Work Text:
Max has a TV show that she watches, every Saturday, at 2 pm. She’s very diligent.
She’s only missed a few episodes, when she had to be somewhere else and couldn’t get back in time to watch it.
But today she’s been distracted by homework, and almost misses the beginning of the show. It’s three minutes until it starts when she runs out of her room.
And stumbles over the bunched up edge of the carpet in the living room, stumbles into the side table, and knocks a snow globe.
It falls to the floor with a resounding crash, the glass ball shattering into pieces and glitter and fake snow and liquid spilling out over the floorboards.
Billy comes running out of his room at the sound, eyes wide. He takes one look at Max, before both of them turn their gazes to the broken snow globe on the floor.
Her mum bought it. Last week. It’s got a Christmas tree and a penguin on skis.
Max was with her when she bought it. It was pretty cheap. She could easily pay it back. Explain to her mum what happened when she gets back from her book club.
Max looks up at Billy, sees the way his jaw is working. She’s expecting him to start yelling at her, to call her a clumsy idiot or something, but he doesn’t.
Instead he swallows, and, still staring at the broken pieces on the floor, says, very quietly, “I did it.”
“What?”
Billy looks up at her, and Max startles at the emptiness in his eyes. His voice sounds even and calm and it’s almost creepy, “I need you to go outside.”
It’s been a little over a month since Max sedated him and threatened him with Steve’s nail bat.
Billy hasn’t ordered her around since then.
“What?” Max says. “No.”
There’s a tiny flash of anger in his expression before it goes back to being blank. “I need you to be outside when my dad gets home. Go build a snowman, or something.”
“Why?”
“ Because . Because I’m asking you to. For once in your life, can’t you just do what you’re fucking told?”
“He just left,” Max protests. He did. He dropped Max mum off at her book club and then he went to buy Christmas gifts. “And there’s no snow outside, so I can’t make a snowman.”
Billy’s expression goes pinched. Max sees him clench and unclench his hands. “Then there’s probably no ice either, right? So take your skateboard and ride it down the sidewalk, Max, I don’t give a shit. Go pick flowers in the backyard. Just go out.”
Max shakes her head. “I’ve got my show.” She’s already missed the first few minutes.
Billy’s nostrils flare.
“Okay, fine,” she says. “I’ll go out after. After I’ve watched my show. It’s just thirty minutes.”
Billy sighs. “Watch your fucking show then.”
He walks past her, into the kitchen. Max turns the TV on and finds her programme, but shoots another glance at the mess on the floor, wondering if maybe she should clean it up first.
Although there’s an add break halfway through. It can wait. Max doesn’t want to miss more than she already has.
To her great shock, Billy comes out of the kitchen with a plastic bag and paper towels. He crouches down on the floor and starts picking up the pieces of broken snow globe.
“Do you… Do you want me to help?”
Billy turns his head to look at her with an expression that’s so unimpressed and annoyed that Max regrets asking. Even if she’s the one that broke it.
“I was gonna clean it up,” Max says. “During the ad break.”
Billy scoffs. He laughs, and it sounds mean. “Just watch your fucking show, shitbird.”
Max looks away from him and turns up the volume. He leaves a few minutes later, dumping everything in the trash, before passing her again to go to his room, letting the door fall shut with a low bang.
He’s an obnoxious asshole, but he did actually clean her mess up, so Max figures she could be nice and do as he’d asked her, even if she doesn’t get why he wants her out of the house.
She ends up skating on the sidewalk outside the house, and down the street when there’s no cars passing, and it turns out she was right and Neil wouldn’t be back home soon.
She’s there for two hours before his car pulls up in the driveway. Her cheeks have gone prickly from the cold.
Neil raises his hand in a wave when he sees her, but doesn’t wait for her to raise her own back before he’s turning away. He gets his trunk open and takes out two bags. He takes them with him to the door leading into the basement, but only leaves one of them there - the one with the Christmas gifts, Max thinks. She wonders what he’s gotten her. It’s usually something small that she might actually like, and then also something else that he would want her to like and that she was to pretend she does, even if she’s never going to use it or wear it.
