Archive of Our Own ^beta

Max found the pictures when she was cleaning out Billy’s closet.

It had been three weeks since the battle at Starcourt. Three weeks since the mind flayer had been defeated for good, three weeks since she had lost her brother. For the first week afterward she had been in too much shock to do much of anything- she barely even slept. Whenever she closed her eyes she could see the flesh-monster leering down at her, its arms waiting at the ready to tear her apart, too. Or she saw Billy again, bleeding black onto the tile of the mall floor, and if not him, then it was El, or Lucas or Will or Steve or- the list of people could go on and on. Sometimes there was just nothing but a horrible feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong , and she would open her eyes again for fear that that something would be staring her straight in the face. 

Whenever she could get away from her mom’s worried gaze and Neil’s controlling grasp (she had been practically grounded for life by Neil because of the recklessness portrayed in the government- approved story of why she was at the mall during the “fire”, and her mom was so worried about her getting hurt that she barely got to leave the house), she was with her friends. They found comfort in each other’s presence, even if it was only a little bit at times. She soothed El when she cried over Hopper, she held onto Lucas and Will and sometimes even Mike when they got spooked by something, anything. She listened to Dustin and Steve when they talked about fighting the Russians under the mall. She even said hello to the girl who seemed to be incorporating herself into the group, the girl who had worked with Steve. Max found out her name was Robin, and she had a sneaking suspicion that she and Steve were a thing, but she hadn’t said anything about it yet. If it was really important, she was sure Steve would tell them sooner or later.

For the first week, Max hadn’t been able to even look in Billy’s room without feeling herself start to cry. Not that she had really gotten a chance to look at it; the second that he had gotten the news of his son’s death, Neil had closed his door and virtually erased every other sign in the household that Billy had even existed. His weights, anything of his laying around. If there had been pictures of him up to begin with, Max was sure that Neil would have taken them down and burnt them. She was just glad that Billy’s camaro wasn’t there for her stepfather to sell for scrap metal. The one good thing about Steve totalling it with the TODDFATHER was that it was out of Neil’s grasp. 

During the second week, Max had begun sneaking into Billy’s room when both her mother and Neil were away (which was a rare occurrence since the Fourth of July). She needed proof that he had actually existed, that he had lived under the same roof as her, that at one point she had had a brother . Sometimes the others would ask if she was ok and how she was doing after “ well… yknow…”. No one around her would even say his name, and she needed evidence to prove to herself that Billy was real, that at one point he had been flesh and blood. She would sit in his room, on the edge of his bed or on the floor, until it either got to be too much for her to think about or she heard a car pulling into the driveway. It was good for her, she thought. It was good to ease into the fact that he had been there, and now he wasn’t.

During the third week, she had started going through his stuff. She figured it was only a matter of time before Neil started getting rid of things himself, and she hated the thought of that more than she feared what Billy would think of her going through his things. Besides, there were some things she would rather Neil, (and possibly, horrifyingly, her mother), not see. Stuff like his porno magazines she unfortunately knew that he kept in a drawer next to his bed, or the weed she suspected he kept under his bed. 

She had started small, with the bedside table, which unfortunately turned out to be not-so-simple when she ended up with an armful of magazines with pages covered in scantily clad women (and one on the bottom with a man on the cover (ok, she wasn’t surprised but god knows she did not need to see it) that she needed to get rid of quickly. She didn’t dare radio any of the guys for advice because she didn’t really want them to know what she was doing in the first place, and she absolutely shuddered at the prospect of telling them what she was trying to get rid of. In the end she had settled for waiting for the day when the garbage truck came down their street, and before it got to their garbage can she had run out, buried the bag of magazines under another bag of trash, and ran back inside before anyone noticed. She had opted to keep Billy’s awful posters up, since Neil had probably seen them all already and she didn’t want him to get suspicious of her operation. Max did take one poster, though, the only one that looked vaguely nice, she thought, and rolled it up and stashed it in her closet. Maybe she would put it up later, strategically placed somewhere unnoticeable on her wall.

