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“You ever thought you’d die like this?”
Steve takes a long time to answer. Long enough that Billy wonders if maybe he fell asleep, even though it’s supposed to be his turn keeping watch. But he does reply, a good thirty seconds later, a drawn out sentence, annoyed but mostly unsure, “We’re not going to die.”
Billy snorts. “Hate to break it to you, pal, but they’re going to kill us as soon as they find us.”
They , being a bunch of Russians or whatever the hell. Burly men with guns, screaming nonsense two inches from their face, making sure they know hell before they put a bullet through each of their brains. That’s what Billy gets for following Steve around like some lovesick kid, though. He’s really gotta stop letting his stupid crushes dictate the course of his life.
“We’re going to be fine,” Steve says, in that bitchy tone of his. “They’re going to notice we’re gone and they’ll send someone to find us. We just have to hold on until they get here.”
“Mmm. You tell anyone about the Russian elevator before we got in?”
“I—uh, no? But—”
Billy snorts. Again. “There you go.”
What really gets him is the kid. Sinclair’s sister. She’s way too young for the shit that’ll go down once the doors snap open and the Russians find them squatting here. Even Henderson—Billy was way younger than him the very first time his dad really smacked him around, but still—he doesn’t like the idea of him bloody and bruised.
Neither Robin or Steve for that matter.
Steve huffs, but he shuffles closer to him. They’re sitting side by side, almost shoulder to shoulder now, on top of the damn elevator. The others are down in the actual box.
“You don’t know that they won’t find us,” Steve says. “Dustin and I, we have friends like, in high places.”
“Yeah? Like who?”
“Like the Chief of Police. And his daughter.”
Billy narrows his eyes, turns to look at him. The sailor uniform keeps distracting him, his brain unable to decide if it’s hot as fuck or plain stupid, but he makes an effort to push the thought aside for now. “His daughter?”
“Yeah. Yeah, she’s good at finding people. She’ll find us.”
Billy knows the Chief. Grumpy old dude that keeps giving him speeding tickets. And he knows his daughter too, Max’s friend, this kid with a perpetual wide eyed look. No way that kid can do anything about their situation, and no way a small town cop can do anything either. They’re dead. They’re dead. They’re as good as dead. In fact, Billy will count himself lucky if they kill them fast and painless. He of all people knows there are fates fucking worse than death.
Still, Steve looks so certain at that moment. Or—maybe certain is not the right word. He looks hopeful. Expectant. Desperate to believe. Billy can’t bring himself to pop his bubble.
He rolls his eyes instead, looks away. “Someone has to notice we’re missing first.”
And Steve sags beside him, sighing. Their shoulders brush. “No, yeah,” he says. “Erica has that birthday party thing tomorrow, right? I guess she’s our safest bet because Robin and Dustin both told their parents they were going to be with friends, and mine aren’t even in Hawkins.”
Then: “You think yours will notice any sooner?”
And, Billy didn’t tell anyone he was going out. He just took his keys and drove away and ended up in the mall and ran into Steve doing god knows what with a bunch of children and a Russian code. He didn’t exactly ask for permission before going out. His dad will notice he’s gone. There’s no doubt about it in his mind. It’s really not what Steve’s looking for, though.
Neil will not throw a search party for him. Won’t call hospitals and morgues and other parents, won’t search heaven and hell for him. All he’s going to do is wait. Wait and wait and wait for the moment Billy steps foot back in the house, the moment he can yank his hair, slap him, ask where in the hell he was that he left without asking.
It’s kind of thrilling, in a way. The thought that he’s going to die down here and Neil will have to live knowing he didn’t do the bare fucking minimimun of reporting his kid as missing.
“Uh, no,” he mutters. “I guess my old man’s going to assume I went out somewhere.”
But he took a little too long to respond, his tone too—hesitant, or something. Something . His heart wrenching in ways he’d rather not think all too closely about.
Steve looks at him, doe eyes wide with something that almost feels like sympathy, understanding.
His parents are out of town, aren’t they? His parents are always out of town. They’re not exactly friends, but people talk. He’s heard all about King Steve’s epic parties, parents gone for weeks and weeks on end. It’s gotta be lonely. Big, empty house, no one to share it with.
Steve parts his mouth, like there’s something he wants to say—but he seems to think better of it at the very last moment, huffing instead.
“You should sleep, Hargrove,” he says. “It’s not your turn to keep watch.”
“Can’t,” Billy replies, and leaves it at that.
They fall into silence.
Billy’s itching for a cigarette but he’s not sure how much oxygen they’re getting down here and he’d rather not risk it. Doesn’t mean the pack of Marlboros he stuffed in his jacket before leaving the house doesn’t burn a hole in his pocket, though.
