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“Let me try to work through this again,” Billy says raggedly, smoke spilling from his lips as he talks.
His cigarette dangles loosely from his fingers — a pile of stubs sit on the ground between them, smushed into the concrete by the heel of Billy’s boot. He’d asked for a smoke when they came outside, and when Steve had offered him one, he’d taken his whole pack. Steve didn't ask for it back.
“So last year, this… this demogorgon escapes from the Hawkins lab, and kills a few people. Takes Byers’ little brother.” He lifts his cigarette back to his mouth, and takes another long drag of it. His blonde curls hang limp around his head, matted with blood and sweat and dirt. His hands are still shaking, but he’s not bouncing his knee anymore, so at least Steve’s Barclays are doing something. “Carrie—”
“Eleven,” Steve corrects half-heartedly.
“—kills it,” Billy continues, ignoring him, “but then Hawkins Lab opens another portal?”
“No, it was the same gate. It was never closed in the first place,” Steve clarifies.
Billy nods, biting down on his bottom lip hard enough that it dimples. He hasn’t looked at Steve once since they got out of the tunnels — maybe even since he lifted Dustin by the legs and practically threw him up to safety, shoving Steve behind him even though he didn’t have any weapon of his own. Instead, he keeps his gaze fixed on the tarp that covers his empty pool, his eyes glassy.
“And more demogorgons, they came out of it?”
“They were demodogs, this time,” Steve answers, like he has any more clue about what he’s talking about than Billy does. He only knows what the kids have told him about all this. Anything else, and he’d have to tell Billy to ask the kids about it. “That was… was what Max showed you. In the fridge.”
He’d only left Billy inside with the kids for two minutes, too stunned by the right hook he’d delivered to the side of his head to stand up without falling over again, and when he’d finally gone in, he’d found the kids standing silently around Billy as he had a crisis in the Byers’ kitchen, staring down at the demodog’s corpse where it had fallen out of the freezer, his expression unreadable.
It should be Max explaining all this to him now, given that it’s her fault he even knows, having showed him it to get him to stop spitting in Lucas’s face, but a few hours after Billy had left to drop her off at their house, his Camaro had pulled up in Steve’s driveway, Billy with a collection of bruises he’s fairly certain he didn’t get in the tunnels. And Steve, always a bleeding heart, had let him inside.
Somehow, after talking a little bit indoors, they’d ended up out here, in his yard — in part because when Steve told him Barbara Holland had died in his pool, he’d wanted to see it for himself. Whether it was out of curiosity or some bizarre sense of obligation, he couldn't tell, and still can't, but either way, he hasn’t taken his eyes off the pool since he sat down.
He wishes he could ask what he’s thinking, but asking could result in anything from some sort of meltdown to another punch in the face, or even Billy deciding it’s Steve’s turn to die in the pool, and he doesn’t particularly feel like finding out, even if he’s curious about what’s going on inside his head.
The past few hours have really shown him how little he actually knows about Billy. He bites his lip when he’s thinking. He’s the type of person to hate Steve’s guts, but still throw himself in front of him and the kids when they were in danger. He actually seems to care about Max, even if he has a confusing way of showing it. He’s actually smart, like. Really smart. And he's got a ‘rich inner world,’ or whatever pretentious bullshit he called it.
And his dad beats him.
God— his dad beats him. As hard of a time Billy has had in coming to terms with the Upside Down, Steve’s barely even started to let that sink in.
The idea that the same Billy who nearly kicked his teeth in and threatened to mow down a group of middle schoolers with his car faces the same abuse from his own father is hard to comprehend, though with how small he looks now, in a worse condition than Steve is in, a blanket around his shoulders and his knees drawn up to his chest, he can almost imagine it. Even if he can’t understand why it happens.
Billy swallows, reaching up to clasp the necklace around his throat. Lifts it almost like he’s going to kiss it, then changes course, pressing the pendant into his throat as he lifts his cigarette to get another puff of nicotine. One of his eyes is puffier than the other, starting to swell, and Steve can tell it’s going to bruise.
“But they’re gone now, right?” Billy rasps.
His voice is small. Purposefully stiff, like he’s trying hard to not let any emotion show in his voice. There’s enough light from the sun over the horizon, just low enough that they can’t see it yet, that Steve can see how white his knuckles are from clenching his necklace. It must be close to six in the morning now, which means they’ve both been out here for almost three hours.
