Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“So, like, why do we want to find this gate?” Eddie asks as they row the boat toward the center of the lake.

Nancy has her eyes locked on the compass and Robin’s peering into the darkness all around them, but Steve can’t stop staring at the shoreline. He doesn’t trust the kids. Hell yes he’s going to bitch about being the babysitter every time the apocalypse comes around, but that doesn’t mean he wants the Mousekateers left to their own devices either.

“Mini-gate,” Nancy corrects distractedly.

“Because it could help us find Vecna,” Robin answers.

Steve doesn’t know if finding Vecna is really a good thing. Eddie, apparently, agrees. “Is that a good idea?” he asks, voice drifting off into a nervous chuckle.

“If you don’t want to get blamed for the Excorcist murders happening in Hawkins, then yeah, I’d say finding Vecna is a really good idea.” Robin flashes her light in Eddie’s face before fanning it back over the obsidian water.

“Right,” Eddie answers quietly.

Steve doesn’t get that part of the plan though. So what? They find Vecna and they are going to what? Record a confession of his crimes? Play it for the police department and say, see, told you so! Interdimensional alien demon!

“Shut up!” Nancy suddenly hisses and Steve’s horrified he’s said that outloud. But Nancy’s shushing everyone, holding her arm out above the water. “This is it! It’s right here!”

Steve looks over Nancy’s shoulder to see the compass pointer spinning wildly. He glances around the boat. “So, why can’t we see it?”

“What if it’s in the water?” Robin points her flashlight directly down at the quietly lapping waves.

“Wait! What’s that?” Eddie leans against the side of the boat, tipping them slightly.

“What’s what?” Robin asks. She swings her flashlight around and blinds Steve. He snatches the flashlight from her and turns it off.

“Jesus, Robin, you’re a menace with that thing.” Steve tries to blink the light out of his eyes so he can try and see whatever it is that Eddie is seeing.

“I see it!” Nancy exclaims. She grabs an oar and paddles them to the right. “See? Steve, do you see it?”

“Shit,” Steve whispers, eyes adjusted to the dark once more. “Yeah, I see it.”

Deep beneath the surface of the lake, a red glow pulses maliciously. From the boat, it almost looks like a volcano is lurking down below, waiting ever so patiently to erupt.

“What now?” Robin asks, voice hushed.

“I - I don’t know.” Nancy looks from the still spinning compass to the blood red glow below them.

“Now we ask the nerds,” Steve decides. He hands Eddie the flashlight to keep it out of Robin’s dangerous hands. Then he grabs both the oars and turns them back toward shore.

“Did you find it?” Dustin asks, splashing into the shallow water but not actually helping drag the rowboat ashore.

“Yes, dufus,” Steve sighs, exasperated. He pushes Dustin out of the way and with Eddie’s help hauls the rowboat back onto land.

“Yes!” Dustin fist pumps triumphantly. “I was right! A water-gate!”

“Yeah, woohoo!” Steve says with a pointed lack of enthusiasm. “Another gateway into hell in our fine city of Hawkins.” He turns around and offers a hand to Robin, helping her climb steadily out of the boat. He does the same for Nancy.

“Okay,” Lucas says, nodding briskly. “Okay, we found the gate. So now we just need -” he breaks off.

“El,” Max says flatly. “We need El. But she’s not here. So what’s the next plan, Dustin?”

“El?” Eddie asks, leaning in way too close to Steve’s personal space. “Is that the mind powers one?”

Steve elbows him away. “Yeah, that’s her.”

“We know that Vecna is somehow connected to the old Creel house, right?” Nancy asks. She has the flashlight and is pointing it at the ground, letting everyone see but not blinding them. Steve thinks she could give Robin a few lessons in flashlight handling.

“Yes, totally,” Robin agrees, nodding her head. “Max saw that when she got Vecna’d and we know that’s where Victor Creel was when his family got Vecna’d in the original Vecna-ing? Am I saying Vecna too much?”

“Yes,” the group choruses.

Her shoulders drop. “Right, sorry, my bad. I’m just kind of freaked that we have a portal to hell under Lover’s Lake.”

“I want to see it,” Max declares. “The water-gate.”

Steve whirls around to stare at her. “What? Why?”

“Because I’m the one Vecna’s coming after and I want to see where he’s trying to claw his way through.” She crosses her arms tightly over her chest.

“I, for one, think that’s a really bad idea,” Robin says. She looks to Steve for support.

“Max, it’s exactly because you’re the one that Vecna is after that I don’t think you should be going anywhere close to the land where he has the most power.” Steve reaches out and gently shakes her shoulder. “We don’t want you going all freaky and levitating into the sky again.”

“Yeah, Max,” Lucas says. “I like it when I can see your feet touching the ground.” His reassuring grin glows in the night.

And, Steve really does try to stay out of the kids drama because there is always so much of it going on. But Lucas and Max? Well, Steve’s kind of hoping they work out whatever is going on with them. They were such a stabilizing presence over the summer while Mike and Dustin made Steve want to throw himself in a ditch. Wanting to go to the media about the Russians, about the Hawkins Lab.

But something happened, right before school started for them. Steve doesn’t know if it was the change to high school from middle school. He doesn’t know if it was Lucas being so amped to join the basketball team that he spent the last two weeks of summer having Steve practice with him at the middle school court. He doesn’t know if it was Billy’s death.

Steve thinks it was Billy. Steve thinks the gaping Billy shaped hole in Max’s life has created a gaping Max shaped hole in Lucas and the other kids’ lives. He thinks that when summer ended and school started and Max walked from her trailer to the bus stop it all came slamming home. Billy was never coming back. He was never going to roar his Camaro into the Hawkins High student parking lot. He was never going to slap Max’s hand away from the radio dial. He was never going to ditch her if she was late from her AV club. He was never going to be there again.

And that really fucking sucks. So Steve’s holding out hope that after all of this life or death shit has hopefully passed them by once more, Max can step back into the space her friends have kept open for her.

Max makes a point of digging her shoes into the dirt. “Well, I’m touching the ground right now, so.”

Dustin shakes his head. “Uh-uh. Nope. I think we should regroup. Call Eleven, ask her what she thinks we should do.”

“I’m with Dustin,” Steve says quickly before Max can argue him.

“Me too,” Nancy agrees. “El’s been to the Upside Down before. She knows better than we do what we are up against down there. I mean, in my brief walk through, I was scared to death.” She looks pointedly at Max.

“I’m down for avoiding hell holes,” Eddie says. “But, like, where the hell am I going to stay tonight because getting strung up for homicide would really put a damper on my evening.”

Everyone falls quiet for a moment. Then Steve snaps his fingers. “What about Hopper’s old trailer?”

“Yes!” Dustin shouts.

“Does that thing even have power?” Lucas asks.

“It’s got a generator in the back,” Nancy says. “Jonathan had to help Hopper start it one time. You know, before he and El moved into the cabin.”

“Then let’s go,” Robin says. She grabs the flashlight out of Lucas’s lax grip and immediately points it directly in Steve’s face.

“Robin!” he yells, trying to bat the flashlight out of her hand.

“Oops!” she trills with absolutely no remorse. She spans the light to the left and points it up the trail. “Onward, troops!”

Everyone falls into line behind her. Steve hangs at the back, counting heads as they start up the trail. And he comes up one head short. One redhead, to be specific. “Fuck! Wait! Where’s Max?”

Behind him, water splashes quickly in the shadows. Steve’s stomach plummets.

“Max?” Lucas shouts frantically.

“Shit! She’s going for the boat!” Steve sprints back to the shore but Max has already climbed into the boat and is quickly rowing herself into the lake. “Max, stop!” Steve shouts desperately.

She doesn’t respond, just keeps rowing.

“What’s going on?” Nancy’s panicked voice calls over the trampling of leaves and sticks as Lucas and Dustin try to get back down to Steve.

“Ouch! Fuck!” Lucas shouts before Steve hears him hit the ground and groan.

“Man down!” Dustin declares. Then he trips over Lucas, smashes into a tree, and goes down with a wail.

But Steve doesn’t have time for any of this shit, so he runs a few feet into the lake before diving in and swimming after the boat.

“Steve!” Robin shrieks, her flashlight casting dark shadows over the water in front of him.

“Holy shit!” Eddie shouts. “What the fuck is everyone doing?”

Steve is fairly certain what they are doing is collectively losing their minds. But he doesn’t have time to say that as he freestyles through the freezing lake water. It takes him less than thirty seconds to catch up with the boat and snag a half-numb hand on the side. There’s a reason Steve was the swimming team’s freestyle champion all four years at Hawkins.