And Steve must be feeling the same, or he’s—anxious, at the very least.
He keeps tapping his fingers on his knee, eyes unseeing. Billy can’t be sure he really believes the Chief’s daughter will find them. And if he doesn’t actually believe it—well. What does he have left that isn’t pure, unadulterated panic? Fear for the kids’ lives? Robin’s? His own?
He doesn’t like Steve being scared.
“Hey,” Billy says, because he needs Steve to focus on anything that isn’t that flicker of panic clouding his features. “You never answered my question.”
“What? What question?”
“You thought you’d go like this? ‘Cause at least it’s cool, right? Tortured by Russians in an underground base is cool as fuck. It better be in the papers.”
Steve pulls a face, rolls his eyes so far back into his skull all Billy can see is the whites for a good moment. “Jesus, Billy ,” he says, sounding deliciously exasperated, so damn done with him. “Don’t be morbid.”
And, yeah, yeah, Billy’s aware it may not be the healthiest thing in the world, but he adores riling Steve up. There’s just something about the faint flush and the pinched lips that he simply cannot get enough of, that annoyed but receptive look—tired of Billy’s bullshit but willing to listen all the same, always willing to listen. It’s the only way Billy can get such sincere reactions out of him.
He smiles something sharp, lazy. Knocks his shoulder with Steve’s and keeps it there, warmth radiating off the pretty boy beside him in waves.
“Humor me,” he says.
Steve groans. “No, I did not think I’d go like this. Something batshit crazy and like, horribly painful? Sure. But not Russians ,” and then, after a deliberate moment: “ You’re also a surprise.”
Now, Billy, he’s not so sure what part of that sentence he’s supposed to be focusing on. He can’t tell whether it’s a good or a bad thing, that they’ll be together in the end. It’s maybe not fair to Steve, but he’ll take it. He’ll take it. Any little crumb of comfort he can get his greedy hands on he’ll take.
At the end, he settles for a low whistle, a noncommittal chuckle. “Batshit crazy, Harrington? What kinda life are you leading?“
And—he doesn’t quite get the reaction he was hoping for. Steve doesn’t play along. Doesn’t call him some generic mean name and blabber out a vague and impersonal response so Billy can do the same in return. He just—sits there, looking.
Doe eyes wide, wide, wide , that same flicker of panic Billy was trying so damn hard to avoid blubbering to the surface.
“It’s stupid,” Steve says. “Never mind.”
“No, Steve—“
But Billy doesn’t have the words. He isn’t chatty like that Robin chick, doesn’t know what to say that’ll make things better, that’ll wipe that overwhelmingly restless look off Steve’s face. Makes him feel like a jerk, watching Steve’s anxious tapping become full on drumming, flexing and unflexing his fingers to an indescribable beat.
He does the one thing he knows how to do. He huffs brusque and gruff, takes Steve’s hand on a whim and flattens his palm against his bare leg, where the stupid sailor shorts reach his mid thigh.
And Steve lets him, is the thing. He lets him.
“Hey. Try me. What did ya mean?”
Steve startles. Looks at their intertwined fingers for a very long time. “I don’t know,” he says. “It’s stupid. It’s just, Hawkins is a lot more fucked up than you’d think.”
“Can’t get more fucked up than evil Russians.”
“No, it—it can.”
And what the hell is he meant to reply to that? There’s very obviously something big Steve’s not telling him, but is it his place to try and pry his secrets out of him? He’s done nothing but hurt and taunt him in the past. They’re not friends.
He draws his hand back. Rubs the back of Steve’s thumb with his own in the process, just because he can.
It's really not his place.
But, Steve—he sighs low and heavy. Says, unprompted: “I guess I figured if I died in Hawkins I’d die young, so—there’s that. Got that part right.”
Billy looks up. “Steve.”
“What? It’s the truth. I don’t know what the deal with the Russians is, I just—I always thought—” and he laughs then, a low, humorless thing. “I always thought a monster was going to get me.”
He means it, Billy can tell. He absolutely means it.
King Steve thought he’d die young. King Steve thought a monster was going to get him.
“A monster?” Billy echoes.
Steve nods, not looking at him. “I’ve fought ‘em before,” he says. “In the woods. These things with—with fucked up faces, and teeth. So many fucking theeth.”
The way he says those words sends a shiver down Billy’s back.
It’s disturbingly easy to picture the scene, Steve with his preppy polos and coiffed hair, shaking, terrified, standing mere feet from a thing , a thing , bloodthirsty and mindless and big, counting down the seconds until it hurls itself at him, until it bites and tears and chomps, until there’s nothing left of him but a mangled corpse.
He takes a deep breath in. A deep breath out.
Asks, “What, like a bear?” even though it’s fucking clear he’s not talking about a fucking bear.