Steve’s fingers went numb a long time ago — he flexes them, reaching up to tuck them into his armpits to warm them up. “Eleven closed the gate in the lab,” Steve says, shrugging helplessly, “so we hope they’re gone. Though we thought everything was over the last time, and it wasn’t.”
Billy’s lips press into a thin line. “A hundred fucking dogs is a lot worse than one monster, too,” he mutters. He finally looks away from Steve’s pool, rolling his eyes heavenward as he leans back in his wicker lounge chair. “And the fucking tunnels… Jesus. What are we even fighting?”
“The kids can’t decide whether they’re aliens or some sort of fantasy monster species,” Steve huffs.
With a breathy laugh, Billy tilts his head back. “If that’s all you and the nerd squad know about them, I hate to say it, Harrington, but we’re kinda’ screwed.”
“I mean, we know they’re weak to fire, now,” Steve points out. Billy hums, though it feels a little condescending. Like he’s saying sure, Harrington, like that’ll help. He shifts in his chair, crossing his legs at the knee. “And we know how to close the next gate. If there even is a next gate.”
“And if it keeps getting worse?” Billy asks. He’s still not looking at him. “If this thing learned from the last time it was here, it’ll learn from this time, too.”
“I don’t think it’s that smart,” Steve protests.
Billy barks out another laugh. “That thing used a twelve year old as a meat puppet to spy on you, and it worked. I’d say it’s pretty damn intelligent, Harrington.”
Steve cringes at his use of the phrase meat puppet, nose wrinkling, but he chooses to ignore it. “It didn’t work, though.” Chief Hopper and Ms. Byers realized what it was doing, and figured out a way to counter it. “We beat it, like we did the last time. And the gate’s closed now.”
“We’re going around in circles here,” Billy points out, rolling his eyes. He pulls Steve’s blanket so that it’s tighter around him, his hand knotted in the soft fabric. “The fucker’s smart. You don’t know if it can open more gates. And all we know is that it can’t handle heat.”
Billy lets the butt of his cigarette fall to the ground before stamping it out, pulling his knee back up to his chest when he’s satisfied with how much he’s ground it into the concrete.
“We're fucked, Harrington," he finishes, tone flat. "With my luck, this shitty town’s where I’ll die.”
Steve gnaws on his lip as Billy tries to fish for another cigarette in the carton, watching as he frowns into it. He must have run out. He’s been chain smoking for close to two hours, and even though Steve had handed him a full pack, he had to smoke through them all eventually.
“You’re not going to die here,” Steve tells him.
Finally, Billy turns to look at him — to actually look at him, their eyes meeting across the gap between their lounge chairs. Steve holds his gaze, and watches the emotions that pass over Billy’s face. Irritation and confusion, then something unreadable. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Billy scolds.
There’s something dangerous in his voice, and really, the guy’s crazy enough that he’d be willing to fight Steve in his own backyard after they fought monsters together, so he shouldn’t be testing his patience. But there’s a challenge in his voice, too, and Steve’s not going to back down.
“You’re a member of the party, now,” Steve says firmly. Because Steve is, so Billy is, too. And the kids might not like him, but Steve can’t be the only one stuck with babysitting duty, with six of them to wrangle. “And we protect our own. So they’ll have to kill me, first.”
“After tonight’s performance, that doesn’t inspire the confidence you think it does,” Billy drawls, his gaze sliding back to the pool. With a flick of his fingers, he tosses the empty carton of Barclays into the water. When it hits the surface, it doesn’t even really make a ripple. It just floats. If he doesn’t fish it out soon, he’ll have to get the pool net to scoop it out from the bottom later, when the cardboard is falling apart.
Steve’s cheeks warm, and he’s ready to remind Billy of what a badass he was, to tell him again about how he fought the demogorgon last year without even really knowing what was going on, except, well. There’s a blush high on Billy’s cheeks that he doesn’t think is from the cold.
“Guess I’ll have to prove it to you, then,” he huffs, sitting back.
Billy snorts. “We’ll see, Harrington.”
Through the trees, the sun peeks over the horizon, though neither of them can see it.
The next day at lunch, Billy sets down his tray of chicken tenders and fries on the table across from Steve, wearing a matching black eye, and their feet knock together when he sits down on the bench. He pulls Steve’s math homework away from him, and digs out a pencil from his backpack, idly starting to correct his work, and tells Tommy to fuck off when he tries to ask him why he’s sitting with Steve instead of with him.
When Steve bluntly asks if they’re friends now, Billy smiles with no teeth.