“Max!” Steve gasps, rocking against the boat as he hauls himself over the side and lands in a soaking wet heap in the back of the boat. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m going to the gate,” she says firmly.

“Max, don’t be crazy. We don’t know anything about this gate. We don’t know where it goes or what will happen to you if you get near it.” Steve reaches out slowly, tries to cover her hands with his to stop her from rowing them further out.

But Max jerks her hands back and keeps tugging the boat through the dark water. “I don’t care. I'm going through.”

Shock silences Steve. From the shore, he can hear the pleas of their friends for Max to turn around and come back. Against the boat, the water splashes with every plunge of the oars. Around them, though, the forest is eerily silent.

“Max,” Steve says carefully, gently. “Why do you need to go through the gate?”

For a moment, Max hesitates and the boat drifts only marginally forward. She squeezes her eyes shut tight and Steve realizes she’s fighting back tears.

“Whatever it is, you can tell me. You know I won’t judge you, Max. You know I’ll hear you out,” Steve promises.

It’s not the first time he’s made that promise. In those last few dying weeks of summer, Steve had begun to seriously worry about Max. So he tried to be there, tried to fill in some of Billy’s shadow. At first it was Max refusing to get ice cream with them at the Dairy Dog on main street. She said she didn’t have the money for it and Steve had offered to pay, he didn’t care. It was a one dollar cone. But Max’s eyes went hard and she’d told Steve she didn’t need charity.

When Dustin begged Steve to drive them to the closest mall, an hour away, so they could get some ‘high school cool’ clothes, whatever the fuck that meant, Steve had agreed because he wanted to get some new sneakers anyway. At the mall, the kids had fanned out, scoping out all the different stores. Except Max. She had hung back, waited until everyone else was disappearing into a brand name store, then detoured to the mall’s only resale shop.

“If you want a shirt or something, I can pick it up, no problem,” Steve had offered when she met back up with him near the mall’s fountain. The three goofballs were still yucking it up, trying on shirts and jeans. Max and Steve were the first two finished.

“I’m fine,” Max had said.

“Cool,” Steve said, nodding. “Can I see what you got then?”

She rolled her eyes and tossed him her paper bag. He sifted through the contents. All of it was oversized. None of it was particularly fashionable. All of it was dark blue, green, or black. None of it looked like the happy, bright Max of the summer.

He’d handed the bag back with an empty smile. “Cool finds.”

She hadn’t answered.

And then there was the end of summer bonfire in Steve’s backyard. He and Robin had thrown it for the kids but also to celebrate Robin’s last year of educational hell in Hawkins. Max had shown up in her new baggy clothes, the dark shades muting all of her coloring, making her skin and even her hair look dull and faded. She’d sat alone, to the side of everyone else, kept her new ever present headphones around her neck, and ignored all of Steve’s attempts to get her to roast a marshmallow.

When he’d driven her home that night, he put the car in park outside of the Mayfield’s new, sad trailer and clicked off the radio. Max had made a grab for the door handle, but Steve didn’t let that deter him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking at her profile and the downward turn of her mouth that never seemed to go away now.

Max had frowned deeper. “About what?”

“About Billy.”

Max’s hand fell away from the handle. She breathed in sharply and refused to look at him. “How could that be your fault?”

“No,” Steve said, “I mean, I’m sorry that he’s gone.”

Max’s chin trembled, then she stiffened her shoulders and clenched her jaw. “Well, you’d be the only one. Nobody else seems to care that he’s - that he’s gone.”

“I know you care,” Steve said gently.

Max’s hands tensed into fists against her knees. “He was my brother. Of course I care.”

“I know,” Steve agreed. “And I’m sorry he’s gone. Nobody deserves to be killed, especially not by a monster like the Mind Flayer. And Billy could be a complete asshole, but I would never have wanted him to die.”

Max’s voice quivered on the brink of tears. “Then why does nobody else feel that way?”

Steve wrapped his arm around her small shoulders, pulled her against his side. Max hid her face against his shirt, letting her tears slip down her cheeks and fade into the fabric of Steve’s polo. “They do, Max.”

“No, they don’t,” Max said fiercely, her voice thick. “They think he died a hero. That he finally did something right with his life. Like the only way Billy could ever be a good guy is if he died trying to save us and I - I - “

Her tears choked off her words. She sobbed against Steve’s chest, blunt finger nails digging into his back as she clung to him. Steve pressed his cheek to the top of her head and let her cry, knowing nothing he could say would take her pain away.

“It’s not fair,” Steve said quietly. “It’s not fair that Billy isn’t here. And I’m so sorry about that, Max.” He rubbed her back. “But you're not alone, okay? I’m here, whenever you need me. You need to talk, you need to cry, you need to scream? I’ll listen, okay? Because we are all in this bullshit together.”

When Max had cried herself out, when her eyes were bloodshot and puff, she pulled away from Steve, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and nodded. “Okay, Steve.” Then she had opened the car door and stepped out into the darkness of the night, walking alone up to the unlit front door of her new home. When the door closed behind her, Steve hoped things might change.

Instead, Max just continued to withdraw from the group. Even when Steve hadn’t wanted Max to take the bus to school, at least not on her first day of high school, she’d said no. He’d called her up the night before, offered to give her a ride the same way he was giving one to Robin. But Max had refused. Said that she was too far out of Steve’s way and there was no reason to waste the gas. The bus would get her there just as easily.

Steve didn’t give up. He still offered her rides, gave her free movie rentals at Family Video, always let her check-out the R rated horror movies she got all starry-eyed over. She’d never asked him to listen though.

But right now, he needs Max to talk to him. He needs her to let him listen to the reasons she’s ignoring every single screaming warning sign they have. He needs her to tell him why she’s putting herself directly within Vecna’s reach.

“Max?” Steve asks again, ignoring the frantic voices of their friends at the water’s edge.

“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” Max finally says.

“I won’t, Steve promises. “With everything we’ve been through, you could tell me the Care Bears were real and I’d believe it.”

She glances up at him. “I saw Billy.”

Steve frowns. “What?”

“When Vecna took me at the graveyard I saw Billy.”

“Okay,” Steve says uncertainly.

“Billy talked to me. As Vecna, but it was Billy, I know it.” Max’s eyes lock onto Steve’s, daring him to disagree.

“Max, we don’t know what Vecna is capable of,” Steve says, still not sure where Max is going with this.

“I don’t care,” Max says. “I only care about Billy. And he’s down there,” she jabs her oars back into the water, “and I’m going to get him back.”

“Max,” Steve shakes his head, “Max, we don’t know what’s down there. And even if it is Billy, we don’t know that it’s our Billy. The one before the Mind Flayer took him.”

“I don’t care,” Max says again. “I don’t care what Billy it is. As long as it’s Billy, I’m getting him back.”

“Max, I’m serious,” Steve says, reaching out and wrapping his hands around hers to stop her from bringing them closer to the dully throbbing red glow in the distance. “Whatever Billy you saw could be one that wants to kill us. It could be a Billy who is not your brother.”

“You promised,” Max cuts him off. “You promised you would be there for me when I needed you. So be there for me now. Help me get Billy back.”

Steve feels nauseous and desperate. They’re so far from the shore now that Nancy, Robin, Eddie, Dustin, and Lucas are barely silhouettes against the trees. Their voices are nothing more than whispers on the wind of the lake.

And the stupid fucking boat keeps moving, like it’s being dragged toward the gate, like the magentic force it pumps out is conveying them closer. A few more feet and they’ll be right above it.

“I’m going,” Max tells him, “with or without you, I’m going to get Billy back.”

“Fuck,” Steve whispers, teeth biting into his bottom lip. His mind scrambles to come up with a solution, one that will keep Max safe. The only one he’s got sucks. “I'll do it,” he says. “I’ll go in and try to find Billy, but only if you stay here.”

Max’s mouth lifts in a half smile, something so rare it blinds Steve just as successfully as Robin’s flashlight had. “I’m sorry, Steve,” Max says. Then she launches herself into the lake.

Steve barely has a chance to scream Max’s name before she’s plunging beneath the surface and into the fiery glow of the gate. Steve doesn’t hesitate before he jumps in after her.

Steve’s expecting the icy chill of the spring lake, the same one that had his teeth chattering when he slogged after Max in the first place. Instead, a gust of desert dry heat engulfs him and sucks him rapidly downward. The air burns in his throat, makes his eyes snap shut to keep the insufferable heat at bay. And then just as suddenly, it’s gone.

Steve hits hard packed earth on his hands on knees, coughing up dry lungfuls of baked air. He squints his eyes open, vision blurring as tears stream down his cheeks. Above him, thunder rolls and red lightning splits the sky.

