Chapter Text
So Steve’s driving around with no destination in mind.
He does that sometimes. When he can’t sleep. He knows for a fact it’s a shitty habit but it’s not like there’s someone back home to stop him and not a single one of his friends is ever going to find out, anyway (—not that he has many of those.)
And, yeah, okay, maybe he does stick to the outskirts of town, mostly, avoiding populated areas in fear someone’s going to poke their head out of their window and see him and—what? Tell the bunch of 14-year-olds he hangs out with that he's not like, sleeping at night?
He doesn’t even know what he’s afraid of, is the thing. Worst case scenario, Dustin stages an intervention and said 14-year-olds start following him around even more so than they already do. He’s pretty sure he’d hardly notice.
Nights like this, though, he feels a bit out of his mind.
He drives past the old steel mill and the abandoned warehouses, past the string of shady old motels with the neon lights and perpetual no vacancy signs. He avoids people. He drives, and he drives, and suddenly he’s really out there, in the woods, those big empty highways, nameless, surrounded in all directions by trees and trees and trees and nothing more than trees.
It’s so disgustingly dark he can barely see five feet in front of him. The beemer’s lights have never really been enough for places like these but Steve’s honestly past caring at this point.
The driving thing is maybe not exactly soothing but it’s something to do, it’s something other than sitting in his big empty house feeling sorry for himself. Makes him feel like he’s here, and now, and not swinging a bat at an impossible creature that wants nothing more than to rip him to shreds. Makes him feel like he can breathe , if even for the briefest of seconds, desperate gulps of air that leave him as soon they come.
Should he even be driving when he feels as suffocated as he does now? Most likely not—or, just—not. Definitely not. Steve’s kind of an idiot but even he knows he’d probably be better off drunk driving than driving while he’s feeling how he’s feeling.
Which is probably why he very nearly doesn’t see the figure standing in the middle of the road.
He does not hit it.
He absolutely does not hit it.
He hits the brakes instead, hard and fast and violent, spins the wheel with all that’s he’s got and doesn’t ram into a goddamned tree by sheer dumb luck, and it happens so damn fast Steve’s shaking by the time he rips the keys out of the ignition.
He’s got the walkie Dustin made him buy with him.
It’s all he thinks about.
But he’s also—miles and miles from the actual town. He’s in the middle of nowhere. Plus it’s like, what? 3:00 AM? Even if he could use the walkie he seriously doubts anyone’s even awake.
He turns his head to the side and sees a shadow through the dark.
He whips his head back, heart racing.
He happens to be one paranoid son of a bitch so of course he’s got the bat with him as well, except apparently he’s also one stupid son of a bitch because he had the wondrous idea of stashing it in the trunk instead of, say, in the backseat, where he could reach it in case a mysterious shadow was rapidly approaching his car in the dead of the night.
He’s just not going to open the door. Like, at all.
He’s gonna see what’s lurking in the woods and then he’s going to drive the fuck away and go home and call a meeting first thing tomorrow morning from the safety of his living room.
Steve squeezes his eyes shut, leans back, neck resting against the seat.
He hears footsteps approaching, heavy.
He opens his eyes just in time to see—
“What the fuck!” An angry scowl, a harsh slap against the glass of his car’s window. “What the fuck, Harrington! You almost ran me over! What’s your fucking problem!”
And Steve—Christ, he sort of can’t make sense of what he’s seeing for a moment or two.
It’d be hard to deny, though, wouldn’t it?
The skin tight denim and the annoying jewelry and the delicate curls?
“Billy?” he blurts, and it comes out a hoarse whisper.
Billy squints, makes a face, something that repeats his previous question, loud and clear:
What the fuck, Harrington?
And, okay, okay, Steve feels like he’s the one who should be asking that question, here.
He opens the door slowly, methodically, almost on autopilot, watches as Billy Hargrove takes half a step back to let him step out of the damn car and then immediately gets all in his business as if it were any other day, standing uncomfortably close for no good reason at all.
“Billy,” Steve repeats, once they’re standing right in front of the other, in a deserted highway, in the middle of the woods, in the dead of the night.
“You okay there, princess?” Billy spits, all lean and mean and angry, knocking his fingertips against Steve’s forehead exactly once. “Did you knock your head? Or were you always this slow?”
Steve blinks, and sees a flash of Max shrieking, screaming, clutching her brother’s corpse.
Again, and it’s Billy’s casket, being lowered to the ground.
He feels wildly out of his depth, all of the sudden.
“You’re dead,” he says, matter of factly.
