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It’s a cold afternoon in early November when Steve pulls up outside of Billy’s house and Robin jumps out of the Beemer and starts waving her arms over her head.
“Hey, Hargrove! Billy!” she shouts and makes him look up from where he’s been sitting outside the front door, staring at his knees. He uses the railing to pull himself up to standing and starts walking up to them.
Billy’s dressed in much warmer clothing than Robin’s ever seen him in. He’s even got an actual coat on, and she’s pretty sure that’s one of Steve’s sweaters underneath. He’s got a plastic bag in one hand.
Robin hasn’t seen Billy since that day in August when she decided to visit him at the hospital, almost exactly three months ago. Steve hasn’t seen him for like, a month. He’s been going crazy not getting to visit Billy, Robin knows, because it’s all he can talk about when she comes in for her shift at Family Video after school.
Robin’s mostly here because Billy’s parents are spending the weekend at a hotel in the big city as a ‘date’ and Max wanted to get Billy out of the house and hang out with Steve, and Billy wanted to try driving again, and they needed someone else to drive in case it went to shit. So Robin said yes when Steve asked, because she’s nice like that, but if she’s completely honest she’s also wanted to see Billy again. She’s curious about him. Curious about the boy Steve’s been talking about with so much love in his voice, curious to see how the boy who wished they’d let him die is doing, curious about the boy who lent her one of the only lesbian books Robin’s ever read.
Steve rounds the car and Robin can tell he’s aching to go up and kiss Billy right there, but he knows better, so he stays back and only smiles at him when Billy throws the Camaro’s keys to him. Robin leaves the passenger side door to the Beemer open for Billy as she goes and sits down in the driver’s seat.
They’re going up to the quarry. There’s a road there, almost always completely deserted, and it’s the safest and most secluded place they could find for Billy to practise driving again. And it fits for the ‘surprise’ she and Steve have planned for him, afterwards.
They’re quiet the first few minutes, just following Steve in the Camaro. Robin glances at Billy after the last turn. He’s got both arms crossed in his lap, his bag by his feet, and is looking out of the side window.
“You okay?” His eyes have dark circles around them when he looks back at her, and he’s paler than she’s ever seen him.
“I’m okay.” Not ‘fine’, or ‘good’ , or even ‘shit’ , but ‘okay’ . Robin’s a little shocked at his honesty. “I took my pills after lunch, so I should be fine the rest of the day.”
Robin nods. “That’s good.”
She feels a little awkward.
“Hey... thank you. For lending me your book. The Highsmith one.” She doesn’t know why she adds it, it’s not like Billy’s lent her more than one book, but at least it does make Billy smile. Robin realises she’s never seen him smile. Not... not for real. She’s seen him grin with too many teeth and to little happiness in school, but she’s never seen him smile. This soft small upturn of his lips where one side ends up higher than the other and he almost gets a dimple. She’s never seen that. She wonders if this is what Steve, and Max, and his parents get to see.
“Did you like it?”
“Yeah. It was good. Really good. ‘She thought of people she had seen holding hands in movies, and why shouldn’t she and Carol?’ Why shouldn’t you and Steve? Why shouldn’t I and whomever I may choose?”
“Because the world does not like people like us.”
“And yet we’ve always existed.”
“But to be accepted we need to be better, do better, than any of them. And even then they may not accept us.”
“We shouldn’t have to,” Robin says, her voice firm. “We should get to burn, and fall, and destroy and create, and love and live just like they do. Because we’re people.”
“Not everyone would agree with you.”
“But do you? Do you... do you see that you’re a person? Do you understand that you’re human, Billy?” She knows she should probably stop, but fuck it, she can’t. She likes talking to Billy. She loves Steve, she really does, but sometimes he can be too much of a dingus to get what she’s getting at when she gets like this.
Billy sighs. A quick glance away from the road tells her he’s dragging the thumb of his one hand over the scars on the palm of the other. “You’re asking me if I still blame myself?”
Robin can’t help but smile. “Yes.”
“I... I still feel guilty.”
Robin sighs. “Billy-“
“No, wait. Listen. I’m going to feel guilty. And there are days when I... when I really blame myself. It’s going to take me time. But I don’t... I’m thankful I’m alive. I’m happy you saved me. Even if I still feel like shit.”
“Do you have nightmares?”
