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The strangest part to all of this, Billy decides, is that he has visitors.
Forget the interdimensional monsters or the possession or the fact that thirty people, including his favorite coworker, are dead because he wasn’t strong enough to fight off said interdimensional monster. That’s either what he’s due for being a shitty, useless waste of breath or the result of him being a shitty, useless waste of breath, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks he’s always expected something like this to happen. Maybe not the interdimensional monster part, but something. It’s what Neil always said about him.
“You shouldn’t listen to what Papa called you,” a quiet voice says from beside him. “You’re not a shitty, useless waste of breath.”
He glares halfheartedly at her—her being El, short for Eleven, and he may not know much about her life, but anyone named after a number probably knows something about fucking awful parents.
“Thought I told you to stay out of my head,” he gripes, but he’s not really angry about it. Hard to be angry about anything when a pretty good chunk of the town population are dead because he lured them into a trap.
“Can’t,” El replies blithely, laying down a pair of cards. Billy doesn’t know what game she’s playing, but she looks like she’s having fun. “You think too loud.”
Yeah.
That’s a thing that’s happening. He’s not sure what it says about his life that a little girl with superpowers isn’t the weirdest thing to happen to him in the last few months, but it’s probably nothing good.
“That’s a good thing, right?” he asks. “I heard the doc asking last time you were here if your powers were coming back.”
He only remembers bits and pieces of his time as the Beast’s (the name that—that thing called itself; El calls it the Mind Flayer, which seems pretty apt to him) puppet, one of which is that El has superpowers she used to fight him. It’d been one of the first things he’d asked her about back when she first came to visit him, convinced that the nightmares in his head were ones that no kid needed to see, even one with abilities like El’s, only to immediately find out that one of the things he couldn’t remember was that she’d lost her powers during her fight with the Mind Flayer. Even so, she’d promised him gravely that if they ever came back, she’d do as he asked and stay out of his head. Except, it’s been two months since the Battle of Starcourt (as El and her little nerd friends call it) and now they’re coming back, but she doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of control over them. Earlier, she’d tried to float a soda to him from his bedside table and instead succeeded in sending it flying into the ceiling where it exploded over both of them.
El shrugs, glancing away from him. “Good,” she agrees tentatively. Billy waits her out. “Joyce says we’re moving. Not sure how much use they’ll be once we move.”
This is the first time Billy has heard about the Byers—and El, since she’s been taken in by them now that Hopper is gone (something else Billy has to atone for, even though he’s been told multiple times that this one is the mayor’s fault more than his)—moving, but he can’t say that he’s surprised. His other frequent visitor, Harrington (pretty, sweet, brave Steve Harrington, who once had his face bashed in by Billy and has more reason than most to hate Billy since Tommy H. and Carol were among the Flayed, yet still comes to see him almost daily), has been slowly filling him in on the Upside Down and everything that’s happened since the first gate opened almost two years ago. So much of it seems centered around the Byers that Billy’s more surprised they haven’t already moved.
“Hey,” he says roughly, carefully reaching over to ruffle El’s hair. It pulls on the bandages still wrapped around his chest (apparently, wounds caused by interdimensional monsters take a lot longer to heal), but he ignores the pain in favor of comforting her. It’s no more than he deserves anyway. “Don’t say that about yourself. You don’t have to be useful. You’re just a kid, you should be—I don’t know, outside playing or something.”
“But the gate—”
“I’m sure if someone else decides to try wrangling the Upside Down, you’ll be the first person your little nerd friends call. You’re only a car ride away, right?” Truthfully, after all the press Hawkins has gotten over the last two months (there’s not much else to do in this hospital room, other than watch TV), he’s not so sure that anyone will try opening a gate in Hawkins again. There’s too much press, too many people on edge, too high of a possibility that it’ll get noticed. Maybe someone will try somewhere else, and if that happens, Billy isn’t sure what’ll happen, if the Mind Flayer will finally be successful in gaining a foothold in this world or if El will somehow figure out how to stop it again (it isn’t fair, he thinks, that the safety of the world rests so squarely on a little girl’s shoulders), but that’s a problem for another day.
“So when are you guys moving?” he asks, hoping to change the subject to something, not necessarily more lighthearted since he knows why they’re moving, but at least not as heavy as the Upside Down.
El holds up a finger. “One month.”
One month until he’s down to only one regular visitor. Damn.