He takes the other bag with him as he walks up the stairs and in through the backdoor, the one that leads into the dining room and kitchen.
Max keeps skating, practicing a new trick, for about twenty minutes, before she realises that Billy never actually told her when she could come back inside.
Well, she’s getting cold, even in her new winter coat and gloves and hat, so she’ll only give him ten more minutes to come out and get her before she walks in herself.
But it’s less than ten minutes before the front door opens and Neil comes walking out, shaking his head as he rounds the house to get to his car. He doesn’t wave to her this time.
He just leaves. To pick her mum up, probably.
Well. Okay then.
If Neil’s come and gone and she wasn’t allowed to be inside when he came, then she should definitely be allowed back in now that he’s left.
And it’s starting to get darker.
Max flips her skateboard up in order to grab it and walks up to the front door.
Billy’s bedroom is in the front of the house, his bedroom door just a few steps in if you enter through the front door, right next to the fireplace.
He usually keeps his door closed, but it’s open now. The lights are off, but Max can see the corner of his closet and bookcase from the light coming in through his window, and she can hear low music from his speakers, softer than what he usually listens to.
She’s debating with herself if she should just ignore him or is she should step inside and demand he explains why the fuck she had to spend almost three hours outside.
But when she passes his bedroom she startles. Her brain short circuits.
Because Billy’s door isn’t open. It’s gone .
“What do you want?”
Billy’s voice startles her further. She hadn’t noticed he was in there, too occupied with staring at the empty space where his door should be, but of course he’s there.
She steps closer, stopping in the doorway. He’s sitting on the floor by his bed, his back against it, out of the light from the living room and window, bending forward so she can’t see his face.
“What- What are you listening to?” is what comes out instead of what she really wants to ask, which is ‘What the fuck?’
“Hendrix,” Billy mumbles.
Max swallows. She looks around the room, trying to see if his door is still in here, wondering where Neil put it.
”And what… happened?” Max gets out. “What did you do?”
Because he must’ve done something. He must’ve done something really bad if Neil took his bedroom door of its hinges.
It can’t just have been because Neil thinks he broke the snow globe. That’s insane .
Billy laughs. It sounds mean, and sad, and Max doesn’t know what to do with that, how to react. “God, Max, you’re such a bitch sometimes, you know that?”
“What-?!”
“Do you even realise how good you have it?”
“I don’t-“
“Your mum loves you. My dad- My dad likes you. And you’ve got me to protect you.”
Her cheeks heat, and she clenches her hand into a fist. “I don’t need protection!”
Billy laughs. “Oh, you definitely do. Otherwise it would be you on the floor with a bloody nose and split lip.”
He looks up at her, for the first time since she came into the house, and Max can’t help but gasp when she sees the blood around his nose, on his lower lip and down his chin.
She takes a step back. Away from the darkness of Billy’s room, back into the warm light in the living room. “What…?”
Billy grins at her. There’s dark spots on his teeth that she thinks must be blood. “I got in a fight.”
Max feels cold, colder even that she did outside. “What?” She hates how small her voice sounds. She shakes her head. “No, you were- You were here the whole time. Did Neil…?”
The grin falls and now he just looks tired. Exhausted. “Of course he did. Didn’t really want you to know, but… yeah. Here it is. The big family secret.”
Max’s heart is beating so hard it almost hurts. “Does my mum know?”
“She likes to take you out of the house when he’s about to start in on me.”
You did, too, she thinks. You made sure I wasn’t inside to see it. To hear it.
And he made sure he took the fall for her.
“Why did you do it?”
Has he done that before?
“Why did you tell him you broke the snow globe?”
When? When has he done that?
Billy shrugs. “Better me than you.”
“Why?”
Billy doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t look at her. Max wants to demand an answer, wants to rage and scream, but she feels so tiny.
She feels like she’s nothing at all.
“Can you do something for me?” Billy asks.
“Okay.”
“Stop being late. Never do that shit you pulled at the Byers last month.” He heaves himself up with his arms on his bed, and brushes past her. “I’m gonna take a shower. Gotta get the blood off.“
He leaves her there, her thoughts racing.