After that first success she moved on to the rest of the room. She hesitated for only a moment before skipping over the bed and whatever was underneath it. She decided that it couldn’t be any worse than what she might find in his closet, but still, it was under a bed and it was a gamble as to what she might find under there, so she figured it would be a service to her own sanity to skip over that particular part of the room for the time being. 

She went through his dresser a little, too. She didn’t really need to get rid of anything in there (surprisingly), but she did end up taking a couple of his t-shirts. They were band shirts, of course, but they were for bands she actually liked. That was something she and Billy had been able to agree on, eventually. He had caught her mouthing the words to a Motley Crue song one day. 

You actually like this shit?

Yeah, so what?

Keep that up shitbird and you’ll actually have a good taste in music.

Max figured that he wouldn’t mind; following that same train of thought, she had also taken an armful of music from where it sat next to his stereo. Unfortunately, the whole entire sound system seemed too conspicuous to move to her room without being caught, but when the time came for Neil to go through all of Billy’s stuff, she hoped she could get her mom on her side and convince him that they didn’t need to throw out a perfectly good stereo.

The only thing she had left before the closet was the little desk that held up the mirror (well, that and under the bed but like she said, she was saving that for much later). She had cleaned off the top of the desk, swiping whatever cologne was left and putting it in the desk drawers in the hopes of saving it. There were only two drawers, and one was taken up with jewelry; it wasn’t much, just another necklace or two, one of which looked like it had belonged to some girl at some point. There was another ring, similar to the one he had worn on his middle finger, the one she had sitting on her own dresser at that moment. Unsurprisingly, most of what she found was earrings; it was all the other half of the earrings he would wear one at a time because he only had one ear pierced. He could have gotten his other ear pierced, there were places in Hawkins that could have done it for him; hell, he could have pierced it himself. It was more about what Neil would think, what he would do if he found out his son had pierced his ears again like a fucking girl .

Max had shaken her head, trying to rid her brain of the voice of her stepfather. She knew he had been awful to Billy- of course she knew, they lived in the same house. But she couldn’t think about it too much because then it only made her think about what she wished she had done and that wouldn’t be any help to anyone now.

It was today that she was tackling the closet, the second day of the fourth week since Starcourt. For this particular mission she was armed with a broom, holding it out stick-first; she didn’t know what she would find, but considering that this was Billy she was talking about, for all she knew there could be an entire fucking bird roosting in the top of the closet. All she knew for sure was that she wasn’t about to touch anything suspicious or unidentifiable, so. Broomstick. 

When she first opened the closet, Max expected a cascade of god knows what, so she had yanked the door open and leapt back out of range of anything that might fall out. To her surprise, the only thing that fell was a precariously placed, wadded up blanket. She poked it once with the broom, then picked it up warily and shook it out slowly, but nothing fell out. Huh. Apparently it really was just a regular old blanket. She folded it up and set it on the floor behind her before delving deeper into the closet. 

Hanging up on hangers on the rack attached to the walls were Billy’s jackets, his leather one and a couple denim ones and a hoodie. Max took them all down and put them all on, one by one, momentarily not caring whether or not her brother would approve. All of them were too big on her, but she thought they looked cool nonetheless. Her favorite was the leather jacket, and she treated that one the most gently out of everything. A few seconds after putting it on, though, her conscience caught up to her and she quickly put it back on the hanger. She took down the smaller of the two jean jackets and put it aside for her to keep, then kept rifling through the closet.

There were boxes on the floor, ones she suspected had barely been touched since they moved into the house. The first one just had more sheets and blankets in it, nothing really suspicious, though she did go through that one with the broom for fear that Billy barely washed his sheets. 