“Steve!” A small body throws itself on top of him and crushes Steve to the hard, cold earth beneath him.

He reaches behind him and anchors Max against him. “Jesus, Max! Are you okay?”

“We’re really here,” she says with surprised awe, like she didn’t think her plan would really work.

Max pulls away from him and Steve pushes up to his feet. His clothes that had been soaking wet moments before are now dry to the touch. His hair that had been dripping down his neck is stiff and hot.

“I fucking knew it was a hell hole,” Steve says, raking his fingers through his hair to get it to lay flatter. He looks around them and stares. Parts of broken boats, forgotten anchors, lost fishing poles litter the cracked dirt around them. “This is Lover’s Lake?”

“I think the gate evaporates the water?” Max says.

“Something did,” Steve agrees. He closes his eyes and blinks them open. “Fuck. We’re really in the Upside Down.”

“This isn’t a mistake,” Max promises. “We’re going to find Billy. I”m going to make things right.”

As if in answer to her declaration, a piercing shriek slices through the rainless thunder. It reverberates in Steve’s eardrums and sets his every sense on high alert. “We need to get out of here, that’s a Demogorgan.”

“The cemetery,” Max says, turning to run back toward the shore. “That’s where I saw Billy.”

“Max,” Steve says, running after her, “we need to get weapons. We need to find something to protect ourselves with first!”

He knows Max isn’t listening to him. She’s sprinting as fast as she can for the shore where there are barren rocks and skeleton trees that are all dankly illuminated in the permanent twilight that shrouds the Upside Down. The endless floating ash swirls after her as she runs.

Steve chases her, listening as another distorted howl shatters the gaping silence. “Max! We will find Billy, I promise! But first we need to find a way to protect ourselves!”

“My house!” Max throws out her right arm, pointing in the general direction of the trailer park. “Neil was a total freak about Vietnam memorabilia. He’s got a plethora of super dangerous stuff that my mom made him lock up in a trunk in their bedroom closet. He hasn’t come back yet to pick it up.”

“Okay,” Steve agrees, catching up to Max and running alongside her. “Not that that’s concerning or anything.” He gives her a sidelong look.

Max rolls her eyes. “Neil’s a total whackjob. We’re in the trailer because he wouldn’t accept the government hush money after Billy - after the mall. He’s in D.C. or some bullshit trying to argue that he is entitled to a lifelong money train since his only son was killed by sketchy quasi-government operations.”

“He’s an asshole for running out on you guys like that,” Steve says, knowing that now is a shitty time to be offering support but since they could get eaten by a Demogorgan at any moment he figures it’s better to lay it all out on the line.

“He’s a piece of shit,” Max scowls. She bites her lips together, looks over her shoulder to the mess of bare trees now obscuring their view of the empty Lover’s Lake. “I think he used to - “ she breaks off.

Steve’s stomach yo-yos. “Used to what, Max?”

She squares her shoulders, runs just a little faster. “I think he used to hit Billy.”

“What?” Steve stumbles, his right foot hitting the ground a stride too soon. “Max, why do you think that?”

She shrugs. “Stuff he said, after Billy died. And those bruises Billy had sometimes. You know on his ribs and stuff? He said it was from basketball but -” She glances at Steve. “You remember Billy’s funeral?”

Steve nods. It had been a bleak affair. Each of the different churches in Hawkins, all four denominations of them, had held a memorial mass the week after the mall collapse. All of the dead were commemorated together before families dispersed to Hawkins cemetery. With the explosion, there were no bodies to bury, at least as far as the residents of Hawkins knew.

Of course, Steve and the others knew worse. There were no bodies to bury because the people who died hadn’t died that day in the mall, they had died in the days prior when the Mind Flayer had taken them and transformed them. The mall was just their sacrificial pyre, all their bodies laid to sludge waste at the feet of the Mind Flayer.

But for the peace of mind of the families, little urns were given out to each family, filled with ash from the mall. The majority of families chose to bury those urns in the cemetery, including Billy’s dad.

Steve had stood shoulder to shoulder with Dustin and Lucas, and the rest of their friends when Billy’s black urn was lowered into its little plot of land. The headstone glaring out at them with a name Billy would have punched anyone in the face for using.

“You remember Neil at the funeral?” Max asks. “Do you remember how he stood next to my mom while she cried through an entire box of tissues? And I cried into El’s shoulder while she held me? But Neil? He didn’t even blink. He didn’t shut his eyes and fight back tears. He just stood there, cold as stone, and threw a handful of dirt on Billy’s grave. He didn’t care.”

“Max,” Steve hushes, terrified of believing her. Because it would be so much worse if she’s right. Steve can’t imagine the kind of monster someone would have to be to hit their kid. He can’t imagine the kind of monster someone would have to be to not care when their child died.

Like, Steve knows his own family dynamics are pretty out of whack, but when his parents heard about Steve’s place of employment imploding, they were on the next plane home. Steve’s mom had suffocated him in attention for the month until Steve got the job at Family Video. She made every homemade dinner Steve had loved from his childhood. Watched late night talk shows with him in the living room. Pressed a kiss to his forehead when he went up to bed.

His dad kept coming into his room in the evening to talk about the ‘future’ and how the Harrington name didn’t mean a thing without a son to pass it onto. His dad wanted him to join his company, to learn about stocks and trades and bulls and bears. Steve had managed to talk his dad into giving him a year to ‘make it on his own.’ Anything to escape a tie and the nine-to-five for one more year. But all the same, he knew it was his dad’s way of saying he cared about Steve.

“Maybe - I mean, people grieve in different ways,” Steve says. The words sound hollow to his own ears.

Max scoffs darkly. “When we got home, after we changed and were all just sitting at the kitchen table, trying not to stare at Billy’s empty chair - “ Max inhales sharply. Steve knows she’s keeping herself from crying and just barely succeeding. “Neil said he always knew Billy was going to amount to nothing. He said he knew Billy was headed to an early grave as soon as Billy turned sixteen and started driving like a bat out of hell. He made it sound like it was Billy’s fault. That Billy had it coming to him for being at the mall on the wrong night.”

“I’m sorry, Max. That’s messed up.” Steve reaches out, squeezes her hand in his and tugs her after him. They’re still winding their way through the desolate forest, getting closer to Max’s trailer, but in the distance, Steve hears more than one howl streak through the air.

“I tried to tell him that Billy had saved me. I just - I made up some story about him throwing me out of the way of the explosion. Neil didn’t care. He told me that Billy was trying to get me out of his way so he could make a run for it first.” Max loses her fight and bitter tears cut jagged lines down the grime on her cheeks.

Steve doesn’t know what to say. Telling Max that he hopes Neil fucks off and dies is probably not all that helpful right now. So he settles for something close enough. “Then I guess we better find Billy so he can tell his dad to go to hell.”

Caught off guard, Max chokes out a laugh. She flashes a grateful smile at him. She nods and releases Steve’s hand. “Last one to my house is a Demogoran!” She puts on a burst of speed and breaks the treeline onto the road beyond.

Steve laughs unexpectedly. It might be the end of the world for the fourth time in three years, but the fourth time’s a charm right? If they beat it this time, maybe the Upside Down will leave them alone long enough for Robin to graduate and Steve to follow her off to college.

Steve amps up from a jog to a run, not wanting Max to get out of sight. He prays to whatever deity illuminated this spark of hope in Max. He prays that Billy is alive.

The trailer is covered in vines. Thick undulating vines with dripping yellow ooze. It’s fucking gross. Max pauses at the door, one hand outstretched but not touching the handle. “Do you think it’s okay to - ?” She looks to Steve for guidance.

He shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Max furrows her brow in determination and pulls her sleeve over her hand before she grabs the door handle. She gives the door a shove and it creaks open. Steve holds his hand out, silently telling Max to let him go first. He steps into the dark trailer and tries to see through the gloom.

There’s ash swirling even in here. Steve dreads to even guess what the ash is or what it’s doing to their lungs as they breathe it in. He turns over his shoulder and asks, “Do you guys have flashlights?”

Fifteen minutes later, he and Max are armed with a pair of heavy duty flashlights, a fucking grenade, four different kinds of guns that Steve doesn’t know the names of, and every can of hairspray Susan kept under the bathroom sink. They’ve also raided the house for lighters and thicker clothes. Steve’s going on the concept that with enough sweatshirts, even a Demogorgan or Demodog will have trouble biting them.

Sitting next to Max on the couch, Steve finishes shoving the last of their weaponry into a backpack. “Okay, Max, what’s the plan? We can’t stay down here for too long. We need to find a way to get back through. At worst, we’ll have to just throw ourselves through the gate in Lover’s Lake and hope we can swim to the top.”