Steve shrugs. “Yeah. Something like that.”
And Billy doesn’t dare ask anymore questions.
He may not know what in the hell Steve’s talking about, but he understands the icy fear lacing his words much more intimately than he’d ever like to admit. He understands resignation.
Understands telling himself it’s inevitable, it’ll happen, one way or another, no need to cry about it—understands that chokehold of dread that hits him dead on every now and then anyways, because maybe he wasn’t half as resigned as he thought he was, maybe he’s still got some fight left, maybe—maybe , maybe it’s not fucking fair, that he’s got live dreading the moment it’ll all come crashing down. There’s not a single day he doesn’t wake up terrified.
The thought leaves him breathless, on edge. He stuffs his hand in his jacket and pulls out the damn marlboros, oxygen be damned. Steve watches him quietly as he plucks a single cigarette out and lights it up with shaky hands.
He takes a long drag, holds the smoke in and wordlessly holds it out for Steve.
And he takes it, of course. Sighs happily the second it hits his lips.
Billy’s not sure he even smokes anymore. He used to run into him in the school’s parking lot sometimes, with— menthols , of all things, but he stopped showing up one day. And then he graduated. Billy doesn’t know the first thing about him.
He knows he’s afraid a monster will tear him apart but doesn’t know whether or not he’s stopped smoking.
Billy lets go of the smoke in his lungs more or less at the same time Steve does. Except Steve’s shameless, it would seem, careless.
His warm breath hits the side of Billy’s face dead on, his cheek, his neck, his shoulder—it makes him squirm. He glares at him halfheartedly and Steve laughs, taking another drag of Billy’s cigarette without a care in the world.
“How about you?” Steve says, after a moment. “This how you thought you’d go?”
“No,” Billy says, easy as that. “I don’t know. Car crash, probably. Or I’d get caught up in a big wave and drown back in Cali.”
Steve hums in acknowledgement. Gives back the damn cigarette.
And Billy should leave it at that, shouldn’t he? It’s true enough. He’s well aware he drives like a maniac and surfing’s never been the safest sport in the world. Those were always within the realm of possibilities, ways that Billy could kick it and no one would bat an eye at.
But—there’s this look in Steve’s eye, so anxious, so tense. He answered Billy’s stupid question with far more honesty than he knows what do with.
He keeps picturing his father, instead of fucked up faces and teeth.
“Or, uh,” Billy starts, voice croaky, hoarse. “I thought—I thought my dad would kill me. He’d be drunk and pissed and he’d start hitting me and he wouldn’t stop, and—and he’d kill me.”
Steve stills beside him, barely even breathing, and Billy can’t—he can’t bring himself to look at him. He sucks on the damn cigarette and keeps his eyes up front, fights off stupid tears that keep welling in the corner of his eyes no matter how fucking hard he wills them not to.
He’s so tired. He’s exhausted.
“That’s not going to happen,” Steve says, sounding petrified, and Billy can’t help laughing.
“Yeah, because we’re going to die in a Russian elevator.”
“No, Billy—look at me.”
But Billy can’t .
He tries taking another drag of the cigarette but Steve’s got no regards for personal space or personal property, he all but crawls on his lap to take the cigarette from him and stubbs it out on the ground by their knees, ignoring Billy’s protests.
“Look at me,” Steve says. And Billy has to. Has to. He’s got no other choice but to look into those big brown eyes, heavy with something that cannot be described. “It’s not going to happen, okay? I’m not—I’m not going to let that happen to you, I promise.”
Billy sucks in a shaky breath. “How can you promise that?”
“I just do. I promise.”
And—Christ, Billy doesn’t even know if they’re talking about his dad or the Russians anymore—about the threat of certain death for sure. Doesn’t really matter if Steve can miraculously keep his dad off him because they’re going to die down here. Doesn’t really matter if they manage to survive and see the light of day again because his dad will kill him one day.
Billy’s screwed, either way. Thinks he has been, since the day he was born.
“Billy,” Steve says, and he’s so pretty .
He’s so damn pretty, and bitchy, and brave, and the sailor uniform is both stupid and hot, and Billy’s never been in love before but he thinks it has got to feel something like this. A pretty boy by his side, saying such soft things. Like he gives a damn.
“Billy, c’mon. I mean it,” Steve says. “I promise.”
Billy nods. He doesn’t trust his voice so he nods.
And Steve smiles , so big and bright. Billy’s vague affirmation that he believes him is all that he needed. “Sleep,” he says. “I’ll wake you up when it’s your turn to keep watch.”
Billy nods again.
He curls up next to Steve, watches him watching him.
He’s not sure how, or why, but he really does believe him. If Steve says he’ll be fine then he’ll be fine. He promised, after all. Steve doesn’t strike him as someone to break a promise.