The third box was surprising. She had expected more clothes, or maybe more stuff for the stereo, but what she found instead was books. Stacks of books piled into a cardboard box that couldn’t have been bigger than a small tv. Some titles she recognized, like  Dracula and The Great Gatsby (they had to read it in English class), but there were a lot of others that she had never heard of before. It wasn’t so much that she was surprised that there were books in there that she hadn’t heard of before; she wasn’t the most well-read person. She was surprised that there were books at all . Max hadn’t thought of Billy as someone who read. She honestly sometimes forgot he even knew how. She had seen him reading books before, but it had only been a few times at a passing glance and she had never thought much of it. Billy just wasn’t a reader in her mind, but apparently she had been wrong.

She leafed carefully through a few of them, reading the summaries on the back of the covers and setting aside the most intriguing ones for later. The Outsiders looked especially promising. She decided that she wanted to eventually read all of them, and made a resolution to come back to the box every once in a while and pick out a new one to read before stacking them all up again and replacing them in their cardboard home. 

And then there was only one box left, a smaller one shoved into the far back of the closet behind the others. The floor of the closet had already been cleared of shoes, old socks and random scraps of paper and other stuff Max had shoved aside with the broomstick. She carefully opened up the last box- after the surprising books in the previous box, there was no telling what she might find in the last one. When she finally got it open, though, she was more confused than really surprised. The top of the box was filled up with five or six small composition notebooks, all of which looked well worn and written in. Max picked one up, curious about its contents, then almost immediately snapped it shut when she recognized Billy’s scrawling handwriting.

He hadn’t just read, apparently, he had written, too. She looked back into the box and counted.

Six whole notebooks.

She carefully took them all out and set them aside to put back in the box after she went through it all. Maybe someday later she would come back and read them, to try to understand her brother a little bit better, but for now he still felt like too-fresh memory for her to even read a single word. 

Max returned her attention to the box. The next thing that caught her eye was what looked like a small jewelry box, with delicate patterns carved into the wooden lid. Max would have never guessed that Billy owned something like that, even after she had started to get to know him a little better. Maybe it was his mom's, she thought vaguely. She took out the box and set it in her lap, the lid squeaking a little as she opened it. It was filled up with jewelry, just as the box suggested, but it was fancier than the stuff Billy would wear. There were long, draping earrings and a glittering bracelet and a couple necklaces and rings. Underneath all the jewelry was what looked suspiciously like lipstick, and when she took it out and pulled off the cap Max’s suspicions were confirmed. It looked old; the red pigment was faded and even the tube itself looked like it had been bought 10 years ago at least. It must have been his mom’s stuff. It was sweet, but also sad that this little box of stuff was most of what he had left of his mom. Max didn’t even really know what happened to her, just that she had been there one day and gone the next. She suddenly felt intrusive, going through Billy’s mom’s stuff, so she quickly put it all back in the jewelry box and set it on top of the notebooks.

She almost passed by the next thing in the box, almost took it out and put it aside without a second thought. It was a dark blue and purple woolen sweater, mostly unnoticeable, except the design on the cuffs of the sleeves caught her eye. She knew that pattern.

Hey, come on, I told Hargrove that Max would be home by 8.

You’ve been talking to my brother?

Yeah, you’ve been talking to Billy?

Shut up, Dustin.

Don’t worry about it guys, he asked me to do him a favor and take her home, it’s no big deal.

Turn up the heat, I’m fucking freezing.

Language.

The sweater was Steves. She remembered seeing him wear it one of the days he had picked her up from AV club instead of Billy, sometime in January. But if the sweater was Steve’s, then what the hell was it doing in a box in Billy’s closet? Sure, she knew the two older boys had started getting along a few months after Billy had nearly beaten Steve half to death in the Byers house. She knew because Steve had told her; she saw them sometimes, talking and laughing and even leaning against Billy’s car, the car she wasn’t even allowed to look at wrong, and when she had asked about it Steve had shrugged and said that he didn’t really know how it happened either, just that it was happening. Towards the summer she would have even tentatively called them good friends. But this was a whole other ordeal. How did it get here? Did Steve give it to him, or did Billy steal it like a fucking pack rat? Still trying to puzzle it out, she took it out and set it aside, only to look back in the box and be met with another confusing sight. 