And now Billy’s doing the blinking, frowning, lost, for a fraction of a second. Well and truly lost, in the confines of his own mind. Like he’s struggling to remember. Like he knows exactly what Steve means but can’t quite reach the thought. He looks weirdly vulnerable, at that moment.
It’s nothing but a single second.
And then, then his ever-present scowl is back on his face as if it never even left, making a damn good job of hiding Billy’s brief moment of sincere emotion. “The fuck are you talking about?”
It sort of rattles Steve, the idea that Billy is capable of feeling as wholeheartedly as that blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment of confusion. The idea that he’s always been a person, underneath it all.
That, and the fact that Billy is dead.
Should be dead.
“The, um,” Steve starts. “Starcourt. The Mind Flayer.”
“What, the mall?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it—shit, uh. Billy, what’s the last thing you remember?”
Billy looks at him. Does nothing but stare.
It occurs to Steve that last time he saw him, Billy was possessed out of his mind.
He thinks of the bat in the trunk.
Thinks he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to use it, anyway, couldn’t stand the idea of hurting someone who was—is, maybe— possessed by an otherworldly creature, someone who had his fucking body taken out for a spin and was forced to do unspeakable things.
Billy’s always been an asshole.
Billy didn’t deserve, for a second, all of the shit that happened to him.
“Bill—Billy,” Steve says. “Just—how the hell are you here? What even happened to you, man? Are you, like, hurt or—?”
“What?”
“Are you hurt?”
“I—no?” And Billy looks like he’s finally losing his patience, like he’s finally, finally getting fed up with listening to Steve’s babbles. “The fuck are you talking about?”
Steve places both palms on Billy's shoulders, squeezes. “Billy, you died. Like three months ago or something, I don’t—I don’t know. Back in July. We’re in October. A weird ass monster from another dimension possessed you, made you kill a bunch of people, and then impaled you in the chest with a tentacle.”
And—there. Recognition.
Once again, Billy gets that strangely vulnerable look in the eye. Like he knows what Steve means, like he knows exactly what he’s talking about.
Like he’s afraid.
But then Billy fucking smirks. “What, in the mall?”
Steve sputters, lets go of his shoulders. “I—yeah. Yeah! In the mall! It—fuck, there was a secret Russian base underneath the mall, so yes , in the mall. I actually got like, kidnapped and tortured by them? But the point is the Mind Flayer needed the portal the Russians opened so it could—”
Billy interrupts him. “Jesus Christ, Harrington.”
“What? What?”
“You’re fucking insane,” he tells him, like it sincerely pains him to inform him. “Completely loony.”
“Am not,” Steve says, and feels like a child.
“Yes, you are. What the fuck.”
“What the fuck what? Oh my god.”
And then Billy—walks around the beemer and hops into the passenger seat, just like that. Steve watches him, mouth agape.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re driving me home.”
“Oh, am I?”
“Yes,” Billy says, leaning into the driver’s side so he can look Steve in the eye. “I don’t know where the fuck I am and it’s fucking dark out so you’re driving me home.”
And—okay, yeah, that makes Steve pause.
Billy doesn’t know where he is.
Didn’t answer a single one of Steve’s very sensible questions, which may or may not mean he doesn’t know what’s the last thing he remembers or how he got here or what the hell even happened to him, either. He thinks Steve’s lost his mind. He doesn’t remember the Mind Flayer.
Steve rolls his eyes. “Yeah, whatever,” he mutters.
Not like he has anything better to do.
He’s not a complete moron, though, so he circles the car and gets the damn bat out of the trunk. He hops into the driver’s seat with it, sets it between his leg and the door once he’s ready to go.
And then Billy’s giving him a look like he’s truly lost his mind now.
“What the fuck, Harrington?”
So his bat is covered in nails, so what?
Didn’t Billy actually see the bat before? Forever ago, when they fought?
Steve’s almost positive Max tried to deck him with this very same bat.
“Shut up,” Steve says. “I think you may still be possessed. I’m not gonna, like—let you murder me.”
“ Why on earth would I —” Billy starts, then stops, just as abruptly as he started. Sighs. Runs a hand over his face. “You know what? Fair. Whatever.”
Steve feels on the verge of hysterics, turning his head and seeing Billy Hargrove sitting there, in his car, alive, so, so, so alive. It’s exhilarating, that Billy’s sitting right there.
***
Steve’s driven Max home enough times to know the way to Billy’s little house in Cherry Road. More so in the past few months, what with Max being one older brother short and all that. Someone’s gotta drive the kid around and it sure as hell isn’t going to be her mom or step-dad.
