange and tiring this night has been, that Billy just says a simple “No,” before turning his back on Steve. No insults, no cursing, no nothing. 

Steve understands the cue well enough, and shuts the bedroom door behind him.

Steve takes a moment in the hallway, leaning his head against the satiny wallpaper. He breathes in deep through his nose, and is surprised by the achy stretch of his joints and the odd, heavy hollowness he feels under his eyes and between his cheeks. 

He supposes it makes sense, how exhausted he is. What with the chronic lack of sleep he’s had, and the last four hours that he’d spent in the ER waiting room with Robin and Max. Robin had ended up falling asleep on Steve’s shoulder, and Max had used the payphone near the front desk to relay a short, clipped message to her mother about spending the night at Jane Hopper’s place.

“It might be awhile before I’m home,” Steve had heard Max say. “If you try and force me back, I’ll tell everyone I know about what Neil did. Don’t think that I won’t.”

Steve had fully expected for Billy to stay another few days in the hospital, but eventually, Billy had emerged with new crutches and a worn-down doctor. 

“He’s already discharged?” Robin had asked, with more than a little disbelief as the three of them made their way over to the doctor. 

“We can’t keep him here by force,” The doctor said simply. His eyes had flashed oddly, but he’d said nothing else. “He’s got new stitches, and we wrapped his ribs. They might be broken, but he didn’t consent to an X-ray.”

He’d turned to Steve, looked him up and down. “You the roommate?”

Steve blinked. Max jabbed him in the side with her elbow.

“Um, apparently,” Steve said.

The doctor nodded, and handed over a few prescription slips. “I’ve prescribed Codeine for the pain, but if it gets too much, fulfill this other prescription for paracetamol as well. Also, I’m not medically qualified to prescribe Diazepam, but I’ve written up a referral that includes that as a suggestion. Maybe, ahem, look into it. Anyway, I don’t think he’s got a concussion, but I’d like him to stay away from operating heavy machinery for a few days nonetheless. So if you could fulfill these prescriptions on his behalf, I think that would be best.”

“Oh, um,” Steve said. “I mean--sure. Yeah.”

“Maybe consider pressing charges to whoever did this,” the doctor said, turning to Billy. “I wouldn’t someone who did--all that, to get away with this.”

Billy had just stared at him until the doctor cleared his throat, straightened out his lab coat, and hightailed it out of the waiting room.

Billy rolled his eyes, and started making his way out of the ER without acknowledging anybody.

Slowly.

Because he was on crutches.

Max rolled her eyes and followed him, sticking her tongue out at him whenever he tried to glare at her.

“What the hell did that doctor just say to me?” Steve asked Robin.

Robin snatched the prescription slips out of Steve’s hands as they started walking. “Two of these are pretty nice painkillers,” Robin said. She waved the referral slip in the air, squinting her eyes at it. “This one is for my anxiety medication, though.”

She paused for a minute, and then shrugged. “He must really hate hospitals.”

“You’re on anxiety medication?” Steve asked, frowning.

Robin slapped his shoulder. “Is that a problem?”

“ Ow-- and no, it’s not,” Steve had said, rubbing his shoulder. “It just--my dad didn’t like psychiatrists, or people on those types of medications. That’s all.”

Robin’s face dropped a bit. Got stony, but her eyes had a soft center. Her eyes became squinty, like she was looking into Steve and felt sorry about what she saw.

Steve frowned. “Don’t look at me like that,” Steve said.

“Your dad is a piece of shit,” Robin said. “You know that? It’s important to me that you know that.”

“Apparently I’m not the only one,” Steve said pointedly, thinking about Robin’s complaints about her dad’s homophobia, earlier that night. Thinking about Billy, and how he has to fucking hobble his way out of a hospital tonight.

“Doesn’t mean your dad is any less of an asshole,” Robin repeated.

Steve, in response, had just shrugged.

Now, in the hallway of his own home, Steve can’t stop thinking about it.

About Billy’s shitty dad, he means. How much shittier he is than all of the other shitty dads he knew, including his own.

He knew that the doctor had referred to Steve as the roommate. He’d kind of hoped that that meant Billy had taken him up on the offer.

To be honest--

Despite everything. Despite Billy’s menacing presence, and his history with Steve, and the fact that he might be the most unpleasant person that Steve’s ever met.

Steve wants Billy to be his roommate if it means Billy doesn’t go back to that shit.

Without meaning to--without thinking about it, really--Steve finds himself five steps to the right again, right in front of Billy’s door.

Steve bites his lip, but pounds on the door anyway.

Billy sighs so loudly that Steve can hear it through the fucking door, but there’s the creak of the bed and thudding, uneven footsteps, and then Billy yanks the door open. Steve takes a step back, but it’s mostly out of habit.

“What, Harrington?” Billy asks.

“You’re actually staying here, right?” Steve asks, the words coming out way too fast, pushing out past his teeth with a nervous, jittery energy. “You’re not going back to your dad’s?”

Billy blinks at him. “What the fuck ?”

“You’re staying here. Permanently. Or until you can get your own place,” Steve clarifies. The pace of his words is way too fast, still, and Steve has to remind himself to slow the hell down. “You’re not planning to go back after your injuries are healed, are you?”

Billy stares at Steve. His eyes are so glittery, like fucking jewels, and it’s goddamn unfair how they refract the dull hallway-fixture light. 

It’s the most neutral expression Steve’s ever seen on Billy. No smirk, no animal-like growl, no grimacing. It’s settled closer to confusion, but Steve prefers it because it’s the most non-threatening expression he’s ever seen Billy wear.

“Yeah,” Billy says, finally. His jaw flexes once, twice. His shoulders start to pull up toward his ears. “Until I can afford my own place. Is that...a problem?”

“No,” Steve says, scrubbing a hand through his hair. His speech suddenly slows itself down to its regular speed, and he feels his shoulder blades settle back into his spine. He hadn’t realized how tense and scrunched-up he’d been, until he settled back down. “That’s--better. Way better.”

Billy opens his mouth just the slightest bit, but shuts it again with so much force Steve can hear his jaw click. “Well--okay then.”

“Goodnight, Billy,” Steve says, tapping the door frame with his fists. He starts to make his way down the hallway, toward the basement stairs, back turned toward Billy.

Which is why he can’t see Billy’s expression when Billy says, “Night, Steve,” and slams the door closed behind him.

***

When Steve first heard about Jonathan’s pictures, all he could think of was that he actually was a piece of shit, just like his father.

He took pictures of them. During private fucking moments. And worse yet, from what that girl had said about them, there were even more private photos. Private photos of Nancy.

He wasn’t allowed to have Nancy that way. Byers had no fucking right. What had happened then was fucking personal, and Jonathan had taken pictures like Nancy’s body like he was entitled to it, when nobody fucking was. That wasn’t okay. That was nowhere near fucking okay. 

Steve’s blood felt like it was getting repulsed out of his body, and his eyes had gone so flat that Tommy, the asshole that he was, still asked Steve if he was okay.

“No,” was all Steve had said. “Let’s find Byers.”

And Jonathan--

Jonathan had been jittery, eyes wide and scared as he took a step back, and he wasn’t fucking allowed to be that scared, because he’d done something twisted and wrong and twisted and perverted, and when Steve told Jonathan so, he had the fucking audacity to stutter out something about his missing brother, to try and use his brother as an excuse for all this shit. 

Even Shelly hadn’t ever tried that. (Even though she never thought she needed an excuse.)

(But that.

Was beside the fucking point.)

Steve’s vision had gone white-hot. 

He doesn’t remember dropping the camera, but he remembers the searing satisfaction that churned in his stomach as Jonathan gasped and lunged for it. He also doesn’t remember tearing up the photos, but that’s probably just as well. They needed to be erased, they needed to be burned, they needed to be--

They needed to never have existed.

Jonathan Byers had done that to Nancy. And Steve wasn’t going to stand for that shit.

Steve was never, ever going to stand for that shit (again) .

***

When Steve gets back down to the basement, Max and Robin have set themselves up, Max on the couch with plenty of blankets and pillows, and Robin on the floor with an old sleeping bag and a satin pillow that she’d stolen from Steve’s mother’s room.

“You guys good for the night?” Steve asks, leaning his elbows on the back of an armchair.

“Yeah,” Max says. “Thanks, Steve.”

Steve nods. He rocks on his heels for a second, and makes eye contact with Robin, who shrugs. Steve groans, and then turns back to Max. “Look,” Steve says, “This is something we can definitely cover in the morning, but, um. What’s your plan for your--for you and your mom, and Neil. Is what I was wondering.”

Max frowns, and looks down at her hands.

“I know that it would be difficult to go back there,” Robin jumps in, her voice soft and careful. “And Steve and I don’t want you to, to be completely honest. But you are a minor. Billy’s not going back, but your situation is different from a legal standpoint.”

Max presses her lips together. “I know that,” Max says. “And I know that Billy’s not gonna press charges, because there’s no way in hell he’d put himself in that kind of position on purpose. But.”

Max takes a deep breath. A tear drips down her cheek, and Steve feels his heart sink down into his chest as Robin stands up and jumps onto the couch, not hesitating to pull Max close to her.

“I’ve never had the best relationship with my mom,” Max explains slowly, trying to keep her voice steady. “I was always closer to my dad, and I guess that made her feel bad, or insecure, or something, because she always--she tiptoes around me, like she’s nervous I’ll just reject her. And that really frustrated me--it frustrates me. But it made me feel bad, too, because she just wanted to have a good relationship with me. And I love her, you know?”

Max takes another deep breath, and rubs out the tears on her cheeks with the edge of her shirt. “But now, knowing that she knew about Billy--seeing her just let it happen. She didn’t try and do anything, and when I came home, when I walked in on that--she just looked so surprised, but she didn’t move, and I. I already knew Neil was a piece of shit, I think I could’ve dealt with that because I fucking knew that already. But my mom. I don’t know how I could live with her, knowing what I know now.”

Robin and Steve look at each other, and Steve suddenly remembers that Robin’s only four years older than Max. Steve’s only five. That gap feels so big in so many important ways--like so many life experiences had set Steve and Robin on a higher plane than the other kids, made them more mature and responsible.

But things like this. Parents. The Upside Down, to an extreme degree. It makes those years, those life experiences that set them apart from the kids, feel watery, useless. Because Steve doesn’t know what to do, or what to say, and Robin’s looking at him like maybe he does because he’s got a year on her

What the fuck is a year, anyway, Steve thinks.

But Steve’s got to say something. He’s got to--figure a way out of this, one that doesn’t feel sticky and ugly. He’s not sure if there is one, though.

“No one’s…” Steve sighs. “I’m not gonna make excuses for your mom, and Robin’s not going to, either. Because we don’t know why she did what she did. All I can say is that--I understand you. I know that this isn’t something you can support, and--and the situation’s complicated, is what I’m saying. And--” Steve groans, and pushes his head into his hands.

“You’re a minor,” Robin says, softly. “And you ran away during a really bad moment, for your entire family. They’re gonna want you back, and if you don’t come back…”

“The police’ll get involved,” Max finishes. “And I’d have to tell them about what happened with Billy.”

“Are you ready to do that?” Robin asks. Carefully. Calmly. The way she speaks to Steve, sometimes. Like she’s trying to pull out an answer through slow, careful tugs, instead of yanking it out. Steve’s never appreciated how well she does it, until he watches Max’s face keep twisting up, how she starts to chew on a ragged thumbnail as Robin watches calmly, never impatient, waiting for Max to say something.

“It’s Billy’s story to tell,” Max says, eventually, pressing her lips together.

“It’s yours, too,” Robin says. “And there are consequences here for you, too. So it’s your decision to make.”

Max tugs on her thumbnail with her teeth. 

The room stretches out in silence. Steve feels like rocking on his heels, but he forces himself to stay still.

“I don’t know,” Max says, eventually. “I don’t wanna--I don’t know what that would mean for my mom, and I can’t…” she swallows. “I wish this had never happened. I wish I didn’t have to--think about this. Any of it.”

“I know,” Steve and Robin say at the same time.

Max presses her fist over her thumb, so that she won’t chew on it anymore. “Can I--I know I have to deal with this, soon,” she says, looking up at Steve and Robin. She takes a deep breath, and rolls her shoulders back.

Her eyes begin to burn again, fierce and stony. The Max that Steve knew, then. “Tomorrow,” she says, firmly. “I know I have to deal with this. And I will. I promise it’ll be tomorrow. Tonight, I need a minute.”

Robin nods. “As long as it’s tomorrow,” she says.

“Take all the time you need,” Steve adds.

“Tomorrow,” Max says, and Steve knows it’s a promise she won’t break.

It rings heavy in his chest, but it’s a thick heaviness. Something that feels solid, true. Steve finds himself nodding.

“One more night,” Steve says. The words taste weird on his lips. Robin stares at him with an unreadable expression. “And then we’ll deal with everything.”

(Steve can’t help but hope that that night lasts a lifetime.)

(But as soon as tomorrow comes--he knows it in his heart. 

They’ll all start dealing with everything.

For real, this time.)

Chapter Text

Dustin is on Steve’s porch.

He’s out of breath, face red and dripping with sweat. His hair is pushed back and messier than usual, and he’s crumpled up his baseball cap to dab at the sweat on his forehead. His bike has been tossed to the side carelessly, wheels splayed out at odd angles against Steve’s porch flooring. Steve wonders if the bike’s painting has been scratched. He hopes not. Dustin once forced him to spend an entire afternoon driving around to different shops just to find the right-colored paint to touch up his precious bike.

“I biked over here,” Dustin is saying, “in the middle of summer, drenching myself in the heat and also sweat, so that I can apologize and we can move past this, and you won’t let me into your house?”

“Um,” Steve says.

Dustin groans and pulls his hands over his head. The armpits of his t-shirt are also soaked through with sweat. 

“And you won’t tell me why?” Dustin demands.

“There’s a lot of reasons,” Steve says. “That I can’t...really get into.”

In Steve’s defense, it’s true enough. There are at least two reasons. One in the guest bedroom, probably (hopefully) still asleep, and one in the basement, watching Saturday morning cartoons and making snarky comments with Robin.

Dustin narrows his eyes, making his face look even more tomato-like than usual. Steve tries to keep a straight face, but he can feel the sides of his mouth curling up.

(So sue him. Dustin looks ridiculous right now.)

“Is it because of Billy Hargrove’s car in your driveway right now?” he asks, pointing aggressively to the Oldsmobile parked half on the driveway, and half on Steve’s lawn, because Max is a terrible driver, no matter what she says.

Steve blinks.

“Shit,” Steve says. “I...uh...well, I forgot about that.” 

“Why the hell is Billy Hargrove here?” Dustin asks. “I thought we agreed that that was a bad idea.”

Steve frowns. “We didn’t agree on anything, Dustin. You told me it was a bad idea, I said I wanted to do it anyway, and you didn’t listen to me.”

“Yeah, well, you have some weird fucking tendencies to do what’s exactly wrong for you,” Dustin snaps. He crosses his arms across his chest. “Excuse me for trying to look out for you.”

Steve feels his blood surge upward all at once. He crosses his arms in front of his chest and swallows once, twice, but the deep, boiling anger he feels doesn’t settle back into his bones. He feels like punching a wall. He feels like punching Dustin.

“So first I’m a useless has-been cool kid, and now I’m just a fucking idiot,” Steve bites out. “I see how it is with you, kid.”

Dustin groans loudly. “Steve--”

Steve shakes his head, and turns around, gripping the front door handle so hard he thinks it’ll snap off in his hands. “Go home, Henderson,” Steve says. “I’ve got shit to do.”

Steve jerks the door open fast. His heart is beating even faster. He’s just about to slip through the door, slam it shut on Dustin and his stupid, searching expression, when Dustin says, “No, you know what? Fuck you. You don’t get to do that again.”

Steve turns back for a split second, and Dustin lunges forward to wedge his foot in the door. He gets so close to Steve that Steve can smell the sweat and cheap drugstore cologne he uses. The combination makes Steve feel kind of nauseous.

“You can’t just tell me how I feel,” Dustin says, mouth pulling down and shoulders crunched in, like he’s trying to squeeze through the door. Steve jerks at the door, and Dustin gasps in pain as it slams up against his toes. He grabs at the door jamb with his hands and jerks it back toward Steve. “God,” Dustin says, “Fuck you and let me in.”

“I can’t,” Steve insists.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Dustin snaps, and it’s got something deeper in it than usual. A desperation that cuts sharply at Steve. Steve loosens his grip on the door and immediately Dustin’s burrowing through the small gap, and then he’s inside Steve’s foyer jamming his finger so close to Steve’s eye that he has to back up, letting the front door shut behind him.

“You’re so goddamn thick sometimes and I don’t know how to deal with it,” Dustin huffs. He’s still pointing his finger directly in Steve’s face, like aggressively shoving his hands in Steve’s face is a legitimate expression of his anger. Steve tries to duck away from it, but then Dustin’s back in his face again, red and wide-eyed and bursting at the seams with some kind of hellish fury.

“All I want to do is make sure you’re okay,” Dustin says. “That’s all I want to fucking do, and all you do is twist that and shove it back in my face because you’re--I don’t fucking know what you’re thinking. And I want to know, but I’m starting to think you don’t even have thoughts. ”

“Get out,” Steve says, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m not asking.”

“Too fucking bad,” Dustin says. More like snarls. His breath is speeding up, and his hands are balling up into fists. His baseball cap is getting all wrung out and smashed in his right hand. “You’re such a fucking idiot, Steve. Why the hell are you--I can’t figure you out. You act like we’re fucking--friends, and you hang out with me even though you don’t fucking have to--you called us brothers, you fucking sap, and then you just shut me out, and you don’t talk to me, you don’t talk to anyone, and when I try to fucking--understand, when I try to get you to fucking talk to me, you act like I’m the asshole! You’re the asshole, and I’m still here as a peace gesture--do you know how hard it is to bike across town in this fucking humidity--and you can’t even give me a good fucking explanation? What happened to being, I dunno, just a decent fucking person?”

Steve stares at Dustin. He’s wearing a stupid Star Wars shirt, with that green goblin thing on the front holding what looks like a light-up, robotic dick, and his hair is sweaty and wrung out, flat at the top and puffing out on the sides like he’s a cartoon character. He’s honest-to-God huffing, like a fucking housewife, and he’s maintaining intense eye contact with Steve, obviously waiting for Steve to say something.

And Steve just.

Doesn’t move. Doesn’t say anything at all.

They stand in the foyer of Steve’s house, and they stare at each other, and Steve waits. He’s not sure for what. Maybe for Dustin to leave, or for Steve himself to think up some glorious, fantastic explanation for everything--maybe Steve could say that he has been going to parties, but that he’ll stop, that he was only going in the first place because he couldn’t shake his own need for popularity, but it’s okay now, or maybe Steve will say that Dustin just wouldn’t understand because he’s not old enough to--

“Steve?” Dustin says, but it’s softer. When Steve looks back at Dustin, he’s looking at Steve with a more careful gaze. Taking him all in, really scanning how Steve looks, his posture, everything. Dustin hasn’t made any move to leave. In fact, he’s moved a step closer to Steve.

Steve blinks. He opens his mouth, and he’s not sure what he’s planning to say, but it isn’t, “I haven’t been going to any parties, Dustin.”

Dustin’s face relaxes a fraction. His hard grip on his baseball cap loosens, just a tiny bit. “I put that together. After Wednesday.”

Steve bites down on his lip really hard. He moves to lean against one of his walls, and looks down at his feet. He can see Dustin mirroring him, with the opposite wall. “I’m sorry,” Steve says, quietly. “I just thought that you...I don’t know. It’s--stupid.”

“Dude,” Dustin says. “We’ve fought interdimensional monsters together. You can tell me shit.”

“Yeah, we have,” Steve says, and for some reason, his mind just--skips right to Barb. The kidney pool. Her bleeding hand. It’s like a broken record. “Doesn’t that fuck you up, at least just a little bit? Or is that...just me.”

Dustin sucks in a deep breath, like he’s preparing a response--

And then a guest bedroom door opens down the hall, and Dustin turns just as Billy starts to limp his way out, his face still sporting a deep black eye, still wearing a loose tank top that exposes the extent of his injuries. He stops just outside of the doorframe, eyes going wide when he spots Dustin and Steve near the foyer.

He tries to school his face, curl his lips even though they’re swollen, bloody messes. “Sorry,” Billy says, voice dry, “am I interrupting a domestic?”

“Holy shit,” Dustin says.

***

It’s not hard to convince Dustin to leave, after that.

Because the cat was pretty much already out of the bag, Steve took Dustin down into the basement, where Max and Robin were, and explained that he’d shown up early as a sort-of apology. (“It was a great apology,” Dustin had insisted, followed up with a, “Please tell me that we’re good now.”)

(“We’re good now,” Steve had promised.)

Dustin didn’t demand for more answers, which was maybe character development. He’d made a lot of awkward eye contact with Max, and said that he’d talk to Lucas about cutting her some slack about everything. Max had said that Lucas was the least important thing she had to worry about at the moment, kind of pointedly, and then said, “Tell him he’s ridiculous but that I’ll take him back anyway.”

Steve, Robin and Max had essentially explained that they couldn’t explain what was going on, which Dustin seemed pretty okay with, all things considered. He probably didn’t want to know. He’d flinched when Billy had passed him in the hallway, upstairs. As if Billy could still hurt him when Billy looked like a living, walking bruise.

After Dustin and Max traded a few more insults back and forth, Robin finally volunteered to drive Dustin home, and to drive Max to Hopper and El’s cabin. “If you’re good with that, Steve,” Robin says, and raises both of her eyebrows.

Steve knows what she’s asking. If it’s alright for Steve to be alone with Billy. If he wanted her to stay, or to come back after she dropped the kids off.

But Steve, he’s fine. Actually. Well, he always is, but this is genuinely--like, he doesn’t feel weird about being in the same house as Billy, alone. And since no matter what, it would happen eventually, Steve says, “Yeah, no worries at all. Thanks for staying over, last night.”

Robin brushes a hand over Steve’s shoulder. “Of course,” she says gently. Behind her back, Dustin gives Steve a thumbs-up and wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. He’s a fucking idiot. Steve rolls his eyes at him.

“Let me know if you need anything else,” Robin says. “Seriously.” 

“Yeah,” Steve says, “I will.”

Robin raises her eyebrows again, but she leaves it at that. “Come on, kiddos,” she says, clapping her hands. “Time for a drive.”

“We’re not five,” Max says, but hops up from the couch anyway. Then, to completely undercut that: “Wanna race to Robin’s car? I know I can beat you,” to Dustin.

“What--that’s not--”

Max is off like a shot.

Dustin rolls his eyes, and starts off at a much more reasonable jog, making sure to pull Steve into a one-armed hug beforehand. Steve pushes him away, and Dustin sticks his tongue out before taking the stairs two-at-a-time.