“Lucky you,” he says, forcing joviality to his tone. “Looks like you’re getting out of this shithole sooner than I am.” Dr. Owens, who doesn’t seem to be a regular doctor from what Billy can tell—doesn’t specialize in anything other than the Upside Down—wants to keep Billy for at least another month, not just to give his body time to heal, but also to keep him under observation in case there are side effects from drinking bleach (he’s so glad that isn’t one of the memories he has from those days). Apparently, the working hypothesis is that the chemical consumption by the rest of the Flayed is what caused their breakdown into the Mind Flayer’s body, but Billy doesn’t seem to have suffered any of those effects. Dr. Owens isn’t sure if that’s because he was the Mind Flayer’s host, not just one of the mindless Flayed, or for some other reason, but Billy isn’t complaining.
“Shithole?” El asks, wrinkling her nose, reminding Billy that she had a very sheltered upbringing.
He asks, “Never heard the term?” She shakes her head. “Like a dump. A bad place to be.”
She muses on that for a moment and then agrees, “Hawkins is a shithole.”
Billy barks out a laugh at her matter-of-fact tone (because if he doesn’t, he’ll cry, it’s not fair that this town has taken so much from her), a sound that’s echoed from the door, startling the two of them. Or, he decides after looking at the way El’s face lights up, maybe it only surprised him. He looks up to see Harrington standing in the doorway. There’s something tight in the way he looks at Billy, and Billy doesn’t know if it’s because he pities what happened to him or if it’s because looking at Billy just reminds him that his two oldest friends are dead (he bets it’s because he’s a reminder about Tommy H. and Carol). He doesn’t really like being an obligation to Harrington (Steve says he’s not an obligation, says he wouldn’t come if he didn’t want to, but Billy knows his type—self-sacrificing and noble), but he’s not going to say anything if it means Harrington keeps coming. He doesn’t have so many visitors that he can be choosy about the ones that do come.
And besides. He. He likes having Harrington around.
“Hey, El,” Steve says, voice gentling. He does that every time he sees her, like he’s worried that she might break apart if his voice is too loud (maybe she will; she’s lost her dad, her powers, and her home all in the last few months—Billy might not have known El for very long, doesn’t know how tough she is, but that’s enough to break anyone). “Joyce is down the hall. Told me to send you out whenever you’re ready.”
“Stay?” El asks hopefully. Billy loves her in that moment, for being one of the only people who actually wants to stick around this hospital room with the boy who was ready to sacrifice her to the Mind Flayer only a few months ago.
Steve shakes his head. “Sorry, kiddo. Joyce wants to—uh—she wants to—go through the cabin with you.”
“Oh.” El’s voice is small and quiet. Billy wishes he could give her a hug, something he would never have felt before all of this—the Mind Flayer has definitely changed him; he just wishes it wasn’t too late—but he’d definitely pull his stitches if he did that and then he’d have to start this shitty healing process all over again. Fortunately, Steve is there to give her a hug for him.
“I know,” he murmurs into her hair, and they both pretend they don’t hear her sniffle into Harrington’s shirt. “I know, I’d much rather spend all my time here with Billy too.”
It’s a joke, it has to be, but neither Steve nor El are laughing, so Billy buries how much he wants it to be true under a slightly too rough, “Yeah, hanging out with the invalid sounds much fun than going through some dusty old cabin.”
He has a brief flash of a memory, about standing in that cabin—not dusty at all, homey and clear well-loved—with a lit cigarette in his hand as he threatened El and everyone she loves, which is funny because he doesn’t think he could even point to where it is on a map.
Both El and Steve give him matching odd looks. Steve says, “Uh yeah, that was my point,” and he still doesn’t sound like he’s joking, but Billy can’t take him seriously. Forget bashing Harrington’s face in, he’s killed people—or at least, lured them to their deaths, which is just as bad—and he doesn’t understand why neither of them seem to care about that.
“Wasn’t you,” El says, reading his thoughts again. He wants to snap at her for that, but Old Billy would have done that, and he’s not Old Billy anymore.
“Yeah it was,” he argues, not caring that this is the first time Harrington has been around to hear this argument. He and El have variations on it all the time.
“It was the Mind Flayer,” El shoots back.
“Still my body, still my words. It was me.”
“Sure, but would you have done it if you hadn’t been possessed?”
Both he and El stop short at Steve’s question, slowly turning to look at him. Steve shifts under their gazes, but then steels himself to ask again, “Would you have killed anyone if the Mind Flayer hadn’t made you?”