“Every week.”
Robin grimaces. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m tired.” She chances a glance at him, and sees that while he does look tired, he’s also smiling at her. Softly.
“I have nightmares, too, sometimes. About... that whole thing. You still have your walkie, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Call me. Or Steve. Or Jane, she likes you. Just... talk to someone, afterwards. It helps.” They’ve turned off into the woods, now, and Robin can’t help but look warily at the tree line. She always liked the forest, before she heard about secret labs and demodogs and other dimensions. But that’s behind them, now. She knows, because she saw the biggest, baddest monster die. Saw Billy sacrifice himself to murder it. Maybe she can get to enjoy the woods again.
“Max has been... helping.”
Robin smiles. “Good. But still. If you ever-“
“... need to talk to someone else, you’re... there for me.”
He sounds so unsure, Robin starts to wonder if he’s ever had any real friends.
“We are,” she says.
Steve stops the Camaro in front of them, and Robin pulls up to the side of the road behind it and parks. They get out of the Beemer and Steve goes up to them and squeezes Billy’s hand.
“Hi, love. You ready?”
Billy nods, but the hand not in Steve’s is trembling. They separate and Steve goes to sit in the passenger seat. Billy’s slower to move, but he does eventually get in, and almost a whole minute later the car starts.
But it doesn’t go far. It jerks forward, once, twice, nothing like the smooth speed devil Robin saw around Hawkins last autumn and spring. The Camaro stops, less than three meters forward, and the door to the driver’s side is wrenched open so harshly Robin’s afraid it’s going to fall off. Billy stumbles out, and falls down, leaning back against the side of the Camaro with his knees pulled up.
His breathing’s off, and Robin barely registers Steve stepping out on the other side, before she’s moving forward and falling to her knees in front of Billy on the ground.
She recognises the symptoms instantly, because she’s dealt with these herself a couple times throughout her life.
Billy’s hands are shaking on top of his knees, and Robin’s pretty sure he’s sweating. There are tears in his eyes, and he’s taking in air in large gulps of air that are so short and quick he’s probably not getting anything in at all. He’s going to pass out, if he continues like this.
She leans down, tries to get eye contact with him. Once she does, she gives him a small reassuring smile. “Hey... Hey, Billy. It’s me. Robin. You’re with me, and Steve. We’re by the quarry. You’re safe. You’re safe, Billy. We need to slow down your breathing. Can I... Can I hold your hand?”
She’s not sure if he nods or not, but she takes one of his hands in hers anyway, and he doesn’t pull away. She holds it gently, moves her thumb down to his wrist. His pulse is fluttering like the wings of a hummingbird. She pulls his hand down and presses it gently to the gravel by the roadside.
“Can you feel that? Can you feel the ground underneath your fingertips? Can you... Can you hear the birds? The birds are singing, Billy. You’re here, with me, and Steve.” She thinks he nods, so she gives him another small smile. “Okay... Can you try to match me? Breathe in, and try to concentrate on the air. It’s reaching your lungs, filling your stomach, okay? Now breathe out, four seconds. Four, three, two, one...” She takes exaggerated breathes, still counting, even as his eventually start to match hers.
Once his breaths are back to normal he breaks eye contact and stares down at his knees.
“Do you want me to get Steve?” Robin asks quietly. Billy nods and she gives his hand a squeeze before standing up and going over to Steve. He’s standing a few feet away, looking both worried and a little amazed. She gently knocks his shoulder with her fist.
“Your turn, dingus.”
—
Later, when the sun has gone down and the stars are glimmering above them, Robin lies on her back on the roof of the Camaro, her head falling down on the back window.
They’d pulled up to the open edge towards the quarry, the water glittering two hundred feet below them, and parked both cars a little bit from the ledge. Billy’s curled up in the trunk of the Beemer, overlooking the water, the lid open and decorated with fairy lights that Robin had in her bedroom. She and Steve filled the trunk with blankets and pillows before they went to pick Billy up, and Steve packed sandwiches and cookies in the picnic basket Robin brought. The sandwiches are gone now, but there’s cookies and drinks left. Billy’s got a coke, and Robin’s got a beer can she shared with Steve in hand. Steve’s sitting on a blanket by the Beemer, his back leaning against the open trunk and his hand on Billy’s leg. It’s peaceful.