“I can’t believe you pulled me into your tweenage friend group,” Robin says, pulling her car keys out of her jacket pocket. “People will think we’re grooming them.”

Steve winces. “Don’t joke about that,” he says, before he’s even thinking about it.

Robin stares at him for a moment, but then she says, “No, you’re right. I’m sorry.” Then, “I’ll call you later, see how you’re getting along.”

“It’ll be just fine, ” Steve promises her.

Robin raises her hands in surrender, then turns it into a little salute before following Max and Dustin up the stairs.

***

Steve realizes that he’s alone with Billy Hargrove in his home.

And, moreover: That’s actually all right.

Steve doesn’t know why he’s decided, suddenly, that Billy Hargrove isn’t all that bad. Maybe it’s Will Byers and his weird optimism in people, finally sinking into his bones, or maybe it was the influence of Max and her strange, evolving relationship with him. Maybe it was the fact that Billy was so fucking beaten to hell right now, that there’s probably no way he could land a punch on Steve if he tried.

Or maybe it had something to do with Starcourt. The way his back had bent backward, eyes facing upward like he was ready, he was prepared. The way he’d just--fallen to the floor. A fucking human being, at the end of the day, trying to save somebody else for once.

No matter what it was, Steve didn’t feel that weird, nervous energy that he used to feel, whenever Billy Hargrove was around. Still, it didn’t mean that Steve wanted to spend time with him.

So, instead, Steve switched on the TV in the basement, flipping through until he found a rerun of Happy Days.

Steve stretches out on the couch, and he tries to focus on the TV. On what Fonzie is saying, is joking about. It’s probably something funny, it usually was. Steve always forgot how much he’d liked this show.

It was probably because of Shelly. She never seemed to enjoy it, God knows why. In the few months that she’d been around, she’d basically banned Happy Days. She’d always sigh loudly, and too long, every time that Steve tried to watch an episode, and she’d pick at her nails and her teeth and made annoying comments about how dumb that jokes were. Steve hadn’t meant to stop watching for good, but he never seemed to get back into it afterward. Every time Fonzie said something funny, all Steve could think about was Shelly making fun of him, and then making fun of Steve for liking it.

The only thing they’d shared was a love for M*A*S*H, and it’s not like Steve could still watch that. Every time Hawkeye came on screen, every time the theme song started up, all Steve could think about were Shelly’s hands on his thighs again--

Steve groans, and leans over to turn off the television.

Why the fuck has this just--become everything for Steve.

Every goddamn waking moment. Like everything is tied back around to Shelly. It’s probably what she fucking wanted, now that Steve’s thinking about it. When she made him screw her. She wanted to be his first, she wanted to change him, she wanted to become a part of him that was impressed on him forever. She wanted to fucking--be memorable. From her hair coloring to her too-cool-to-care attitude. The way she always talked about dabbling in acting. She wanted to be memorable, but with Steve--that was the only time she’d ever been successful.

Steve scratches at the back of his neck. He feels--hardened, thrumming with something equally energizing and draining. There’s something welling up in his bones--like his marrow has been replaced with gasoline. Flammable. Steve’s about to explode, and it’s fucking itching at him, and he can’t--

Steve gets up off his couch, heads straight to the liquor cabinet in his dad’s office, because fuck that noise.

***

“Damn, Harrington,” Steve hears Billy say. “Do this often?”

“So much it’s starting to feel like fucking deja vu,” Steve says, looking up from his bottle of Jack.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he first yanked open the cabinet. It looks considerably emptier than Steve’s used to. He wonders if his dad will be pissed when he comes back. Probably fucking not. He’d just restock it and fucking leave again, like it was no problem at all.

Billy raises an eyebrow. He looks so bad. Steve tells him so.

“I know you’re day-drunk,” Billy says, “so I’ll let that go if you gimme some of that.”

Steve gestures at the liquor cabinet. “Take an entire bottle, see if I give a fuck.”

Billy hesitates.

“It doesn’t fucking bite,” Steve says.

“Your old man won’t mind?” Billy asks unexpectedly. In the lamp light of the dining room, his black eye is pronounced, more shadowed. Maybe not unexpectedly.

“If he comes back, he might,” Steve says, swallowing down more whiskey. It burns like a motherfucker. So like his dad, then, Steve thinks, and it’s a shitty joke but Steve lets himself snort at it, anyway.

Billy raises another eyebrow at that. Apparently he’s good at that. He grabs out some bourbon and gets a tumbler, pouring out two fingers of it, because apparently he cares about culture or some shit like that. Steve just wraps his hands tighter around his handle of whiskey.

“Sounds like there’s a story to that,” Billy says, honest-to-God swirling the bourbon around like he’s some corporate bigwig trying to impress his secretary into sleeping with her. Like he’s Steve’s dad. Maybe they’d get along well.

“There’s a story to everything,” Steve says. “The fuck are you here? This house is big enough for us to never see each other. ”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Billy says, sipping at the bourbon. Steve hates that. He should go whole-hog. Steve takes another gulp of Jack to prove his point. Billy’s eyes are so fucking twinkly, and Steve wants him to stop it, because it’s fucking distracting.

“I’m just trynna not get another plate smashed over my head,” Steve says. He rubs at his hair. If he really tries to feel for it, there’s a jagged scar over his scalp from it, from where it never healed correctly.

Billy’s eyes stop twinkling, instead growing flat. His eyebrows settle back into their regular positions on his forehead. “I did apologize for that,” Billy says.

Steve snorts. “Barely.”

“Why were you really there?” Billy asks, leaning forward. “At the Byers’s house that night.”

It’s Steve’s turn to quirk an eyebrow. “Upside Down shit, what else?”

Billy’s breath catches. It’s barely there, a slight unevenness between his inhale and exhale, and if Steve wasn’t watching so closely, he wouldn’t have noticed. Why is Steve watching so closely. He leans back.

Billy drinks more bourbon, but it’s more of a gulp than a sip this time. That’s the fucking spirit.

“So,” Billy says, after a pause. His voice doesn’t shake, and he seems so solid, like nothing could shake him. Maybe Steve was just projecting. Maybe Billy is just a fucking machine. “That’s what made King Steve fall, then.”

Steve’s about to retort, about to spew out something nasty, but he catches the harsh edge to it right at the end. Billy’s twist of his mouth, that almost resembles a smile. Sarcasm, then.

“To two fallen kings,” Steve says, matching Billy’s tone. He raises the bottle of Jack sloppily, because he’s fucking drunk, and a bit sloshes over the side.

Billy smiles like a goddamn shark, and leans forward to tap his glass against Steve’s. “You sure are something else, Steve,” he says, and he downs the rest of his bourbon like a shot.

Not to be outmatched, Steve gulps his down, just as quick.

Billy’s answering smile isn’t something that even resembles the lamplight of the room, but it feels too bright, all the same.

Chapter Text

Three Weeks After Billy Moves In.

Billy’s hair’s gottne longr, Steve v naoteas.

“Go to sleep,” Billy says clearly and calmly, shutting off Steve’s bedside lamp. He’s not even slurring, the asshole. “We’ve got to talk in the morning.”

“Don’ wanna,” Steverwea wheirsnes. In thre tedarknes, Stve seews Billyf djusts raise shis eyebrwos nad shake rwhis head/ Liek he knwows betre thn Stev. Lieksaq fuckignsdf ashfdofle. “To both...don’t wanna t’both those things.”

“Sleep. Now. And don’t fucking choke on your own vomit.”

Andsd fso Stevers dioes. Buts only becausersd hes was ffjucking sldreeepyu ints dthe fjierst places, ‘mkayy?

***

(Three Weeks and a Day.)

“So,” Billy says, leaning against the door jamb of the bathroom, arms crossed and eyebrows raised. With the healing scar pulling at his lip and his black, worn cutoff shirt, he looks like the bad boy lead in a made-for-TV movie. 

Steve hates him, mostly because he currently looks worse than a corpse right now. It also doesn’t help that Steve’s leaning over the toilet bowl, retching. 

“You got shitfaced last night,” Billy continues, as Steve spits one last time and flushes down the bile. Steve groans and shuts the lid of the toilet before slumping down on top of it, rubbing at the dull, high-pitched ache between his temples. “Really fucking shitfaced.”

“Guess so,” Steve mumbles, staring down at the tiled floor. It’s supposed to be a bright white, but the laminated stone has faded to more of an eggshell color because of wear, tear, and Steve’s lack of interest in cleaning anything. Maybe Steve should hire a cleaning service before his parents come home--if his parents come home.

“Hey,” Billy says, and Steve looks up as Billy tosses a crumpled packet of gum at him. Steve catches it and pulls out three sticks of gum. He pops them all in his mouth and winces at the watermelony taste, setting the packet down at the edge of the sink next to him.

“Juicy Fruit, seriously?” Steve asks, but Billy just shrugs.

“Do you remember what happened last night?” Billy asks, cutting right to the chase. “Do you remember what you said? What happened?”

Steve searches Billy’s face for a sign of anything. Any emotion, any hint of--any hint of anything. But he seems just as steady, just as regular as he usually is. Still, after three weeks of living together, Steve couldn’t read Billy’s expressions properly.

“Bits and pieces,” Steve says, finally, gum snapping in his mouth. He presses into his temples with both hands, but the whine of his hangover headache doesn’t stop.

“You know what I’m asking,” Billy says, maybe a bit short but still as even as the rest of his words.

“Sorry if I embarrassed you,” Steve says. “In front of your friends, I mean.”

“They’re not my friends, and I don’t give a fuck,” Billy says. Under the fluorescents of the bathroom lighting fixture (a monstrosity with ceramic curlicues and way too many light bulbs), his eyes have stopped twinkling, have become flat green discs instead. “Did you mean it when you said--”

“Yes,” Steve says, dropping his head down. He feels like his ears are bleeding because of the strength of his ringing hangover. “God. Fuck you. Yes.”

Steve quits squeezing at his temples to rub at the base of his neck, eyes shut tight. He tells himself to breathe, but he already is. Way too fast, but he’s definitely breathing.

It’s quiet, so quiet it’s like it’s trying to swallow the both of them. Steve wonders how long it could last. If it really could swallow him whole, could make it so that the silence was all there was. Steve wonders if he would mind if that happened. His hangover headache hums soundlessly with the silence, harmonizing and making Steve flinch.

Steve opens his eyes, risks a glance at Billy. And Billy’s still there, of course he fucking is. Leaning against the door jamb with his stupid cutoff shirt, mouth slightly open and jaw working side to side, like he’s trying to actually chew on the new information he’d gotten. 

The new things he knows about Steve.

Steve’s heart falls down heavy, fast and hard into the pit of his stomach. He feels it like an aftershock in his body, echoing out through his nerve endings.

Because Billy knows these things about Steve now. These things that Steve hadn’t...things that Steve couldn’t...things that Steve barely let himself know about.

“Could you…?” Steve starts to ask, but his throat is mealy, choked up with too many things to say. He doesn’t even know what he’s trying to ask Billy. His heart feels like it’s being ripped apart by his own stomach acids. He snaps the watermelon gum between his teeth again, like it’s an adequate substitute for words.

Whatever it is Steve’s trying to say, Billy seems to get, because he just cocks his eyebrows, pushes himself off the door jamb, and leaves. Just like that. Like he’d never been there at all.

The artificial sugar taste in Steve’s mouth and the crumpled old gum packet slipping into the sink, though, prove that Billy really had been there.

Steve sighs, and presses his hands into his temples again.

***

Two Weeks After Billy Moves In.

“Why do you drink so fucking much?” Billy asks, because it turns out he’s nothing if not direct.

Steve sighs and checks the clock on the wall. It’s about a quarter past one a.m. on a Sunday night. He should probably be asleep. He wishes he could be asleep.

“I dunno,” Steve says, which is a lie. He’s halfway through one of his mom’s whites, which she doesn’t like as much as the reds, but Steve thinks tastes better. It’s a Pinot Grigio from the Napa Valley, and it tastes like a honeyed Chardonnay, if what his mom yammers on about is true. All Steve knows is that he likes it well enough to keep drinking it.

Steve’s splayed out on the downstairs couch, and Billy’s leaning on the wall by the TV. He’s eyeing Steve’s bottle of wine, so Steve just says, “I’m not sharing, if that’s why you’re here. You’ve been here long enough, man, you know where to find everything.”

“Didn’t want you to share anyway. That’s a fucking girly drink,” Billy says, but he walks off to the kitchen anyway. Steve snorts.

Steve thinks that that’s the end of it, but instead, Billy heads into the living room a few minutes later with three cans of Busch Light. He sits himself down on the armchair next to the couch and pops the tab on the first one, setting the other two on the coffee table. 

“Planning to be here for a while?” Steve asks, not unpleasantly, wrapping both hands around the wine bottle like it was a mug. He doesn’t really mind Billy’s company, especially when both of them are getting tipsy.

“Nothing better to do on a Sunday night,” Billy says. He gestures at the beer and wine. “The fuck do you get all this shit, anyway?” 

“My parents are probably functioning alcoholics,” Steve says. “They drop off a lot when they stop by, and they don’t really notice how much is gone when come back the next time. Also, Ohio’s like, an hour, hour and a half drive from here, so it’s not a bad drive for stocking up.”

Billy makes a sound halfway between a grunt and hum, and chugs the rest of his beer. “Fucking hate Busch Light,” Billy says, wrinkling his nose and crushing the can in his fist. As if to contradict himself, Billy then cracks the tab on his second can.

“It’s not great,” Steve agrees, taking another swig out of his wine bottle.

“Then why do you have a whole fucking case of it in your fridge?” Billy asks, shaking his can. Which. Fair point.

“It’s the first beer I ever shotgunned,” Steve says, suddenly remembering. It tasted fucking gross then, too. “I guess I’m like, sentimental about it.”

“That’s fucking dumb,” Billy says.

“Yeah, well,” Steve says. “When you’ve been drinking the same thing since you were twelve, you get used to the taste too, I guess.”

Billy snorts. “What was twelve-year-old Steve doing, shotgunning beers? I figured you would’ve been in Prague while your daddy stole money from large corporate banks, or whatever the fuck it is he does.”

“That’s assuming that he took me with him whenever he left,” Steve says. 

Billy looks sideways at Steve. “Bet your mom never liked it when he was gone like that.”

“She did cuz she was with him,” Steve says, drinking deeper from the wine bottle. It’s almost all gone, now. “Only seen ‘em about twice a year since I was eleven.”

“Must’ve been nice,” Billy says, and he actually sounds so fucking wistful that Steve sits up and looks at Billy more properly.

Billy’s too busy with his third can of Busch Light, either chugging or choking it down, Steve isn’t sure which one. In the dim light of the living room, Steve can still see the yellowing bruises sprayed across Billy’s face, and arms, and Billy’s not looking at Steve for a reason, probably. Steve sighs, and sinks back into the couch.

“Sure it was,” Steve says, because he doesn’t want to sound like a little bitch. Not in front of Billy, anyway.

***

(Steve’s still Got a Ringing Headache.)

Steve isn’t sure what to do.

He stays in the bathroom for a long time, sinking down to the floor next to the bathtub. He closes his eyes and balls his hands up into fists against the tile, and breathes deep, and long, and tries to unroll his shoulders from their hunched-in positions. It doesn’t work that well.

He sits like that for so long, and when he opens his eyes, everything is the exact same as it was. The same wrong tilt to the world, like the axis of the earth shifted into a deeper angle when Steve wasn’t looking. (When Steve was too drunk to notice that he’d shifted the world himself.)

He doesn’t want to leave the bathroom, but he has to.

He should talk to Robin, but it’s a school day. He wouldn’t want to bother her. (When was the last time he’d talked to her, anyway? And never about this.)

He maybe should talk to Billy, but it’s--

He just--

Billy’s flat eyes, and his arms crossed so tight across his body. He’d been--uncomfortable. 

Probably uncomfortable around Steve, and Steve’s--

Steve’s uncomfortable around himself, too, he gets it, it’s just--

“Fuck me,” Steve says, and grips at his head with clawed hands, and the  skin gathers underneath the tips of his fingers, and it stings and his blood beats at his skull, steadily throbbing, and he--

He just--

Fuck.

Yeah.

Steve doesn’t move for a long time.

***

Five Days After Billy Moves In.

“So,” Billy says, holding a stemless wine glass half-filled with bourbon, “How the hell’d you get involved with all this interdimensional shit, anyway?”

“Nancy,” Steve says, leaning back against the pool lounger. Billy’d wanted to do laps earlier, which might’ve been the most idiotic thing Steve had ever heard, even with the excruciating heat of a dying August. He’d pulled out the bourbon to distract Billy from probably giving himself internal bleeding, but the downside was sitting near the lip of the pool which his friends griped at before getting torn apart by monsters in his nightmares.

It wasn’t ideal. Nothing fucking was, at this point. Steve sips at his own glass, and says, “she had a best friend. Barbara Holland. Nance called her Barb.” He shut his eyes so he didn’t have to look at the diving board.

“Barbara Holland…” Billy trailed off. Steve knew that Billy recognized the name. They’d had a one-year memorial service held in the high school gym last November, just days before Nancy drove off with Jonathan to break the real news about Barb’s death.

“What really happened to her?” Billy asks. He’s trying to make himself sound as disinterested as possible, but when Steve looks up, he’s got a strange expression on his face. Like he was being stuck with needles, but trying his best to hide it. Steve moves back further onto his pool lounger, pushing more distance between them without really meaning to. Billy still made Steve a bit anxious sometimes, sue him.

“I--well,” Steve says, swallowing a bit. He drinks the rest of his bourbon, sets his glass down on the concrete. From his vantage point, he can see the whitened spot where, a while ago, he’d spilled wine with Robin and cleaned it up with bleach. Steve wonders how he always finds himself in the same places, over and over again. 

“She died, obviously,” Steve says. “From this--there was this monster. Not the--not what got you.” Steve stares at Billy, looking for some kind of reaction. Billy’s got a good fucking poker face. His hands are wrapped real tight around his glass, though.

“It was another monster,” Steve says, squeezing his eyes shut. He can kind of smell the tang of blood, of Nancy and Jonathan’s bleeding hands, and the sharp circuitry of old lamps flashing like lightning, and then-- “It was--it had fucking, hands and feet, like a person, but it was all gray, and slimy, and it didn’t have a head, it had...it kinda opened up, the head did, and…”

Steve doesn’t want to open his eyes. He doesn’t want to look at his pool. “It got Will and Barb, took them to the Upside Down, and Will managed to survive because he’s fucking smart, but Barb--we don’t know, what exactly...but she died. From the monster.”

Steve opens his eyes, checks Billy. Billy’s staring straight at Steve, eyes flat and shoulders hunched over, but he’s still there, biting down on his lip.

“The kids called it the Demogorgon,” Steve adds, somewhat unnecessarily. “Dustin told me. I didn’t know what it was called at the time, I just--I just knew that Nancy was with Jonathan for some reason, and I had to apologize to her--to both of them, and I showed up to the Byers’s house and Nancy had a shotgun, and I got this spiked baseball bat, and suddenly I was just fighting this...thing, and I thought that I--that I was going--”

Steve cuts himself off. Billy’s still looking at him, same as ever, and he doesn’t say a word for a long time, for too long of a time, and maybe that’s why Steve says, “I think-- Nancy and I think that we were the last people to see Barb alive, and she always asked me why it didn’t bother me as much as it bothered her, and I never told her that I. Shit, I guess I thought if I didn’t think about it, it wouldn’t bother me,” Steve sucks in a deep breath. “I try not to let it.”

He rubs at his eyes. “Sorry for just--”

“I was the last to see Heather alive,” Billy says, voice so even, expression so blank, it was mechanical. Like it was still the Mind Flayer again, but Steve can see how white Billy’s knuckles are against his wine glass.

“I had to hold her down,” Billy explains, just as even. “So that the Mind Flayer could infect her. So that it could control her. And she screamed. A lot. It was so piercing, that I could have sworn my ears started bleeding. The Mind Flayer was annoyed by it.”

Steve swallows. He doesn’t really know what to do, what to say to that.

So he says, “Sometimes I think--sometimes I know that...Barb died here. At my house. In my pool, maybe.”

Billy shudders. “Dude, what the fuck, ” He says, shooting up to his feet. It’s a bit wobbly, considering all the bruises and his damaged ribs, but Billy moves quickly just the same, going for the sliding glass doors. “Should’ve told me that first, I wouldn’t have tried to fucking swim, what the fuck. ”

And Steve--Steve just starts to laugh, of all things. Billy turns around to look at Steve like he’s an insane person.

“It’s really not funny,” Steve says in between spurts of laughter. He’s already developing a stitch in his side. “Oh my God, it’s so not funny, but you can’t--you can’t swim in my fucking pool because someone died in it in an alternate dimension, that’s so--”

Steve laughs and laughs and laughs, and eventually, the laughter fades down to twitches in his shoulder, a breath cutting short here and there. Billy’s still standing by the doors, eyeing Steve up and down, holding the handle of bourbon in his hand now.

“It’s really not funny,” Steve says, like it explains the laughter. 

Billy says, “You’re right.”

“Sorry,” Steve says.

“Don’t be,” Billy says. “Let’s just fucking get inside, away from that pool. Honestly, Harrington.”

Steve nods, and pushes himself up off the pool lounger. “That’s the first time I’ve ever told someone about that,” Steve says, crossing the cement and in through the sliding doors that Billy’s pulled open. “About Barb, I mean.”

“I mean, I can see why,” Billy says. “If you’re gonna crack up like you’re watching an episode of Saturday Night Live while talking about some chick’s death.”

“That’s not it,” Steve says, grabbing the handle from Billy. He screws off the lid and gulps down a few swallows of the bourbon, and tries not to squeeze his eyes shut as it licks its way down his throat like a flame. “It’s--I felt like I was wrong, for like...thinking about it so much, I guess. Since it...since I didn’t really--and. It just felt good, getting it out, I guess. Um.”

Steve’s eyes flicker between Billy’s and the wall, but Billy’s eyes seem to hold all the gravity, keep drawing Steve back in. Steve’s eyes circle Billy’s face like an orbit, sketching out the planes of his face, before they get pulled up again to Billy’s green, deep irises.

Steve’s throat gets tight, like a delayed reaction to the bourbon. He suddenly gets the idea to move back half a step from Billy, and when he does, it seems like the gravity breaks, leaving both of them awkwardly standing in Steve’s hallway.

“Yeah, well.” Billy’s voice is gravelly all of a sudden, and Steve shivers, then wonders if he should adjust the air conditioning. He grabs back the handle of bourbon from Steve, and Steve lets him, watches as Billy chugs it for a few seconds like it was a beer.

“There’s a lot wrong with you, Steve, but I don’t think that’s a part of it.”

***

(Steve Really, Really Doesn’t Want to Think About It.)

But his thoughts keep leaning toward it. Like they’re circling the drain.