Max nods seriously. “I’ve been thinking about it and it’s not like Billy is really a ghost. So he won’t be haunting his grave.”

Steve keeps his thoughts to himself. This is still mostly a suicide mission in his opinion. They have no reason to think that Billy is alive. Especially not when some fucked up demon corpse is passing out halluciantions like Halloween candy. But he doesn’t say that, it’s not what Max needs to hear.

“And Billy wouldn’t know that we’ve moved to the trailer. So - so I think we should try my old house first. He’s probably there, you know, scared. Alone and confused.” She wraps her arms around herself. Well, as best she can wearing two long sleeve shirts, one sweatshirt, and an old hoodie of Billy’s.

Steve’s chest had ached seeing the cardboard box hiding on the top shelf of Max’s closet. She carefully pulled open the top and sifted through the contents. All the pieces of Billy that had been left behind when he died were shoved carefully inside. An old lighter, a bunch of his tapes, the license plate from his car - blackened and twisted, his brown leather jacket, a couple of his t-shirts, a hoodie with the name of some surf shop on it.

At the bottom of the box was a small plastic photo album. Written in sharp on the front cover were the words “Billy and Mom.” Sadness twisted through Steve as he watched Max carefully pile Billy’s things back in, like she was packing them protectively on top of the photo album. She’d left out the sweatshirt, which she had pulled on.

Then she held out the leather jacket to Steve. “We don’t have anything else that will fit you.”

Steve was already wearing Susan’s only corduroy button down over his own yellow sweatshirt. He’d accepted the jacket with a nod of thanks. Slipping it up his arms, unease chased down Steve’s spine. It felt far too much like walking over Billy’s grave.

Now, Steve fiddles with the worn cuffs of the jacket. “Okay, we’ll check your house. But if he’s not there?”

Max juts out her chin. “He will be.” She clicks on the tape deck connected to her jeans.

Her real headphones and player had been left on the shore back in Hawkins. Steve had freaked out watching her pull out the Upside Down player from her nightstand and shouted at her. Did she even know if the player would work in the Upside Down? Max had defiantly clicked on Kate Bush and smashed the headphones over Steve’s ears.

Every second of their time spent in the Upside Down is eating away an ulcer in Steve’s stomach that he knows he is much too young to have. And Max’s unwavering belief that Billy is somehow trapped in this hell hole is probably going to give him arthritis or some other Dad type illness.

“Okay, but if he’s not?” Steve presses. “We need to agree that if Billy isn’t at your old house, we are finding a way back to Hawkins.”

Max presses her lips into a thin line. “If he’s not at the house, then we need to check - “

“Max,” Steve cuts in gently. “I have to keep you safe. That means finding a way back, with or without Billy. So if he’s not at the house -”

“Billy’s here,” Max repeats, voice hard.

Steve sighs and runs an anxious hand through his hair. Maybe Max needs to see that Billy isn’t here. Maybe seeing the empty house will be enough to convince Max that Billy is dead and that the only thing they can do is go home.

Steve stands up and shoulders the backpack filled with their supplies. He tosses a can of hairspray and a lighter to Max. “Remember, we come up against something, you light it up as fast as you can and then we run like hell to the first building we see.”

Max tucks her chin in a nod. Her clear blue eyes skirt away from him and then back. She squares her shoulders. “Thank you, Steve.”

He lifts his brows. “Don’t thank me yet, Maximum Overdrive. We’ve still got to survive walking out that door and biking to your house. And that’s only half of the journey.”

Max makes a show of rolling her eyes. “God, who knew you were such a Debbie Downer.”

Steve’s mouth quirks in a wry grin. He grabs the hood of Billy’s old hoodie and tows Max with him to the front door. “You ready to face the evils of this world?”

“There’s two bikes at the side of the house. Mine and - “ she darts a glance at the leather jacket Steve’s wearing.

“Got it,” Steve says. “Right then. Let’s get this shitshow on the road.” He flashes a cocky grin at Max that drops as soon as she looks away.

Steve reaches out, opens the trailer door, and prays to the sun, the moon, and the stars that he and Max make it to her old house in one piece.

“Get in! Get inside!” Steve screams. He pulls out the gun wedged against his hip. He drops to one knee, shooting desperately at the Demodog charging through the swirling ash on Cherry Street.

It’s shrieking and dodging left and right. The left side of its flower head is charred meat from a good blast of hairspray fire. Max emptied the canister on it when it came lunging out at them from behind one of the cars parked in the driveway of the empty houses lining Max’s street.

Max slams into her front door, jiggling the handle and gasping for breath. “Steve! Steve, another one is coming!”

“Open the door!” Steve pops off three shots.

The Demodog falls back, cocks its head to the side, then yips for the other Demodog to join it. Steve uses the brief respite to sprint up the steps to Max’s old house. Max kicks the bottom of the door, wedging it open. Steve shoves her through, passes her the backpack, then whirls around.

The two Demodogs chirp to one another, their heads facing Steve. He backs up, covers the six inch gap in the door with his body. Steve holds out the gun, shifts it between the two Demodogs. Behind him, Max is screaming for him, her small hands scrabbling against the smooth leather of Billy’s jacket. She’s trying to pull him into the house, but they don’t have enough time.

If Steve goes in, so will the Dogs. Max won’t be able to get the door shut in time. Steve snaps off a shot at the Dog on the right. It takes the hit and shrieks. The Dog on the left leaps forward, mouth open wide, hundreds of vicious teeth on full display.

“Fuck,” Steve hisses. He takes a shot at the Dog on the left. It bounds forward, mouth snapping shut and flaring back open with an ear piercing howl.

Steve doesn’t want to die. He really, really doesn’t. But it's looking like the end right now and, well, at least Max is safe. And she’s smart. She’ll find a way out of here. He knows she will.

He also knows that if she doesn’t stop jabbing him in the back, he’s going to end up fucking up a shot and missing the Dogs entirely. “Max! Quit it!” he snaps.

The next jab is harder, right to his spine. “Then hold out your hand, dickhead!”

Steve takes two quick shots, one at each Dog, then thrusts his left hand backwards. “This better be good, Max.”

She closes his fingers around a metal canister. Steve pulls his hand back and looks down at what he’s holding. Then he grins. Turns out the grenade wasn’t what he thought.

Tucking the gun back in his waistband, Steve yanks on the metal top of the canister. An ominous hissing fills the air. The Dogs stop moving forward, they call gratingly to each other. Steve hefts the tear gas canister and tosses it at them. As it hits the grass, it begins to spin wildly, grey smoke pouring forth. The Dogs snap at it and back up.

Max’s fingers finally clench in the back of Steve’s borrowed jacket and she yanks him into the house. Steve shoves the door closed and locks it. Panting, he turns around and scans the house.

It’s vein covered and oozing yellow goo just like the trailer. And just like the trailer, Billy’s not here. No one’s here. “Max?” Steve looks anxiously around for her.

“Billy!” Her voice seems to echo through the empty house.

The sad beach theme that Steve had noticed when Max lived here has been replaced by floral patterns on everything. The couch, the wallpaper, the curtains. Steve can’t even begin to imagine Billy setting foot in a place like this.

“Max, I don’t think -”

“Billy!” Max darts through the short hallway.

Steve doesn’t chase after her. She can’t go far and the most pertinent danger is outside the front door. Steve moves around to the living room and pulls away one of the floral curtains.

The street is obscured by thick grey smoke. Through it, he can still hear the Dogs, but they sound further away now. Not that far, maybe only a house or two away. But that’s lightyears ahead of them being ten feet outside the front door.

It takes Max less than five minutes to search every corner of the house. When she’s done, she stands in the middle of the living room blinking. Steve takes a last look out the front window, making sure the Dogs aren’t creeping up on them. Then he steps towards Max.

“Max, I -”

Max’s chin wobbles, her red rimmed eyes lock onto Steve, and she sobs. Her knees bend and she hits the floor hard, hands covering her face. She gasps for breath between heaving sobs.

Steve drops down in front of her, wraps his arms around her, and just pulls her into his chest. “I know, Max. Fuck, I know. I’m so sorry. So fucking sorry.”

“I - I really thought -” She buries her face against his neck, clings to Steve like he’s the only thing keeping her tethered.

“I know you did,” Steve says. He presses his cheek to the top of her head. “I would give anything to fix this for you. God, Max. I’m just so sorry.”

She hitches in a breath, fingers digging into Steve’s back even through the leather jacket and extra layers. “I used to - used to pray. Used to pray he’d just go away.” She breaks down again.