Sometimes, Billy thinks he might have been angry enough to, but he’s not—he’s not Neil; outside of that fight with Steve, he’s never hurt anyone so much they couldn’t get back up.
“No,” he says.
Harrington shrugs. “Then it wasn’t you.”
As though it’s that simple. It’s not, but El is nodding along to Harrington’s declaration. “Friends don’t lie,” she says like that settles everything.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Billy asks.
“Steve isn’t lying,” El says slowly, patiently. And that’s—they’re not friends, except that Harrington says, “Right. So I’m not lying to you. It can’t be your fault if it’s not something you would’ve done on your own. It’s not like we blamed Will when he killed all those soldiers when he was possessed, because it wasn’t Will. It was the Mind Flayer using Will.”
Billy is still stunned by the revelation that Steve thinks of them as friends (it’s all he ever wanted, to have Steve smile at him, like him, be his friend, but he could never have managed that back then, too angry to do more than needle him, scream at him, hurt him), but he manages a, “Sure.” He still doesn’t really believe it, wonders if Will himself, sweeter and softer than Billy will ever be, would tell him the same thing, but Will’s never come to see him. Billy doesn’t blame him. He wouldn’t want to see the person who tried to kill him either.
El and Steve both grin like they think Billy agrees with them now. He doesn’t have the heart to tell them otherwise, not when Steve is holding flowers in his hand (what’s he holding flowers for? It’s not like Billy needs them) and not when he’s just found out El is moving.
“Yeah, yeah,” he gripes and raises a hand to shoo El off. “Go on, get outta here. Don’t wanna keep Mrs. Byers waiting.”
Get out of this town, he wants to tell her. Don’t let it swallow her up the way it did Billy.
El frowns at him like she knows what he’s thinking again—she probably does. “Back tomorrow,” she promises. He doesn’t argue with her. He knows from experience that it’ll only make her double down. Girl’s as stubborn as Max is, which is saying something.
She waves, gives Steve another hug, and disappears out the door, leaving him and Harrington alone.
Billy clears his throat. “So. What’re the flowers for?”
“You,” Steve says, holding them out like Billy can reach all the way to the end of the bed to take them. Harrington seems to realize that too because he coughs and puts them on the table next to the tray left over from lunch. “Uh—Robin said I should bring them.”
Billy likes Robin. He hadn’t at first, thought she was yet another contender for Steve’s attention like Wheeler had once been, only to catch her staring more at the nurses than at Billy during her one and only visit. It hadn’t taken him long to realize after that that she has zero designs on Steve. Yeah, he likes Robin.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. She said that it’s what you bring when you—” Harrington stops, looking suddenly nervous. Billy’s heart leaps into his throat. “Uh—when you visit someone at the hospital.”
Oh. Telling himself he’s not disappointed, Billy settles back into his bed. “You’ve been visiting me for two months, and I’m only just now getting flowers? What’s wrong with you, Harrington?”
“A lot,” Steve says ruefully. “Or at least, that’s what people tell me.”
And that’s just—no. “No,” Billy says firmly. “There’s nothing wrong with you. Only room for one self-hating asshole in this hospital, and that’s me.”
Steve lights up like Billy’s just told him something amazing, which he hasn’t. Only told him the truth, but Steve smiles anyway and plops down into the chair El vacated.
“Alright, I brought you The Hobbit, like you asked. Can’t believe you’re as big a nerd as the kids—”
“You take that back,” Billy says without any heat. He likes it when Steve reads to him. Steve stumbles over the words sometimes—often enough that Billy wonders if he’s got dyslexia like some of the guys he knew back in California, though he’s never said anything—but he’s got a great voice. Billy could listen to him all day.
“Uh-huh. Anyway—” Harrington opens up the book, cupping it one hand with a finger tucked between the pages so he can turn them. He rests his other hand on the bed, right next to Billy’s, who can’t resist nudging Steve’s pinky with his own. To his surprise, Steve traps Billy’s finger under his—and then leaves them there. Heat floods through him where they’re connected, and Billy’s eyes shoot up to Steve’s face, wondering if he was looking down at their hands just like Billy was. But Steve’s eyes are fixed on the book, and eventually, Billy looks back down.
Still. Steve’s hand doesn’t move, and neither does Billy’s.
