Chapter Text
JULY 4, 1985
“She was pretty.”
—
It's quiet when Billy Hargrove wakes up.
There's fireworks exploding in the air ten feet away. People are screaming, his head is pounding, something is roaring - there's so much noise, but it's quiet. So quiet.
Billy breathes for the first time in... days? Weeks? Years? Fuck, Billy's head hurts, so he decides to leave all the thinking for a little later. Maybe for when he doesn't feel like he's just risen from the grave like some horror movie villain. Instead, he savours the summer humidity in his lungs, revelling in the tepid air and the spittle, picking out the scents of the mall on the breeze.
There's artificial sweetener from that idiotic ice creamery. That chemical detergent they use to clean the floor. Stinky plastic from the fake plants. New shoes. And meat.
...Meat?
Oh. The meat.
Somehow, Billy completely forgot about the monster. It's roaring again now, screeches thrumming into his eardrums, threatening to worm its way into his thoughts again, desperate to pull him under. He can still feel it wiggling around inside him, how the hairs on the back of his neck raise when it cries. How the veins in his arms begin to throb when it gets closer to him.
I know you, it taunts, and I own you.
Whatever's left of Billy's mind thinks this is all pretty fucked.
As his eyes dart back down to that mousy kid below him, Billy registers that he had been pinned on top of her until now. She's terrified, so Billy blinks and sidles off of her, wobbling as he comes to his feet.
It's still deathly quiet in the mall. Billy's ears are still ringing from the fireworks. The noise and the blinding light has petered out by now, leaving the purple mood lighting to fill up the plaza, snaking up the walls to smother any colour that tries to struggle through. Some tinny Prince song is playing on the loudspeakers. Billy takes a moment to contemplate that this sticky hellscape might be the last thing he ever sees. Shuddering, he cranes his head around to catch a glimpse of whoever else is here with the superhero kid, and his heart drops when...
Shit. It's Max.
Billy's mouth has fallen open. Holy fuck, is Max really this stupid? Billy told her not to go near these kids, he screamed at her because he knew he was right and here she was proving his point --
Billy is rudely interrupted by Steve Harrington in an absolutely hysterical sailor costume – hat and all – hurling him out of his way down onto the tacky tiles. When he whips his head back, it's just in time to see Steve leaping in front of the girl and the monster growling and the kids yelling and then it all ends with a thud.
When Billy clocks what happened, he thinks he might just vomit.
Did Steve Harrington just get fucking killed?
Billy has seen too many people die this week. Steve Harrington was decidedly not one he was betting on, but then again – he wasn't betting on being possessed and forced to kidnap twenty people by an evil extra-dimensional monster hellbent on taking over a sleepy Indiana town, either.
At this point, Billy just wants the carnage to stop.
Steve's troupe of teenagers is practically all over him within seconds. Billy can make out his weak, ragged breaths, whistling through his torn-up chest. There's a girl with stringy blonde hair and a thin voice shaking and whispering something about getting him to a hospital. A boy with a gummy-looking mouth is wailing, and loud. Tears slip down Nancy Wheeler's face in silence. Everyone is huddled around Steve like he's a campfire – except Billy, sitting frozen on the ground a mile away, one thought looping in his hazy head:
Would they do this for me?