Chapter Text
"Do you want anything from the store, Billy?" Susan asked, standing in the door to his room, Neil looming behind her. He'd been home from the hospital two days. He had instructions to stay in bed for another three, at least.
"No, thank you, Susan," Billy said, and if his smile didn't reach his eyes Susan didn't notice, because it never had before. Not with Neil around.
"We'll be back in an hour, son. Max will be home soon, if you need anything," Neil said, and Billy just nodded, unsure as always what to do with kindness from his father. He'd be surprised, except Neil was always like this in the aftermath. Except usually he was the one who caused Billy to be laid up like some helpless kid.
Billy would never admit this to anyone, least of all himself, but he still felt like a child. A little boy, barely coming up to his Dad's elbows. Like that kid, Adam, whom he and Heather had brought to the monster. It had almost been too easy. His parents were split, and when it was his father's turn to pick him up from swim lessons he was guaranteed to be 45 minutes late. Billy had scooped him up, one hand over his mouth, and Heather had waited with the trunk of the car open.
These were the thoughts Billy was sweating with in the July heat. He'd never liked the cold, and found he liked it even less now. The fan sat in the corner, unplugged.
Billy shifted, the sheet sticking to his bare skin from sweat. He missed the drugs in the hospital. They left him in a haze, mostly unaware of what was going on around him. The world had just been a drone of distant voices, and when his roommate had regained consciousness, a slightly closer drone that he wouldn't have understood even if he had listened, because he was Russian.
Billy considered getting up, taking the pain pills Susan left on the kitchen counter. He'd just had a dose, but maybe another would stop the thoughts in his head.
He began to lever himself up, when the door banged open and Max came in with a skateboard under her arm. Billy flinched at the noise, then laid back down with a sigh.
Max took up Susan's spot at the door, expression somehow more mature than Billy had ever felt. When she didn't say anything, he snapped, "What?"
She rolled her eyes but didn't say anything. Instead she walked into the room and collapsed on the foot of his bed. "Why don't you put on some clothes?"
"I'm wearing clothes," he sneered.
"You're wearing underwear." Max rolled her eyes again, before a more pensive look came over her face. "About what happened…"
"I don't want to talk about it," Billy stated, drawing away to look at the fan.
"But-"
"Max!" he snapped, hoping to cut her off, but she kept going, voice raised to match his own.
"- don't you have questions?" Billy looked back over at her, face still a blank. "With Neil and Mom gone, this is a good time to, you know, talk interrupted." He doesn't respond. "Do you understand what happened? What that thing was? What stopped it?"
"No, Maxine," he said, dead slow. "Go away."
She did, and Billy was left alone with his own thoughts again, but now they focused on the monster's death. He'd already decided that he didn't want to live, but he couldn't actively think about taking his life. The monster wouldn't let him. He'd tried so damn hard once, just once, when the kids had locked him in the sauna. As his hands had reached for the shard of tile he'd thought about slicing it across his own wrist, but the thought was pushed from his mind and he was forced to lunge at the glass, at Max.
He'd be lying if he said he never wanted to hurt Max, because the moment they'd met the big mean kid Billy had become had squeezed when Neil ordered him to shake Max's hand. She had just screwed her face up, blue eyes welling with tears, but they hadn't fallen. Billy had gotten a slap for that later, and Max had gotten an approving chuckle. When Max rode her skateboard inside the house and broke a plate two days later, Billy had realized that the two of them operated on different rules when it came to his Dad. They both got bandages, but Billy's were where they couldn't be seen.
He'd realized that he needed to protect her for his own sake, and shown her better places to skate, resentment burning in him.
He'd wondered when Neil's anger would turn, like the tide, to swallow Max too.
He wasn't sure when he started to care for Max the way a brother should, but one day in the Hawkins winter she wordlessly handed him her fingerless gloves as he rubbed his hands together as he started the Camaro to drive them both to school. When he'd asked why, she'd just said the steering wheel was cold and she could put her hands in her pockets, unlike him. He'd tried to give them back when he dropped her off, but she'd just shrugged, and told him to keep them, walking away with one hand shoved in a pocket, the other in her boyfriend's hand. Billy had given up keeping her from him, but he was still hoping he could keep Neil finding out about him so his wrath didn't find her.
He'd warn the gloves well into the spring, then shoved them into his glove compartment for the next winter. Summer's warmth had found him, and Billy had found his purpose. Billy liked being a lifeguard, liked the attention and the sun and the water, sure, but what he loved was protecting people. The pool became his kingdom.
But then he fucked it up, just like he always did. The monster got him, and the fear that he'd just begun to shake swallowed him. He was a little kid, all alone, unable to fight the monster that he had to obey, or else.
It wasn't entirely the monster that wanted to lash out at Mrs. Wheeler. He was so damn angry that he had been forced to drive by that damn place, so damn angry, and he blamed her. He wanted to hurt her. But it wasn't her fault. And she didn't leave her family, not like -
Not like his Mom.
He didn't have the energy left to keep it from Heather. All he could do was tell her not to move. He'd struggled, and as a result he still had a huge laceration in his cheek, and something in his throat hurt when he choked down the chemicals the monster needed to grow.
Don’t move.
He whispered it to each and every person he brought to the monster. Heather, her parents, and the little boy he taught swim lessons to, the ultimate perversion of his job.
His kingdom became the monster's hunting grounds, Billy it's dog.
Billy couldn't even protect Max.
But then Max's friend, the one the monster wanted, she had reached into his mind and reminded him that he could. Reminded him of his Mom, of her hair and her dress and how small he'd felt beside her, how safe. And he'd fought with everything he had, intending to die for those kids.
And then the monster's power disappeared, and it died instead. At least, that's what he thought happened. Billy's memory is blurted from pain and his drop into unconsciousness.
Was it dead? He couldn't feel it anymore, but what if it was coming back? He couldn't let that happen.
"Max!" he hollered. She appeared at the door. "Get in here."
She took her spot at the end of his bed again, scooping a wife beater off the floor and throwing it at his face. His scoffed but put it on.
He doesn't say I'm sorry. He'd already said that, when he thought he was dead.
"What the fuck was that? What happened to it? Will it come back?"
"We call it a Mind Flayer, Chief Hopper and Mrs. Byers killed it by closing the gate the Russians opened under Starcourt Mall, and it's trapped in the Upside Down now. It can't get back."
Billy just blinked at her, feeling like a dumb child. At least half those words didn't make sense, and if he hadn't experienced the monster - the Mind Flayer? Yeah, okay, that name matched his experience - he'd be laughing by now. Instead, he just raised an eyebrow and said, "What?"
Max sighed. "This is going to take awhile."