“Question,” El says. It’s her last day in Hawkins. She and the Byers are on their way out of town now, and Billy doesn’t blame them one bit. He’d probably leave too if he had anywhere to go. Why should he stay where there’s monsters? Except he knows why he stays, and it’s not because he has nowhere else to go or because of pretty Steve Harrington or even because he’s still laid up in this damn hospital bed (it’s because he killed all those people; the least he can do is stay and try to make up for it).
The Byers are in the waiting room, waiting not to see Billy, but for El to finish saying goodbye. He’s going to miss her, he realizes. He wishes her all the best, hopes that she’s able to heal once she’s far away from shithole Hawkins, but he’s still going to miss her.
“Answer,” he says flippantly, grinning when she flicks his hand.
“Has Max come to see you?”
He hesitates. No, Max hasn’t come to see him. Not since he first woke up and she and Susan had visited him to tell him that whenever he recovered, he would be welcome back home. He hadn’t paid too much attention to what they’d told him, too focused on where Neil was to even consider going back to that house. At first he’d thought that Neil just wouldn’t bother coming to see his only son in the hospital—it wouldn’t be the first time Billy had landed himself there and Neil had ignored it—but eventually, Max had told him that Neil wouldn’t be coming to see him at all—because Neil had been one of the Flayed.
He doesn’t know how he feels about that. Neil had been an asshole who saw nothing wrong with hitting his son, and Billy’s often wished him dead, but—but he was his dad, and somewhere, deep inside him, something had shriveled up and died at the realization that he’d never have that opportunity to make his father love him. Part of him is glad that he doesn’t remember Neil’s death. He doesn’t know what he would have done if he had remembered it (another, more secret, part of him wishes he did remember it, wishes he could remember how it felt to finally, finally, win a fight against his dad, wishes he could remember the look on Neil’s face when he realized this was the universe getting back at him for so many years of abuse).
El nods, looking like she had expected his non-answer. It hurts something inside him that she thinks that, that even this strange little girl who barely knows him is more willing to visit him than his own family.
“No,” El says quickly, reaching out to place her hand over Billy’s. “No. It’s—she feels—guilty.”
“Guilty,” he repeats dubiously. Max? Max doesn’t feel guilty about anything. She doesn’t even feel guilty about telling Neil about the boy Billy had been seeing, the incident that had started this whole mess that ended with them in Hawkins and Billy getting possessed.
El nods again. “She—we helped Will when the Mind Flayer had him. She thinks we should have helped you.”
Billy blinks at her. “Then what the fuck was that whole sauna thing?” He knows that the Mind Flayer doesn’t like heat, both because he remembers that from when he’d been the host and because Steve had told him about it.
El grimaces. “Confirmation.”
Right.
Yeah, he guesses they probably wouldn’t have thought about helping the guy who’d nearly killed Steve last year. Steve is their hero. Billy had been their nightmare.
“She didn’t want it to be you. She kept trying to tell me it wasn’t you. When we fought you, she tried to stop me from hurting you.”
“Yeah? And why would she do that?” Billy asks indulgently. She probably didn’t want the host to be Billy because she knew how much he could fuck them up if he was. He’s stronger than all of them when it’s just him (or rather, he was, before he landed himself in a hospital bed). With the extra strength given to him by the Flayer, he must have been fucking terrifying.
“Because she loves you,” El says simply.
Billy can’t help himself—he laughs. He laughs so hard it hurts (or maybe that’s just the ache in his heart). “Bullshit,” he finally manages. “Maxine? She doesn’t love me.”
“She does,” El insists. “When you were dying, she said—”
“I remember,” he says brusquely. “She just didn’t want to be left alone with Neil.”
“She loves you.”
“She really doesn’t, El.”
“But—”
“Drop it,” he snaps, feeling bad as soon as he says it. He’s trying so hard to be less cruel than he was, trying so hard to be that boy El saw in his memories.
El glares back at him, fierce and stubborn. “Why was meeting her one of your worst memories?” she demands.
Wrong-footed, Billy asks, “What?”
“When I was in your memories. I saw the bad ones before I saw the warehouse. Max was there. Papa introduced her to you. Why was she a bad one?”