“That’s okay, Max,” Steve soothes, heart aching. “I used to wish every birthday that my Uncle Mark would turn out to be my real dad. I used to blow out those candles and wish that this birthday, Uncle Mark would pull me aside and let me know, ‘Hey, kid, it’s me. I’m your dad and I love you and I’m proud of you.’”

“I - I hated him,” Max confesses, words rough and uneven as she cries. “He was so awful. So fucking awful to me and - and to my friends. And, god, the year we moved here. I just - I just wanted him to run away, back to California, disappear, leave me alone.”

“We don’t choose who we love,” Steve tells her. “I hate my dad most of the time, but fuck, what I wouldn’t give for him to care about me. To take me by the shoulders and tell me that I’m everything he could have asked for in a son. It’s okay, Max. Everything you’re feeling, it’s okay.” He squeezes her tighter, tries to shield her with his body from everything that’s ever hurt her.

“I want him back,” Max sobs. “Steve, I want him back! Please, please, bring him back. Please, Steve. He’s my brother. I want him back. I want him back, please!”

There’s nothing Steve can do. He picks Max up, cradles her carefully in his arms, and carries her into the basement. His first job is to keep her safe.

Steve sets Max on a hideous plaid couch tucked into the corner and mostly clear of vines. She holds onto his hand, not letting him go.

“I’ve got to get the backpack, Max. I’ll be back. I won’t leave you.” He bends and presses a hard kiss to her forehead. “I’m right here, Max, with you.”

She curls into the couch, burying her face in the cushions. They muffle her crying, but every sound still shatters Steve’s heart. He gives the basement a brief once over. There aren’t any windows and there’s only the one door to the first floor. It’ll be safe enough, he hopes, for a few hours. Long enough to let Max recharge.

In a few hours, he’ll make a plan. In a few hours he’ll get them out of here.

There’s no sense of time in the Upside Down. Steve’s watch said it was midnight when he laid down on a blanket over the vined carpet next to the couch Max is sleeping. His watch says it’s now five in the morning. In Hawkins, the sun would be pushing pink rays against the skyline. In the Upside Down, the endless blue glow hangs heavy over them and the swirling ash continues to fall like snow.

Steve leaves Max in the basement while he goes upstairs and carefully peers out the front window. The Demodogs aren’t in sight. He opens the front door next, whistles into the eerie stillness of this other world. No shrieks answer his call.

When he gets back downstairs, Max is sitting up and blinking tiredly at her lap. “We’re going home, aren’t we?”

Steve bites his lip as he nods. “I’m sorry, Max. We just - we can’t stay here.”

She glances at him. “You don’t think Billy is here, in the Upside Down, do you?”

Steve crosses to the couch and sits down beside her. “I don’t think anyone could survive what happened to Billy,” he says.

Max shifts. She rests her head against Steve’s shoulder. “I just - I wanted my brother back, you know? Even if he was awful and a piece of shit most of the time, he was still my brother. And I - “

Steve wraps an arm around her shoulders. “I know, Max.”

“I love him,” she whispers. “And I don’t think he ever knew that. And I just - I hate myself for never telling him. Never telling him before it was too late.”

Unlike last night, Max doesn’t break down crying. She breathes shakily, but Steve can tell she’s moving toward acceptance. That whatever Vecna showed her, it was never really real.

Steve gives her a few minutes, then pats her shoulder. “Okay, Maximum Overdrive, you ready to escape this hellscape?”

She tilts a look at him. “Are we going to go back through Lover’s Lake?”

Steve runs a hand through his hair. “Actually, I was thinking we go to my house. I’ve got the walkie-talkie Dustin gave me there. I have this, probably crazy, idea that we can reach them through it. And like, I’d rather Dustin genius our way out of here than rely on my sketchy understanding of the Upside Down.”

Max grins at him. “Don’t ever let Dustin hear you say that. Or we’re never going to hear the end of it.”

Steve grins back. “Yeah, well, it’ll be our secret?”

Max nods. Then she throws her arms around Steve and gives him a split-second, but asphyxiating hug. “Thank you for believing me, Steve. Even if I was wrong. And stupid. And could have gotten us killed.”

Steve grabs her back and pulls her in for a proper hug. “Of course, Max. What else are pseudo-babysitters for?”

Max giggles and it’s the best sound Steve has heard in the last twenty-four hours.

Steve’s learning a lot about the Upside Down. Things like, if it doesn’t run on batteries, it doesn’t run at all. Things like, running water is an illusion of pipes and handles. Things like cars are nonfunctional hulking masses of steel. Things like, the Demodogs and the Demogorgans don’t roam the streets. They seem to stick to the woods and the nature beyond Hawkins proper.

Max and Steve bike down silent, still streets. Nothing moves. There’s no wind in the Upside Down. The closer they get to Steve’s house, the more worried he is. Because his house is bordered by woods. His house is where a Demogogran got Barb. His house is probably the last place they should be going.

“Maybe we should go to Dustin’s house instead,” Steve says, keeping his voice quiet since anything louder than a whisper sounds like a shout in the silence surrounding them.

They’re biking down Nancy’s street and Steve can’t help but stare at the darkened windows of her house. Where is she now? What do Nancy and Robin and the others think happened to them? He fucking hopes they don’t try to come in after him and Max.

“No,” Max whispers back. “I think your idea is solid. I’ve been thinking about, like, the duality of this place? Like, I think if we use Dustin’s walkie, it wouldn’t work. Because it’s the echo of his, right? But if we use yours, then some kind of mirror of your voice should come through?”

Steve squints at her. “Uhm, hopefully?”

She sighs. “Let’s try it first, at least. And then if it doesn’t work, we can think of something new.”

Steve leans to his left and guides his bike from Nancy’s street to the main road that will lead them to Steve’s neighborhood. He shifts his shoulder, readjusting the weight of the backpack. Last night he had tossed out the gun he used against the Demodogs, it was out of bullets and they didn’t have any extras to reload it with.

They’ve each got their mega-watt flashlights strapped sideways across their chests using spare belts from the closest of whoever is currently living in Max’s old house. It was the best solution Steve could come up with for keeping the flashlights with them at all times. Last night they’d nearly lost them when they had to swing off their bikes and make a run for Max’s old house.

A few minutes later, they turn onto Steve’s street. Steve looks at Max and presses a finger against his lips then tilts his head toward the trees behind the houses. The forest is a dense, stretching blue darkness. Steve knows that somewhere in that darkness there are Demogorgans hunting for living creatures to eat. Steve can’t even begin to imagine what lives in the Upside Down that Demogorgans eat, but he assumes that whatever it is, it has a shit ton of teeth.

Max slows in front of Steve’s house and waits for him to decide their next move. Steve hops off the bike and wheels it quietly up to the house. He leans it up against his porch, in case they need to make a break for it. Max follows suit.

Steve holds his hand out, silently telling Max to wait until he checks the house first. Steve walks carefully back down his driveway, trying to make as little noise as possible. He peers up at his house.

It’s wrapped in vines the same way that Max’s trailer and house had been. But unlike either of those places, all of Steve’s windows have been boarded shut on the inside. He frowns. Why would this house be different from the others in Hawkins?

He motions for Max to come to him. She darts over on silent tiptoes. Steve points up at the house. Max leans her head back and stares. She shoots a confused look at Steve. Then she grabs the sleeve of Billy’s leather jacket and yanks Steve down to her height.

“Do you think - could someone be living here?” she whispers frantically.

“Like who?” Steve whispers back.

“Will lived in the Upside Down, didn’t he? When he got taken?”

Steve shakes his head. “That was different. He was chased into the Upside Down by a Demogorgan. I don’t know anybody else who got trapped here. Do you?”

Max purses her lips. “What if it’s Chrissy?”

“Max,” Steve cautions, “her body got pretzeled. I don’t think -”

“But you don’t know,” Max counters. “So let’s go find out.”

And, well, at the very least, Steve highly doubts Demogorgans are out here boarding up windows. So, probably, they won’t die.

Steve leads the way back up to his front door. He wraps his hand around the handle and pulls.

Nothing happens. Because the door is locked. Steve slides a sideways glance at Max. She looks pointedly at the door and then back at Steve. He rolls his eyes and motions for her to hang on.

Climbing off the porch, Steve rounds the side of his Upside Down home and picks up the potted plant next to the hose. Underneath is a spare key, just like in Hawkins. Except this key is covered in disgusting yellow goo that Steve hastily wipes off on his pant leg.

He returns to the front door with the key held up for Max to see. She grins sarcastically at him and flashes a thumbs up. The kid is such a little shit. Steve just wants to suffocate her with, like, noogies.

“Ready?” he asks, voice hushed.

Max squares her shoulders and nods. “You have a gun?”

