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“I’m sorry, a what?”
“A topless car wash,” Robin repeats gleefully, practically bouncing in place. “The band’s gonna make so much money off of this. Maybe we’ll even be able to ditch the decade-old uniforms.”
Unfortunately for Steve, his life is so batshit insane nowadays that once the initial shock wears off, he realizes this is like, the least concerning thing he’s heard in the last month. “Right, yes. End-of-year fundraising, that’s fantastic. How exactly did you get this approved by administration?”
Robin shrugs, a mischievous glint in her eye. “Well, you know, Jenny Fischer can be very persuasive.”
What she probably means by that is that Jenny stole her dad’s credit card and made a hefty “donation” to the school again. The rumor is that’s how she managed to convince the school board to hold prom at an offsite venue, which Steve definitely wasn’t upset about. And you know what? If the school okayed it, this car wash thing really isn’t his problem.
“Well, I hope you have fun,” he says, mostly trying to end the conversation because he somehow got roped into making a casserole for “family dinner” at the Byers’ and he really doesn’t know what he’s doing. Robin scoffs as he cracks open the oven. The edges look a little burnt, but the inside is still raw. Maybe he should turn the heat up?
“I’m not gonna be working it,” she says, as though Steve’s an idiot for even thinking that. “Besides, you have to come! We need some of that sweet, sweet blood money, Harrington.”
It’s smoking a little bit now, but like, not that much. “Sure, whatever,” he says as he fans the oven with a dishtowel.
“Great! It’s tomorrow from noon to three,” Robin hollers as she sprints out the door, her mission apparently complete.
Steve doesn’t really register her words. This casserole is looking more and more unsalvageable. What did his mom’s recipe even say? He casts about for it, but it’s nowhere to be found. Ah well, maybe the microwave will fix it.
He ends up buying one from the grocery store and letting Joyce cook it in her oven.
* * *
A knock, sharp and loud, echoes through Steve’s house at precisely 12:26 pm. He sets down the cereal he’d been shoving unceremoniously into his mouth and pads to the door, clad only in the shirt and boxers he slept in last night. It’s Saturday, who the hell is bothering him at this ungodly hour?
Robin, apparently. She doesn’t wait for a greeting or an invitation inside, just barges her way past Steve. “Ready to go?” she asks despite the clear evidence to the contrary, grabbing an apple from the bowl on the kitchen counter.
“Go where?” Steve asks as he reacquaints himself with his box of cereal. He leans his hip against the counter and raises an eyebrow at Robin when she just blinks at him, apple juice running down her chin.
“‘Go where?’” she repeats incredulously. “‘Go where,’ he says! Steve, Steve, Steve, did you listen to a single thing I said last night?”
He casts his mind back to crashing on the Byers’ couch for a couple of hours, before that to getting high with Jonathan on their front porch, even further to making that disaster of a casserole. That’s right, Robin was there for that bit.
“Yeah, your band fundraiser thing. The car wash, right?”
“Bingo,” she says, crunching into her apple. “And you said we would go today, to support your bestest friend in the whole wide world. So, here I am, ready for us to go.”
Honestly, that… sounds like something Steve would do. “Alright, give me a minute to put on actual clothes,” he says. Robin snorts. Before he’s even halfway up the stairs, she’s got her hand in his cereal box.
Five minutes later they’re on the road, heading toward the Hawkins High parking lot, which Steve thinks should be considered a crime on the weekend, even if it is the summer. About a mile away, signs begin appearing along the side of the road. Some of them are tame, advertising the band fundraiser aspect of the event, while others take a bit of a different approach. Steve’s personal favorite is the one that just says “TOPLESS CAR WASH” in big black letters on a white poster board. There’s nothing else on the poster, and for some reason Steve finds that hilarious.
Robin’s sporting a maniacal grin in the seat next to him, and he wasn’t terribly worried last night but now he’s starting to be.
As soon as they pull into the parking lot, Steve gets the joke. It is indeed a topless car wash, but all the washers in question are dudes. He thinks he recognizes a couple as band kids from the last few basketball games he played, but there are definitely guys out here that aren’t in the band. Steve wonders how they got roped into this. He has to give credit where credit is due, though; every one of them committed to the bit. He admires their dedication, even if there isn’t much else to admire.
He pays the two dollar entrance fee, then gets into the line. It creeps forward agonizingly slowly.
“This better be worth my two dollars, Buckley,” he threatens, and she chortles.
“Oh, it will be,” she promises, and suddenly Steve’s not sure he should be here.
But then he finds himself at the front of the line, and he’s waved all the way down to a spot at the very end of the swathe of soapy cars. After a moment, and what sounds like a short scuffle behind his car, a knuckle raps on his window. Steve obediently rolls it down, and this is where the problem arises.
Because Billy fucking Hargrove bends down to stick his head in Steve’s car, elbows resting on the edge of his door. And he is in fact topless, as the posters promised.
Steve is immeasurably glad he actually put on a clean shirt before walking out the door.
“Hello, valued customer,” Billy drawls, tongue flicking out to lick his bottom lip. Jesus Christ. “I’ll be servicing you today.” Steve doesn’t know how a person can make a wink look that fucking dirty. He’s gonna have an aneurysm.
“Don’t break anything, Hargrove,” he says on autopilot, thank God. Billy shakes his head before straightening up, purposefully flexing his bronzed abs and almost certainly lingering to make sure Steve gets an eyeful.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, pretty boy,” he says, thumping the roof of the car as if to disprove his point. “And you might wanna roll that window up, unless you wanna get wet,” he adds before sauntering around the front of the car to grab a sponge and a bucket of soapy water.