Billy sighs, tipping his head back against his pillow. Patience, he reminds himself. Patience and honesty, because El values honesty above everything else. “It wasn’t about her,” he says quietly. “Not really. It was about me. And Neil, I guess. I saw her and I saw the perfect little girl that Neil always wanted, another standard I’d never be able to live up to. And I was so afraid.” He stops, remembering that day and how afraid he’d been that Susan Mayfield would just be another Julia Hargrove, abused and scared. He remembers seeing Max and being terrified that she’d be another Billy, bruised and battered and bleeding, only she was younger then than Billy had been the first time Neil had hit him, and he’d known that if Neil hit her, she wouldn’t be able to take it like he could. He’d thought all of that, even as his ears had heard how proud Neil had sounded about his new daughter, prouder than he’d ever been of Billy, and decided that he’d never let Max be the one to face Neil’s wrath.
And he’d done that for five years—right up until Max betrayed him at dinner that night and told Neil all about Billy’s new boyfriend. He’d abandoned her then, decided that she was old enough to fend for herself, only to realize that he’d never needed to worry about her at all. Billy was the only one Neil hit because Billy was the only one had something wrong with him.
“You love her,” El says quietly. How much did she see? Did she see all the times he lied to his dad about why Max was late or where she was? Did she see what Max did to him? Did she see him give up on her?
“I don’t,” he says. He doesn’t even know if it’s true. He’d loved her once, but—but telling his dad about Chris (pretty, sweet Chris with fluffy hair and big brown eyes, just like Steve), that wasn’t like telling him about Billy going to a party when he said he would be studying. That crossed a line.
“You do. You wouldn’t want her here otherwise. And she wants to be here. She just doesn’t know if she’s can.”
“Nothing’s stopping her,” Billy sneers.
El doesn’t look very impressed by this. “Welcome,” she corrects herself. “She doesn’t know if she’s welcome.”
Billy has never known Max to feel unwelcome anywhere—she made herself feel at home in Hawkins—but he’s not the one who can read minds. “So why don’t you just tell her that she can come over?” he asks, discomfited by the thought that all this time, he’s really only had two visitors, but maybe—maybe, if El isn’t wrong—he could have had more if he’d spoken up.
“Has to come from you,” El says, poking his chest right in the middle of his scars. She’s the only one who doesn’t seem uncomfortable with them. Steve always looks away from them, and even Billy himself is scared by them, scared that maybe the Mind Flayer is still in there, lying dormant, but El isn’t afraid. Sometimes, Billy wonders if she’s scared of anything. The idea makes him feel a little safer. Nothing can get him while El is looking out for him.
“You have to tell her,” El continues. “Before it’s too late.”
There’s this look in her eyes—heartbroken and lonely—and he remembers about her dad, who sacrificed himself to save the world. What did Hopper wait too long to tell her about? Or was it El herself who waited too long?
“Okay,” he says, just to drive that look from her eyes—she’s too young (they all are). “Okay, I’ll tell her.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Good,” El says, satisfied. “Friends don’t lie.”
“Is that what we are? Friends?” He won’t lie, even to himself: maybe it isn’t cool to be friends with a preteen like her, but he doubts he’ll ever find one as cool as El is. And after this summer, after everything that happened, maybe he doesn’t care about being cool as much as he once did.
“Yes,” El says decisively. She smiles at him. “I’ll miss you.”
“Yeah,” Billy agrees. “I’ll miss you too.”
El gets up, hugs him, and turns to go. She pauses in the doorway and looks back at him. “You should tell Steve too.”
And now is when he should panic, but he finds that he doesn’t. El’s already seen the worst in him. What does it matter if she knows he’s queer?
“He wants to know,” El says. Billy can’t stop the smile that spreads across his face at the thought. He’d—he’d hoped (dreamed, really) that all those little touches and secret smiles meant something, but a boy like Steve Harrington liking someone like Billy? It had always seemed like too much of a fantasy.
“I’ll tell him too,” he promises her.
“Bye, Billy.”
“Bye, Eleven.”
Except he doesn’t.
He keeps chickening out, keeps finding excuses not to say anything to Steve when he drops by with his books and his flowers and that shy look in his eyes that Billy wants to kiss away, keeps finding reasons not to ask the nurses for a phone so he can call Max. Eventually, Dr. Owens tells him he can get back on his feet. Eventually, he starts physical therapy. Eventually, they tell him he can go home. He gained weight while he was laid up for all those months. Dr. Owens tells him it’s a good thing, tells him that Susan had said he didn’t eat anything during those days the Mind Flayer had him so he lost weight. Billy pokes the softness of his stomach and misses his weights.