Steve shakes his head and pulls the backpack around to his chest to take one out. He checks that it’s loaded and takes off the safety. Max gives Steve another quick nod.

Slotting the key into the lock, Steve turns it to the left. In the silence pressing down on them, they hear the tumblers turn over. Steve leans some of his weight against the door. It readily eases open, like the door is frequently used.

Nerves jangle along Steve’s shoulder blades. Someone is here. Or something.

Not having a better idea, Steve takes a step inside and calls out, “Hello?”

Seeing his house strangled by the thick black vines of the Upside Down is surreal. All of the familiar furniture and pictures on the wall are corrupted by the writhing black shapes that snake and twist across every surface. But no one answers Steve’s call. It only makes him more uneasy.

“Is anyone here?” Steve asks, raising his voice louder than before.

Max presses up close behind him, pulling the door closed behind her, and clicks on her flashlight. She plays the beam of light over the dark house. Steve squints, reaching out and holding her flashlight in place. Together, they stare at the pile of large planks of wood stored next to the foyer window.

Max shakes off Steve’s grip and walks towards the kitchen. Steve sticks close to her side, gun held steady in his left hand. As they pass through the living room, Steve lifts his own flashlight to shine at the fireplace. Logs are piled inside on top of the ashes of previous fires. Next to the fireplace is a neat stack of freshly chopped logs.

“What the fuck?” Steve hisses quietly.

Max gives him a bewildered shrug.

In the kitchen they find every cupboard jammed with canned food. It’s like someone went out to the store and brought back every single canned item they had. Steve uses his flashlight to illuminate the cans and finds that they aren’t just haphazardly shoved in. No, the cans are arranged by what type of food they are. On a whim, Steve pulls open one of the cabinet drawers not locked shut by vines. Inside, a seemingly endless supply of plastic silverware is organized by utensil.

“Okay,” Steve decides, “this is really fucking weird and someone is very obviously living here, so let’s get the walkie-talkie and then get the fuck out of here.”

Max pans her flashlight around the rest of the room. “Where do you keep it?”

“In my room.”

They both look up at the ceiling.

“I’ll go up,” Steve says, “you stay down here. If anything goes wrong up there, just get the hell out of here, okay?”

Max holds out her empty hand. “Give me a gun.”

“I’m not giving you a gun,” Steve says aghast. “You’re a baby child!”

Max gives him a flat look. “I’ll be a dead baby child if the owner of this place comes home and I don’t have a gun to defend myself with.”

Steve hates her logic. Still, he hands over the gun he’s holding and slips a different one from the backpack, repeating the ritual of checking the ammunition and clicking off the safety. “Don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to,” Steve tells her firmly.

Max rolls her eyes. “I’m not a moron, Steve. It’s not like I want to shoot anyone. But I really don’t want to die here either, so.”

Steve edges toward the staircase with Max following behind him. “Stick close to the door,” he says, “in case you need to run.”

Max mock salutes him.

“Right,” Steve says to himself.

He takes the stairs two at a time, reaches the landing and whirls on his heel to speed walk down the hallway to his bedroom. He kicks his door open, gun held at the ready, flashlight spinning across the open space. But there’s no one inside.

Quickly, Steve drops to his knees and reaches over the thick vines beneath his bed and grabs for the old shoe box he keeps Dustin’s walkie-talkie. He pulls it out and flips open the box. “Yes!” Steve exhales.

The walkie-talkie is covered in a layer of dust that Steve attributes to the Upside Down’s ash, but otherwise, it looks as good as new. Wiping the walkie off on his sheets, Steve checks the back for batteries.

“Here goes nothing,” he mutters. Then he clicks the walkie on and twists the channel knob to get to Dustin’s channel. A hiss of static crackles from the speaker. Steve holds down on the talk button and squeezes his eyes shut. “Dustin? Are you there? It’s Steve!”

He releases the talk button and waits. Seconds tick by. First five then ten then thirty. His heartbeat kicks into overdrive. If this doesn’t work - if Dustin can’t hear them - if -

“Steve!”

Max’s terrified scream rips through Steve like a bullet. He drops the walkie-talkie and sprints out of the room, down the stairs, and into the living room. “Max! Where are you?” He wildly aims the gun, ready to shoot at anything without red hair that moves.

He sees a streak of light down the hallway near his dad’s office. “I’m coming! Max!” Steve runs, palms sweating, heart trying to lodge itself in his throat.

He skids to a stop at Max’s dropped flashlight. It spins idly on its side, splashing light across the dark hallway and the doorway of the office. From the depths of the office, Steve hears the choked off sound of Max crying.

Steve aims his own flashlight inside. “I’ll fucking kill you if you hurt her!” Steve shouts as his eyes scan the room.

And then he freezes, bright beam of light laser sharp on Max in the back corner, on her knees, with her arms wrapped tightly around - around Billy. Steve takes a faltering step into the room. Has to brace himself on the door frame when his knees decide to lock up.

“Max?” Steve asks, sounding as shocked and winded as he feels.

The person, who can’t be Billy because Steve saw him die, turns and glares at Steve. Ocean blue eyes spark sharply above a full, but well trimmed beard. Hair that is wildly curly, no longer a mullet, is twisted into a mess of a bun at the nape of his neck. Bangs still brush against his forehead and the scar in his right eyebrow matches the white scars slashed over the back of his hands.

Hands that are holding Max tight.

Billy, who can’t be Billy, darts an angry look from Steve to Max. “You’re not real,” he growls. His voice is deeper. There’s a gravelly rumble to his words too, like this Billy isn’t used to talking all that often.

“Billy?” Steve asks, his question hanging heavier than the ash in the air.

“Billy, Billy it’s me. It’s Max.” Max peels herself marginally away from this Billy’s chest, tries to angle her face so he’ll look at her.

This Billy shakes his head, only looking at Max for quick seconds at time, then shifting his gaze to Steve, like he thinks Steve is going to attack him the moment he’s distracted. “You’re not Max,” Billy says, glancing at her. “You’re not anything. You’re just my mind finally fucking imploding on itself.”

“Billy, no,” Max pleads, one hand trying to reach up and touch her maybe brother’s face.

Billy ignores her, centers his untamed gaze on Steve. “And you. I don’t know what the fuck you are.”

Which, like, whoa. Because Steve very vividly remembers Billy taking every chance he could to be up in Steve’s space to annoy the shit out of him during Steve’s senior year. And he remembers Billy showing up at Scoops every Friday near closing, not to get anything, just to sit at a booth and heckle Steve while he cleaned up all the spilled ice cream and sticky tables.

“Holy shit, nice to see you too, Hargrove,” Steve chokes out, feeling like he’s probably losing his own mind right now, because there is no way this is Billy. It can’t be. Steve saw him die. “I saw you die!” Steve repeats aloud. “So, like, fuck you. If anyone’s not real here, it’s you.” Steve kind of shakes his gun at Billy since he has no free fingers to point accusingly with.

And, okay, probably not the best idea because Billy promptly flips the fuck out. He throws Max to the ground, shields her with his body and then whips a fucking knife at Steve that Steve barely dodges.

Or doesn’t really dodge because the blade slices through the shoulder of the leather jacket. Steve thanks all his fucking lucky stars that he’s got so many layers on because the knife doesn’t make contact with his skin.

“Billy, no!” Max screams, pouncing on her brother and dragging him down to the ground with her. “Steve, put down the gun, you moron!”

“Shut up!” Billy shouts, and it’s unclear who he’s trying to reprimand.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry! This is all a bit much, holy fucking shit!” Steve snaps the safety back on and tosses the gun to the floor.

It pinwheels across the hardwood before coming to a stop near the combat boots Billy is wearing. Billy wrestles himself out of Max’s reach and grabs for the gun. He clicks the safety off and aims directly at Steve’s forehead. “Who the fuck are you?” Billy demands. “What the fuck is going on? I’m in fucking hell! So what are you doing here, Harrington?”

Max makes a noise like Billy’s stabbed her, which distracts him long enough that Steve is able to snatch a new gun from his backpack. There’s only one more left and Steve really hopes they can all lay their weapons down instead of trying to re-enact a Wild West stand-off.

“You’re not in Hell, Billy. This isn’t Hell this is -” Max tries to explain, hands latched onto the sides of her brother’s face, keeping his eyes on her.

“Then what the hell else could it be?” Billy shouts at her. “I killed people. I did horrible things. I woke up here. There’s no one else here. I’m alone. There are monsters here. Everywhere. Waiting to eat me. I’m in hell.” Billy’s voice breaks.

Steve nervously edges closer. “To be fair, it’s kind of offensive that you think Hell is Hawkins.”