So they drive.
“You sure you don’t remember anything?”
A deadpan look, well deserved.
“No, like—seriously. The Mind Flayer got Will last year and it was like, shit, but I think he does remember some stuff? I’ve never really asked him but he gets really quiet sometimes and Dustin told me—”
“Dude.”
“What?”
Billy’s weary expression is barely visible, in the unlit streets. But Steve can see enough to recognize the uneasiness, the barely restrained exasperation. “One, I have no fucking clue who you’re talking about. Two, I don’t care.”
And Steve frowns, turns his eyes back to the road only because he doesn’t particularly feel like crashing his car. “For real? They’re Max’s friends. Doesn’t she ever tell you about her friends?”
“No.” Billy says, in a short, brusque way that leaves Steve wondering.
“Mmm,” Steve hums. “But you have to have seen them around. I know I’ve seen you around when I drop them off at the arcade and you’re driving Max.”
Plus that night at the Byers’. And the mall thing.
Billy grunts in response. Says nothing.
And yeah, no way Billy doesn’t know the kids. Steve doesn’t think Max has spent a single second apart from them since they accepted her into the party. They’re a package deal.
But Billy and Max haven’t always gotten along all that nicely now, have they?
Neither Billy and him, for that matter. He doesn’t think he’s seen Billy warm up to a single soul in Hawkins.
They lapse into silence.
Steve doesn’t bother turning on the blinkers when he turns into Cherry Road. It’s a long, lonely street in the Hawkins suburbs at 3 fucking am. There’s not a single person in sight. He parks five whole houses away from Billy’s actual house out of habit, just because Max always asks him to, not wanting to let her parents know a random older guy is driving her.
And, well—it only occurs to him as the motor goes off that both Max and their parents saw Billy buried six feet under. And now he’s randomly alive.
“Ah, this is gonna be bad, isn’t?”
No response.
When he turns to face Billy, he finds him staring intently at some of his neighbor’s Halloween decorations. A bunch of pumpkins and a sad little plastic ghost with bugging eyes.
“Billy?”
No response.
But then: “What day is it?”
And there’s an edge, there, to his voice, to his expression.
Steve winces. “Uh, like October 15th? 16th? Thursday. I don’t know.”
Billy breathes out through his nose, a noisy, visible endeavor.
“No,” he says.
“No?”
And then he gets out of the car.
Steve scrambles after him, nearly falling face first into the ground as he opens the door, tripping on the bat he had left right there before, ready to use. He abandons the bat, abandons the car, leaves the door wide open, all in his chase to get to Billy first, to talk to him, to maybe try and devise some sort of plan to break the news to his family that he’s back from the dead.
But Billy’s standing right next to the beemer, a long way from his home.
He’s just standing there, perfectly still.
“They think I’m dead,” he says, voice flat. Stating it as fact.
His family, he means.
Max and her mom and his old man.
And Steve almost opens his big mouth and asks something like what happened to you’re crazy, Harrington, you’re loony, Harrington, I don’t believe you, Harrington, but—Halloween décor, whatever. Billy kicked it back in July. Maybe the little plastic ghost was enough to convince him.
Or maybe he does remember something , anything.
He seemed pretty lucid and distinctly non-possessed right there at the very end.
He saved them all.
“I—yeah,” Steve mutters, feeling incredibly wrong footed. “Yeah, they think you’re dead, Hargrove. There was a funeral.”
Steve’s not certain there was a funeral specifically for Billy.
There were mass funerals. His name was mentioned.
Steve swallows, walks closer and closer and closer until he’s almost standing shoulder to shoulder with Billy. “Max—shit, Max was a mess. I know you guys are always at each other’s throats but—she loves you, man. She mourned you.”
And Billy reacts at that, a whole-body flinch, barely there, gone as soon as it came. He glances at Steve and says nothing—which, Steve’s beginning to learn, says much more than words ever could.
Billy keeps staring straight ahead at that innocuous little house, doing nothing, saying nothing.
And then, after a too long moment, he smiles .
He smiles.
Something cruel and tight and desperate and disturbingly at ease. Manic. Relieved . “If they’re not expecting me back…”
“Uh, that’s really not—”
“Fuck it,” Billy says, with absolute certainty. “Fuck it. I’m not going back. Fuck them.”
“ Billy —”
“Fuck them,” Billy repeats. “Fuck them and fuck this fucking town. They think I’m dead so what does it matter if I never walk through that fucking door, huh, Harrington? I don’t want to see those shitheads and they don’t want to see me . I’m doing everyone a fucking favor.”