There was a mess of photos in the bottom of the box, laying flat where they had been pressed down by the sweater. Max gingerly picked up the first one that caught her eye, a young boy with messy blonde hair holding a surfboard on the beach. It only took a second for Max to realize that it was Billy; who else could it be? It had been taken on a beach in California, obviously, but by who, Max wasn’t sure. At least, she was until she looked down at the other photos and realized who was in them. There were photos of only Billy, of him as a little kid running on the beach, of him laughing at the camera, one especially good one of him glaring into the lense while dressed in what was probably his Sunday best. They couldn’t, wouldn’t have been taken by his dad, so only one option remained. Max gingerly lifted out one of the only photos with someone other than Billy in it. It was a blonde woman, smiling at the camera, her eyes sparkling and wrinkled at the edges where her grin reached them. Max almost couldn’t help but smile back. She had the same dirty blonde hair and blue eyes as Billy, she had to be his mom. 

Max collected up all of the pictures that she could find and put them in a stack. She put them back in the bottom of the box, storing them away for much, much later. She vaguely thought about how it would be nice to put all the photos in an album someday, where she could look at them any time she wanted and be able to see Billy happy. After making sure the stack lay flat on the bottom of the box, she turned to the still-folded sweater laying on the floor next to her and sighed. Regardless of how it got in a box in Billy’s closet, she guessed she would have to be the one to return it now. She picked it up and shook it out of its fold, wondering if she should wash it or just return it as it was when something papery fluttered out of a sweater sleeve and onto the carpet. She picked it up, expecting a receipt or something of the likes, but it was something completely different.

Something completely, totally different. 

She yelped in surprise, then glanced at the door to Billy’s room quickly, as if worried that her mom and Neil would come barging in the door at any second even though she knew they both weren’t due back for another hour. It took most of her willpower not to drop the thing on instinct and back away; she had a very strong suspicion that not another soul was meant to see what she was holding.

It was a strip of four photos, the kind you’d get in some kind of photo booth. That in of itself wasn’t that odd; Max had never in all her years of knowing Billy thought that he looked like the type of person to take pictures in a photo booth, but there was apparently a lot she didn’t know about her late brother. The second shock was that there was a person besides Billy in the photos, and that person was Steve . She herself had taken lots of photo booth pictures; some with her friends back in Santa Monica, some with the boys, (Lucas in particular), and, now, loads and loads with El (at least, before the mall burned down). It wasn’t an uncommon thing to take pictures like that with your friends, it was practically what photo booths were made for. But these weren’t anything like the friend-photos she had ever taken. Her hands almost shook as Max looked down the column of photos.

The first photo was fairly normal, just about what Max would have expected from a photo of Billy and Steve if she had been aware that such a thing existed: Billy with an unamused expression on his face and Steve smiling at the camera, his arm hooked over Billy in an attempt to get him to go along with whatever scheme he had planned. The second picture was of Steve part laughing, part grimacing as Billy smiled the nastiest smile he could manage, all teeth with his tongue poking out between them. Max couldn’t even bother to shudder, because the photos just got more unbelievable as she went down. The second to last one was of both boys laughing, neither of them paying much attention to the camera anymore; Steve was smiling wide again and Billy’s barking laugh seemed to echo out of the picture. He looked the happiest Max had ever seen, and if someone had asked her to pick a favorite photo of him, she would have picked that one.

But then there was the last picture of the four. 

Steve had brought his hand up to grab lightly at Billy’s jacket, and Billy had his eyes closed with a peaceful, happy expression on his face; their lips were pressed together in a kiss, the camera in front of them seemingly forgotten.

It couldn’t be real.