Billy’s wide blue eyes blink once, then twice. And then he drops the gun and crushes Max back against him in what Steve assumes is supposed to be a hug. Steve drops to his knees and quickly scoops up the discarded gun, locking the safety into place once more. Then he shoves both his gun and the one Billy stole into his backpack.

“Oh my god, Billy,” Max gasps, hugging him back just as fiercely as Billy is hugging her. “I thought you were dead. We had a fucking funeral. You fucking asshole.” She chokes on her tears, trying to laugh but mostly still crying.

“What kind of bullshit did they write on my headstone?” Billy asks, voice gruff and suffused with desperation.

“I made them put in all caps, World’s Worst Brother,” Max says. Then she breaks down crying, arms clinging around Billy’s neck.

Billy laughs hoarsely, saying, “You would, you brat.” He stands up, hitching Max up, she readily wraps her legs around his waist, holding on like a koala.

Steve backs up to let them by and tries not to feel like too much of an intruder in his own Upside Down house. Billy leaves the office and turns left down the hallway. Steve watches from the office doorway. When Billy gets to the basement door, he looks back at Steve. “Well, are you coming or what, Harrington?”

Chapter Text

Steve’s basement has been turned into a fortress. His dad’s expensive bar has been converted into an armory. Billy has amassed an alarming amount of weapons in all variations, sizes, and abilities. He’s got them all grouped though, just like the cans and plastic silverware upstairs.

The basement bathroom has been made into a med center. Gauze, band-aids, hydrogen peroxide stitches, pain killers, anything and everything you might need to survive an apocalypse hangs half out of the shelves and cabinets. There’s a blue bucket next to the shower and a red bucket next to the toilet. Behind Steve’s house, a little ways into the woods, there’s a stream. If Steve had to guess, he’d assume that’s where Billy’s getting his water for the plumbing.

In the far back corner of the basement, surrounded inexplicably by chain link fencing, is a mattress Steve vaguely recognizes from the guest room. The mattress is covered by sleeping bags rather than blankets. A surplus of sleeping bags is sloped up against the left side of the fence walling in the mattress. Lining the right side of the fencing are battery powered lanterns, flashlights, and an incongruous stack of books. Sweeping his eyes upwards, Steve notices that there’s even fencing above the mattress so that Billy has essentially created a cage to sleep in.

Shivers skitter down Steve’s spine. He quickly glances over the remaining space. There are two trunks Steve remembers being in his mother’s library that held family afghans. They’ve been repurposed to contain a bunch of jeans, t-shirts, sweatshirts, boxers, and socks. Propped up against them is a bullet proof vest and some stuff that seriously looks like riot gear. Each designated area of the basement is lit by a large battery powered lantern. The five lanterns illuminate the basement with a dim, pale glow, but it’s the most light Steve’s seen in, like, three days.

It hits Steve squarely in the chest that Billy is living here. That he’s scraped out his survival by gathering all of the supplies he could find and that he’s established some semblance of control over his life by organizing the hell out of those supplies. Steve doesn’t know if he should admire Billy’s determination to live through this hell or if he should bawl his eyes out over Billy just accepting this as his fate.

While Steve’s been gawking, Billy has tucked Max safely into his bed cage, then run back up the stairs. Steve hears wood hitting wood, so he sticks his head around the corner of the staircase. Billy slots three hammered together three planks of wood, using them to barricade the door to the main floor of the house.

Billy trots back down the stairs, past Steve, and puts all his weight into shoving an overturned pool table in front of the door at the bottom of the stairs. It takes Steve’s brain a second to click back on and then he’s hurrying to help Billy. With that done, Billy ignores Steve in favor of ducking behind the bar. He comes out with three bottles of water; he tosses one to Steve, cracks one open for himself, and carries the third one over to Max.

Max takes the water and gulps down half of it in one go. Billy sits cross legged and sips from his bottle, eyes locked on his sister. When Max finally pulls the water away from her mouth, Billy says, “What the fuck are you doing here, shitbird?”

Max blinks wet eyes at Billy. “I came to save you, obviously, you dickhead.”

Billy exhales loudly. “How the fuck are you going to save me from hell, Maxine? Got a rope ladder for me to climb back up?”

“Dude,” Steve cuts in, edging his way over to the bedroom cage, “you’re not in hell. You’re just in the Upside Down. Which, like, yeah, pretty similar. But, major difference,” he lifts one hand gives a snazzy jazz hand display, “in hell you’re dead. In the Upside Down you just wish you were.”

“Bullshit,” Billy says.

Steve would take this as an insult toward Hawkins, but honestly he’s just trying to cope with Billy keeping his beard all close cut and groomed. Like, his bathroom situation is a poorly lit mirror and stream water. And, like, the only other things around are the Demogorgans and Demodogs, so it’s not like there’s anyone for Billy to impress. And there is no fucking way Steve could grow a fucking lumberjack beard like Billy has going on. Steve knows he’d be lucky if it grew in patchy and kind of homeless looking.

But here’s Billy Hargrove in the fucking Upside Down dropping looks like he’s in an action movie. It’s so typical of Billy that it only adds to the surrealness of him being alive after all these months. Of him having not died when Steve very literally saw Billy pulverized before his eyes.

Max grimaces. “Don’t be an asshole, Billy. You’re obviously not in Hawkins, right? But it all looks like Hawkins? And there are dogs with demon plant faces running around? Just. Like. I. Told. You.” Max bites out each word with enough venom to kill. Steve’s impressed.

Billy flips her off, but a wry smirk is tugging at the corner of his mouth. “As if I was going to believe your crazy ass horror story, dumbass.”

“Eat shit and die,” Max snaps back instantly. They exchange bemused glares, like this is some kind of normal bonding experience for them.

Steve doesn’t think now is the time to start analyzing the Mayfield-Hargrove family dynamics. Instead, he drifts over to the bar and boggles at the weaponry Billy has amassed. “Where did you even get this stuff?”

Billy twists to glare at Steve. “I’m living in a ghost town, Harrington. I’ve gone into every house, store, and shed in this whole fucking town.”

“Gotta say,” Steve says, gesturing around them at his remodeled basement, “not sure my parents would approve of the changes you’ve made.”

There’s a second where Billy just frowns at him, then his features go slack with surprise. “This is your place?”

“Uhm,” Steve looks around him with wide eyes, “yeah?”

Billy shakes his head in disbelief. “Of fucking course it is, Harrington. Gotta have the biggest house in town, right? The palace to go with the crown, King Steve?”

Max’s empty water bottle goes sailing towards Billy’s head, but he dodges it with impressive ease. “There are, like, a bunch of professional family photos framed on every wall upstairs, dipshit,” she says.

Billy shrugs, lifting a hand and unwinding his tangled curls from his bun. His hair drops down to hang past his shoulders. “I don’t look around at the pictures when I’m going in a place. Don't want to know if the person whose house I’m in is a person I’ve killed,” Billy explains unfazed.

“You didn’t kill anyone, Billy,” Max intercedes. She stresses the ‘you.’ Crossing her arms tightly against her chest, Max glares her brother down before saying, “You were possessed. It wasn’t your fault. I believe you. You tried to tell me, remember?”

Billy glares right back, blue eyes stormy, his lips pressing into a harsh line. It’s clear to Steve that Max and Billy are having a conversation that he isn’t privy to. So he thinks he should probably give them some privacy, as much as you can in one open space.

He heads toward stairs, the farthest he can really get away from Max and Billy. He looks at the grimy fabric of the pool table. The basement isn’t covered in vines and slime like the upstairs, but it’s also obvious that it had been at one time. Black streaks stain the pool table, crusty yellow gunk clings to the corners and the pockets of the pool table.

Steve looks behind him and sees the same marks on the walls, the carpet, and the corner of the bar he can see. Someone had to carve those vines up, rip them off of the walls, scrub away the grime. It’s another jarring reminder that Billy has been living here, actively living in the Upside Down. He’s made a life for himself in the most inhospitable environment imaginable.

Which is insane and impressive. And also, like a big fucking reminder that all three of them need to get the fuck out of here as soon as fucking possible. Steve tilts his head back and looks at the top of the basement door that is visible behind the pool table. He left the walkie-talkie upstairs when he heard Max screaming.

Leaning around the corner of the stairs, Steve waves moronically at Max and Billy. Together, their blue eyes stab him with annoyance. Steve jerks his thumb behind him. “Hey, so, while you guys sort out your sibling stuff, I’m gonna go grab the walkie-talkie from my room, okay?”

Billy’s up on his feet in a heartbeat. “You’re not fucking going anywhere, Harrington.”