He’s still against the lip of the bathtub. Still has his head in his hands, and he can just tell that his skin’s gotten all red and blotchy underneath his palms, the tips of his fingers. Normally he’d do a cold compress about now, lay down and take a nap until he felt better.

He...really hasn’t felt normal in a long time, if he’s being honest with himself.

God, being hungover sucks so much.

And the worst part is, even his headache isn’t stopping him from picking at the memory like it was a loose thread. Like he could fix it somehow, reshape the past, pull at the string until it’s gone. 

But he fucking can’t.

But when he presses his head into his palms until his eyes see stars under the pressure, he thinks about last night.

When he rocks himself back and forth, like he’s trying to shake himself out, he still thinks about the bedroom.

And when he gets up and paces, goes so far as to slam a hand against the wall near the sink, all he can think about is the hands wandering Steve’s body, mapping him out. How Steve had liked it.

It’s all through the sloppy perspective of ten drinks, including a few shots and mixed drinks.

Billy had...well, not friends, exactly. A few people he knew, who worked at a garage that Billy was interested in working at. And they’d invited him to not-a-party, but kind-of-a-party at one of their houses. And Billy had taken Steve, because--well, Steve hadn’t really even thought about the invitation, just accepted because free alcohol, which was probably along the same lines that Billy was thinking.

They were nice enough, as far as strangers go. Rough-and-tumble, a lot of denim and plaid. Way more men than women, a few tattoos dedicated to those hard metal bands with bloody skeletons on the album covers.

There’d been one of the guys. Blond-brown hair, well-trimmed beard. He’d done this thing where he mixed whiskey and spiced rum together and let Steve sip at it from his own glass, and it’d been fucking disgusting but it probably helped in getting Steve as drunk as he’d gotten. So drunk he probably couldn’t even breathe right.

There was a point where the group kinda splintered. There’d been twenty or so people initially, and some went out onto the deck to smoke, and some went to a nearby bar, and some left with shotguns and beer cans in their hands and Steve hoped they were only planning to shoot the cans. He lost track of Billy, but that had seemed okay at the time. Steve hadn’t felt as drunk as he probably had been, even though he’d genuinely been content to sit and stare at the wall like some sort of senile old man.

Then, all of a sudden, there’d been a hand on his shoulder, and he’d looked up to see the guy with the blond-brown hair smiling at him, eyes all twinkly and hazel in the soft light of the living room, and he’d said, “Wanna come with me?” and in retrospect, Steve probably should’ve seen that for what it was. He really didn’t think--the guy wasn’t like Shelly. 

Fuck, Steve thinks, and slams his hand against the wall again. Like that fucking does jack-shit. He wants to cut this whole train of thought off at the pass. Wants this to have never happened. 

Neither of those things are fucking possible, apparently.

The next parts are piecemeal. Sieved through his own drunk perception, so that only chunks of time remain.

He remembers the guy closing the bedroom door and immediately kissing Steve, pushing Steve up against a nearby wall. How he’d been gentle but insistent, tugging at Steve’s lips like it was a question until Steve responded because--well, because Steve had followed the guy in there, and so this had to be something that Steve had meant to do, and it didn’t even feel that bad, even from a guy instead of a girl. And it wasn’t so bad, because the guy had gone for it first, which didn’t make Steve as big of a fag as the guy, and the guy was wearing plaid and denim, which meant he probably wasn’t a fag either, and--

Next thing Steve remembers, he was on the bed, and he’d pulled off his shirt like a little kid, back against the pillows, and the guy was on top of him, still kissing him, and Steve had felt a bit dizzy, began to push a hand up against the guy’s chest, maybe to push him away, Steve wasn’t sure--

And then suddenly Billy was fucking there. That’s the part that’s the clearest, maybe, like it was a cold water shock. He remembers because all of a sudden the guy was standing up, next to the bed, talking fast and panicky and trying and failing to put on his jacket because his hands were shaking so bad, and Steve’s shirt was still off so he searched around a bit for it, and he heard Billy saying, over and over again, “What the fuck?” and Steve’s stomach churned at that, unsettling in his torso, wringing itself out, and suddenly Steve said, “ I think I’m gonna--” and he’d leaned over the side of the bed and vomited, thankfully on the opposite side from the guy.

“Shit, man, how much did you have?” Billy had asked, and the other guy, the one with the twinkly hazel eyes and nice beard, said, “Oh, fuck, I didn’t think he was--please don’t tell Jake or Adam or any of them, I really didn’t mean--and you know how all the guys are, I just--”

“Get out, ” Billy said, hard and firm enough that even Steve sat up straighter, wiping at his mouth. He still couldn’t find his shirt. The guy had almost run out of the room, and then--

Billy was driving Steve home, and Steve had his shirt on now, and he’d asked Steve, quietly, voice so hollow and deep it didn’t even sound real, “Did you want him to do all that?”

Steve had his face pressed to the glass of the car window, because it felt too warm in the car, and his stomach was still churning, and he hadn’t even thought when he’d said, “I dunno. It’s never really mattered much before.”

“Shit, man,” Billy had said on an exhale, and Steve could hear Billy’s knuckles pressing tighter into the leather of the steering wheel, and it occurred to him that he’d said something wrong.

“Sorry if I’m a fag,” Steve had said softly, voice slurring through until he hit the word “fag” like it was a speed bump. “Did any of your friends notice?”

“Fuck if I know,” Billy said. “You don’t even fucking know if you liked him? You were just gonna let him go for it because he wanted to?”

“It’s the firs’ time a guy’s ever dunnit,” Steve said, jaw slack against his throat. “Plenty o’ girls have already, though.”

“Shit, man,” Billy had repeated, and Steve closed his eyes so that he wouldn’t have had to see Billy’s face, see how fucking pathetic Billy thought Steve was, see how disgusted Billy was that Steve was a fucking fag, or might be at least--

In the brightness of day, or at least under the bathroom lights, Steve swishes those thoughts around again in his head. Feels them lap against his skull, sending odd shocks through his body as they swirl around and around and around.

The thing is--it’s not, being gay isn’t wrong. He knows that clearly, because of Robin, and because of Will. But it’s--

He’s just, he’s not a...he’s not gay. 

He’s proven it before, so he isn’t.

But Billy thinks he is, now. And he’s probably gonna tell people, tell everyone who Steve is, or at least who Billy thinks Steve is, and it’s gonna be--Steve won’t be able to handle it, because Nancy’ll know, and Dustin will know, even if it’s wrong, and it is, it has to be--

Why had he let that guy kiss him?

Why had he kissed back?

It had felt nice in the moment. Like not a big deal. The guy hadn’t been treating it like a big deal. And Steve had been so lost because of the alcohol, had been drifty and absentminded, but it didn’t mean--Steve had known what was happening, to some degree, and he hadn’t hated it--

Steve knocks his head back against the bathtub.

He wasn’t gay. He knew that.

He just had to make sure Billy knew that. Simple. Easy. 1-2-3.

Steve sighs, and stands up, a bit too quickly. His vision clouds up with black dots, and he becomes hyper aware of his hangover again.

“I shouldn’t ever drink again,” Steve mutters to himself.

***

(Steve Drinks Again.)

Steve finds Billy in the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast bar with a pile of slightly burnt eggs and a beer.

“You’re drinking already?” Steve asks, heading to the fridge to pull out a water bottle casually, like everything was normal and fine. Because it was.

“Best hangover cure,” Billy says, scooping up some of the eggs. He’d also drenched them in hot sauce. Steve can’t imagine it tastes very good. “Feeling any better?”

“Kinda,” Steve says. “Getting drunk again is the best hangover cure?”

“Takes the edge off,” Billy says, and drinks some beer, as if to punctuate his own statement. 

“Hey, uh--I freaked out on you this morning,” Steve says. He cracks the seal on the water bottle, but doesn’t unscrew the lid entirely. 

“Yeah, you did,” Billy says, somewhat unhelpfully.

“I just--you caught me off guard, and I. I don’t--I’m not a...I like girls,” Steve stammers out. Not as cool as he was hoping. He unscrews the lid all the way off the water bottle and chugs, so that he doesn’t have to look Billy in the eye.

“Okay,” Billy says, easily enough. Steve stops chugging water to stare at him.

“Okay,” Steve repeats, kind of dumbly.

Billy stretches, popping his shoulders. He rubs at his ribs, almost unconsciously, then at the soon-to-be-scar that tugs at his lip. He eats some eggs. Steve realizes he’s staring, and drinks more water instead.

“You did say that you were gonna let him do whatever, though,” Billy says casually. A bit too casually. His eyes look dark again. “And that you’ve let girls do whatever to you in the past.”

“I…” Steve starts, and then stops. His headache pounds in his ears. His shoulders sag down. “Yeah.”

“What’s that about?” Billy asks. He’s being careful, Steve realizes. He doesn’t know why, and God, his head hurts, and it’s not even a big fucking deal. Steve thinks that him kissing a guy is the bigger deal here, and they’ve already cleared that up, so why are they going deeper, they never go deeper, never prompt each other, they’ve gotten a good balance here, Steve doesn’t understand why it has to shift--

“Steve,” Billy says, and Steve realizes that he’s tensed up, so stiff he looks like a still-life, like a drawing of a person instead of a person. Steve has to really focus to move his shoulders down to his collarbone, instead of his neck.

It’s not a big deal, Steve tells himself. His head aches like a motherfucker, he’s drained half this water bottle, he kissed a guy last night and a guy who assaulted him is now living with him. It is not a big deal, and if Steve treats it like a big deal, then he’s a fucking idiot. Billy won’t fucking care. Steve shouldn’t fucking care.

“I had...a bad babysitter,” Steve admits. He pushes himself back against the nearest countertop, and forces his hand to stay relaxed against the water bottle, so he doesn’t crunch it up.

Billy bites at the cut on his lip, and drinks some more beer. Steve feels the silence like a current of electricity coursing through him, and thinks that he’s being ridiculous.

“Okay,” Billy says, at last. 

He doesn’t ask any more questions. Not like Robin would, not like Dustin would (not that he’d ever tell Dustin about this). 

Steve breathes out, but it doesn’t feel like a release of breath. “No more questions?” Steve asks, and it’s maybe half of a question, and definitely more of a request.

“You had a bad babysitter, I have a bad father,” Billy says, shrugging. 

“Okay,” Steve says. He feels pale, weak. His hangover pulses faster and stronger than the blood running through his veins.

“Want some of this?” Billy asks, gesturing toward his beer. “You look like you need it.”

Steve thinks about how he probably shouldn’t. How he told himself he shouldn’t just moments before talking to Billy. This hangover hurts so bad, it’s like it’s not worth ever having a drink again.

“Yeah, I really do,” Steve says anyway.

Chapter Text

Okay, so maybe Steve drinks too much. Maybe it’s a problem.

It just--it doesn’t feel like a problem, though. 

If he had something to do, somewhere to be, then it could be a problem. Showing up day-drunk to a job counts as a problem. Going to school with vodka in your water bottle, like Tommy had done sometimes, is a problem. 

But chugging beers with Billy during weekdays is different. There’s nothing that he should be doing. Even though Steve feels restless sometimes, feels a queasy tugging sensation in his stomach with a jolting adrenaline spike here and there, it’s not like there’s anything for him to do.

(Well. Steve could be job-hunting with Robin, maybe, or driving Dustin around. But school’s started back up, and Robin’s probably really busy and he wouldn’t want to bother her with all of this, and Ms. Henderson hasn’t called him up for any favors, and he wouldn’t want to really bother Dustin just for the sake of needing something to do. And besides, he’s getting better at beer chugging with Billy as his competition.)

So, in Steve’s defense, his definition of a “problem” is probably just different than other people’s. And Billy probably agrees with him, and they’re the only two living together at the moment, and it’s going better than what anyone expected. If that has something to do with Billy offering cans of Busch to Steve along with a pocket knife at around the same time every day, well, Steve isn’t going to mess with that.

***

Billy, as it turns out, is a Star Wars fan.

Well, he doesn’t describe himself as a “fan,” because to him, Star Wars fans are just huge nerds with wire-framed glasses and acne problems. But he insists that it’s fun to watch high or drunk, because “it’s basically a Western on an LSD trip.”

So that’s how they end up crossed on a Wednesday afternoon, watching a VHS of A New Hope. 

Steve, to be honest, doesn’t remember a lot about the movie, even though he’s still watching it. 

For some reason, there were weird robot things and one of them didn’t speak except for odd clicks and beeps and the other had a fancy British accent, and it was in the desert and there was red sand everywhere. Steve forgot he was supposed to be watching characters do things because he was too busy watching the enormous amounts of sand and wondering how they’d managed to get that much sand for a Hollywood set, and then Steve had had to stare at the ceiling instead of the screen for a while because the room started uncomfortably spinning.

When he turned his head back to the screen, there was someone new. Well, he might not have been new, but he was new to Steve. He had one of those shirts that opened up really low on the chest, and a stupid vest and really tight pants and really, really good hair, honestly. And his face was really nice to look at.

“Oh, who’s that,” Steve asks, blinking.

“Han Solo, dude,” Billy says, and lets out a huff of breath probably meant to resemble a laugh. Billy never laughs, not really, but that’s the closest thing he’s got to one, and even that exhale feels caustic and sarcastic somehow. Steve frowns. “Have you been paying attention? He’s a main fucking character.”

Steve watches as the guy fights off someone wearing a shitty, cheap-looking white armor costume. Steve can see the chest hair curling up from Han Solo’s pecs, that’s how low the shirt goes. And the pants really hug his butt, in a really fucking flattering way. Steve could never pull that off. 

Steve forgets that he was meant to respond to Billy until Billy lets out another huff of breath and says, “Lightweight.” He adjusts himself on his armchair, kicking his legs over the side of it.

“He’s hot,” Steve says.

Billy blinks, and shifts to look at Steve, a joint sat in his left hand, a dented beer can sweating against his right palm. “Dude,” Billy says, and then doesn’t say anything else. He half-squints his eyes, the bottoms pulling up until only half of his irises are showing. His eyes seem arched like that, strange and inhuman, and Steve tells himself that that’s what’s making him uncomfortable right now.

 “Tell me I’m wrong,” Steve says. He swallows hard. The room starts to spin around him again, but he can’t look away from Billy right now. He feels like he’d be giving something up, if he did.

Billy purses his lips. His shoulders roll forwards in the seat, and he looks tense, predatory like that. He takes a long drag from his joint, and then breathes the smoke hard and quick out of his nose and mouth. He gnaws at a chapped ridge on his bottom lip, breaking the skin open.

“I guess you’re right,” Billy eventually says, and his shoulders unroll again. He closes his eyes. His lips part, wide and pink and a bit red with blood.

Steve looks away from Billy then, and reminds himself to breathe as the room keeps spinning around him.

Han Solo shoots another white plastic soldier on screen. 

Steve isn’t as interested in him anymore.

***

“Hey,” Steve says suddenly, and Billy tears his eyes away from the television, frowning at him, even though they’re only watching Family Feud, for God’s sake.

“I just realized I haven’t heard from Max in a while,” Steve says, even though that might be his fault, if he thinks about it, because he hasn’t picked up the walkie-talkie recently. The last time he heard the crackle of the radio, he’d been hungover, so he said “Not now, I’m tired,” like he had the past few times, and then stuck it in the closet and hadn’t thought about it since.

He should probably get that thing out, come to think of it. Just in case the kids had anything important to say.

“Have you heard from her?” Steve asks Billy, nudging him with his foot. Billy shoves his hand under Steve’s ribs, breaking up Steve’s inhale into sharp coughs, but he doesn’t do any more bodily harm, so Steve thinks he’s made progress.

“No,” Billy says, and moves a hand up to his face. Belatedly, Steve realizes he’s rubbing his thumb over the healing scar on his lip.

“Do you--?” Billy jabs Steve in the shoulder hard before Steve can finish his question, and then reaches over him to grab the remote and flip through the channels.

“Guess that’s a no,” Steve mutters.

Billy ignores him.

***

Steve doesn’t really wake up from nightmares anymore. It’s probably because he’s always at least slightly buzzed or high before he goes to bed now, but hey, whatever works.

Still, he usually only goes four or five hours before he wakes up, his mouth dry and gross and warm, and he has to go get a drink of water, dragging himself down to the kitchen to guzzle down a bottle of water or two before he goes back to sleep.

He doesn’t really recognize it the first few times. Billy’s always up, either sitting out on the patio, backlit from the pool lights and smoking, or he’s smirking at Steve as he watches a late-night rerun of something, or he’s half-heartedly reading a paperback, splayed across one of the couches with a beer bottle pinched between his fingers.

Eventually, though, maybe the sixth consecutive night of this, when Steve walks into the kitchen and sees Billy notching the table with his pocket knife, Steve says, “Do you ever sleep?” and sees the dark circles under Billy’s eyes, made darker by the poor lighting of the gaudy overhead fixtures.

Billy stares at him, and sets the pocket knife on the table. “Sure I do,” Billy says, easily enough. A tendon in his neck looks like it’s bulging, but that could just be another trick of the light.

Steve grabs two beers out of the fridge and tosses one to Billy. Billy catches it out of midair and cracks the tab, swallowing down half the can in only a few gulps.

“Because if you don’t,” Steve says, and pauses to watch Billy’s reaction. He doesn’t give much of one at all, instead choosing to pull out a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket. He flicks out a lighter as well, and flips the cover of the pack open, grabbing out one of the cigarettes and holding the pack slightly away from his body, his way of asking Steve if he wants one. Steve shrugs, and Billy shoves the pack away, and thumbs at the gears at his lighter until a weak flame spurts out.

Steve lets Billy take one, then two drags from his cigarette, and then he says, “If you’re not sleeping, I’ve been there, man. You’ve seen me there.”

Billy chews at the filter at the end of his cigarette, and Steve watches it wobble around his lips, back and forth in an oddly hypnotic rhythm. The kitchen smells sharp and acrid with smoke, but Steve doesn’t mind it, too focused on Billy and his cigarette and the scar near his lip.

Billy takes the cigarette out, blows smoke from his nostrils, and says, “I don’t know if it’s any of your goddamn business,” and squares his shoulders. The shadows under his eyes make him look evil under the kitchen lights, and Steve takes a step forward anyway, leaning his hip against the countertop.

“It’s probably not,” Steve agrees, and Billy looks at him, really looks at him, and his eyes twinkle even in this low light, even with this little distance between the two of them.

“I changed my mind,” Steve says, holding out his hand, palm facing up, fingers curled in. “Can I have a drag?”

Billy hands him the smoldering cigarette, gnawed a bit at the end, but Steve doesn’t mind, and takes three drags instead of one. Billy doesn’t say anything about it.

***

(“Hey, has anyone heard from Steve in a while?” Dustin asks over the main radio line. “I figured we should give him space with the whole Billy living with him thing, not adding stress or whatever, and there was that whole breakdown he had anyway, but...I’m getting worried.”

“I’m sure your lover’s fine,” Mike says.

“Dude, ew,” Dustin says.

“You do kinda sound like his girlfriend,” Lucas says.

“Have you tried driving by his house?” Will asks.

“I mean, I could, but...Billy’s there,” Dustin says, and no one else says anything, which means they all probably agree.)

(Steve doesn’t hear any of this, seeing as his radio’s still stashed in the closet.)

***

They’re channel-surfing in the late afternoon, both pretty pleasantly buzzed from a now-empty fifth of vodka, and they pause on a news channel by accident, neither of them paying attention until it shows up in bright, angry letters on-screen: UPDATE ON THE AMERICAN AIDS EPIDEMIC.

Steve swallows hard and sits up. Billy’s also looking at the screen, but he’s on the couch, and Steve can only see the side of his face from his position on the armchair.

A reporter comes on the screen with a full face of makeup, teased-up hair, and round cheeks. She starts reporting on the latest numbers for infection and fatalities, and pictures flash up. Huge protests with banners cut from bed sheets, but then picture after picture of people laying in beds, most of them men, with hollowed out faces and frail arms grasping onto other men.

Steve should change the channel. He’s the one with the remote, and it’s even sitting in his hand, threaded between his middle and ring finger. 

He doesn’t click any button. The tips of his fingers feel cold.

“You know,” Billy says, when the reporter reappears on screen to discuss the politics of the epidemic and a promising new drug for patients, “My dad says that the AIDS epidemic is just God’s way of getting rid of all the fags.”

Steve doesn’t say anything.

“It’s weird,” Billy says, and he hasn’t even turned his head to look at Steve, “because he’s never stepped foot in a church, as long as I’ve known him. Pretty fuckin’ sure he’d burn, if he did.”

Steve swallows. He wishes he had more vodka. “What do you think?” he asks.

Billy turns his head to look at Steve. “About what? AIDS? Or about gays?”

Steve doesn’t say anything. Billy sighs. “I wish you’d stop being so goddamn cryptic, sometimes,” he says, and it just. It fucking takes one to know one.

Billy turns back to the TV. “I think people are fucking dying, is what I think.”

Steve rubs his face with his hand, and he switches the channel. The reporter’s voice is cut off by footage of an airplane in a bright blue sky, and the blue illuminates Billy’s curls, makes them look almost like a halo.

“Dude, this is a fucking documentary, change the channel,” Billy complains.

“Nah, I like this one,” Steve says, and Billy groans in protest before settling back in his chair.

***

Robin has called Steve’s house three times in the last five days.

Once, he picked it up and explained to her that he was about to have a very important nap, because at the time he’d been crossed as shit and felt floaty, and to be honest, that’s the best state to nap in.

The next time, he’d missed it because Billy had wanted to work on Steve’s car (something about examining the carburetor, but Steve didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about), so they’d both been out in the garage, Steve handing Billy oil rags and beer alternately.

The last time, he’d actually heard the ringing, and surprisingly, he’d even been sober.

But he thought about picking up the phone, listening to whoever was on the other line, and talking. Having them ask what he’d been up to, when the answer was kind of nothing, but it was fine, he didn’t want to explain that to them though, they wouldn’t understand.

So he’d let it ring out, the third time.

***

There’s a thing that Steve should be doing. He thinks.

It’s mid-September now. September 15, to be precise. And Steve thinks that he should be. Precise, that is.

It feels like something important happens on the fifteenth. September 15. 

Something he shouldn’t be forgetting.

“We’re almost out of beer,” Billy tells him, slapping Steve on the back as he enters the kitchen. 

“Is there anything important about September 15?” Steve asks Billy.

Billy blinks at him. “Fuck if I know. Also, we’re down to two cans, and we could probably use another handle or two, if we’re headin’ all the way to Ohio.”

“We?” Steve asks, raising his eyebrows.

“You in or out?” Billy asks, and tosses Steve a cigarette that he pulls out of his flannel. He waits for Steve to stick it in his mouth before he lights it for Steve, but before Steve can go to take a drag, Billy steals it out of Steve’s mouth and puffs on the end of it.

Steve sighs and holds out his hand, fingers loose. Billy breathes smoke out of his nose, and settles the cigarette in between Steve’s middle and index fingers, squeezing them tight together so Steve would know that the cigarette was his again. 