It couldn’t possibly be real. 

Max had always sort of known why Billy had never had a steady girlfriend, why he wore all the jewelry he did, the very reason why they had left California. But she had never expected this . She had never expected to know the guy, much less be friends with him. She set the strip of pictures down on the ground in front of her, picked them up again a second later, then set them down again. She didn’t know what to do . She wondered how long they had been… together? She didn’t even know. When had these photos been taken? Four weeks ago? Four months ago? More?

Oh, Steve.

All this time. She had had no idea, none of them had, and Steve had probably had one to go to ever since Starcourt.

In a split second, Max snatched up the photos, folding the strip in half and carefully putting it in her pocket. She grabbed the sweater, too, and ran to her room, grabbing her backpack and stuffing it in. After a second of thought, Billy’s ring went into her pocket as well. She ran back to Billy’s room, shoving all the boxes in their disarranged state back into the closet and slamming it shut, then bolting back into the hallway. She darted into her room and grabbed her skateboard, then went down the hall and through the dining room, out the front door and down the steps of the house. She skidded into the road before laying down her board, hopping on and tearing down Old Cherry Road. 

***

In hindsight, Max probably should have radioed before skating all the way to Steve’s house on a whim. She hadn’t even known if he had been home when she had taken off down the road with the sweater stuffed in her backpack and the pictures of him and Billy in her pocket, but when she saw the beamer and only the beamer in the driveway she had felt such relief that her mad dash hadn’t all been for nothing. Now that she was here, though, her nerves were catching up to her. 

What was she even going to say? Hey, sorry my brother died, just found out that you two were secret boyfriends. Good news is, I found your sweater! Yeah, that was out of the question. She also realized about 20 minutes too late that she hadn’t left a note saying where she was going and where she would be, and that might not bode well for her if she got home after Neil or her mom, especially if she got home after Neil. Max picked up her board and tucked it under her arm, taking a second to adjust the strap of her backpack and taking a deep breath before trudging up to the front door of Steve’s house. 

She could remember the first time she had come here, a couple months after she had met him when she, Steve, Dustin and Lucas had holed themselves up in the junkyard bus, waiting for the demodogs to take the bait. She had been invited over for a dnd session, only the second or third game she had been included in (and eventually the second to last as their interests drifted to other things). It had been nice- it felt like a sort of initiation, like once she went to Steve’s she was officially a part of the party, even though Dustin had only befriended the same month she showed up at school. It seemed like a very refined house, she liked spaciousness and the blue glow of the pool in the backyard (she had caught a glimpse of it through the closed curtains). It was big, sure, but it was big and empty and she had found herself a little worried about Steve. From what she had heard from Dustin and could tell from observation, his parents were almost never there. She had looked around the enormous living room and decided it was too much house for one 18 year old to fill up all by themselves. She hadn’t felt too bad for very long, though, because at that moment Will had come wandering over with Mike in tow, telling her they were gonna start the game in a few minutes and Steve had ordered pizza. She had smiled at them, but partially to herself because she could also hear Lucas and Dustin bickering in the other room and Steve, ever the begrudging mediator, trying to break up the argument. She decided she was glad Dustin had dragged Steve into this mess with them, because now he had friends to hang out in his stupidly big house. Even if those friends happened to be a group of 13 year olds. 

Now, the same house as before seemed large and imposing, casting a shadow on her in the July evening. She shivered despite the warmth that seeped through her clothes from the slowly setting sun. Max reached into her pocket and fidgeted with the ring waiting there. She wasn’t sure what she was so afraid of. It wasn’t like Steve would lash out at her for bringing something like this up. He wasn’t that kind of person, and besides, she didn’t care. She didn’t care that her suspicions about Billy had been proven true, she didn’t even care that they had been partially proven true by Steve . She knew well enough that Will looked at Mike a little too long sometimes, that maybe, just maybe , she did the same to El, too. Maybe she was afraid that it would be too much for Steve to handle at once, that maybe he would just start falling apart and she would have to call in reinforcements and that meant Dustin and that new girl, Robin, and that meant more people finding out about him and her brother, and-