Steve is supposed to be the one picking him up from the hospital. He knows Sharon had said he could go back to the house on Old Cherry Road, but he doesn’t know that he’ll ever be able to set foot inside that place again. He’d told Steve about this (he’s trying—so hard—to get better at communicating), and Steve had just nodded before informing Billy that he was coming back to the Harringtons’ house.
“Won’t your parents care?” Billy had asked him.
Steve had just kind of stared off into the distance, and Billy remembers suddenly about El telling him about the funerals after Starcourt and about Steve standing alone during Tommy H.’s and Carol’s funerals. He hates the thought of Steve alone. Steve is the kind of person who deserves to be loved, deserves to be surrounded by people all the time. He shouldn’t have to go back to an empty house.
“Yeah,” Steve had said eventually. “Maybe they would, if they were ever home. But they’re not, and I’d feel a lot better if you stayed with me instead of the Motel 6 or something, so.”
Billy had only thought for a moment about staying at the Motel 6, about driving past the warehouse, and nearly been sick, so that was a definite no. And if Steve was offering… He wasn’t about to turn him down.
“You sure I can’t walk out there?” he asks Dr. Owens, eyeing the wheelchair the nurse had brought in for him.
Dr. Owens chuckles. “If you could walk all the way out there, I’d say sure. But you’ve been in that bed a long time. Your muscles have atrophied. We’ve been working on building that muscles mass back up, I know, but that doesn’t mean you’re ready to play basketball yet. We’re sending the wheelchair home with you.” He levels a stern look at Billy. “I want you to use it when you need it. I’m not saying you have to use it all the time. We’re trying to get you back to full strength again, after all. But I know what you teenage boys can be like, always pushing yourself too hard. I’m telling you now: if you push yourself, you’ll only make it worse. Use the chair.”
Billy thinks he can still get away with stowing the chair away in a room and never looking at it again, right up until Dr. Owens continues, “I’ve told Mr. Harrington about this. I trust he’ll make sure you use it.”
Well, that’s that, then. There’s no way Harrington will let him get away with putting the chair away. “Fine,” he grumbles and reluctantly sits down.
Dr. Owens is the one who wheels him out, not one of the nurses. He’s not sure if that makes him feel better about the whole situation or worse that the head doc in charge of his care is the one seeing him out to the car. Steve’s Beemer is waiting for them right in front of the hospital, Steve himself leaning against it, arms crossed against the chill of the early autumn breeze.
He’s not alone.
Max is standing beside him, wearing a thick blue sweater, her red hair in two braids. It’s the first time he’s seen her in almost four months. He’s surprised at how much his heart leaps at the sight of her. Steve pushes off the car once Billy’s in front of them and draws Dr. Owens off to the side, leaving the siblings alone.
“Max,” he says, voice rough. “What’re you doing here?”
“I—uh—” She stops, scuffs the toe of her shoe along the pavement. Billy wants to tell her to stop, wants to tell her that Neil won’t pay to replace her shoes if she wears through them too fast, but then he remembers: Neil won’t be doing anything. “I wanted to make sure you got settled in at Steve’s okay. And—uh—El called. Said you wanted to talk.”
He should have known El wouldn’t just let it drop, should’ve known she’d check in on the two of them. She really is stubborn. His mom probably would have adored her.
“Yeah, I—” he begins and then stops. “I—” Why are the words so hard to find? He’s never had a problem with talking before in his life. “I’m sorry,” he finally manages. It’s probably best to start with an apology.
Max’s brow wrinkles. “You already said that.”
He did, when he was lying on the floor of Starcourt Mall, bleeding out from a dozen wounds. But a deathbed confession is probably not the best way to go to show that he’s sincere. Anyone can make a deathbed confession just to absolve their own guilt. It takes a lot to continue being sorry once it’s all over.
“Well, I’m telling you again,” he says gruffly. “I’m sorry. I was angry and a dick, not that it excuses anything I did, but—”
“Yeah, you were a real asshole,” Max says, but her eyes look a little wet.
“Watch your language,” he says, but there’s no heat behind it, and Max knows it, considering she punches his shoulder. It’s light, but it still hurts enough that he flinches.
Max’s grin immediately fades. “I’m sorry too,” she says. “Maybe if I’d believed El when she said something was wrong with you, we could have stopped all this.”
“Maybe,” Billy allows, “or maybe you would’ve just gotten killed along with everyone else. The Mind Flayer had a pretty firm handle on me.” He pauses and looks up at her. She still seems upset about something, and after everything he and El have talked about, he knows what it is. “I forgive you, you know. For—for telling Neil.”