“Yeah, why not,” Steve says, and takes a drag, blowing the smoke in Billy’s face just for the hell of it. Billy rolls his eyes and says, “We’re taking your car and you’re paying for the gas money,” and Steve doesn’t argue.

He does still feel a bit unsettled, even as he grabs his keys and throws open the garage door, looking behind him to see Billy following closely, eyes twinkling and wide. 

(What with it being September 15 and all.)

Billy smiles at him and throws open the passenger side door of Steve’s car so fast, the hinges creak and bulge against the screws holding it together.

(But Steve’s sure it’s nothing.)

***

September 15 is Steve’s mother’s birthday. And September 15, 1986, is important , because it’s his mother’s fiftieth birthday. Even if she swears to her friends over drinks that it’s her forty-fifth.

Steve’s never forgotten to phone her on her birthday before. So his mother waits until it’s eleven o’clock p.m. at night in London, and when he still hasn’t called, she rolls over in bed and says to her husband, “Steve hasn’t called.”

“Time zones,” he mutters, eyes squeezed shut. “Go to bed, Laura.”

“Maybe,” she says, a crease folding the skin in between her eyebrows, “but he’s usually good about that sort of thing.”

“Probably having fun with those friends of his,” he tries again, and presses a satin pillow over his face.

“Maybe,” she says again, but sits up and flicks on the bedside lamp, anyway. Her husband lets out a light groan and says something about an early business meeting the next morning, but he’d been fine to stay out with their friends at the restaurant until 10:30 p.m., and in fact had lagged in leaving the restaurant, so she didn’t feel too bad.

“I’ll just give him a ring,” she says. “Just in case. I want to make sure everything’s all right. He’s a responsible boy, of course...and I’m sure he wouldn’t forget about his own mother’s birthday, I’m sure he wouldn’t do that…”

(It rings out, beeping through to the answering machine.

It’s 6:00 p.m. in Hawkins, and Steve and Billy are currently at a Burger King drive-thru, Billy humming to a Metallica song as Steve orders for the both of them, their trunk piled high with beer and two handles of vodka that Billy bribed the cashier to let them buy.

Steve’s mother leaves a message, asking him to call her back as soon as possible, please, and he didn’t forget his mother’s birthday, did he?

It joins all of Robin’s five new voicemails from the past week. )

***

“So, um,” Billy says, which is already unusual. All of his words are always clipped and pointed.

“Um, so,” Steve parrots, and Billy rolls his eyes. They’re both in the living room, again, the TV screen flashing quickly with some poorly-edited Western. Steve had muted the volume ten minutes prior, Billy complaining about the terrible background music, and now neither of them know what’s going on with the movie. Neither of them care.

Billy takes a swig from their last remaining vodka handle, and passes it to Steve. They’re both on the couch, this time, Steve’s feet shoved underneath his own thighs as Billy sprawls across the entire couch. Steve hasn’t complained to him about taking up all the space, though.

“We never talked about what happened at Chris’s party,” Billy says, and Steve bites at his cheek and takes two gulps of vodka, before setting the handle on the floor.

“Who’s Chris?” Steve asks, and Billy rolls his eyes, pulling himself upright just so he can slap Steve’s shoulder. Pretty hard, actually. Steve winces, and rubs at his shoulder.

“I’m not even kidding,” Steve says, turning to stare at the TV again. Some fringe-wearing, cowboy-booted character gets shot in the chest, and blood spurts everywhere. “I didn’t fucking know anyone there, much less any names.”

“Do you like guys like that,” Billy asks, and when Steve turns back, Billy’s already there to meet Steve’s gaze. His eyes are flickering up and down Steve’s face.

Steve swallows hard, and reaches down to grab more vodka. “Want any?” he asks Billy, once he’s managed a few more sips.

“You’re fucking bad at avoiding questions,” Billy says. “Do you like guys like that.”

“You gonna fucking beat me up if I say yes?” Steve snaps, hands tightening around the neck of the handle. He stands up, shoots to his feet, and Billy’s following him a second later, eyes fixated on Steve’s hands around the slim bottle neck. “You gonna fucking--break my ribs, make me scream for help, you gonna call me a fucking fag? Because I’m not, you fucker, even if I did like guys, I’m not a fucking fag, What the fuck does it even matter to you?”

Billy’s staring at Steve the entire time, scoping out his eyes, his temples, the feathery tips of his hair, his clenched jaw. Finally, when Steve stops for breath, his eyes pause on Steve’s lips, firm and taut in a half-grimace, half-frown. Then, Steve gets it.

It’s not fucking graceful, but Steve’s on his way to being fucking drunk, so Steve doesn’t give a fuck.

He grabs Billy by the neck and kisses him, mouth open and scrabbling for purchase against Billy’s stubble and rough lips. 

Billy cooperates immediately, kissing hard and fast, mouth open and tongue lashing against Steve’s lips and cheek, grazing his teeth. It’s not pretty and it’s not lovely but it works just the same, and Billy pulls away just long enough to set the vodka down on the floor and to throw Steve back on the couch, this time with Billy on top of him. Steve lunges up to kiss Billy again, and Billy’s already tugging off his shirt, mouth breaking away so he can pull the shirt over his head. 

Suddenly, as Billy comes back down to meet Steve, he sees someone different, a flash of red and a snarling face. Before Steve can flinch back, there’s a shrill ringing that startles Billy enough to pull himself up off of Steve and the couch.

“The fuck is that?” Billy asks, and looks down at himself, and then back at Steve, like he’s just now realizing what was about to happen.

Steve sits up. “I think that was the doorbell,” he says, just as it shrieks again.

A heavy fist pounds on the door just as the second screaming ring ends, along with a muffled voice, shouting “Steve Harrington, get your ass out here!”

“I should,” Steve says, hand rubbing at his lips, “I should probably get that.”

Billy sits down on the couch and reaches for the vodka. “You think?”

***

When Steve opens the door, his lips are swollen, his hair is disheveled, and he smells like he bathed in rubbing alcohol.

It’s Robin. Because of course it is.

She stares at him, eyes flinty and arms crossed. Steve notices that both of her hands are balled into fists, and involuntarily takes a step backward.

“And just what,” Robin asks coldly, “the fuck do you think you’re doing, Harrington?”

Chapter Text

“Steve,” Robin says, in that awful chilled, hard voice. “This isn’t okay.”

“What  isn’t okay?” Steve asks. He thinks that he might know what she’s talking about, though. His head feels too stuffed up with cotton to really, actually know, though. 

Everything feels smooth, around him. It always does, when he’s hit this spot. He calls it the sweet spot, the place right in between tipsy and drunk, the place where nothing matters as much as it should, and he feels sweeter and better in his skin than he ever does, otherwise.

Really, it’s such a shame that Robin had to do this now.

“Why’d you have to do this now, ” Steve groans, and swipes at his lips, somewhat absentmindedly. They taste like vodka and Billy’s cigarettes. Billy is still inside, on that couch, and Steve wants to overwrite his memories of sex on that couch to sex on that couch with Billy. He would have, he was going to, and it wasn’t even going to matter that much. Nothing should ever matter too much.

Robin was trying to make things matter, though.

“You haven’t answered your phone in two weeks,” Robin says, uncurling one of her fists just to jab a finger at him. “No one’s seen you. For all I fucking knew, another-- thing, from the Upside Down or whatever, it could’ve gotten you. Maybe the Russians were holding you hostage. I didn’t fucking know, Steve, nobody did.”

“Does it matter,” Steve says, because nothing does. “Robin, I don’t think--”

“Of course it fucking matters, ” Robin says, before Steve can finish his thoughts, and suddenly she’s right there, right on him, finger wagging in his face and eyes two inches from Steve’s. Steve gets backed up against his front door, back shoving hard into the cedar wood, and Robin doesn’t back off at all. “You’re such a fucking asshole. Do you think that people don’t care about you? How the hell could you think that?”

“It’s not that,” Steve says.

“I cannot believe you,” Robin says, and presses herself even closer, if that’s possible. She probably smells everything, at this point--Steve’s aftershave mingling with Billy’s, the heavy and sharp scent of liquor stinging at Steve’s skin, the damp weakness of Billy’s low-tar cigarettes (Billy’s such a wimp about actually smoking some good quality shit. He says it costs too much, but Steve knows that Billy just likes Marlboro Lights). 

“You think you’re the only person on the planet, don’t you,” Robin bites out, and finally has the sensibility to lean back a bit. “The only fucking person with problems, and you think that that gives you the right to treat people like they’re nothing, like they’re just props that help or hurt you. Newsflash, asshole! We’re all dealing with our own fucking problems, and you trying to pretend that you’re--that you’re the only person who has the only set of problems, that’s not going to do anything but alienate everyone else. You goddamn asshole.”

“I’ll answer my phone more?” Steve asks. Even with Robin leaning further back from Steve, he’s still plastered against his front door. Steve wonders if Billy can hear their conversation. Steve wonders if Billy cares.

He hopes that Billy doesn’t.

Robin rubs at her temples. “How fucking wasted are you.”

“Not very,” Steve says.

“I can smell it on you,” she says. “Smells like a fucking distillery, Harrington.”

“I’ve developed a better tolerance,” Steve says, and Robin pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Do you know how much Dustin’s been worrying?” Robin asks. “Fucking asking everyone he goddamn knows for updates on you, because you won’t answer your phone, won’t touch your goddamn radio. God, we all knew that something had been wrong since Starcourt. We all fucking knew that, and I thought you were working through it, I--I really did. But you won’t tell us, except apparently you’ve been just--wasting your days away with your new fucking roommate, how is your friend Billy, by the way.”

“A good kisser, but I’m not surprised by that,” Steve says mildly, and then immediately freezes. His shoulder blades jam themselves into the indented panels of his front door. It causes a sharp and hollow pain that starts reverberating around his spine.

Robin stares at him. Her eyes turn flat and dull. Like they suddenly got coated with a layer of sand. She shifts back, even further. Takes two steps back. Her white skin, usually somewhat milky-looking, turns an odd shade of paper-white. She almost turns two-dimensional, right on Steve’s porch, and Steve feels his stomach start to sink downwards, even before she opens her mouth.

In a monotone but graveled voice, Robin says, “Is this a joke. Are you making fun of me.”

No, Steve thinks. Of course not, he thinks. God, I would never, ever--I’m just--I’ve got--he’s so pretty, and I--I always knew. I would never, Robin, you need to know that. I’m so fucked up, Robin, and you seem to know, but it’s in all the wrong ways.

“You should probably go,” Steve says instead.

Robin shakes her head, and it’s an odd two-jerk movement. One to the left, and then to the right, and then she says, “I can’t believe you,” and she turns around, hard and sharp, and leaves, leaves the odd little dome of light cast by Steve’s porch lights, and then she’s in the darkness and slamming her car door shut and turning back on the engine, and then she pulls out of Steve’s driveway and into the street and takes the left out of Steve’s street, back down to her own house or maybe to the Byers’, it’s the same turn either way, and Steve’s still plastered against his front door, still feels the tips of his shoulder blades jabbing into the wood and bruising him, and it feels as if the bruises go straight down to the bone.

Steve takes a deep breath, and then another, but it doesn’t work. Feels like the air is escaping out of the bottom of his lungs. The calm, sweet little feeling of half-drunkenness has turned sour and starts to roil in his gut.

He opens his front door again, and steps inside, and slams the door, pretending that he isn’t sick with shame and disappointed that he’s the only one going through the threshold.

***

“Do you still want to do this?” Steve asks, when he finds Billy again.

Billy turns to look at Steve. His shirt is still off, he’s still sitting at the edge of the couch, the vodka handle is still in his hand, slightly more drained than it had been. He smiles an odd, screwed-up sort of smile at Steve.

“Trouble in paradise?” Billy asks.

“God, she’s not my girlfriend, you have to know that by now. Stop pulling my fucking chain,” Steve says, and conquers the distance between him and the couch in three quick strides, pulling Billy into a wet and hot kiss.

Billy jerks upward, sets a hand on Steve’s cheek and tugs Steve down to the couch beside him. Steve falls downward and oddly has the sensation of falling backward into time, as well. Billy’s hand, the one not cupping Steve’s cheek, palms at Steve’s jeans, and Steve thinks of red hair and twisted-tooth smiles, and jerks away.

“Fuck,” Steve says, shuddering and reaching for the vodka handle, tugging it from the V between Billy’s legs where it had settled.

Billy frowns at him. “Something wrong?” 

“Bad babysitter,” Steve says, and swallows a lot of vodka. It feels like a chemical burn slithering its way down his throat.

Billy stares at him. “Worse babysitter than I thought, then.”

“She was the fucking worst,” Steve agrees.

“She?”

“Made me prove I wasn’t a fucking faggot,” Steve says, and shudders again. “Not exactly sexy talk, though, man. The fuck are you doing.”

“My dad started beating me up because I told him I had a crush on a black guy in my first grade class,” Billy says dryly. “Never stopped hitting me afterward. Too fun for him to stop, I guess.”

“Why the fuck aren’t we kissing,” Steve asks, and Billy nods vigorously, and all but attacks Steve with his mouth.

***

Billy takes Steve apart that night.

His hands grip at Steve’s hips so tight that he leaves them a swollen red, guaranteed to fade into black and blue shadows, but Steve doesn’t mind. In fact, he groans out, asking for more and more and Billy delivers with gnashing teeth at Steve’s neck and collarbones, a trail of heavy bitemarks leading down to the waistband of Steve’s jeans.

Steve responds in turn, sinking into Billy’s shoulder with his mouth and into the planes of Billy’s back with his nails. It’s not gentle and neither of them want it to be; half a wrestling match and half the deep, hurtful pleasure of sex.

Billy unzips Steve’s jeans and Steve jerks down Billy’s without even bothering with the buttons or the zip, and Billy says, “Careful, that fucking chafed,” and Steve says, “My whole dick is chafing right now.”

Billy laughs, and this time it was a real laugh, the kind that welled up from his chest, not just an exhale of breath, and Steve thinks that was what it fucking took? And then he isn’t thinking anything at all because Billy pulls down the waistband of Steve’s briefs and puts his mouth on Steve and Steve can’t think at all, except for the wholeness of everything that he was feeling.

Billy has good fucking technique, too--nothing like the gentleness of Nancy or the clumsiness of high school party girls, but the efficiency and swirling tongue of an expert, and Steve juts up and into Billy’s mouth and comes faster than he ever has before.

He wonders then, breathless and dizzy and with an edge of confusion, if Billy was going to make fun of him. 

But Billy just spits out everything onto the floor, barely missing the edge of Steve’s mother’s oriental rug, and Steve says, “Want me to do you?”

Billy says, “Yeah, but I don’t wanna clean up leftover jizz in the morning, Steve,” and he stands up, stretching the ripples of his muscles out, dick still a tent in his boxers, and Steve knows that if he wasn’t so thoroughly spent at the moment, he’d be half-hard again.

“I got it,” Steve says abruptly, blushing. “Don’t want you to lose it, I can clean it up, and I’ll meet you--back here?”

“If this is going to be a thing,” Billy says, “Then let’s move it to a fucking bed, and keep it there in the future. I’ll be waiting in my room, and you’d better be goddamn quick. This shit’s starting to hurt.”

“Be there in five, Hargrove,” Steve says, and Billy, swiftly and without warning, leans in and kisses Steve again. His lips were still wet with all of Steve, and Steve feels so off-balance that he nearly falls back when Billy pulls away, only to realize that he’s already sitting down.

“Be quick ,” Billy says. “Just like you were, before.”

Ah, Steve thinks. There it is.

***

Steve wakes up with the sunlight slanting in differently through the window.

It takes him a second to realize why this is.

It’s because he’s not in his bed. He’s in Billy’s.

Billy’s room is full of stubbed-out cigarettes and old beer bottles and weights that he’d stolen from Steve’s garage. It smells stale and acrid, like damp laundry and lingering tobacco smoke and the weak sting of old alcohol. All of his clothes (mostly flannels) are thrown into a slumping pile near, but not quite in, the closet.The sheets on Billy’s bed are gritty and bunched up.

And they’re cold, too. Billy’s nowhere to be found.

Steve takes a deep breath, and then another. He can’t seem to find a stable rhythm of breath, suddenly. His mouth feels sticky and dry, and it tastes stale, just like Billy’s room.

In the bright glare of the morning, he can’t seem to stop thinking about Robin. The way she’d shrunk back from him, how she’d seemed to swallow herself up and pull away from Steve, as soon as he said something that he didn’t know was wrong, but apparently was.

And worse--he hadn’t tried to stop her from going. He hadn’t tried to keep her from leaving--he’d felt like stone. No, that wasn’t right--he’d felt like the stump of a tree. Just as immovable, with its roots clawing into the ground, but nothing growing up and out, for him. 

He gasps in another breath, and buries his face into Billy’s pillow. 

“Fuck,” Steve says.

“Ready to go at it again, then?” Billy asks, and Steve flips over to see him staring at him, all twinkly-eyed, in a muscle tank, holding a beer bottle. Like some sort of alcoholic fucking angel. Gorgeous, even considering his greasy hair and the tired bags under his eyes.

“I’m so fucked up,” Steve says, sitting up.

Billy cocks an eyebrow. “Is that a no?”

“Of course it’s not a fucking no,” Steve says, and Billy smiles, leaning forward and letting the bedroom door swing shut behind him.

Chapter Text

While she was driving home from Steve’s house, Robin considered the idea that maybe she overreacted.

Maybe she should have stayed at Steve’s home. Maybe she should’ve forced her way in, picked up all the fucking liquor bottles and screamed at Steve until he sobered up for good. Maybe she should’ve found Billy and wrung him out by his fucking neck and told him to call Max, for God’s sake. And then told him to stop poisoning her best friend with whatever the fuck he was doing.

But every time she thought about turning around, she just kept seeing Steve’s face, sweaty and pale underneath his fluorescent porch lights, saying that he was used to kissing Billy in a flat, absentminded way, a joke that didn’t feel like a joke at all. A jab that was unprovoked and stupid, why the hell would he say something like that, if he wanted to insult her he could’ve just gone straight for a slur like a normal fucking person.

It just--it didn’t make sense.

None of this made any sense. Not Steve, or Steve and Billy, or the fact that she was friends with Steve, or that there was a horrible parallel dimension that seeped into the cracks of Hawkins and seemed to snag onto a bunch of stupid fucking preteens like a thorny vine.

And now Robin was caught in the middle of all of it.

And worse still, she cared.

That goddamn Harrington asshole had made her care about him, made her worry about him, when she had plenty of issues to work through herself. 

Like the way that her dad had shown back up in town, and seemed ready to stay for good, even though he’d packed up and left her and her mother alone and in debt five years ago. Now, he kept insisting on spending time with Robin, taking her out to dinner once a week, as if that would fix the hardened look in her mom’s eyes, or the Father’s Day cards that Robin used to make and then burn in the fireplace every June even though it was seventy-five degrees outside and their chimney flue didn’t work properly.

On top of that, apparently her dad had started to listen to those fundamental Christian radio programs, and now he played them from the staticky radio in his horrible, rusted-over truck, and on days that he picked her up for dinner, she had to listen to him hum along in agreement whenever the preacher said that women need to be submissive, or that homosexuality was a sign that the devil had invaded a person.

She’d tried to call Steve when it became evident that her dad wasn’t leaving, and when he moved from his shitty motel room to an even shittier studio apartment next to the highway. Then she tried to call Steve when her dad joined the  strange megachurch that had taken over the shell of an old Macy’s department store,  and he forced her to join in on a couple services, saying that it would be good for her. Steve  answered the phone but brushed her off, saying he needed a fucking nap when she called about her dad insinuating that she shouldn’t go to college, that instead she could join up with the Christian Fellowship Church of Indiana and set about doing Good and Better Things (which definitely just meant finding a husband as soon as possible and becoming a fucking teen bride).

She’d  fucking needed Steve, because the nightmares weren’t going away and her dad was scaring her and her mom was so stressed out all the time because of her jobs and it all felt like too much, like everything in her life had become paper-thin and it was crumpling in on itself and leaving her with terrible little papercuts at the same time.

 And Steve hadn’t picked up his phone. For weeks, he hadn’t picked up, and then he just didn’t pay attention to her, and then he didn’t pick up his phone again .

And it turned out he was fine, but not really, but he didn’t seem to care about anything anymore, and--

God.

Fuck him. 

He could drown in his vodka, for all she cared.

***

“I don’t care about Steve,” Robin insists.

“Then why did you come to the Operation: Save Steve meeting?” Dustin asks, gesturing so wide and wild with his piece of chalk that he accidentally drops it, breaking it in half.

Robin sighs and kicks at the linoleum tiled floor with her sneaker. “Mr. Nicholson won’t let you borrow his classroom again if you break all his chalk.”

“Mr. Nicholson told me, and this is a direct quote, that he ‘didn’t give a shit’ about what I do in the classroom after school, because he’s the best ninth-grade science teacher ever,” Dustin says, and nimbly steps over the shattered pieces of chalk that are starting to gather underneath his feet. He grabs another piece of chalk and underlines the ‘Operation: Save Steve’ that he’d written on the blackboard.

“So,” Dustin says, turning around and rapping the teacher’s desk with his knuckles, “Any ideas?”

Robin looks around the classroom. Lucas, Max, Will, Mike, and Eleven all occupy different desks, which Dustin had arranged in a semi-circle around the front blackboard. Dustin had ordered all of them to an after-school meeting, after Robin radioed last night to tell Dustin that they should probably leave Steve alone. 

Dustin hadn’t responded well to her advice, obviously.

Robin sighs again. “Dustin, I went by his house last night. You know that,” she says, and she makes sure to soften her tone. “I really don’t think that this is a good idea. It seems like Steve’s going through something, and...to be honest, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with any of you going over to that house, right now.”

Dustin takes off his baseball cap to run his hands through his hair again, making the curls stick out even further than they usually do. He settles the cap on his head again, this time backwards, and a fluffy piece of hair shoots out of the gap between the cap and adjustment strip. He looks absolutely ridiculous, but the hard set to his eyes makes Robin keep quiet about his stupid hair situation.

“You say that,” Dustin says, “but you won’t give any specifics.”

“It’s…” Robin hesitates. “You all are still a little young for that. Uh, sorry.”

“Dude,” Mike pipes up, “we’re fourteen. And we’ve fought actual interdimensional monsters, which is more than a lot of fucking adults. We can handle this.”

Robin bites at her lip. “It seems--personal,” she tries again.

 “Steve once described me as his little brother,” Dustin says, his jaw tightening. “As family. If there’s a problem with him, then he deserves help.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t want help,” Robin says, twisting her fingers together in her lap.

“So what does that tell us?” Dustin asks, turning back to the blackboard and brandishing his newest piece of chalk.

“That it is something he’s uncomfortable talking about,” Eleven suggests.