Robin stares up at the stars, and tries to remember the constellations her mother taught her. “How old were you guys,” she asks. “The first time the sky fell? I was ten. My mum died in a car crash. My dad’s nice, and he dies his best, but it’s not the same. I miss her.”
Part of her doesn’t expect any of them to answer, so she’s pleasantly surprised when she hears Billy’s quiet voice.
“Seven. My mum left. She never looked back. I don’t know where she is, now.” Robin didn’t know that Susan Hargrove wasn’t his real mum.
Steve’s doesn’t add anything, for a second, then he sighs. “My parents started leaving me alone when I was... eleven? I’ve not spent more than two continuous weeks with them for seven years.”
Robin smirks. “So we’ve all got mummy and/or daddy issues, huh? Well, how about your queerness? How would your parents react?”
“I don’t even know if my parents would bother caring, honestly,” Steve says, bitterness in his voice. “They’d probably be disappointed, if anything.”
“My dad would be afraid for my safety,” Robin says, because after years of fear, she’s now certain her dad loves her, always, and absolutely.
“My dad would murder me, probably,” Billy says, and it’s not a shocking answer. It’s a very real possibility, sadly, for so many people like them. She thinks back to their conversation in Steve’s car.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
She stretches out on the car, spilling a little beer on the ground as her hand turns too much to the side. “I dream of a place that never existed,” she whispers, and she’s not sure if they hear her. If she’s talking to them, or to the stars filling her field of vision.
“Hey, Billy?” Steve says. “That bag you had with you, what’s in it?”
Billy laughs. “Max insisted I take a scarf with me. I don’t have one, so she gave me hers. And then she made me promise to take my walkie with me, in case I needed to talk to her, or something. And I grabbed my sketchbook and pencils, and took them with me as well.”
Robin props herself up on her elbows and turns to look at Billy. She can’t see him from her position on top of the car, but she can see the light from the lid illuminate Steve. “You draw?” she asks.
“Yeah. Murray and Alexei, they gave me a sketchbook. But it’d been years before that.”
Robin doesn’t care. “Can I see?”
He hesitates, and Robin almost regrets asking. Art... art can be very personal. “Sure,” Billy then says. “But Steve can’t see.”
“Hey!” Steve protests. “Why not?”
Robin only partly listens to them. She’s moving her camera away from her belly, and jumping down from the car. She’d taken some pictures of Steve and Billy, and had Steve take one of her.
“It’s embarrassing! And I might... I might have some possible Christmas gifts in there, for you.”
She finds Billy’s bag still in the passenger seat of the Beemer, and gets out the sketchbook in there. She grabs a flashlight from Steve’s blanket on her way back up on the Camaro, and lies down on her belly.
The first few pages are mostly filled with flowers, all in the same vase. Robin remembers some of them from small bouquets Steve had while Billy was in the hospital. Zinnias, red tulips, edelweiss, chrysanthemums, verbenas, lily-of-the-valleys, hyacinths, valerians. There’s a drawing of what she thinks is the kids playing DnD, and a quick sketch that she recognises as Max on her skateboard, because the movements are so unmistakably hers. Four pages are dedicated to sketches of Heather. They’re dark, and sad, smudged graphite and harsh lines, and Robin knows it’s her. Heather always had beautiful eyes. She wonders if this is a glimpse into Billy’s head, as close as she’s going to get without having powers like El, and wonders what it means that he decided to trust her enough to let her see. She turns the page, and there’s Steve, sleeping in a chair, and the angle tells her Billy must have drawn it while sitting in his hospital bed. The hair, if nothing else, is perfectly drawn. Written in the corner, in Billy’s messy scrawl, is a couple of lines of what almost sounds like a poem.
‘I was born with anger in my soul
and destruction in my bones.
I will die with love in my heart
and tears in my eyes.’
Robin looks up from the sketchbook, stares out at the water and the dark night around them. It feels like their alone in the world. As though everyone else has disappeared, and it’s only the three of them left. “I came into this world on a night of shooting stars, and I grew in fear. I will live in joy, and I shall leave this world in the arms of my lover,” she says, and hopes Billy understands. Steve’s climbed up into the trunk of the Beemer, and she imagines they’re curled up around each other, now that they can finally touch again for the first time in months. Robin stays perched up on the roof of the Camaro, a guardian on lookout to make sure they’re safe.