“C’mon, man, you don’t—you don’t mean that.”
“Oh, I do, pretty boy.”
“Billy, that’s your family you’re talking about.”
“And?” Billy spits, and that’s all it takes.
Steve sort of, takes a moment, to reevaluate the situation.
It’s just—Max’s homelife is weird. And yeah, that’s coming from the guy whose parents drop by the house like, twice a month if they’re feeling generous, but—he has friends and he has always been the introduce to the parents type so he’s seen many a many homes and he’s seen the way many a many parents interact their children.
Max’s homelife is weird.
He never noticed before because Billy was the one driving her around and he never had a reason to drop by her house, but—it’s the little things.
Like, what’s with Max making him turn the car around if any of the kids are with her and Neil’s truck is in the driveway? Only El is allowed in the house because she’s a girl . Max is only allowed to hang out with girls . And not in like a oh jolly we love our dearest daughter so much, she must be protected from the mean bad boys kind of way. Like, in a weird way. Max always gets prickly about it. Says her mom gives her an earful but Neil gets pissed , whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.
And then she’s grounded all the time? More than all of the other kids combined? She’s kinda rowdy, sure, but she never gets into any real trouble. And she gets weird punishments, too, always going without lunch money, having her skateboard taken away more and more often ever since July.
Steve met the parents the one time, in the grocery store, by chance, and he’s not exactly sure what happened there but Max introduced him as Billy’s friend with a panicked expression, silently begging him to play along, and Neil Hargrove asked him in all seriousness if he was a queer while Susan laughed awkwardly on his arm.
He’s heard some weird rumors, too. Rumors of shouting and crying and dull thuds and strangled screams. Thing, after thing, after thing. Hawkins is not such a big town after all.
Thing is, there’s a picture, he’s been painting this whole time.
He absolutely does not like the horrible, terrible, awful, disgustingly heinous picture he’s been painting with every little crumb of information thrown his way.
Worst of the worst, though?
Three whole weeks ago Max showed up with a shiner and burst into tears when he tried prying.
After the tears were done for she said it was nothing, said she fell off her skateboard.
Said it had never happened before and it would never happen again.
And—wasn’t Billy always showing up to school all bloody and bruised? Saying it was nothing? A cocky grin in place and a look in his eye like he was broken? Empty, exhausted.
Steve takes a deep breath, lets his shoulders sag.
“Hey, um, do you wanna go back to my place?”
And Billy goes from tense but weirdly relieved and disturbingly calm to razor sharp strung in the span of a moment. Shoulders tight, posture feeble.
“ What ?”
Steve shrugs. “You have to stay somewhere, right? If you’re not going back home?”
“What the fuck, Harrington,” Billy says, like a broken record. It’s like the man doesn’t know any other fucking words.
“Dude, you came back from the dead. I don’t—I’m not even sure your folks still have like, all of your stuff? Max kept most of your jackets and your cassettes and some like, posters and shit, but if you’re not going back in there ,” he points to the house, “then you have nothing, buddy. You’re homeless. All you have are the clothes on your back.”
Billy grimaces. Looks away.
“I’m serious,” Steve says. “What were you even planning to do? Just, hop on a bus and ride off into the sunset? Newsflash asshole, bus tickets cost money .”
And Billy clenches his fists.
Billy takes half a step towards him.
Billy grabs his shoulder in a painful hold and pushes him hard and fast against the side of the car.
A weird noise gets torn from deep within Steve’s throat, something like a gasp or something like grunt or something in between. The beemer is icy cold against his back. Billy’s hold on his shoulder feels so damned hot it’s almost burning.
For a stupid, goddamned second, Steve’s convinced the guy’s going to punch him.
Just—knock his lights out, like he did that night.
Except this one time Steve feels like a whole damn different person, feels like, without the kids as witnesses, he’d go well and truly off the wall on Billy. He’d kill him. He’d kill him. Billy would not let off and he’d kill him, or—they’d kill each other, more like. The both of them, they’re not the kinda people that ever learned when to back down.
Steve knows what Billy’s grave looks like, thinks he knows a thing or two that went on in Old Cherry Road when no one was looking. They’d throw hit after hit after hit and they would not stop.
But Billy doesn’t punch him.
He doesn’t do much of anything. Just stares right at him, face two inches from his.
Steve can’t quite read his expression so he focuses on his features instead. Golden hair. Rough stubble. Nice, plump lips. The bluest eyes. (And Steve means that, like, objectively.)
Billy steps away and hops back into the car without another word.