“Yes! Good point, El,” Dustin says, and writes that down as a bullet point.

Robin groans, and presses her forehead down into her desk.

“Hey, Robin,” Max says. Robin turns her head to the right, keeping her temple pressed into the cool plastic of the desk. She eyes Max from her sideways position, and sees the worried scrunch between Max’s eyebrows.

“Did you happen to see Billy last night, when you were over there?”

“Oh, that’s true, Max, good thinking!” Dustin says, and Robin hears the scratch of Dustin writing something on the blackboard. “Steve could be acting this way because of Billy’s antagonism!”

“Shut up, Dustin,” Max says without heat. Her eyes are still locked onto Robin. “I’m worried about my brother just as much as you’re worried about ‘yours.’”

She puts ‘yours’ in heavy air quotation marks. Robin snorts and pushes herself up into a more upright position.

“I didn’t see him,” Robin says, apologetically. “But if it helps, Steve...mentioned him...and, well, it seems like they’re doing okay. And I saw his car in the driveway.”

Max nods, and kicks at one of the legs of the desk. “It’s just that he hasn’t answered any of the calls I’ve made to Steve’s house. And--I just. I really want to talk to him.”

“I know,” Robin says. “I tried to call Steve too, and he didn’t pick up, either. They seem like they’re...I don’t know...fine, with only talking to each other at the moment.”

Max frowns. “That doesn’t sound like Billy at all,” she says.

“It doesn’t sound like Steve, either!” Dustin cuts in. He’s got his hands on his hips, and now his chalk is dusting the loops of his jeans a powdery white. “Which is why I called this meeting, which is why I’d like you all to get to the point. ”

“What doesn’t sound like Steve?”

The voice is delicate, and it comes from the threshold of the classroom door. Robin turns her head over her shoulder, and is greeted with the not-unwelcome sight of Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers.

Nancy’s got a hand gripped on her bag, and her eyes are outlined in thin eyeliner. She’s wearing a white eyelet sweater that drapes artfully across her chest and pools down by the palms of her hands. Robin smiles and retraces the lines of the sweater with her eyes, before turning to look at Jonathan. He looks tired as ever, but his shoulders fall down into a more relaxed pose when he catches sight of Will.

“You didn’t tell us that you were having an after school meeting,” Jonathan says gruffly. “Nancy and I were searching all over for you and Mike.”

“A little more warning would be appreciated next time,” Nancy adds, but she sounds distracted. Robin follows her eye line to Dustin’s stupid operation title, now underlined three separate times on the board in white, yellow, and blue chalk. 

“What’s going on with Steve?” Nancy asks again, a frown starting to gather on her lower lip.

“We don’t know, but we’re worried,” Will says, at the same time that Robin says, “He’s reverted to his old asshole self.”

Nancy’s half-frown develops into a full frown, and  Jonathan’s eyebrows push together in the middle of his forehead. Nancy turns and takes in the board more thoroughly; Robin sees her move her lips to match the bullet points “definitely hiding something,” “being annoying on purpose??” and “Billy Hargrove is involved, I know it!!!”

“Hmph,” Nancy sighs, sounding completely ridiculous and like a middle-school librarian. Jonathan wraps an arm around her shoulders and smiles down at her.

“Robin,” Nancy says, turning again to look straight at her. Robin sits up even taller and brushes away a stray lock of her hair from her face without meaning to. She feels a deep blush starting to spread across her cheeks, but she ignores it. 

“Sup,” Robin says, instead. Honestly, she thinks half of the blush is just because Nancy even knows her name. Literally no one knows her, ever.

But hey, if you’ve fought a gore monster together with fireworks one time, maybe you’re owed a first-name basis with that person.

“Can I talk to you in the hallway, for a second?” she asks, jerking her head to the left. Jonathan unwraps his arm from her shoulder, and looks at her. They stare into each other’s eyes for a long moment, and then he nods   and steps into the classroom, sitting on top of one of the desks in the corner.

Dustin raps his knuckles against the teacher’s desk again. Chalk dust sprays out from the piece he’s got gripped in his fist, and it showers down in light powder against the fake plastic-wood of the desk. “If you’ve got something to say about Steve, it would help if you said it here! I’m so fucking tired of all this secrecy.”

Nancy doesn’t roll her eyes at this, the way that Robin does. Instead, Nancy just says, “Actually, it’s more of a girl...friend thing, with Steve. That I think I should talk to Robin about, and no one else. Because Steve deserves privacy over his girlfriends.”

Dustin’s eyes grow impossibly wide, and he turns to Robin. “I thought you weren’t dating him! This adds a whole other dimension to--”

“I’m really not,” Robin says, even as Nancy walks decisively over to Robin’s desk and grabs Robin’s backpack for her. 

“Come on,” Nancy says, and her eyes flash, dark and hard when she meets Robin’s gaze.

“What--okay, fine, whatever,” Robin says, and follows Nancy out into the hallway. 

Mostly because Nancy’s got a vice-like grip that digs into Robin’s wrist, but hey. She follows.

***

Nancy ends up dragging her into the girls’ bathroom.

“Dustin and the rest of my brother’s friends are nosy, but they’re still fourteen, and they’d never risk going in here yet,” Nancy explains. “And Max and El have too much common sense, so they’re not gonna follow me.”

“I’m really not dating Steve,” Robin says, crossing her arms over her chest. “And besides, what do you care? You’ve got Will’s older brother wrapped around your pinky finger.” And you’re wrapped around his, she thinks.

“I don’t care,” Nancy says, easily enough that Robin believes her. “But you are Steve’s closest friend right now, who’s actually his age or close to it, and…”

She bites her lip, and scrunches up her eyebrows. She tugs at her sleeves, and then she says, “Okay, so have you ever noticed that Steve tends to not talk about really important shit?”

“Uh, yeah,” Robin says. “Constantly. All the time. It’s so dumb.”

Nancy nods. “Yes! Exactly. It’s what--it’s part of the reason why we didn’t work out. He didn’t understand why I wanted to talk about Barb, and I couldn’t handle it. But now that I have some distance, I’ve realized that he does it all the time. I didn’t learn about his thing with his parents until, like, six months into our relationship, and sometimes, when we were--he--and I’d get…”

Robin frowns. “What?”

“No, that’s not relevant, especially if you’re not his girlfriend,” Nancy decides. “But my point is--if he’s really as bad as Dustin seems to think, then I’m worried that it’s even worse for him.”

Robin sighs. “Look, I know it’s bad. I saw him last night, and he looked like absolute shit. But he was also--he said some things to me. And I don’t know if he meant them to be as mean as they seemed in the moment, but he also won’t talk to me, even when I need to talk to him, and Dustin’s obviously going out of his mind trying to get Steve back...this has been going on for months, and I can’t just fucking slap him and hope he snaps out of it. And if he’s gonna keep treating me the way he is, then. I’m done. He can figure it all out by his goddamn self.”

Nancy sighs. She bites down on her cheek, and then she wraps a hand around the edge of the sink. Robin hears the clink of her nails against the porcelain basin, and Nancy keeps lightly tapping against it for a while. Robin shifts from side to side on her feet.

“I’d check on him myself, if I thought it would help,” Nancy eventually says. “I had no idea...but I’d probably make it worse. But I still care about him. And he’s a good guy. I know there’s no reason for you to, and we don’t know each other that well, but. Can you try just one last time? For me? And just tell me about what happened. I need to know what’s going on.”

Nancy’s eyes have grown wide in her face, and all sparkly-looking. Her pointed chin juts forward, and she’s pursing her lips, making them seem fuller and wider.

“I’m not your fucking boyfriend,” Robin says.

Nancy drops her chin and relaxes her lips, but her eyes remain wide and worried.

“God, fine. I guess I’m worried about him too,” Robin says, and uncrosses her arms. “He’s a dick, though, and you are too.”

Nancy drops the innocent look, and tugs at her bag across her shoulder again. She smiles, small and prideful. “Thanks, Robin,” she says. 

“Yeah, whatever,” Robin says, already regretting all of this.

***

And that’s how Robin finds herself pulling up to Steve’s house for the second time in two days.

“Fucking asshole,” Robin mutters to herself, as she runs up the steps and presses the doorbell. “Fucking dumbass who has a manipulative ex-girlfriend and no respect for his friends.”

Robin leans against the railing of the front porch and waits for Steve to emerge from his McMansion-sized house. Honestly, the fact that Robin’s worried about him makes no goddamn sense. She has to shop at goddamn thrift stores and he has a woolen Burberry jacket that he used to wear to school in the winter like it was a normal piece of clothing.

She waits a second, and then checks her watch. Then rings the doorbell again.

No one comes out of the house.

“Fuck,” she mutters to herself. Then raps on the door with her knuckles, hard and fast so that he’ll know how unamused she is.

Still no one emerges. Not even Billy Hargrove.

She sighs, and bounces up and down on her toes. A thick arm of anxiety wraps itself around her lower stomach. Because what if Steve’s drank too heavily? Like, logically, he’s probably just napping or out near the pool, but what if he’s passed out somewhere? It’s not like it’s an illogical thought.

And now she has a disgusting image of Steve, drooling into a puddle of his own vomit, and she shudders. She steps away from the door and forces herself to take in a deep breath, and then another one, and lets her head drop into her chest for a second.

He’s fine. He’s fine and he’s just an asshole.

Another deep breath, and her eyes focus back in, and she realizes that she’s staring at the old bamboo welcome mat next to the door’s threshold.

Robin frowns and squats down, peeling up the edge of the mat.

There’s a key taped to the underside of it.

Well, it’s not technically breaking and entering. And if it pisses Steve off, then fucking good.

She slots the key into the door.

***

The house first opens up to a foyer that turns into a hallway, branching off into different rooms. The living room is the first room on the right, and doesn’t have any door--just a wide entrance that’s bordered by white crowning.

This is important for two reasons:

The first is that she can smell the sharp, headache-inducing scent of hard liquor, mixed with the twinging and earthy scent of a lot of fucking weed. There aren’t any doors to stop all of the smells from rushing up on her as soon as she opens the front door and steps inside Steve’s house.

The second is that when she turns her head to the right, following some odd muffled sounds, she is immediately confronted with the view of Steve and Billy on the couch that sits in plain view of the foyer.

Steve and Billy, making out almost violently, and Billy’s shirt is already off. Billy’s hands are wrapped around Steve’s waist, and his fingers are starting to tug at Steve’s jeans.

“Oh,” Robin says, blinking rapidly.

Steve shoots up, throwing Billy down onto the couch. He stares at Robin and climbs up off the couch. He wipes at his mouth. His fly is already undone, and his belt is hanging loosely off of his belt loops.

“Shit,” Steve says, and doesn’t say anything else.

“What?” Robin says, and shakes her head like she’s trying to clear out water from her ears.

 “Um. What the fuck?”

Chapter Text

The diner that they used for job hunting is a fourteen minute drive from Steve’s house, and that doesn’t account for the time needed for negotiating street parking and the actual wait to be served at the restaurant.

So in total, it’s about twenty three minutes. Twenty three minutes of silence between Steve and Robin, plus an awkward car ride where the radio kept going in and out. Steve never tried to change the station, and Robin had her arms crossed so tight, hands shoved under her armpits, that Steve was surprised she was able to disentangle herself once he’d parked the car.

Steve doesn’t have a clear memory of what happened when she walked in on him and Billy. Probably because he was still in the throes of a particularly good high, and because up until Robin had shouted, he’d been focused on nothing except the feeling of Billy’s teeth biting down on his own bottom lip. Steve’s mouth still felt raw, and Steve still felt utterly undone by Billy, even after the cold water of Robin’s appearance had fully splashed over him in tumultuous, dreaded waves.

But there’d been screaming, and confusion, and then Steve had essentially come-to behind the wheel of his car, Robin tapping her foot against the floor of his car in an irregular rhythm. And Steve had known enough to drive to the coffee shop and order an Americano with an extra shot of espresso. Robin asked for hot chocolate and the biggest pastry they had, and the middle-aged waitress glanced between the two of them for a while before offering Robin a discount for her hot chocolate.

“That’s great, thank you,” Robin says, and tugs at the skin next to her left temple. The waitress nods and moves quickly to another table.

Steve stares down at the table. They’ve been in this booth before, more than once. It fills Steve with a sick sense of deja-vu, the worst-case scenario of a repeated experience. His eyes are still bloodshot from Billy’s weed, and he wonders if he should’ve brought sunglasses, or if that would’ve been too much of a tip-off.

It’s quiet, again. It seems like Robin doesn’t wanna break the silence, not with him. Maybe that’s fair. Steve chances a glance up at her, and she’s already staring at him. The spot next to her temple has turned red from all the pinching. He stares back down at the table, and almost feels dizzy with confusion as he expects to see a newspaper with help wanted ads spread across it. Another time, even if it had only been weeks, months ago.

“You ever find a job?” Steve asks her.

“Oh, that’s what we’re starting with?” Robin asks, a bit too loud. Steve stares at her, and she throws her hands up. “I am not in the position to be lectured by you, Harrington.”

“Robin,” Steve says. “Please.”

Robin stares at him. She doesn’t say anything else.

Eventually the waitress returns with Steve’s coffee and Robin’s cocoa, piled high with whipped cream. She sets down a monstrous-sized cannoli, too, dripping with chocolate chips.

“Let me know if you need anything else,” she says, and Robin nods at her. 

That should be the end of it, but she seems to catch onto Steve just as she starts to turn away. She frowns, and then leans in. Her perfume catches Steve’s notice; fruity, and light, and pleasant, and it makes him nauseous. 

“Are you all right, sir?” she asks gently, and absurdly, Steve feels his eyes well up with tears. It comes out of nowhere, just like the heavy tightness in his throat, and he wipes at his face once, twice, three times, and the tears don’t seem to clear up, just start falling faster.

“Sir--” The waitress begins, alarmed, hand outstretched, and that’s when Robin apparently gives in and says, “I’m so sorry to bother you, but is it possible that we could actually get our orders to go?”

“I...of course,” The waitress says.

“Sorry to bother you,” Robin says, and passes the dishes back to her. 

The waitress nods. “Will...will he be all right?” she asks, delicately.

Robin bites at the inside of her cheek. Steve’s still wiping at his eyes, and he’s pulled up one of his  knees, foot resting on the plastic booth. He’s wrapped both arms around his leg, crunching in on himself. The table between them isn’t very wide, so she’s able to reach across and tap on the back of his hand with a knuckle.

“Yes,” Robin finally says. “I’ll tip you extra.”

The waitress nods, and heads back to the kitchen.

“When I say I’ll tip, I mean you,” Robin says, moving back from Steve and relaxing back into her seat. “Since you’re the one who can’t keep it together in public anymore. Jesus, Steve.”

Steve hiccups out a small laugh, and it makes Robin smile. Just a little bit.

***

Robin drives this time, which is only fair. Steve’s vision is all clouded over with tears, and he feels overheated. He presses his cheek against the cold glass of the passenger window, and closes his eyes.

Finally, the car motor cuts out and the car jolts to a halt. Robin pokes Steve’s shoulder a couple times until he blinks and sits upright, and she pushes his paper coffee cup into his hands. “Drink,” she says. 

Her voice is still harsh, but she watches him as he gulps down his Americano. When he sets the cup back down into the cup holder, she opens the styrofoam box holding her cannoli, rips off a sizable piece, and pushes it into his hands as well.

Steve nibbles at a corner of the pastry, and looks out the windshield of the car. Robin’s driven them up a backroad. They’re pulled off onto a gravel lot next to a snaking, crumbling street, facing a weedy, barren field. There’s an outline of a trailer house in the distance, but other than that, it’s a quiet, abandoned area. 

Steve swallows and says, “You drive up here to kill me?”

Robin doesn’t say anything. She unbuckles her seatbelt and hops out of the car, and then stares at Steve until he does the same. She hops up onto the hood of his car and pats the space next to her. 

Steve follows. He looks at her, at the side of her face. She’s staring out at the meadow ahead, eyes boring into the line of trees at the far end of the field. Steve sucks in his lips and bites down on his top lip, pushing at the skin with his bottom line of teeth.

Robin says, “I’m so pissed at you, Harrington.”

 She’s still not looking at him, so Steve shifts slightly and stares up at the sky, too. His elbow presses uncomfortably into one of the metal ridges on the car hood.

“I’m…” Steve says, and then finds that he has nothing else to say.

Robin slams a foot down onto the car. It’s a loud metal bang, and it takes everything Steve has not to flinch. “My dad came back,” she says. “He’s such an asshole. And I needed you, you know?”

Steve keeps his eyes on a passing cloud overhead. It’s gray and wispy, barely a cloud at all. He hears and feels Robin shift next to him, feels her eyes burn into the profile of his face and along the bridge of his nose, but now he can’t look at her.

“I thought we were friends,” Robin says. “I thought we’d. We got each other, and I thought we’d be there for each other.”

“I’m not, I’m not trying to, I mean, I’m trying, but,” Steve says, but his voice dies out on him again. He tilts his head back even further. He doesn’t know what time it is. Close to sundown, probably. The sun seems to be dying a quiet death to the right of him, sinking down in a weak red horizon.

He takes a deep breath, and then another, and waits for her to cut in.

“Robin,” he says softly, when she doesn’t say anything else.

“You need to talk to me,” he hears her say. “Otherwise I’m gonna drive us back to your house, I’m gonna get my car, and--and you’ll never see me again, Steve.”

Steve sighs out through his nose. A tear slips down his cheek, tracing its way down and over his mouth, and clings to the edge of his jaw. He’d never stopped crying. He only just realized that.

“Robin, I don’t, I don’t know how to, please,” he says, and the words shudder out of him, and his voice breaks, and all of a sudden Robin’s in his space, wrapping her arms around his middle and squeezing, and he lets out a full-out sob, the kind he’s never really actually let out.

“Oh, fuck,” he says, and Robin laughs into his shirt, but he feels it growing damp with her tears, too.

***

It takes until Steve can breathe regularly, not in irregular pants, but it starts pouring out of him.

“I asked my parents to leave, and they did,” is how he starts. “And I was eleven, and I didn’t realize what I was asking til they were gone. I only ever wanted to get out of a bad situation, and--and it worked, so I. I never realized how bad. Everything was. I thought it was taken care of.

“And maybe it was, but. I. I wasn’t, and no one. Um, no one cared about me, not in the way I needed, Robin. It was. I was. A mess. And then, with Nancy, I thought even if I wasn’t supported, I could support someone else. I never. I never thought it was a two-way street, and I never thought she’d leave. I don’t...fuck, I don’t know what I’m saying. And Barb, she. She died in or near my house, but I couldn’t ever. Talk about it. The kids are so okay with everything, and I’m not, and they’re strong.

“But. The kids, they can’t ever know, Robin, not about--not about what I’m about to tell you. No one knew until--until Billy, Jesus Christ, I never even. Um. I thought he was hot, I always did, I just. Shelly, she made me. Jesus, Shelly. Look, I. Please don’t--just don’t, I need you to listen, but I tried pretending she hadn’t, for the longest time, and just.

“Something bad happened to me when I was eleven. Really bad, Robin. Shelly was my babysitter, and she made me hate gay people, and. I think she...I think she raped me, Robin.”

“I never put it like that before, either. Not til just now.”

***

“Steve,” Robin says. Just that, and she looks up at him, and it’s not with pity, even if it’s with a good deal of fear. But there’s something warm there, something soft in the center of her eyes, and Steve realizes, with a shockwave that rolls over him, that it’s love.

He’d told her all of that, and she still cared about him. She pulled herself even closer to him, wrapped her arms around him again, tighter, like she was offended she couldn’t get any closer to him, and she says, again, “Steve,” and Steve feels himself just.

Break down.

And new sobs rolled over his body, thick, and fresh and heavy as all hell.

***

“Sorry,” Steve says. Later. The sun’s long since disappeared underneath the treeline, and the sky is dusty and bright with stars. “For not being there for you. That was shitty.”

It’s not like he’s stopped crying--at this point, he’s not sure if he will, ever--but his voice is clear, if croaky, and he doesn’t have to wipe at his nose every fifteen seconds, now. His eyes are still leaky and red-rimmed, but that can’t really be helped.

“Yeah,” Robin says, but it’s gentle. “It was.”

“There’s something wrong with me,” Steve says. “There has been. For a while.”

Robin stares at him. Her eyes are also red-rimmed. Her entire face looks messy with emotion.

“You need help,” Robin says. “More than I can give, Steve. You’ve...for years, you haven’t gotten any. And, at the risk of sounding like an after-school special...I really think that’s not healthy for you.”

Steve clears his throat. He thinks for a second, about denying it all. 

But there’s no way to. There’s no way to go back. Steve’s already ruined that for himself, even while repairing his friendship with Robin.

“You’re right,” Steve says. “I know you are.”

“Will you get help?” Robin asks. It’s a measured question, Steve can tell.

“It’s late,” Steve says.

“Steve,” Robin says, and he can hear the break in her voice.

“I’ll drive you back to your car,” Steve says. “I guess that’s at my house.”

“Steve,” Robin says again. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and looks down at his lap. Twists his fingers together. It’s really a beautiful night.

And it’s a school night for Robin. 

She needs to get home.

“Please, Robin,” Steve says quietly. “Not tonight.”

“It’s never tonight,” Robin says. Almost snaps, but not quite. The break is in her voice, again.

“I think I like guys. And girls. Both of them, at the same time,” Steve says on an exhale. “And Billy’s. I need to get back to Billy, Robin. And it’s a school night for you. Please.”

Robin sucks in both of her lips, bites down on both of them at the same time. She swallows, loud and audible enough for Steve to hear it. 

“We’re not done,” Robin says.

Steve finally gets up the gumption to look straight at Robin. She’s staring right back at him. She’s been letting her hair grow out, and now it’s brushing the tops of her shoulder blades. Steve wishes he could tell her how beautiful she looked, but instead, he just nods, and says, “I’ll be there, Robin. I’ll be there for you.”

She holds his gaze a second longer, and then nods, definitive. She slides off the hood of his car and wipes her hands on her thighs, even though she’d gotten nothing on them.

“I’m driving,” Robin tells him. “You’re still fucking crying, and you don’t have windshield wipers for your goddamn eyes, Harrington.”

***

When they get back to Steve’s house, Robin hugs Steve for a long time next to her car. 

When she pushes away from him, she says, “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.”

And Steve’s chest aches as he says, “Yeah. I know.”

She punches him in the shoulder, and says, “If you go ghost on me, I will kill you. You need people.” 

Her eyes are so sad. Steve has to look away, scuff at the driveway pavement with the tip of his shoe.

“I won’t let you down again, Robin,” he says.

She purses her lips, and stares at him for a long time. The tension ratchets in Steve’s chest, not easing even when she says, “Okay. I’ll be back soon, and we’ll deal with all of it together, okay?”

“You don’t have to,” Steve says, looking back up. He stares at her nose, so he won’t have to look into her eyes. “I wouldn’t--it’s a lot, I’d never ask you to.”