“Thanks,” Steve calls out sarcastically before doing just that. As soon as it’s closed, he turns to Robin, careful to keep his face neutral and his voice low in case Billy’s looking or listening in. “Hey, what the actual fuck.”
Robin looks like she’s barely holding back laughter. “You should have seen your face,” she hisses, smiling so wide she looks like she’s fucking insane. Steve isn’t quite sure she isn’t.
“Yeah, I’m sure it was a fucking riot. What the hell is he doing here?”
Of course, now Robin pulls her face into something resembling sincerity. “Hmm, washing cars I think. Yeah, that seems right.”
Billy starts wiping the sponge over Steve’s windshield, much slower than is really necessary. When he catches Steve’s gaze through the glass, he grins the kind of grin he likes to toss around near the mothers of Hawkins. Steve gives him a tight smile in return and pointedly does not watch the beads of sweat and water dripping down his toned arms.
“Okay, let me rephrase,” he starts, still very much not looking at Billy. “Why the hell is he here?”
Robin shrugs in his peripheral vision. “I’ve heard Jenny Fischer is quite persuasive.” He can hear the laughter in her voice. What a betrayal.
“That’s the same thing you said last night,” Steve grits out. He really wishes Billy would get on with it and move to the back. Of his car. The back of his car.
Robin claps, exaggerated excitement suffusing her voice when she squeals, “So you did listen to me!”
Steve rolls his eyes. Billy’s washing the driver’s side window now, and Steve has to physically turn away to hide the redness he knows is spreading over his face. “I don’t know what game you’re running here,” he says, even though he knows exactly what game Robin’s running here, “but you severely overcharged me.”
“Whatever you say.”
Robin’s undeniably smug as she settles back into the passenger seat, arms crossed over her chest. Steve’s going to strangle her. “I’m going to strangle you.”
“Better wait until we’re alone, pretty boy,” she mocks. Fuck his life.
Billy finally does get around to the back of the car, and for some unknowable reason, he seems to wash it much faster than the front. He still winks at Steve in the rearview, though. Steve flips him off in return, and he can practically feel Billy’s laugh even though he only sees it in the mirror.
Billy drags an upturned bucket over to use as a stepstool so he can get to the top of the car. Steve is one hundred percent sure it’s just an excuse to show off his ass in those fucking skinny jeans. They should be illegal. They’ve caused casualties before, Steve’s seen it. He does his time in the parking lot on school days.
But fortunately (or unfortunately, a traitorous part of his brain whispers), he only has to spend a few minutes trying not to make direct eye contact with the zipper on Billy’s jeans before he hops down from the bucket and drags a hose over from… somewhere. One quick rinse later, and he’s knocking on Steve’s window again.
“Clean as a dream, Harrington,” he says as soon as Steve starts rolling it down. “Hope you enjoyed your experience at the Hawkins High Band Car Wash.” Steve can hear the capital letters. It almost makes him laugh.
“Customer service could have been better,” he says instead. Billy raises an eyebrow.
“Is that so?” he asks, and there’s an edge to his voice that makes Steve’s heart race. “Do let me know how I can improve for the future.”
The easy answer is to complain that it took too long or the job was sub-par (which Steve is pretty sure it is), but Billy doesn’t go for the easy answers, and two can play at that game.
“You could have put on a better show,” Steve says, gesturing across the parking lot where several girls he recognizes from school, as well as some of their mothers, are desperately trying to look like they’re not watching Billy as they speak. “I don’t think every member of the fan club got to see you flexing your biceps.”
He has the satisfaction of seeing Billy’s eyes widen, hearing a surprised chuckle burst from his mouth, before he’s leaning forward, grin almost predatory. “I think the real fan club is in this car, Harrington,” he drawls. It sends a shiver down Steve’s spine.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” he replies, but even he knows it’s not his best work. “Now back up so I can leave.”
Billy steps back, hands raised in a show of surrender. “You’re the boss!” he calls as Steve drives away. He sticks his hand out the window to flip Billy off one more time for the road.
He doesn’t understand the unusual number of people who snicker at him as he drives home until he parks his car in his driveway and actually opens the door. Or, tries to, because something’s holding it shut. Driving his shoulder into the door works on the third try, by which time Robin’s already out and collapsed in a fit of laughter on the pavement. Steve slams his door shut and stalks a few steps away to observe the full scope of what’s happened.
There, larger than life, across the whole side of his car, is a crude depiction of a penis made out of what appears to be masking tape.
For a moment, Steve’s almost impressed. He doesn’t know when or how Billy managed it; Steve was watching him the whole time. Wait, no he wasn’t. Billy had plenty of opportunities, definitely. Yeah.
So now he’s just pissed, stripping the tape off his car and rubbing at the sticky residue it leaves behind. “Robin, I swear to God—” he starts, then cuts himself off. Death threats are nothing new between them, and he needs to put the fear of God in her for pulling this shit on him. “I am going to lock you in a utility closet with Tammy Thompson for an entire week.”
“Oh my God, Steve, noooooo,” she whines from the ground. “Don’t do that to me! I don’t deserve to be bullied like this!”
She definitely does, but Steve thinks that walking into his house two weeks later to find him and Billy furiously sucking face against the kitchen counter, screaming something about her pure, innocent eyes, Steve! and promptly leaving the way she came might be punishment enough.
He searches Tammy Thompson’s number up in the phone book just in case.