“Can we stay here, forever? In this moment? This night?” Steve says, and Robin laughs a little. There’s a reason he’s her best friend.
“Fuck, Stevie, I wish,” Robin says.
They don’t say anything for a while, until Billy breaks the silence.
“He would make me, and then Heather, he’d make us grab them, and put them in my trunk, or the backseat, and we’d drive them to that fucking warehouse and I... I’d try to make them calm down, because I knew how much it hurt , but it was really fucking hard, and as soon as I sat in that car I felt like I was about to drive there. Like I... Like I had you, Robin, in the trunk, or that I was going to run you over like I almost did the kids, and that I was going to give Steve to that monster.”
“You’re not,” Steve says.
“And you didn’t,” Robin adds. “We’re here. We’re free. We’re alright. All of us.”
“Thank you for helping me. I’ve never... I’ve never had that happen,” Billy says and Robin smiles, even if he can’t see her.
“You had a panic attack. I’ve had them, sometimes. When mum died, and when I realised I was a lesbian, the first time I realised I had a crush on a girl, and a couple of times since this summer, if I’ve had a nightmare about the Russians, or something like that.”
“‘The Russians’?” Billy asks, and Robin is hit with the horrifying realisation that perhaps nobody told him about the Russians. “The Russians in the basement of the mall? The ones Alexei worked for?”
“Yeah...” Steve says. “Dustin heard their code, and Robin cracked it, and then the three of us and Erica Sinclair ended up in their lab, and we helped Dustin and Erica escape while the Russians held us.”
“You mean to say nobody fucking thought to tell me that you two were kidnapped and held prisoner by Russians?” He sounds so indignant it almost becomes funny. Robin chokes on laughter she refuses to let out.
“They probably thought someone else told you,” she says instead.
“Did they hurt you?” Billy asks, and neither Robin nor Steve answer, which really is answer enough. Billy huffs. “How much? Were you... did they torture you?!”
“Not... Not that bad, no, shit,” Steve says. “We got out alright. I even knocked one of them out!”
And now Robin can’t keep herself from laughing. This... this is a really fucked up situation they’ve somehow managed to find themselves in. She never expected anything of this when her summer started and she found out she’d have to work with Steve ‘Pretty Boy’ Harrington.
“What the fuck is wrong with her?” she hears Billy whisper to Steve, and she has to hold the side of the Camaro not to fall down with how much she’s laughing. She takes care not to wrinkle Billy’s sketchbook or let it fall on the ground.
“We’re all a little fucked up, aren’t we, boys?” she says. “God. But I wouldn’t want to be fucked up with anyone else, either. You’re the best friends I’ve ever had.”
She hears them join in in her laughter, though not as hysterically as she had.
“Yeah, I agree, Buckley.”
“Love you, Rob. We just have to go and try to get you a girlfriend, and then we’re set. Just as long as it isn’t Tammy Thompson.”
“No, wait...” Billy says. “‘Tammy Thompson’? I think Tommy threw her at me at a party, but she didn’t want to do anything. She dragged me out and gave me a kiss and told me I wasn’t her type. I told her she wasn’t mine, either, and she winked and left. I still remember it, because it was the weirdest fucking kiss I’ve ever experienced.”
“She can’t sing,” Steve says and Robin sighs dreamily. She lays her chin down on her folded hands.
“No, but she has amazing boobs. And hair. And legs. God, her legs . Shit, have you seen her ankles?”
“You sound like a Victorian lady,” Billy says with a laugh, and she hears Steve clear his throat.
“ ‘Turn around, bright eyes...!’ ”
Robin bites her lip to keep from laughing again. “ ‘Every now and then I fall apart’! ”
“ ‘Turn around, bright eyes!’ ” Billy joins in with Steve.
“ ‘Every now and then I fall apart!’ ”
And together the three of them belt out the chorus into the night.
“ ‘And I need you now tonight! And I need you more than ever! And if you only hold me tight, we’ll be holding on forever! And we’ll only be making it right, ‘cause we’ll never be wrong...! Together we can make it ‘til the end of the line, your love is like a shadow on me all of the time! I don’t know what to do, I’m always in the dark! We’re living in a powder keg and giving off sparks! I really need you tonight! Forever’s gonna start tonight!
“ Forever’s gonna start tonight!’ ”