“I’m here for you,” Robin says, quietly. It still feels like a scolding.

Steve swallows and says, “Drive safe,” and she nods, pulling him into another hug.

***

And once she drives off, finally, Steve’s left alone at his house.

Well, not entirely alone, Steve amends in his head. When he glances up to the front porch, Billy’s there, propped against the doorframe and staring at him without saying anything at all. He’s biting at his lower lip and his hands are shoved into the front pockets of his jeans.

Steve clears his throat, rubs at his dried-out, red-rimmed eyes, and squares his shoulders like he’s preparing for a physical fight.

For all he knows, he might be.

Chapter Text

Billy knows when it’s time to cut his losses.

It’s something he learned through punishment. Excessive punishment, if you ask Billy, but no one ever has. And it doesn’t matter, because the end result is still that Billy learns the lesson he was meant to.

For instance: during high school, if he didn’t pick his sister up from school, he knew he’d wake up the next day with funny, wheezing breathing and purple and blue bruises all over his ribs. If he mentioned a boy in any sort of physical way (even to say that a boy’s strange-looking, like Jonathan Byers), it ended up with the impression of a belt on his back. 

And if he told anyone else about these sorts of marks and bruises, like he had to his seventh-grade social studies teacher, it always gave him a black eye and threats of military school that Billy’s dad couldn’t afford. The brochures were still scattered throughout the house for weeks afterward, anyway. Once, Billy’s dad even made him get a buzz cut, a few years before they moved to the middle of Buttfuck Nowhere, Indiana. It’d been humiliating, showing up to school like that. 

(His older friends, the ones that had introduced him to cigarettes and weed and when it got really bad, those white little tablets that made everything go all fuzzy and hazy--they’d laughed at him for ages afterward. And it wasn’t a nice kind of laugh. It was mean, and sharp-edged, just like everything in Billy’s life had always been since his mom left.)

So Billy learned. He learned to pick up his sister every day, and never to mention any boys if he could help it, and to never, ever tell anyone about his dad. He learned how to misbehave, but in a way that his dad respected, the way that meant if his dad did raise a hand towards Billy, it was an open palm instead of a closed fist.

So when Steve’s not-girlfriend stomps through the door and then back out of it with Steve in tow, Billy sits on the couch and smokes a joint and stares at the turned-off television. He thinks about Steve’s tongue caught between his teeth, and how good it always felt in the moment. Certainly better than any of the girls Billy had ever been with, and Billy also thinks about how Steve always pushed his hair back with a hand before taking a long drag on a cigarette.

But it’s time to cut his losses. Billy knows that. He and Steve have been in a kind of stupor ever since Billy had run--ever since Billy had moved out of his dad’s house. They’d been living in a world that existed outside of reality, one where the both of them could fall apart and it wouldn’t matter, and they wouldn’t have to put themselves back together again.

They’ll have to stop. Steve’s not-girlfriend will wake him up, Billy knows, and Steve will come back to him with clear eyes and Billy will have to face the same kind of clarity, at least as long as he lived under Steve’s roof.

Billy doesn’t want to, though. He wants everything to stay exactly as it is. 

Because sure, he can’t sleep well without thinking that dark, thick shadows are creeping up and grabbing at him, or without thinking about Heather and her pretty eyes and dark curly hair and the way she’d screamed and writhed and twisted as the Mindflayer burned out her mind. And sure, sometimes Billy wakes up from nightmares that were actually memories and he's terrified of moving because what if he tries to get up and he can’t because he doesn’t have control of his body again?

But without the cheap weed and low-tar cigarettes and dark liquor that he and Steve had been living off of, it’s going to get worse. It’s going to get way worse, and Billy's not sure he can survive the come-down, much less the painful reality of sober life.

So Billy knows when to cut his losses. Even if it means he has to give up Steve.

***

Billy watches Steve as he approaches the front door.

As soon as he spots Billy, his shoulders tense. As he gets closer, Billy can see that Steve’s been crying. His face still looks a bit tacky from tears. His eyes are over-bright, shining and almost glassy. Not a good sign.

Billy shoves his hands deeper into his pockets, and waits.

Steve comes to stand in front of Billy, a bit farther away than usual. He clears his throat and says, “So Robin knows.”

Billy snorts. “I figured that much.”

“But she’s not going to tell anyone.”

“And you trust her?”

“Yes,” Steve says, and his shoulders roll even further down his back. Neither of them have made any move to get off the front porch. Billy’s still leaning against the door jamb.

Billy takes a deep breath. He knows how awful Steve is at taking the first step with--well, everything, so it falls to him, again, to sort the both of them out.

Billy starts by shifting, so that he’s no longer blocking the entrance. He waves with a hand, so that Steve knows to go through. He does, casting a glance over his shoulder at Billy. Billy just rolls his eyes, and then follows him in.

Steve leads them to the kitchen, and throws himself into one of the seats gracelessly, staring at Billy still. Billy stays standing, leaning against the kitchen island and sucking in his left cheek. He rubs at his chin, hand scraping against the stubble growing there, and looks back at him.

Steve breaks eye contact first, staring down at the polished wood of the table.

Billy sighs, and then says, “I can start looking for apartments, if you like.”

Steve’s head jerks up. “What?”

Billy shrugs. “I figured your friend said something about how this isn’t healthy, or whatever. I don’t know how far she took it, but. No matter what, we can’t keep going on like this forever.”

Steve shakes his head. “I’m not asking you to move out, Billy.”

“If you’re getting sober,” Billy says, pushing himself off the counter and heading toward the fridge, “then I need to move out.”

He opens the fridge and pulls out a beer can, pops the tab, and takes a long drink. He can feel Steve’s eyes on him the whole time.

Finally, Steve says, “I never said anything about getting sober.”

“Your girlfriend’ll want you to,” Billy says.

“Fuck you.”

“I know you keep saying she’s not your girlfriend, but--”

“She’s not,” Steve insists. “I’m not a cheater.”

Billy turns around. Squints his eyes. “Who’d you be cheating on, in this situation?”

Steve presses his lips together. It’s not an answer. Billy doesn’t think he really wanted one anyway.

So he switches the subject. “At any rate, you care more about her.”

“She never tried to kill me.”

“It’s not an accusation,” Billy says, and is surprised by how much he means it. “I’m just saying--the way she wants you to live, and the way I need to, are different. So I’ll move out.”

Steve scrapes back his chair. Billy turns his back on him, leaning on the opposite side of the kitchen island. He drains the rest of his beer, and pretends he doesn’t hear Steve walking up beside him until he can feel Steve’s breath on the shell of his ear.

“Why can’t you live sober?” Steve asks, but the question is low. Breathy. Billy wonders whether he’s trying to start a heart-to-heart, or something else entirely. Billy knows which one he’d prefer, but he forces himself not to react. He just crumples his beer can and sets it on the counter behind him.

“Take a wild guess,” he says dryly.

“You never talk about it.”

“I never want to.”

“You know more about me than I do about you,” Steve says.

Billy turns to face him, then. He’s really close to him. Billy stares down at Steve's lips for a second, before he forces himself to look back up and make eye contact.

“I don’t know if that’s true,” he says.

“Is that so,” Steve says. His eyes are dark. He presses close to Billy, and Billy takes in a deep breath.

“Your friend would want us to talk,” Billy reminds him, even though he doesn’t care. He just knows that Steve would.

“First time you haven’t called her my girlfriend,” Steve says, and leans in close enough that Billy can feel the ghost of Steve’s lips on his.

“Wouldn’t be appropriate right now,” Billy murmurs, staring firmly at Steve’s mouth.

“When have you ever cared about appropriate?”

“Got me there,” Billy says, and, since he can’t take it anymore, surges forward to match up his lips with Steve’s.

And Steve kisses back, so enthusiastically that Billy forgets everything they’d been talking about.

***

It’s a routine for them now, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hit Billy any differently.

The way that Steve kisses burns its way through Billy’s lungs. The sensation is hot, and warm, and always settles itself somewhere in the lower right center of his stomach, tight enough that it feels like a muscle flexing and tensing, just like his jaw did when Steve moved his mouth down Billy’s neck, hot and wet and somehow sweet and tangy at the same time.

And then Steve does something with his tongue against the roof of Billy’s mouth, and reaches into Billy’s jeans to cup his hand around his groin, and Billy’s vision and all of his thoughts white out.

***

“I still think I don’t know anything about you,” Steve says, afterward. He’s stretched out horizontally on Billy’s bed, head pillowed in his arms. His leg kicks against the air uselessly as he looks at Billy, his eyes still dark and his skin still sweaty from everything they’d just done.

“Sure you do,” Billy says. He’s sitting up and rifling through his nightstand drawer. He finds the pack of cigarettes he’d been looking for, and offers one to Steve. Steve just shakes his head, but he licks his lips as he watches Billy light up.

“Nothing that you’ve said, though,” Steve says. “Just context clues and shit. Stuff I’ve heard from other people.”

“Like you’re any better.”

“I am, a bit,” Steve says, raising an eyebrow. Billy puffs smoke out of his mouth.

“I’m not sure what you want from me,” he says.

“Tell me something,” Steve says, rolling onto his side. Billy has to make a conscious effort not to let his eyes wander. He knows what Steve’s doing, but he’s not sure if he’s up for a round two. Not yet, anyway.

Billy sucks on his cigarette for a while, so long that Steve sighs in annoyance and rolls onto his stomach again. He picks at the quilt on Billy’s bed, and Billy knows he’s regretting not taking the cigarette, now. Good.

Finally, after Steve sighs again and starts picking at a hangnail on his thumb, Billy says, “I’ve told you stuff about me, though. I’m not sure what you mean.”

“But it’s not--like. I know you like Star Wars, but what’s your favorite movie?” Steve says. “Or, I know you like lifting weights, but why? I just, I dunno. I feel like--we’ve spent the past weeks together, only with each other, and you haven’t…”

“What?” Billy asks, stubbing his cigarette out in a mug of water next to his bed. “I haven’t opened up to you? I don’t need to, man. We’re not… this isn’t… I’m not your girlfriend.”

“I never thought you were,” Steve says, but he keeps his eyes down, staring at the criss-crossing pattern of the quilt. “I just. I don’t know. Talking to Robin made me think. Maybe I should do better, you know? At checking up on people. Friends. I’ve been…”

Steve twirls his pointer finger around his temple, and Billy rolls his eyes.

“I’ve never asked you for that, Harrington,” he says. His voice is gentle as he says it, though.

“I know,” Steve says. “But I can’t help but think--I mean, I just…”

“What?” Billy asks, and frowns at Steve. “Say what you mean.”

“Have you ever asked that of, like, anyone?” Steve asks, and then bites down on his lip. His eyes go squinty, and he sits up properly this time, looking around for his clothes. “Not that it’s--any of my business.”

Billy exhales sharply through his nose. He stretches his arms up and back, and listens to his shoulder joints crack with the movement.

“It’s not really any of your business,” he says.

And then, as Steve is pulling on his boxers, he says, “I hate reading. I really hate Catcher in the Rye, especially.”

Steve turns to look at him. His eyebrows are drawn close together, and he pauses for a moment before he finishes pulling up his jeans.

“Then why were you reading it, that day in the hospital?”

Billy shrugs, and forces himself to keep his voice calm. “I was making sure. I was, uh, reminding myself of the things I like. And… and the things I don’t like. It was--important for me, at the time. To know those things, the things that stayed the same. You, um, don’t really have access to beer or weed in a hospital. So.”

Steve opens his mouth, like he’s planning on saying something else. But then he closes it, and pulls on his shirt quickly. He ruffles up his hair, and then heads over to Billy’s nightstand. Billy watches him as he pulls out a cigarette and Billy’s lighter.

“Thanks,” Steve says, and then lights his cigarette. The smoke drifts off, pale grey and noxious in the room that hadn’t even cleared the last dregs of Billy’s smoke. 

Then he leaves Billy’s bedroom, and makes sure to close the door behind him.

Billy glances at the clock. It’s half past ten at night.

He’s got a long night ahead of him.

***

When the early dawn light stretches thin and sticky like taffy across the horizon, Billy stops staring at the ceiling. He pushes himself off his bed, accidentally knocking the hardcover edition of Catcher in the Rye that he’d found in one of Steve’s bookshelves to the floor.

He checks the kitchen first, but Steve isn’t there. He’s probably trying to get a full night’s sleep, that fucker. Whether it works is a whole other story, but the fact that he’s trying is enough of a sign, to Billy.

So he goes to the front porch next, and picks up the rolled-up newspaper that had already been left there by some early bird delivery boy.  

Then he heads back to the kitchen, and makes himself a pot of hot, black coffee. As he waits for it to percolate, he pulls a red ink pen out of the stuffed-full mug on the countertop, and unfolds the newspaper.

And he flips to the real estate section, and starts reading through the ads for rentals and leases, circling the ones that he thinks could be within his price range.

Chapter Text

Robin’s been pacing in front of the phone for around ten minutes, and she can’t figure out what she’s meant to do.

Well, some of it is obvious: she should probably call Nancy and let her know that she’d talked to Steve. She should probably also call Dustin and tell him the same thing.

But then, what could she practically say to either of them when they asked more questions? She barely could handle what she’d learned, what’s still swimming around in her brain like a shark circling around her. Because Jesus Christ, it was a lot, and it was fucked up, and it was the first time since fucking Starcourt Mall that she’d felt so out of her depth, and lost, and terrified.

She sighs, and presses the palms of her hands into the inside corners of her eyes. She’s exhausted, though physically fine; it’s the type of feeling that she keeps coming back to, like a homing pigeon or something. If someone asked Robin how her life has felt the past few months, she’d describe it as trying to navigate a maze of mirrors, she thinks. It’s the constant feeling of confusion and desperation, mixed with a miserable but everlasting hope that you see the exit, only to hit up against the same kind of barrier every single time.

Robin wonders if this is what adult life looks like, or if it’s just the part that she’d managed to suck herself into. Does it always feel so awful, and repetitive, and like she’s constantly in the waiting room of a hospital, counting down the time until she receives her next batch of bad news? 

And then she feels bad, because that’s not fair to Steve. She’s thinking about it like what he told her is the only thing that happened. When what happened to him is what happened, and him telling her about it is only secondary. Her knowledge of everything wasn’t the main problem, even if it felt an awful lot like bumping up against another fucking mirror.  

But she’s not the one who needs help, it’s Steve, and she still doesn’t know what she’s meant to do about that, or what she’s supposed to say to their friends to make it seem as serious as it is without having to tell them about the actual issues at play.

“I’m too good of a fucking friend to Steve,” Robin mutters, and then feels guilt, like stomach acid, eat its way up her throat. She coughs a few times, and then sighs, and then finally grabs the phone off the hook, thankful that her mother was still at her cashier job at the local K-Mart. If her mom had seen her pacing around the living room like a madman, she would’ve asked about it, and Robin isn’t too sure she’d be able to lie to her mom about this. Not after lying about so much shit over the past few months, and especially not when she knows that she’s about to lie (or as good as lie) to her friends now, too.

But her mother isn’t here, and Robin can do this, and she can protect Steve’s privacy. She needs to.

Robin steels herself, rolling back her shoulders like a soldier, and calls Nancy.

***

Will only knows what he heard from Mike, who overheard Nancy talking to Jonathan in the Wheeler’s kitchen, and Nancy was discussing what Robin had said to her about Steve in a phone call that was placed late last night.

So already, that was about three or four degrees of separation or something. Will isn’t that familiar with police terminology or sociology, despite Hopper being his almost-stepfather. Anyway, the point is that the information is unreliable, and Will should really find out from Steve what the hell was going on--which was precisely what Mike had asked him to do.

Will was honestly surprised that Mike had come to him instead of to Dustin. Sure, he and Steve had talked plenty, but it was only due to Billy, really. Any conversation they’d had had always been in relation to either Billy or the Mindflayer. Dustin was the one who loved Steve like family. Hell, even Max would’ve been the more obvious choice, since her brother was Billy, and he was living with Steve right now. Will had been just as concerned as everybody else when the whole Steve-is-drinking-and-not-responding thing began, but he wouldn’t have expected anyone to come to him individually about it.

But that’s what Mike did, anyway, on Friday morning. Just as Will took the scrambled eggs off the burner and started dishing them out onto plates for his mom and himself, there was a quick, uneven pattern of knocks at the door. Will paused, and cocked his head; the pattern repeated, and Will shook his head, a bit in disbelief. 

That was the pattern that he and Mike had worked out when they were nine. It operated as a sort-of best friends’ handshake, and they used to tap it out on the cinder-block walls of their elementary school as they passed by each other, or on their desks as a call-and-response when they were bored in class. It used to annoy their teachers, so much that once Mike had gotten detention for tapping out the pattern too much within the space of a single hour (though, in his defense, they’d been learning fractions for the fifth day; he’d only been bored, and fidgeting, and the pattern was second-nature for him at that point).

Neither of them had used it since the whole Demogorgon incident. Will had figured that they’d both outgrown it, and at any rate, neither of them had ever tried to initiate it with the other. Until now.

Will frowned, set the pan of eggs down on the counter, and made his way to the door. He tried hard to ignore the pulsing, uncomfortable feeling of fear that spiked in his hindbrain. It was nothing. It was probably nothing, at any rate. Maybe Mike and El had broken up again and Mike just wanted to remind himself that he still has friends outside of her. That’s happened about three times now, usually whenever Max manages to stir El up with enough episodes of She-Ra or Phil Collins albums.

When Will opened the door, Mike was staring back at him grimly on the porch, and there was something to the line of his mouth that made Will grab the door frame for support. 

“Jesus, Mike,” he said, “what is it?”

Mike swallowed, and said, “Not Upside-Down related,” which slowed the rising beat of Will’s heart, at least. “But I don’t--well, I’m not sure what to do, Will.”

“Did El break up with you again?”

“Oh,” Mike said, “no.” Then he tilted his head and said, “Wait, did she say something? Or, that’s, that’s actually not important. Sorry. I do need to talk to you, though.”

Will frowned, but nodded, and gestured for Mike to come in. Mike only shook his head.

“I don’t want your mom to worry,” Mike said, which was a bit of a lost cause, when it came to Will’s mom.

“Oh,” Will said. He wrung his hands a few times, and then stepped further away from the door, letting it shut behind him. “Uh, what’s going on?”

Mike scrubbed a hand through his hair, and then leaned against the iron railing of the porch. Will noticed that Mike’s bike was tossed down at the bottom steps of the porch, and there was mud on his Converse, and cooling sweat on the crest of his upper lip. Then Will looked away from Mike’s lips and leaned against the siding of the house.

“It must’ve been urgent,” Will prompted, when Mike hesitated a moment longer. “Seeing as you rushed here and everything.”

“Yeah,” Mike said, and then he said, “Look, I’m not trying to pry, but, like--how well do you know Steve?”

Will blinked. “I guess as well as you do. He drove me to the hospital to see Billy Hargrove a couple of times. He was nice.” And I came out to him last summer, before everything. I don't even know if he remembers it, Will didn’t say.

“I just…” Mike sucked in a deep breath. “It seemed like you guys--understood each other. It used to make Dustin really mad, and jealous and stuff.” He scratched at the back of his neck.

“Did you come all the way here to ask me about Steve?” Will asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“No,” Mike said. “Just. Look, you know how Jonathan picks Nancy up for school every day?”

“Yeah,” Will said, “They’re kinda gross.”

“Yeah,” Mike said, huffing out a breath. “Well. I overheard Nancy talking to Jonathan this morning. About Steve. So of course I had to listen in.”

“Naturally,” Will said dryly.

Mike shot him a look. “You can’t tell me you don’t listen in on Jonathan’s calls to Nancy sometimes. And it was about Steve. And she said that Robin called her last night, and you remember that Dustin called that stupid after-school meeting yesterday, and how Nancy pulled Robin away? And Nancy had asked Robin for any updates about Steve! It’s fucking weird, and Nancy said to Jonathan that Robin said that Steve wasn’t doing well and that they’d had a long talk and that Robin couldn’t tell Nancy everything and that worried Nancy even more, because apparently Nancy thinks there are pretty dark things in Steve’s past but she wouldn’t say what, when Jonathan asked for specifics. And then Nancy said that Robin said that Steve’s relationship to Billy was really weird and unhealthy, and I just…”

Mike took a deep, long breath, and then said, “I don’t know Steve, and I can’t help, but it doesn’t sound like Nancy or Robin can, either. But I know that you’ve...dealt with some stuff, the past few years, and with your dad…”

Will felt his mouth twist downward, and he had to fight to keep the rest of his facial muscles still. He folded his arms tightly over his chest. “You think that just because my dad hit me sometimes, I can provide the emotional support that Steve, a guy four years older than me, needs.”

Mike’s eyes widened. “No, that’s not what I was trying to--”

“No,” Will said, and then kicked his foot against the wall siding, “because you don’t seek me out for months, Mike. You’re too caught up in your relationship, which, whatever, but then you come here, and you tell me I need to support someone else just because you think I’m as messed up as them? What the fuck am I supposed to do with that? Jesus, Mike.”

“I’m just worried about Steve!” Mike protested. “I thought you’d be, too--hell, I’m here for you, because you and Dustin have some weird attachment to the guy--”

“Because he’s actually talked to me more than you have in the past few months!” Will snapped, and then put a hand against his forehead. He needed to calm down. He didn’t even know why he was so angry. He hadn’t thought that he was.

Maybe I’m not, Will thought, with a strange nervous edge. Maybe it’s the fucking Mindflayer again.

And with that, his breath hitched. He swallowed hard, and suddenly, he was on the floor of his porch, the birchwood rough and splintering underneath his hands, and Mike was pushing Will’s head in between his knees.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Will said immediately, and jerked his head up so that Mike was forced to let go. He waited until his breath was more even, and then said, “Sorry.”

Mike was still crouched next to him, a divot forming between his scrunched-in eyebrows. “Does that happen often?”

Will shrugged. “I just--don’t handle sudden surges in emotion well, anymore,” he said, and hoped Mike would leave it at that.

Mike opened his mouth, and then closed it again, and then said, “I...didn’t know how to deal with you.”

“What?” Will asked, turning his head to look more closely at Mike.

Mike squeezed his eyes shut. “When you came back, and with the whole Mindflayer thing afterward, and...I don’t know. It seemed like it was--a lot, for you to deal with, and everything I did to help didn’t seem like it worked, and then I’d get angry about it, and so. I just. Left things as they were. And that was really selfish of me, and then when I saw you talking to Steve more, and dealing with things on your own...I don’t know. I just thought that maybe it was better that I didn’t reach out. But maybe that was me mistaking better for easier, and. When I heard about Steve struggling, I figured, ‘Hey, maybe this is something Will could help with. He’d know better than I would, or than anyone else would, since he’s been through so much, and he’s still strong enough to be okay afterward.’”