She was overthinking, obviously. She was on the front porch now, standing awkwardly in front of the door. She hadn’t even knocked and she was already freaking herself out. Steve was level-headed. Enough. He fought the first demogorgon and all the demodogs with nothing but a spiked bat, a can of gasoline, and a lighter. He had gone headfirst into a Russian base, got drugged for it, and then made a mad drive through the night to make it to Dustin’s shitty ham radio. He would know what to do, what to say. He’d be ok. Hopefully.

So Max knocked.

She waited 30 seconds, counting every single one in her head, waiting for the door to swing open. When it didn’t, she knocked again, harder this time. Again, she didn’t hear any sign of movement or life inside she knocked again, practically pounding on the door for good measure this time. Finally she heard someone shouting inside, then quiet as that someone, (presumably Steve), made their way over to the door and opened it with a muttered “alright, Jesus Christ ”.

And there Steve was.  

Max didn’t know how startling it would be to actually see him in person after seeing the pictures. He looked tired, but gave her a small smile when he saw that it was her and arched an eyebrow. 

“Max? What’re you busting down my door for? At 7 o’clock at night?” he furrowed his brows further when he looked around a little and saw it was only Max standing sheepishly on his front step. “What’s up, everything ok?” Max had never been more sorry for something she was about to tell someone. For a split second she considered telling Steve everything was fine and turning around and going back home. But she had to at least give him the sweater back. So she looked up at him and asked

“Can I come in?” 

***

Max let Steve lead her through his house, even though she knew her way around well enough by now. 

“Why didn’t you radio first? Are you sure everything’s ok? ” he asked again, and Max felt a surge of affection for Steve’s strange, motherly instincts. 

“Yeah, I’m… I’m ok.” she said hesitantly, stopping in the kitchen and standing a moment. “I have to talk to you.” she said, her nerves starting to get the best of her again. Better to get the ball rolling quick before she really did chicken out. Steve stopped and turned to her, crossing his arms and frowning.

“Now you’re really freaking me out. Would you tell me what’s up before I have a heart attack?” Max couldn’t help but huff a tiny laugh, partially out of stress, partially out of the fear that Steve would have an actual heart attack.

“Ok, but you might want to sit down.” Steve arched an eyebrow but sat at one of the stools at the kitchen island anyways. Max took another deep breath and sat down across from him. Here went nothing. “Ok, um, well first of all,” She took off her backpack and unzipped it, pulling out the sweater and holding it up for a second before sliding it across the counter to Steve. The boy gaped down at it, as if she had told him she was giving him a sweater and poured a bowl of soup into his lap instead. Confusion and shock flashed across his face.

“Where…?” he started, lifting a sleeve of the sweater carefully and running it between his fingers, then looking up at Max again. She hurried to get the next part out, because once she started, she didn’t want to stop. 

“Before you say anything, I found this in it, too.” she said, pulling out the folded photo strip and leaning across the island to place it on the sweater. She swore she could hear Steve’s heart hammering in his chest, what with the apprehensive way he looked down at the little scrap on the sweater. Or maybe that was just her own heart. 

Steve’s hand shook almost imperceptibly as he reached down to pick up the photos and unfolded them, like he already knew what it was before he even saw them. Max could see Steve’s eyes move down the images, the same way hers had when she had first seen them.

“So… I kinda know about… that , now.” Max said, shifting awkwardly on her stool, saying it if only to break the awkward silence. Steve looked over at her, a sort of worried, sad look on his face.

“Did you know about him before…?” The before now part of the question was left out. Max shrugged, meeting Steve’s eyes for only a second before glancing back down at her hands. 

