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Billy sits on a bench overlooking the San Diego Skate Park, and past it, the ocean. He can’t see the water due to the darkness - it’s nearing midnight - and the light of the streetlights by the boardwalk don’t reach that far, but he can hear the waves washing up on shore.
He’s sat there shivering for about twenty full minutes, listening to laughter and cars and the sea, looking out at the skate park, the masked people that pass him, and the homeless addicts and drunks and stoners who’ve taken up refuge among the ramps and benches. Two of them had raised their hands in greeting. Billy doesn’t know them, but he’d still raised his own.
One of the mothers taking her kids’ for trick or treating had taken one look at Billy and pulled them further away as they walked past him. She’d probably thought he was suffering the effects of withdrawal, sitting curled up on the bench, tremors wracking his face, with sweaty hair and dark bags below his eyes.
“Billy!” Steve’s voice calls. Billy doesn’t bother turning his head to face him, just waits for him to cross the street. “What the hell are you doing?!”
He’d hoped he’d be able to get back to their room before Steve realised he’d gone, but he’d left him a note, just in case. Steve doesn’t like waking up not knowing where Billy is.
Billy gets that. It’s no fun being abandoned.
Steve stops in front of him. He looks like he’s been running, red cheeked and nose flaring. “You do realise that I don’t actually know where ‘the skate park’ is, right? I had to ask the receptionist for directions.”
Steve’s booked them into one of those fancy ass hotels, with a 24-hour reception. Billy’s never stayed in anything other than a motel.
The plan had been for them to go spend Halloween in California, because neither one is particularly keen on seeing monsters roaming the streets of Hawkins, even if it’s just people in costumes. They had the whole week planned. Billy was supposed to show Steve all around the place he’d grown up in, give him the tour only a local can give.
Instead Billy had caught some fucking bug back in Hawkins that hadn’t manifested itself until the second day in California. He’s spent the past three days curled up under the hotel duvet, cuddling with Steve and ordering either a colossal amount of room service or, when Billy finally caved and gave in to his cravings, sending Steve out to Billy’s favourite diners and pizza places for takeout.
Still. It might’ve been a stupid idea to go out like this. The same receptionist that Steve probably got directions from had looked all concerned at him as he stumbled past her desk and out into the night some thirty-five minutes ago.
Steve holds his arms out to his sides in that universal gesture of ‘What the fuck, man?’, but when he speaks he sounds worried instead of annoyed. “What’s going on, Billy?”
Billy loves the way his name sounds coming out of Steve’s mouth. He says it sweetly, like Billy is something to be revered instead of hated.
Billy looks up at him sadly. “It’s Halloween.”
Steve looks at him, doing that thing with his head and shoulders and eyes that’s all, ‘Yes. I know’.
“I can’t spend Halloween in a stuffy hotel room.”
“Our hotel room isn’t stuffy.”
“Steve,” Billy sighs.
“Okay,” Steve says. He sits down beside Billy on the bench, hooking their little fingers together. California is more accepting than Hawkins, and it’s dark, so he probably could do more, but Steve’s still got his small town fear instilled in him. Billy presses his knee against Steve’s. “Okay, fine. It’s Halloween. You didn’t want to miss Halloween. Fine. What else?”
Billy swallows. He stares out at the ocean, thinking that if he just looks long enough he’ll be able to make it out, but the streetlights blind him. “I had a nightmare.”
Steve’s little finger pulls at his. It’s the closest he can get to squeezing Billy’s hand.
“That this was all a dream. That I was still under the Mind Flayer’s control, and that all of this was a dream, something I’d made up to tell myself to keep at least a little bit of my sanity.” He sighs, barely manages to suppress a cough. His head hurts, and it’s not fair. He has to blink away the tears gathering in his eyes.
Steve doesn’t say anything about how it’s been almost sixteen months since the Mind Flayer, how Billy really should be over it by now, because Steve’s nicer than the voice in Billy’s head that sounds too much like his father. Who left. Left while Billy was in the hospital, left with most of their savings so Susan had to move them out to a trailer park.
“Why the skate park?”
Billy shrugs. “I wanted to go somewhere I knew. It was the closest.” He smiles a little. “Max would- I would park the Camaro over there, and Max would spend hours skating here while I went down to the beach with my board. She’s always liked skating better than swimming.” He shakes his head. “Fuck. We used to love Halloween. It was my favourite holiday.”
He’d talked to Max on the phone yesterday. She was gonna spend Halloween at Ms. Byers’ house with the others. She’d called him an idiot for managing to get sick right around the time he got back to California for the first time in two years.
He can hear the smile on Steve’s voice without having to look. “What kind of stuff did you do?”
“Susan would always put on a horror movie.” He catches Steve’s expression and laughs, although it turns into a cough halfway through. It only lasts a few seconds, and he’s still smiling afterward. “I know. Hard to believe, but it’s true. She loves them. We’d make pumpkin pie. When Max was younger I used to go take her trick or treating, then she got a little older and decided that was for ‘little kids’ and she’d rather watch horror movies with her mum. They’d give her bad dreams, and she’d-“ He stops, realising he’s about to say something about Neil. Billy doesn’t like talking about his father.
Steve must notice the shift in the mood. “It’s okay.”
“Yeah,” Billy nods. “Yeah, it’s- it is. Now. But the first year, she tried to go to her mum when she woke up in the middle of the night, but Neil threw her out, said it was the consequences of her own actions if she wanted to watch scary movies and get nightmares. So Max started climbing into my bed instead. We didn’t talk about it, but, you know. I kind of started to expect it.” He shakes his head, biting back a groans as it makes his headache flare. “Fuck. We were so little then. It’s weird to think about. But, anyway. I kept going trick or treating, with my friends. You know that thing with toilet papering a house?”
Steve looks at him, starting to grin. “You didn’t.”
“We did. There was this woman at one of the houses who got mad when she saw us. Said fifteen was too old to be trick or treating.”
“No!”
“Yes. So, you know… We’d brought a couple rolls. Just in case.”
“She got what she deserved.”
Billy snorts. “Yeah. Yeah, she did. She was a bitch.”
Steve nudges his leg, smiling sweetly. “Do you want me to bring you some candy, Billy?”
“Would you?”
“Mhm.” He stands up and holds his hand out to Billy. “As soon as we get your sick ass back into bed. There was a bowl out in the reception.”
“Was there?” Billy asks.
Steve nods again. He puts the back of his hand against Billy’s forehead for a few seconds. “But you didn’t see that, because you’ve got a fever, and you’re not thinking clearly. That’s why you’re out here in the cold.”
“It’s like 55 degrees.”
“And you’re sick. Come on now.” He offers his hand again.
Billy takes it and lets Steve pull him to his feet. He’s hit with a wave of vertigo that has him stumble and lean against Steve’s.
Steve rubs his hand against Billy’s shoulder blades. “You’re okay. You’re okay, love,” he whispers.
Yeah , Billy thinks. I am.