Will blinked, and stared at Mike. He pressed his hands into the porch floorboards until he felt a splinter stick into the lifeline crease of his palm. 

Mike chewed on his lower lip. “That wasn’t fair of me. I was–I’m supposed to be your best friend. I should’ve known you needed more from me, but instead I got angry that it seemed like you didn’t at all. I’m sorry.”

Will swallowed, and moved his hands into his lap. He pinched the edge of the wood splinter in between his index finger and thumb of the opposite hand, and then said, “El’s been good about making you talk more plainly. That’s for sure.”

“To her, it helps, yeah,” Mike said. “I’m starting to see that it’s a good thing for everyone else, though.”

“It’s not your fault,” Will said. “I should probably be in therapy or something.”

“You can’t afford it,” Mike said, and then winced at his own bluntness. Will snorted.

“Downsides to being around El, too,” Will said.

Mike smiled quickly, and then sat down beside him. “I know it wouldn’t be the same,” he said, “And I may be an asshole for mentioning it, but. El, she’s probably the only other person who’s had to deal with the Upside Down as much as you. And she has trouble sometimes with it too, things I can’t help with. Maybe it would be good for you guys to talk, sometimes. About it, I mean.”

Will nodded, and fiddled with the edge of the splinter in his hand. Blood beaded up around it, and he wiped it away with his thumbnail.

He’d spoken to El a fair amount, of course. That’s what happens when you’re in the same friend group, and when your parents are dating one another. He liked her, he supposed, but in a distant way. He didn’t think they’ve ever really said anything to one another, only polite nothings and hellos and goodbyes. Mike was right, it would probably be good of Will to bridge that gap. He should.

He pulled the splinter out of his hand, and then said, “Oh, I’m bleeding.”

Mike’s eyes widened, and he grabbed Will’s hand hard and said, “Oh, shit, what happened?”

“I dunno,” Will said, and let Mike apply pressure to his hand. They both stood up, and Will led them to the bathroom that sat adjacent to the living room, directing Mike to the box of bandages when Mike insisted that Will wash the cut out.

“Might’ve just happened while I was panicking,” Will said, with a quick little grimace. Mike nodded, and handed Will a bandage. Will dried his hands and applied the bandage quickly, and then wiggled his hand. “Good as new,” he said. “And, uh. I’ll talk to Steve. And to El. You’re right, Mike.”

Mike looked up at Will, and then down at his shoes, and then settled on somewhere in the middle between Will’s eyes and the floor. He said, “Thanks,” and then, squaring his shoulders, made eye contact with Will. Will wondered why it took him so long to do it, and why it seemed like Mike was searching for something in Will’s expression. 

“You’re my best friend,” Mike added, a bit unnecessarily. “I mean it.”

Will smiled and said, “I know. Thanks, Mike.”

Mike nodded once, firmly, as if they’d just negotiated a satisfying business deal for the two of them. “Good,” he said, and then they’d stood there, awkwardly underneath the harsh fluorescent bathroom light fixture, until Will heard his mother opening her bedroom door and the silence broke between them, like a climbing rope had been cut.

***

So that’s how Will finds himself biting his lip, staring down at a blank page in his science composition notebook after class that Friday.

Will knows that Mike had probably intended for Will to talk to Steve in person, but the way Will sees it, that’s impossible. Mostly because Will knows that if he went in person, his words would be kinder than he wanted them to be. He does that sort of thing all the time, and he knows it–he bends down instead of standing firm, and he doubles things back in his own brain, folds and twists things up until Will thinks everything is his fault.

If Will went over to Steve’s house, Steve would just say it’s not Will’s problem, and Will would agree (and really, it’s not his problem), and that would be it. Maybe that’s what he should do, anyway. He could tell Mike he tried, and he could leave well enough alone, and start living life like a proper fourteen year old, anyway.

But, if he’s honest with himself–really, really honest–then he’d have to say that he has some things to say to Steve anyway. Things that he really does want to say, even if now isn’t the best time to say them. But he’s got an excuse to do it, now.

So he’s writing a letter, like a girl.

He gnaws on the end of his pencil for a moment, presses the eraser end into his temple. He’s not the best writer, not the best at expressing himself clearly. He prefers drawing if he were honest about it.

But Will tries, anyway, and that has to count for something. It must.

***

Steve,

I can’t say I know what you’re going through, because to be honest there’s no way to know. Because I’m not you, but also mostly because you won’t tell anyone.

I hope you can see the issue with that. There’s no way to explain it to you if you don’t. I know that Robin’s been to see you, and I know that Nancy and Jonathan are so worried about you that it caused Mike, of all people, to reach out to me about it. He thought I’d be able to do something to help.

I don’t think I can. I remember that night in your kitchen when I was the one asking you for help, and you told me to either ignore my problems or embrace them. I didn’t really think that that would work for me at the time. Now, I’m not sure that that works for anyone. If that’s usually what you do, I guess it’s safe to say it’s not working for you right now. I’m sure you’ve had to figure that out already, I’m not trying to talk down to you.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I appreciate how much you’ve been there for me for a lot of things. I know it doesn’t sound like that’s what I’m actually trying to say, but just listen, because you’re making a lot of people worried, and I’m getting mad about it.

I’m mad about a lot of things, honestly. I can’t tell a lot of people about that. Because then they get worried about me. And I don’t like that, and I assume you don’t like that, either. I assume that’s why you haven’t talked to any of us in weeks. Or maybe you really are a jerk, who knows, but my point is that they’re worried about you for a reason.

Don’t be like me. Don’t get mad when people try to talk to you, and don’t push them away or lie through your teeth until they’re convinced that you’re handling things okay. I’m not so sure about Nancy or Jonathan or Mike, but I know for a fact that Robin loves you a lot and if she’s offering help or support, you should take it. Or you should take it from someone.

For the record, me and Dustin care about you, too. But there are only so many things a pile of kids can do. Which is also true for you and Robin too, I guess.

Just take care of yourself. And tell Billy I said hi.

Will

***

It’s a rambling, nonsensical letter. 

Will stares at it for a while, and he wonders if he should bother sending it at all. There’s a good chance that he shouldn’t. Reading it back, it seemed like it was more about him than it was about Steve.

Why did Mike ask him to do this, anyway? Why did Mike care?

He groans, and fiddles with his pencil. He doodles on the edge of the paper. When he finishes, he’s drawn a large, barren black tree with nails stuck in it. It’s raining, slashing down at the boughs of the tree and making its roots all muddy.

Will stares at the letter for a while, and then folds it up, and goes to ask his mom for a stamp and an envelope.

It’s not that he thinks the letter will help. It’s that he thinks that Steve won’t bother to read the letter at all, so there’s no harm in sending it, now.

Chapter Text

Steve feels like he’s at a loss for things to do.

It starts the morning after Robin comes, and everything goes to shit and Steve says a bunch of things he didn’t mean to let slip. 

He wakes up feeling strange. Billy's side of the bed is cold and empty.

He knows that the proper saying is “in a haze,” but in all honesty he feels like he’s in a glaze, instead. He used to say that a lot as a kid. 

“I feel like I’m in a glaze,” he’d say, if he’d gotten too little sleep the night before, or he was in the middle of math class. No one ever corrected him. Maybe his words ran together enough that no one ever noticed the mistake. Maybe no one ever cared enough to set him straight. Either of these things could be possible.

It took him a while to learn the real phrase (which had been an embarrassing moment between him and Nancy—a few weeks after the first Upside Down attack, he’d tried to say that everything “seemed all glazy,” and Nancy had stared at him and asked, “Do you mean…hazy?” to which Steve had very quickly said, “Yes, isn’t that what I said?”). 

But personally, quietly, he felt that “glaze” was a better way to talk about it. It felt like someone had spread greasy icing over his eyes, his brain. It didn’t feel vague or ambiguous or misty, it felt like he was looking at the world with eyes that had been damaged, been made to be blurry and unfocused. “Haze” implied that everything else was the problem. “Glaze” implied that something had been done to him.

He wakes up and walks to the kitchen, and it feels like someone else has taken his feet and decided to wear them like boots. He pours himself some coffee, and realizes that Billy must’ve made it. He turns and sees him sitting at the table, holding a pen and the paper. He’s already looking at Steve.

Steve takes a big swallow of his coffee. He has no idea what to say. He doesn’t know what to say at all. Absurdly, he wants to talk to Billy about Catcher in the Rye more. About why he’d be so unsure of the things he liked and didn’t like. 

Instead, he says, “How’s the crossword?”

Billy licks his lips, and folds the paper up. “Not good.”

“Usually isn’t,” Steve says. He hasn’t filled in a crossword a day in his life.

Billy cocks an eyebrow, like he knows this. He probably does, honestly. “I wasn’t doing the crossword,” he says.

“Sure,” Steve says, and takes another sip of his coffee. Then he realizes he’s supposed to care more. That’s what Robin said. He had to care more about other people. “Uh, I mean. What were you doing instead?”

“Job hunting,” Billy says. “It’s been long enough. Gotta figure out a way to pay you back somehow.”

“Oh,” says Steve. He scratches at the inside of his ear. “I mean it’s not—like, you know I don’t care.”

“Sure,” Billy says, but there’s a crease forming between his eyebrows now. Steve doesn’t know where he went wrong. “But, Steve. I have to find a job.”

“If you want.”

“If I want to find an apartment,” Billy says, and Steve feels like he’d walked into a sudden, bitterly cold snowstorm without meaning to, or even knowing. And he’s running a fever on top of that. Or something.

Steve shakes his head. The greasy, glazed feeling feels more suffocating now. “You’re planning to move out.”

“I was always going to,” Billy says. He says it almost patiently, in a way Steve never could have imagined he would have said anything. A square patch of sunlight is spread across the top of his head, highlighting his blond-brown curls. His hair is unwashed, stiff and separated out into individual strands. Steve wants to tell him to take a shower. Steve wants to crawl into his lap and kiss him. Steve very much wants to go back to bed.

“But, I mean.”

Billy sighs. Steve doesn’t like how kind he’s being, how patient. This is the same person who once smashed a plate over his head. Steve thinks that he’d prefer Billy to do it again, instead of whatever’s happening now. Whatever’s happening now is making Steve feel nauseous, unbalanced, unattached. Greasy and scrubbed over with grime. Steve takes a seat at the kitchen table.

“It’s not as if you wanted me to stay, anyway,” Billy says. He flips the red pen over two of his first two fingers, then catches it with his ring finger. 

“At first,” Steve says. He’s still holding the mug of coffee in his hands. He taps two nails on the porcelain handle. It makes a pleasant clinking sound. “I’d like to think that. Well.”

“You’d like to think what, exactly,” Billy says. His voice is strange. It sounds like it comes from someplace deep in his chest, like an exhale he can’t control. Steve looks up at Billy, and his face is even more pinched than it had been.

“Well,” Steve says. “I’d say things have changed. I mean. Wouldn’t you?”

“Huh,” says Billy.

“What?” says Steve.

“I thought we weren’t talking about that,” Billy says. 

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Steve says, though in a way, he does. It all floats in a nebulous sort of way over both of their heads. Sometimes he thinks it makes things more intense, sexier, better. 

Right now, Steve wonders if that’s what’s making him feel all glazed over and terrible.

“I thought we weren’t talking about the fact that we like each other,” Billy says. He looks pale in the morning light. The heavy circles under his eyes look even worse, more filled in. Steve swallows hard and bites down on the inside of his cheek. He wants a drink. He wants to cry. He wants to be able to feel clear headed enough to choose which one he wants to do.

There’s a pause. Steve says, “To be honest, I don’t really know what the rules are.”

Billy smiles at him. Steve doesn’t like the look of it. “I guess that’s fair.”

“You guess?”

Billy spreads his hands apart. “I’m not sure what you’d like me to say.”

Steve shrugs and doesn’t say anything.

Billy sighs and stands up. The kitchen chair screams as it scrapes across the kitchen tile. Billy says, “I think I’m gonna go for a walk.”

“Sounds healthy,” says Steve. He looks at his fingernails. There’s a small, hard red scab near the tip of his index finger. The skin around it is white and thin as paper. He starts to pick at it.

“You know me,” Billy says. “Picture of health.”

It’s more flippant than anything Steve would have expected from him. But it’s not as if the conversation has been anything like he’d have expected from Billy, anyway.

Billy leaves the kitchen. Steve doesn’t watch him go.

***

The problem with promising to be a better person is that it doesn’t leave you with an awful lot of things to do, Steve decides.

With Billy out of the house, Steve finds himself staring at the ceiling and doing not much else. Not even on the couch or anything, too. He’s on the floor, just staring up at the smooth, white ceiling above him. There’s a light water stain in the top right corner. The overhead fixture is gaudy and uses too much silver. Steve would very much like a drink.

But he can’t. It’s the middle of the day, and if Robin calls, he’ll have to answer, and if he answers, she’ll be able to tell whether he’s wasted. And he had told her, he had promised, that he’d be there for her, that he’d try harder. 

He also told her things he’d rather not think about, things that he’s hardly let himself think about for years on end. He can’t believe that he did that.

He presses his palms over his eyes and presses down so that there are starbursts of color against his closed eyelids. He wonders whether another terrible, nightmare-inducing monster has escaped from the Upside Down and is wreaking havoc around Hawkins. He doesn’t like the strange, unwelcome sliver of carbonated hope that bubbles up in him at that thought. 

He chews at the inside of one of his cheeks. His back feels terrible against the bare floorboards underneath him. There used to be an oriental rug where Steve is laying. But he rolled it up and threw it in a dumpster behind the high school after a random freshman had vomited all over it at one of his parties. Steve knows that the carpet must’ve cost a lot of money. It was too fancy and detailed to be a part of his mother’s regular tastes. But years had passed since Steve had ruined it, and neither of his parents had ever noticed on their small, short visits home. 

That’s just the way things are, Steve supposes. 

He squeezes his eyes shut even tighter and wonders whether he’ll be able to fall asleep where he is. He hopes so. He doesn’t have it within himself to move. He wants to fall asleep until something deeply drastic and incredibly world-changing happens—until the axis of the earth shifts in the opposite direction, maybe, or the poles switch places or the sun burns out like a cheap lightbulb. He doesn’t have it within himself to push himself off the ground unless it was the end of the world. Maybe not even then.

Not for the first time, Steve contemplates the meaning of death. He finds that since he can’t really think of it—who could ever try and envision something so separate from everything they know?—he’s not really afraid of it. The best version, he thinks, would just be something very cliche, like sleep. Maybe with one or two dreams every millenia or so.

Steve doesn’t necessarily want to die. But he thinks if he had a brain hemorrhage, right now, at this exact moment, he wouldn’t really mind. Possibly that’s something that’s not great. Possibly it’s something that, if he admitted it to Robin, it would be with tears in his eyes and a sharp, hot pain in his throat.

But who’s to say, really.

***

The phone is ringing.

Maybe it’s been ringing for a while. Steve blinks once, then twice. His back hurts even more now. Maybe it’s been a while.

He doesn’t think that he fell asleep, but he doesn’t feel particularly awake, either. He feels like a helium balloon pressed up against a living room ceiling, slowly leaking, but not enough to come down, not yet.

The ringing of the phone cuts through to Steve eventually, peeling away layers of unconsciousness until it finally hits Steve, just like this: The phone’s ringing. Should probably answer that. 

He groans loudly, but there’s no one around to hear it. It’s like that philosophical problem that Dustin used to joke about, in relation to the Demogorgon: If there’s a horrible extra-dimensional monster out in a forest, but there’s no one around to hear it, did it ever even murder anyone?

It was a stupid joke. No one ever laughed, but Dustin kept telling it anyway, like some sort of tic for a few good weeks last year. Then Will had turned all pale and sickly-looking, and said, I don’t think I like that, I don’t think I like that joke, and Dustin had quit immediately.

Dustin’s a good kid.

Steve should probably answer the phone.

Steve shoves himself into an upright position and hears his back crack in several places. It sounds like bubble wrap. He groans, rubs his eyes, and stumbles to the kitchen.

He picks up the phone right before it goes to voicemail. “Yeah?”

“Steve?” It’s his mother. Her voice sounds high-strung. Steve thinks it’s like a  guitar string about to snap. He winces and passes his palm across his face.

“Yeah,” he says. “Uh, yes. Mom, it’s me. What’s up?”

“Oh, sweetie,” she says. “Oh, I was so worried for a moment! You know, we haven’t heard from you in a while, even when we expected your call, your father and I, I mean, and we just thought that maybe the phone lines were down, but your father said that that didn’t make any sense because the phone was still ringing out and everything, and I swear I was close to calling the police station about you. Imagine that! Oh, my god, is everything all right?”

“Oh,” Steve says, blinking. “Uh, I mean, it is. Sorry, I—there was a problem with, uh, the answering machine. But I don’t think I missed any calls in the last few days?”

“Well,” his mother says. Her voice has gained a new quality to it, cold and rough like knitted wool. “I called once, and you didn’t answer. And your father and I, we were really busy these past few days. But I suppose we were expecting a call from you, that’s all.”

“You were?”

“Yes.” 

Steve frowns. He checks the clock on the wall, and says, “I’m not sure—did we schedule a call?”

“Steve,” his mother says. Her voice is now strained like a knot pulling tight. Steve can hear the phantom heat of her words, even over the transcontinental phone line. “What day is it, do you know?”

“It’s, uh…” Steve frowns, then wraps the curled telephone curled over his arm, leaving enough slack for him to lean forward and squint at the calendar hanging on the opposite wall. “It’s September nineteenth.”

Then, abruptly, it hits him. “Fuck.”

“Language,” his mother says coldly.

“Your birthday,” Steve says, eyelids screwing shut. “I missed your birthday, didn’t I.”

“Yes. Yes, you did.”

“I—I’m so sorry,”says Steve. “It’s just that. Well, no there isn’t an excuse that you’d—what I mean is that I’m sorry.”

His mother huffs. The sound crackles through the receiver of the phone, and sounds distorted and staticky, like a local news program. She doesn’t say anything. Steve wraps the phone cord around his index finger and pulls it tight so the skin turns white and bloated above the knuckle.

Finally, she says, “You’ve never forgotten before.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says automatically.

She hesitates again, and then says, “I think—your father and I. We may be coming home soon.”

Steve blinks. “Mom, that really isn’t necessary.”

“Why can't I see my own son?” his mother asks. Her voice is dreary now, purposely damp with tears she doesn’t feel. Steve feels something awful and hot swell in his chest.

“What did I do,” Steve says.

“What?”

“What did I do wrong? I forgot your birthday one time, ” Steve says. He’s aware he sounds too frantic. His father would disapprove. His vision has become clouded, and when he wipes at his eyes, they come away wet. “It’s really not necessary for you to come home, Mom, I swear. Jesus.”

“What’s wrong with you?” His mother’s voice is sharp and jagged like broken ice. She says, “Your father and I coming home is not a punishment for you. We own the house, and we can visit whenever we please.”

She places a hand over her receiver, so the sound of the phone calls becomes muffled. Underneath her palm, her voice sounds like the voice of a person who is getting suffocated. Steve’s eyes are getting blurry again. He’s forgotten that he’s been crying, and the tears are coming faster now, but he doesn’t feel anything as they streak down his face like raindrops on a moving car’s window.

Then she’s back, and Steve can hardly focus as she says, “Your father’s booking the tickets. We’ll be home soon.”

And then she hangs up, the dial tone harmonizing with the strange ringing that had begun in Steve’s head.

***

When Billy comes back from his walk, Steve is sitting at the kitchen table, playing with a rubber band. He pulls at the band until it snaps back against his wrist. There’s a red splotch on his wrist from where the rubber band has continually stung it. Steve can feel the rubber growing weak, too stretched from Steve’s game. He plays with it still, expecting each time that the rubber band will finally break, but it hasn’t yet.

Steve doesn’t know how long Billy has been gone, but when he comes back he doesn’t look any better than he had in the morning. He’s gripping a pile of mail in his hand, and he tosses most of it into the wastebasket next to the refrigerator, but he also drops an envelope into the space between Steve’s arms.

“You got a letter,” Billy says, somewhat unnecessarily.

“Yeah,” Steve says, and picks it up. He flips the envelope over to its back, where messy handwriting has scribbled out Steve’s address and placed a flowered postage stamp carefully into the top right corner. One of the kids, probably. Maybe Dustin, but God knows why. 

Steve tucks the letter into his back jean pocket, and clears his throat. Billy has gone to the fridge and grabbed a can of beer. He stops and looks back at Steve. His face is as unreadable as ever.

“My mother called,” says Steve. 

Billy’s hands tighten around the can. He lifts the tab and nearly rips it off instead of popping it open. “Yeah?” 

“She’s coming home,” Steve says. He looks down at his hands. Studies the green veins in the back of his hand with perhaps too much interest. “With my dad, I mean. I don’t know when. She wouldn’t tell me.”

“Oh,” says Billy, and then he doesn’t say anything for a moment. Steve hears him take a swallow of beer. He imagines Billy is staring out the window, or at the countertop, but when he finally musters the courage to look up, he finds that Billy’s staring at him. 

“That’s—a bummer,” Billy offers. He almost smiles at him. At the very least, he curls his lips upward. Steve wishes that this day would quit trying to throw him off-balance.

“I, I mean,” Steve says. “I wasn’t—I just meant that. Like, I don’t know how long they’ll be here, and I don’t know how they’ll take the fact that you’ve been staying here…”

“I’m already looking for places,” says Billy. Now his mouth is moving downward, forming little divots at the corners. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I wasn’t,” says Steve, but it’s not true.

“Good,” says Billy. He takes another few gulps of the beer. Steve feels a pang of longing in his own throat, and he doesn’t like how tempting it is to grab a beer, too. To grab it out of Billy’s hands and drink from it himself, purposely sharing saliva with Billy along the way. 

He can’t find it within himself to move, to get himself to do anything. He’s tired of not knowing how to respond, so he’s opted not to, not at all. He feels worse than being in a glaze, now. He feels like someone has wrapped him in greaseproof paper and stuck him in a warmed oven, and oil from his skin, his hair, his guts, have started leaking out all around him, and he’s stuck only watching it, watching himself dry out.

“Well then,” Billy says, after a long time has passed. Maybe too long. “I think I’m gonna smoke out by the pool.”

He’s chosen the pool for a reason, Steve knows. Because he knows that Barbara died there, and that Steve can’t follow him, doesn’t want to follow him there. Steve nods slowly, like a vegetable bobbing in a soup.

“Okay,” Billy says. Maybe he’s stalling. Steve isn’t sure.

But eventually he walks out of the room, through the backdoor, and Steve watches him go and doesn’t say anything about it.

Eventually, he finds the energy to get up from the table and go to his room. He flops down onto his bed and shuts his eyes and tries to sleep, but it doesn’t happen for a long while. 