It’s the right thing. Max bursts into tears, startling both Steve and Dr. Owens. Billy waves them off and draws Max down into a hug. She seems surprised, and he gets it. Four months ago, he would never have willingly even touched her, let alone hugged her, but he’s changed now. He just hopes she’ll let him show her.
“I didn’t know he would do that,” she sobs. He shushes her, running his hand through her hair.
“I know you didn’t,” he says. “And I know you didn’t do it to be mean. It’s okay, Maxine. We’re gonna be okay.”
Max sniffles again, but he can feel her smile against his shoulder. Relieved, he smiles as well.
“There’s—uh—there’s one more thing El wants me to tell you,” he says, deciding that he’s going to tell her. El’s right; he shouldn’t wait, even if there’s still a lingering resentment about Max and moving to Hawkins. “I—I love you, Max.”
Max pulls back enough to look at him and says, very seriously, “I know.” Billy laughs. “I love you too, shitbird.”
“Of course you do. I’m very lovable,” Billy says, in an attempt to dodge the soft way Max is looking at him. He may be trying to turn over a new leaf, but feelings are still not his forte. He glances over at Steve only to see him watching the two of them with an equally soft look. Jesus, there are just feelings bleeding all over the place today, huh.
“Hey, Max,” he continues. “I’m gonna try to be better, I swear.”
“I know,” she says again. “I think getting away from that house is going to help. You know, Mom’s thinking about putting it up on the market?”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah, something about starting over fresh. We’ll see if it’ll actually happen though.”
Privately, Billy agrees with her. Susan doesn’t have much of a spine, and he can’t see her growing enough of one to move out of the place that held so many bad memories for their family. But who knows? She might surprise them.
“Alright, shitheads,” Steve says, coming over to join them. “Let’s get this show on the road. I’m too hungry to hang around here any longer.”
“I want pizza,” Max says as she gets off of Billy’s lap and opens the passenger door for him. She goes to help him up. Billy lets her, even though he’s definitely capable of standing on his own, because he can feel how much she regrets their months of silence and how she’s hoping this’ll help make up for it—he feels the same way after all.
“Billy?”
“Pizza sounds great,” he says, huffing a little as he gets situated in the front seat. He wonders what happened to his Camaro. He probably doesn’t want to know if his memories from that night are anything to judge by.
“Pizza it is then,” Steve says, climbing into the driver’s seat. Max finishes settling the wheelchair in the trunk and climbs into the back behind Billy’s seat. He feels her lightly kick the back of it and grins. Still the same old Maxine, then, even if they’re trying to be softer with each other.
As they drive off, Billy turns to look out the window. Four months of seeing the same couple of trees outside his window. He’s still seeing trees now, but at least they’re different. His hand falls onto the center console, feeling the leather under his palm. He’s missed being in a car. Growing up, cars meant freedom, an escape from the misery that made up his home life. Maybe, if he’s lucky, someone rescued the Camaro from the Starcourt parking lot before the whole place went up in flames. Maybe, once he’s got the strength to stand on his own two feet for longer than a few hours, he can work on restoring her.
He looks out the front windshield again, noticing Steve’s hand flex on the wheel out of the corner of his eye.
“Getting twitchy there, Harrington?” he murmurs, low enough that Max in the backseat won’t be able to hear it over the music.
“I’m fine,” Steve says, but Billy doesn’t miss the way his gaze darts down to Billy’s hand on the console for the briefest second before watching the road again. Billy thinks about what El said—“He wants to know.”—and thinks maybe she’s right.
“Give it here, pretty boy,” he says, dropping his voice into that register he once used on bored housewives.
“What?”
“Your hand. Pass it over.”
“Why would I do that?” Steve asks, but the corners of his lips are curling up.
“Cause maybe if something’s holding it, it’ll stop being so damn twitchy and won’t run us off the road.”
Steve sighs like he’s being very put-upon. “Can’t argue with that, I guess.” Billy watches with a thrill in his heart as Steve’s hand drops from the wheel and into Billy’s open palm. It’s warm and surprisingly soft, and Billy wants to lift it to his lips to kiss the back, but he settles for running his fingers over every inch of Steve’s hand, delighting in the way Steve shivers, before he finally threads his fingers through Steve’s.
He exhales slowly. This feels right. This feels like coming home.