“Kinda. It was weird. He never said anything but… I could always kind of tell.” She watched Steve carefully as he looked everywhere but her, seeming to think about what Max had said and what he was going to say next. She couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to have your dead partner’s little sister come and interrupt your day with this sort of stuff. Max was pretty sure that if she were Steve, she would have kicked her out about 5 minutes ago. Steve ran a hand through his hair, letting out a puff of air and looking at Max again.

“Does it… I dunno, freak you out?” he asked warily. Max quickly shook her head. 

“No, no way.” she said. “It’s kinda freaky because I had to see that to find out about it but I’m not freaked out because you’re… y’know. I’m not freaked out, I swear.” She finished, then after another moment of silence, spoke again.

“How long?”

Steve shrugged helplessly, still staring down at the pictures. 

“Since February so… 5 months? 6?” he said, his voice wavering. “It’s just been a long time since I’ve seen him. Obviously.” He absently rubbed a thumb over the third picture. 

“I wish I had known.” Max said. I wish I could help. “I would have been happy for you guys, if not a little weirded out that one minute you two are beating each other up and the next you’re all over each other.” 

“Well when you say it like that-“ Steve said, laughing weakly, looking at Max. “I know you would have been. But we figured it was just better to… not, tell anyone.” Max nodded, then remembered the other thing she had brought.

“Oh,” she said, reaching into her pocket. “I almost forgot, I brought you this, too.” She brought out Billy’s ring and held it out across the island to Steve, letting it rest in the center of her palm. Steve glanced between her and the ring, then smiled sadly as he took it from her and slid it onto his middle finger, like he’d done the same motion before. “I’ve had it for a while but I thought you should probably have it.” Max said, watching Steve twist the ring. 

“Thanks.” he said simply. Max shifted on her stool, debating whether or not to ask her next question. 

“Did you love him?” she finally asked, drawing her brows together. She internally cringed at the words coming out of her mouth. If she didn’t get all her answers now she might never work up the nerve to ask again. It was now or never. Steve looked almost startled, then stared hard at the ring, thinking for a long moment. There seemed to be a lot of staring and thinking going on on Steve's behalf. Then again, Max had never been in this situation before; she didn’t know how much staring and thinking was necessary. She was just glad Steve hadn’t cried or something. Yet. Eventually Steve shook his head.

“No. Maybe? I don’t know, I don’t think so.” he said, running a hand through his hair and pushing it out of his face. “I think I could’ve though. I think I definitely could have.” Max smiled and nodded, her gaze drifting back to the pictures Steve was still holding.

“He seemed happy.” she said and gestured to the photos. “Well, at least happier than he was .” 

“Did he?” Steve asked, and the expression on his face made Max want to run out of the house and never look back.

“Yeah. I mean, he was still a dickhead like, all the time, but he was… better.” Steve smiled back, then looked quickly down at the pictures and nodded a little. If he started getting emotional, she would officially be in over her head. Mostly because she had a sneaking suspicion that if Steve cried, she would, too. She fumbled for something to say.

“I can bring you more of his stuff, if you want.” she mentioned awkwardly. Steve looked up and blinked at her and she shuffled verbally onward. “There’s a bunch of t-shirts, I could give you his leather jacket…” she said, going over Billy’s things in her head. Steve arched an eyebrow.

“Are you just trying to offload a bunch of shit onto me?” he asked. Max jumped to defend herself. 

“Hey, his dad would probably just get rid of it all!” For a second she was afraid that mentioning Neil would make Steve sad all over again, but thankfully he just snorted.

“Yeah, I guess, but you’d better be careful, you might find some scarring stuff.” Max rolled her eyes, a smile spreading across her face. 

“ Tell me about it. I haven’t even looked under his bed yet.” Steve shook his head, snickering.

“Do yourself a favor and don’t . I don’t wanna have to deal with the fallout of that .” Max shuddered and Steve actually, fully  laughed and then Max couldn’t help but laugh along with him. He was gonna be alright. They both were.