He falls asleep halfway through a prayer to some god he doesn’t believe in, and the prayer goes like this: you fucker, let me go to sleep, it’s the least you could let me do, I mean, Jesus Christ…

Chapter Text

Dustin’s doing homework, one leg propped up on his desk, the other pushing away from the ground so that his chair is hinged only on its back two legs. He’s pretty deep in thought, trying to remember anything at all about Lord of Flies as he considers an essay question about Ralph and Piggy, when the walkie-talkie sitting on his bedside table crackles to life.

“Dustin?” asks Steve’s voice, and Dustin nearly topples over. His calf bounces against his desk painfully as he tries to sit up too fast, and he loses balance on his chair, sending the front two legs into the floor with a loud thud that makes his mom call over from the next room: “Dusty? You alright in there?”

“Uh, yeah!” Dustin calls back, even as he grabs his throbbing calf and rubs it. “Nothing to worry about! Sorry, Mom!”

“Dustin?” Steve asks again from the walkie. There’s a pause, and then, “Look, uh, I’m sorry, man. Are you there?”

Dustin hesitates for a moment, and stares at the walkie. He bites down on his cheek. His leg is probably going to have a massive bruise on it, and he’s going to blame it on Steve. The same Steve who he’s been worried sick over, and who wouldn’t respond to him or say anything to him for weeks, even after he’d promised that they were okay, and that he was okay.

“Dustin…” Steve’s voice trails off. “Look, I don’t wanna do this over the main channel. If you can hear me, and you wanna talk, could you switch to four? Um. Thanks. And, uh—I really am sorry. I’ll apologize more on channel four, if that’s what you want to hear.”

Dustin takes a deep breath, and then another one. He reminds himself that this is what he’s been wanting, and that he knows how to talk to Steve; he even knows how to ream him out, which is what’s going to happen after he hears Steve’s apology. He’d been worried, really worried, and now just hearing Steve’s voice and knowing that he was alive meant that irritation was itching its way up Dustin’s throat, instead the clumps of nerves that had been stuck in the same places before.

Dustin gets up, grabs the walkie, and switches the dial to channel four, like Steve had said. He props his legs up on his bed, and he can feel a swollen bruise forming on his shin as he clicks the ‘talk’ button and says, “Steve?”

“Oh,” says Steve, and then: “Sorry, I didn’t know if you’d heard me. It’s good to hear from you.”

“Yeah,” Dustin says. “It’s always nice to hear from friends. To know that they’re alive, and that they’re not mad at you, or dying, or dead. Isn’t it?”

There’s a pause, and then Dustin hears Steve curse quietly on a small breath, before he sighs and says, “Yeah. I deserve that.”

“I’d say so, yeah,” Dustin snaps.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. “Really, really sorry.”

“I’m gonna need a little more than that,” Dustin says, and he’s surprised by how much he means it. Yes, he was always going to make Steve squirm, after everything he’s put Dustin through; but he’s surprised by how irate he really is. But Steve deserves it, because honestly: what the fuck?

“That’s fair,” Steve says. “Uh, look. Are you busy?”

Dustin sighs, and looks over at his unfinished homework sitting on his desk. But tomorrow was a Tuesday anyway, which meant that he’d have an extra day to do the work, since English was only on Mondays and Wednesdays. But he’d been planning to go to the D&D club meeting tomorrow after school, too, which meant he wanted to get his work out of the way…

And there was a part of him that wanted to say no to Steve, and make him come to Dustin, and bend around what Dustin wants to do. It’s been like pulling teeth, trying to get Steve to do anything with him since Starcourt, and a thin, whining, childish part of him wants to treat Steve the same way and see how he likes it.

Dustin toggles the button on the walkie and says, “Maybe.”

“Dustin,” Steve says, and he has the audacity to sound impatient. “Please, just… work with me, here.”

The childish part of him stretches out further and wraps around his brain like a parachute, and Dustin says into the walkie, “Actually, now that I think about it, I’m busy all of this week. Maybe try next week. See if I’m available then.”

“What–please, come on, Dustin–” 

Dustin snaps the switch on the walkie off, cutting Steve off right in the middle. He sighs, and lays back on his bed, and stares at his ceiling. He feels a bit ugly for doing what he did, but he also feels smug and overfull, like he’d eaten too much of a good meal.

Because in a way, Steve really deserved this.

And yes, Dustin would inevitably forgive Steve, and make him pay for the next several dozen of Dustin’s arcade games, and make him get them milkshakes at the diner downtown that Steve likes. But in the meantime, well. What Steve had done had sucked, for Dustin, and if he was feeling uncomfortable or annoyed with Dustin now, it was only what Dustin had felt originally, and probably more acutely than Steve ever did, for that matter.

***

Steve sighs. He switches the walkie off, setting it on his desk. He has the strong urge to drop his head against his desk, but instead pushes back from it, and begins to pace instead.

He tries to find the root of where he’d gone wrong. But it seems like such a bland question, asking if Dustin was busy–he’d asked that as a way of asking if he could come over, to apologize in-person. And then Dustin had seemingly just lost it, his voice getting more and more sharp over the walkie static, until he’d shut off his walkie, essentially hanging up on Steve.

Why would he get so angry so fast? Although he’d been pretty evidently angry as soon as they’d starting speaking—which was only fair, but if Dustin had just given him some time to explain.

He groans and sits down on the edge of his bed. A headache is waking up behind his eyelids, and he starts to rub at his forehead with his thumbs. If this was how Dustin had felt when Steve had gotten mad at him earlier (had it already been weeks?), then he’d have to apologize for that, too.

It’s all so fucking much. And Steve would like a drink. Steve would very much like a drink.

It feels as if there wasn’t any way to fix this huge, gnarled, rusted-over mess that Steve had created. And for what? Nothing had happened. He’s as fine as he’d ever been. Robin had been right the first time she’d chewed him out: he is selfish, and he does need to think of his friends more, and he could already feel that he was too little, too late in trying to fix things now. If Dustin never talked to him again, he’d deserve it. The fact that Robin had given him a second chance was miraculous in and of itself, and definitely uncalled for, given everything else Steve had done so far.

Steve completes another circuit in his pacing, and then kicks his foot against his bed. His shin catches against the iron platform, and the impact feels bloody and sharp on his leg, so much that Steve curses and sits himself unsteadily on the floor, drawing his leg closer to himself. He rubs at the spot, already red and beginning to swell, and he can picture the dark bruise that would form in his head, blossoming ugly and unmistakable across his skin like a brand. He breathes through the pain until it passes, and then blinks.

In the wake of the new bruise, his brain feels a little less cluttered. It’s like the bruise had pressed in on some dirty, swarmed part of his brain, and the ache of it had caused all the dirt and swarming thoughts to flee. His mind feels clear and bright, almost as painful as the bruise is.

Steve swallows. Almost without thinking, he stands up and then kicks his other foot out, against the same spot on the bed. His leg slams against the bed, and he can feel the top layer of skin breaking open, just a little, as the same throbbing bruise begins to spread like a rash on his calf.

The heat of the pain is steady and real. He feels like he’s pinched himself to come out of a dream, and in a way, he might’ve. He sits down on the edge of his bed, and pulls his leg up next to him. Underneath the torn skin on his shin, blood is slowly beading up, and Steve licks at the pad of his thumb and wipes it away. After a moment, he pushes his thumb down into it, fingernail pushing into the divots of torn skin, and he bites down hard on his knee cap as he does it. 

He shudders once, then twice, and abruptly draws away, slamming his foot back on the ground. He grabs a pillow from the head of the bed and balls it up in his arms. He presses his hand into his face, and it comes away damp with tears. He’s tired of crying, he thinks.

He feels a thin stream of blood slip down his leg, and he wants to scream a bit. Instead, he just knocks his heel into the side of the bed, just as hard as he’d knocked his shins, and tells himself that he can fix this because he can, and because he has to, because he owes it to Dustin to at least give a full apology and let Dustin do whatever he wants with it.

He knocks his heel back against the bed frame again, but the pain isn’t as hot or sharp this time. 

The headache that’s been forming behind Steve’s temples sprouts into a full-on migraine. And Steve almost welcomes it. 

He closes his eyes and rolls onto his side and tries to fall asleep as quickly as possible, his foot still beating lightly on the side of his bed as he begins to drift off.

***

“He’ll come around, Steve,” Robin says, “I promise. Dustin loves you too much to do anything but that.”

“I just feel bad, I guess,” Steve says quietly, and wraps his hand around his coffee cup.

They’re at a new diner, which is a bit of a relief. Steve doesn’t want to return to the other one, maybe not ever, or at least for a very very long time.

“I feel like he’s right, you know? To be angry at me and everything. Like yeah, I did ignore him and I yelled at him and I promised we were fine and just went AWOL, for, like, no reason…”

“ Not for no reason,” Robin says. She bites her lip, and then reaches into her pocket. She slides a ripped-out piece of composition paper, folded in half, across the table. “Look, I went to the library yesterday.”

“Nerd,” Steve says, a bit weakly, but Robin makes a face at him anyway.

“I went to the library, and I did some research. These are some therapists in the area that might be worth checking out,” she says. 

Steve studies the list, which has about fifteen names on it.

A few of them have little stars drawn next to their names.

He rubs his thumb over one as he asks, “What do the asterisks mean?”

“I, uh, I called a few of them,” Robin says. Her cheeks are turning red, and she looks down at the table and picks up her fork to stab at a cluster of rubbery scrambled eggs. “Those therapists–they have, um. Experience with clients suffering from sexual trauma. That’s how they said it, anyway.”

“Robin,” Steve says.

She stabs at her eggs with her fork and says into her breakfast plate, “I didn’t tell them your name, I didn’t say anything about you. I just said my boyfriend told me some pretty concerning things, and I wanted to help him.”

“Robin,” Steve says again, and she says, “I wasn’t kidding, Steve. I’m not–I don’t know enough about any of this. You forget I’m still technically a minor, my birthday isn’t until October. And I know I’m the first person you’ve ever told, properly, and I’m not trying to break that trust, but I’m saying that you need more help than I can give, and this is the best I can do for you right now, and I love you and I’ll be there with you every step of the way, but I really think you should consider this.”

“Robin,” he says again, and she finally looks up at him, and he tries to smile at her. He’s not sure he’s entirely successful, but the stiff edge to her shoulders softens, so it does something, at least.

“I’m not upset,” he says.

She frowns, and leans forward. “But?” she asks, because she is, always has been, and always be smarter and more observant than him, and certainly more than anyone will ever give her credit for.

He sighs, and folds the list back in half, and then into quarters so he can slip it into his pocket. “Robin,” he says, “If I do this… it’d have to be out of pocket. I can’t use insurance for it.”

“What’s–” Robin starts to say, and then her eyes widen, and her hand clenches around her fork. “Your parents.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “My bank account is linked with them, too. They’d be able to see where the payments are going.”

Robin sets her jaw, and drops her fork onto her plate. Her eyes have gone dark and stony.

“Please don’t be mad,” Steve says. He reaches under the table and hits his fist, hard, against his thigh.

It makes a dull, low sound, but Robin doesn’t seem to notice. “I know it’s not–I’m not trying to–it’s just…”

“I’m not mad,” Robin says quickly, but her jaw is still held firm. She takes a deep breath in, and then out. “It’s just not fair, Steve. You deserve better. Jesus.”

She buries her face in her hands.

“So… we’re not mad at each other,” Steve says, trying to angle his voice into something lighter. She snorts, and Steve allows himself to take a bite of the toast he’d ordered, that Robin had bullied him into ordering. 

“Yeah,” she says. “We’re not.”

“We both deserve better, Rob,” he says gently. The corners of her mouth turn up, and she nods slowly. She picks her fork back up, and eats her eggs. Steve takes another bite of toast.

“So,” Robin says, once she’s swallowed and cast a quick glance around the diner. “Speaking of deserving better. How’s Billy?”

“Oh,” Steve says.

“Oh,” Robin mimics, but smiles quietly at him. “You really thought we weren’t talking about that?”

“There’s not much to–to talk about, honestly,” Steve says. He braces his elbows against the table, and rubs at his eyebrow with his index finger.

Robin pauses, and then sets down her fork again. “You want it, right?”

Steve blinks. “What?”

“You want everything to do with him, right?” she asks. She reaches her hand across the table for him.

“Oh,” Steve says, grasping onto her hand,“Oh, god, yeah, Robin, I’ve–”

He almost says I’ve moved past that, but he thinks of all the girls, and of the one boy at Billy’s friend’s party, and the words don’t come easily. So instead he says, “–I’ve wanted all of it, swear to god. He, um. He asked, or he tried to ask and everything, and I’m the one… so yeah. It was all–yeah.”

“Okay,” says Robin, squeezing his hand, “okay. I just had to check, yeah? But I’m glad. I’m glad you’re–you’re in control of it, at least.”

Steve shrugs. He releases her hand to pick up his coffee, and takes a few gulps. When he sets the mug down, he finally says, “He’s moving out, anyway. So. I know you think it’s unhealthy, and I guess it’s good it’s coming to an end, then.”

Robin blinks. “He’s moving out?”

“He… we had a talk,” Steve says, rubbing at his neck, “after you and I–well, after I kind of, embarrassingly, broke down in your arms and shit. I told him I had to be better. Be sober, all that shit. I guess he’s not ready for something like that, and…”

Steve hesitates for a moment. Robin spears another piece of egg with her fork and says, in a measured, calm voice, “And what, Steve?”

“My parents are coming home,” Steve says. “My mom called the other day. She told me so. I don’t know when, but it’s probably soon, so Billy’s looking to move out by the end of the week.”

Robin opens her mouth, and then closes it.

When she opens her mouth again, she finally says, “I’m going to apply to Oberlin, I think.”

Steve blinks. “Okay?”

“It’s got this policy,” she says, “where freshmen don’t have to live on campus, and I’ll have to check the prices, but it’s not like I’m moving to New York or anything like that. The rent of an apartment should be affordable, I think. I…” she sucks in a deep breath, and then says, “I’m asking you to move with me, Steve. It could be good. It could be good for both of us.”

And he sees the tightness in her forehead, and the line of her jaw.

“How’s your dad?” he asks gently, and feels a twisting, yellow sense of guilt that he hasn’t asked until now.

“It’s…” she takes a deep breath, and then shrugs. “I–feel like there’s more pressing things to talk about right now, honestly.”

Steve shakes his head. “There’s not. There’s really not.”

She stares down at her plate, still half-eaten, and now growing cold. Steve waits for a moment, and when she doesn’t say anything, he adds, “And if I ever made you think otherwise, then I’m sorry, Robin.”

She smiles at him, half-heartedly. Then she clears her throat.

“It’s all right,” she says, and Steve opens his mouth to say that it’s not, actually, but then she cuts in and says, “I think–thinking about plans like Oberlin, or like you and me moving in together… that’s what I need right now, Steve. I promise.”

Steve presses his lips together, but nods anyway. “We can talk about that kind of stuff, then.”

“Good,” she says, and reaches for Steve’s hand again. He takes it, and this time, he’s the one to squeeze her hand. 

“But you can talk to me about other things too,” Steve adds. “Just to clarify. I know I’ve been–gone, but. I do want to hear about it. About anything you want to talk about, Robin.”

“I should hope so,” Robin says, with a laugh she doesn’t seem to feel. “Since we should really talk about job applications anyway. I mean, if we’re going to afford all of this. I mean, Jesus, right?”

***

When Steve gets back to his house from the diner, Billy’s spread out across the sofa with a can of beer.

When he sees Steve, he sets the can down on the floor, behind the leg of the coffee table.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” says Steve. He sticks his hands in his back pockets. “I, uh.  I mean. How–how are you?”

He feels stupid about it, about his little stumble over his words. But Billy only shrugs.

“The apartment search is going good,” he says.

“That’s good,” Steve says. He sticks his hands further into his pockets. There’s a stiff, thick piece of paper that his left thumb keeps brushing against. He pinches at it absentmindedly. “I–”

“I’ve got some tours tomorrow,” Billy continues quickly, “and if it goes well, I could move in within the next few days. Even if your parents come back before then, you could just say you’ve been storing my stuff for a day or two.”

“Yeah,” Steve says.

Billy’s got a strange expression on his face. There’s a sort of  strain there that he hasn’t seen before.

Steve bites his lip. He pulls the piece of paper out, which turns out to be an envelope. It’s the letter he’d gotten a few days ago. He turns it over in his hands.

“My parents, though–you don’t need to worry. They’re not like your, uh, your dad. It’s going to be fine. They’re not. They’re not like that.”

Billy shrugs again. His face doesn’t change as he says, “Yeah. That’s why they got you that babysitter.”

Steve flinches. Billy’s face grows a bit more strained, and he reaches for the beer can he’d set down, nearly hidden from Steve’s view. 

Steve clears his throat, and tries to find something else to say. He stares down at the envelope, which he’s still gripping tightly in his hands.

“Have you heard from Max?” Steve asks him.

Billy’s bottom lip tightens into a straight line. He licks at it, and then gulps down some of his beer.

“Nah,” he says, and then gets up from the couch.

He stretches like a cat, and then says, “I’m gonna take a nap. See ya later, Harrington.”

“Oh,” Steve says.

He watches Billy as he walks around him. His eyes are cast around Steve’s face, but not quite enough to make eye contact.

“Sure. See you,” says Steve.

Billy does a little salute, lifting two fingers from his beer before ambling down the hall to his room. Steve thinks about following him, and falling into his bed with him. Then, he shakes himself out of it.

Instead, Steve sits himself down on the couch, in the same spot Billy had occupied. He stares at the letter, and then rips open the envelope using the edge of his thumbnail.

***

The first thing that Steve really, truly registers is that it’s from Will.

It takes him a while to get through the letter, honestly. The more he reads, the more the words become shaky, distended, warped. Halfway through he realizes it’s not because of the letter, but because of him, and whatever weird reading thing he has.

He takes a deep breath, and makes himself retrace the words, slowly.

He retreads over and over until it’s etched into his brain.

Which it probably should be, anyway. Steve deserves that much, he figures.

Will talks about how Steve’s problems have gotten so severe that Mike, of all people, reached out to him about it. And he talks about he’s not sure anyone can help Steve, much less Will. And then Will talks about how he’s struggling, too, and how he doesn’t want Steve to follow a similar path, god forbid, and then he talks about how he thinks he’s a liar and a bad person, and how he cares about Steve, but how he doesn’t think it’s enough to save Steve.

When Steve’s finally read all of it, properly read it, he folds the letter back up and sticks it in his pocket, and then combs his hands through his hair. 

Sometimes, or a lot of the time, Steve notices that he’s feeling sad or bad before he actually, really feels it. It’s as if, there's a part deep inside himself where he’s trying to switch to a wider camera shot or something. It's like he's trying to encompass all of what he’s feeling, and trying to comprehend it, before he gets closer and lets it hit him. 

And when it hits him, as it always does, it feels just as hollow and knotted and horrible as it always does. 

He feels evil, honestly.

He feels like a villain from a Disney movie, but he wasn’t aware until just now.

He feels like something that needs to be excised, something throbbing and cancerous and awful.

It isn’t as if he was naive enough, or selfish enough, to believe that he’s the source of all of Will’s pain.

But Will had sent the letter like it was a diary entry that he’d balled up and trashed. He’d written it with no expectation of his words ever being read or understood, and worse, Will obviously felt so useless and incapacitated that he’d assumed there was nothing that he could do to help Steve.

He’d thought that Steve was so far gone, it wouldn’t be worth it to talk to him, and Steve knew that there was a point at which Will had felt safe coming to Steve with anything.

So when Will couldn’t face Steve and tell him he was worried about him–well.

What did that say about Steve?

Steve swallows hard, and then again, and then he vaguely wonders if he’s going to throw up. He gets up from the couch. He pulls the letter back out of his pocket and reads the first few lines. He folds it back up and sticks it in his pocket. And then he goes to his bathroom and pulls out a package of extra razor blades from the bottom drawer in the vanity.

***

There were girls who did this sort of thing all the time in school, Steve knew.

Strange girls, girls that Steve had never talked to and never felt the particular need to. They were girls who were pale, or with smudged makeup, or with thrifted sweaters and beaten-up sneakers. Sometimes they were just girls who were quiet and wore nice things and did well in class, but wore enough long sleeves during the summers that it became suspicious.

He didn’t really know of any boys who do the same thing.

But maybe Steve’ll be the first.

He could make history.

I t’s funny, in an absurd way. Honestly. 

He shakes the package of razor blades out on the counter, and a few of them fall into the sink with faint clinking sounds. He picks one up, pinching the flat sides of it. He runs the pad of his middle finger over one of the edges, and feels a slight stinging sensation as the very first layer of skin breaks open over it. 

He nods, and then sucks the blood out from the small, thin cut on his finger until he can’t taste iron anymore.

And then he lowers the blade down to the middle of his forearm.

He knows that he’s supposed to cut horizontally. Perhaps it’s some sort of ingrained, cultural knowledge. Or maybe he just knows he’s not meant to cut vertically.

He had an aunt who died before he was born. She’d killed herself by slicing her wrists open, from the bottom of her palms until the beginning of her elbow. His mother had mentioned it once, conversationally, over the phone, as if she was remembering a restaurant she went to, or a bad date she had. And then her voice had trembled for the rest of the phone call, and she’d ended it early, and told Steve that she loved him, and he knew that, right?

It was right after the first Demogorgon incident. In a way, although he didn’t believe it, he’d thought it might be a mother’s intuition, or something close to it.

Now, he cuts shallowly over his arm, and watches thin, red blood bead up around the cut. He feels the pain like he feels tears build in his throat. At first, it aches and pulses, and then it fades away, and he feels like he’s released something, and his breathing begins to even out.

He makes a second cut, a bit deeper, parallel to the first. He holds his breath as he holds the razor blade over his skin, and then releases it as he drags it across his skin.

Distantly, he’s aware he’s not exactly in his right state of mind. The razor blade in his hand is small and now turning red, and he wonders if it’ll rust from the iron and oxygen in his blood, and he turns on the tap and rinses it off, and then realizes he should clean up the rest of the razor blades that are still in the sink.

His forearm is still bleeding freely as he packs the razor blades up neatly. He places the one he’d used at the top of the package, and sticks it back in the drawer, the open face pressed tight against one of the drawer’s sides.

He stares at himself in the mirror. He looks solemn and calm, in a way he hasn’t felt in a while.

He looks back at his wrist. He rinses it off, too, in the sink, and then opens the medicine cabinet next to the shower. There’s an adhesive gauze strip that he sticks to the inside of his wrist.

He’s not sure if it really did anything for him, or if he’d do anything like it again.

But he breathes softly, quietly, and goes to his room to grab the radio off his desk.

“Dustin?” he asks. He presses his hand into the bandage on his arm until it feels like it’s leaking.

It doesn’t take long. It hasn’t stopped bleeding yet.

“Are you ready to talk yet? It’s okay if you’re not. I just thought I’d check. Love you. Okay, just… let me know. Okay. But no pressure, seriously."

***

"...Okay, then. That's all right. I get it. Okay, over and out.”