“Okay, well,” Steve says, frowning, “you’re not the boss of me, so -”

Before Steve can step out of reach, Billy crosses the room and snares a hand around Steve’s wrist. He yanks him back toward the bedroom cage. “We stay down here until I say it’s safe to go up.”

He shoves Steve inside the cage where Max quickly scrambles out of the way of getting sat on. Then Billy is climbing inside too and pulls another piece of chain link into place so that the front of the cage is sealed off as well.

Steve edges himself into the back left corner, keeping himself on the mattress and sleeping bags but letting his legs stretch out toward the fence. Billy has hung a battery powered lantern from the top of the chain link ceiling. With all their movement, it swings back and forth, casting shadows over the mattress and sleeping bags. Max reaches up and steadies it, keeping herself close to Billy’s side now that he’s on the bed with her.

Billy hooks his arm around Max’s shoulders and pulls her down so that she can rest her head on his thigh. “This is nighttime here. We’ve got four more hours until it’s safe to be moving around. So go the fuck to sleep.” Billy spears a look down at Max and then across at Steve.

“God, I can’t believe death has mellowed you out,” Max complains, but there’s a soft smile on her lips. She wraps one arm around Billy’s waist, securing herself to him like a barnacle.

“I died and ended up in hell, Maxine,” Billy lectures. “That’s supposed to make me more of an asshole.”

“Not hell,” Max corrects, but her voice is softer, like she’s already on the cusp of being pulled under by exhaustion. “The Upside Down. We found you.” She blinks tired eyes up at Billy. “You’re coming home.”

Steve sees Billy swallow thickly. He reaches down and runs his hand gently over Max’s face. “Go to sleep, brat. You can still save me when you wake up, okay?”

Max, eyes now closed, nods against his thigh. “Okay, Billy.”

In silence, Steve and Billy wait for Max’s breathing to even out with sleep. The two of them keeping vigil over her makes Steve feel kind of like an imposter. He’s been playing at filling Billy’s shadow with his own, but seeing Max and Billy together, he knows he was never anything even close.

Their relationship might be one of cat and dog fights, but at the bottom of it is affection, the type that forges a bond even death can’t break. And really, it’s not all that dissimilar to the way he and Dustin grate on each other. Dustin is constantly bullying him in a way that only an annoying little brother could, but at the same time, Dustin is his biggest cheerleader. He helped Steve edit his history papers during Steve’s senior year.

Eventually, Max’s chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm. Stve thinks she’s down for the count when suddenly her eyes spring back open. She looks up at her brother, “Love you,” she whispers, then clamps her eyes shut, like she’s afraid of seeing Billy’s reaction.

Steve sees it though. He sees the way Billy’s face softens with wonder. He sees how Billy reaches down and brushes some of Max’s stray hair from her face. He sees how Billy mouths the words back, but keeps them silent.

Steve drops his gaze to his lap, knowing he’s seriously invading Billy’s privacy, but they’re literally in a cage together, so he thinks it can’t really be that much his fault. This time, when Max’s breathing goes deep and even, she doesn’t wake back up.

Billy reaches above them and clicks out the lantern, the light ebbing away from them like a wave. The other four corners of the basement are still lit by their lanterns giving the illusion of lighthouses in the night.

Steve wonders if he should try to get some sleep too. But it’s hard to imagine falling asleep here, in the basement of a house that is but isn’t his, next to a boy who should be but isn’t dead. Steve uncaps his water bottle and takes a sip for the lack of anything else to do.

“So,” Billy whispers, voice like rustling leaves, “I know I’ve been stealing shit because I’m trapped here, by where the fuck do you get off stealing my fucking leather jacket?”

The question causes Steve to choke on his water and he proceeds to try and hack his lungs out as quietly as possible so he doesn’t wake up Max. When he finally manages to gasp for some air, he turns and kicks Billy’s leg. “I could have died,” he hisses.

Even in the faded light, Steve can make out Billy’s sharp toothed smirk. “Most painless way to go down here, pretty boy.”

“And I didn’t steal your jacket,” Steve continues, ignoring him. “When Max went crazy and leapt into the lake on her Kamikaze mission to find you, I jumped in after her. We weren’t dressed for monster hunting, so we stopped by the trailer park and picked up some stuff. Including this.” He plucks at the jacket.

“Trailer park?” Billy echoes.

“Oh.” Steve’’s stomach drops. Jesus. There are some things he really wishes he wouldn’t have to explain. “Yeah, uh, some stuff has changed since you’ve been gone.”

“Like what?” Billy challenges.

Running a hand through his hair, Steve tries to think where to start. He ends up with the thing that’s been bothering him the most. “You remember Jason? From basketball?”

Billy huffs a laugh. “That benchwarmer? Yeah, why?”

“Captain of the team,” Steve enunciates clearly.

“No fucking way!”

“Gave a whole fucking captain’s speech at the finals game. Named you among the people he wanted to win the game for.” Steve shakes his head as he talks, still in disbelief over that bizarre charade.

“I broke that dweeb’s fucking nose after he missed the winning shot in our semi-finals match,” Billy says, disgusted.

“I know!” Steve quickly drops his voice back down. “I mean, yeah, exactly.”

“What a fucking asshole. I knew that kid was bullshit.” Billy scoffs, fumbling in his pockets and pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. After lighting his own, he tosses the pack and lighter to Steve. “So what happened with the finals game?”

Steve grins. “Lucas scored the winning shot.”

Billy whistles, low and decently quiet. “Damn. Would have been cool as shit to be on a team with a winner for once. Who knew Dungeons and Nerds Sinclair could play ball?”

“Not me,” Steve confesses. “I would have shot hoops with him at my place if I knew, instead of being trapped listening to the nerd herd planning out D&D campaigns.” He waits a beat, then adds, “But I would have thought you’d hate being on a team with Lucas.”

“Why? Because I tried to kill him that one time?” Billy blows smoke at the chain link ceiling. “Nah, I don’t give a shit about Sinclair. But my dad’s a hard ass. If you aren’t white, Christian, and Republican, you aren’t getting through his front door. I knew he’d pitch a fucking fit if he found out that the first person in Hawkins Max decided to befriend was this skinny ass black kid.”

“So you flipped out for him?” Steve asks.

Steve always thought it was weird the way Billy reacted to Lucas. He would have figured with Billy’s raging asshole reaction that he would be a complete piece of shit to everyone he saw as beneath him at school. But he wasn’t.

Billy actively kept himself on a tight leash. At least at school. He was unfailingly polite to the teachers. He flirted with all of the girls, even batting his big baby blues at Tammy Thompson. He was king of the hill with the guys because he always talked the loudest, had the wildest stories, and shot down anyone who tried to act cooler than they were. But he didn’t lose his cool.

A shove in the hallway, a nasty taunt just loud enough for the people around to hear, yeah. Typical high school bullshit, but nothing like the way he was that night at the Byers. Steve thought it was maybe something special he saved for Steve, who he seemed to hate for no reason, and something extra special he saved for Lucas because the Sinclairs were one of three black families in Hawkins.

Billy sighs. “It was a bad fucking night. My old man was smacking me around for losing Max. Max was hanging out with the one fucking kid I told her to stay away from. You were the only adult present with my baby sister and a bunch of pre-teens.” Billy shrugs.

Steve thinks of what Max told him while they were making their way through Hawkins. “Max said she thought things at your place were maybe on the rough side,” Steve says tentatively, leaving it up to Billy if he wants to talk about his homelife.

“I’m glad,” Billy says stiffly. “That she didn’t know for sure. It was bad enough dealing with that shit myself. Trying to keep Max out of it or safe from it would have been -” Billy cuts off.

“He’s gone,” Steve says carefully, he thumbs the butt of his cigarette. “You’re dad, I mean. He’s in D.C. or something, fighting about the government payout money from the mall collapse.”

Billy works his jaw, the hand not resting on Max’s ribs curling into a fist. “Bastard.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing.

“That’s why Max was talking about a trailer park, wasn’t it? Dad went off chasing dollar signs and left Max and Susan to figure out the rest, right?”

Steve nods slowly. “Max is doing okay, though. I’m looking out for her.” And it’s not the whole truth, because even though Steve is looking out for Max, she’s certainly not doing okay.

“Then why is she here?” Billy demands. “If she’s doing okay, why is she here in hell, trying to save my worthless ass?”

Steve rubs his hand over his face. “It’s a long story, man. And a fucked up on.”

Billy gestures around them, one hand resting on Max’s back like he's scared if he lets go she'll float away. . “We’ve got nothing but time, pretty boy. Enlighten me.”

So Steve does. He winds the clock back to 1983 and takes Billy through all the shit that came before him. All the shit that came the same week Billy arrived in Hawkins. Then Steve walks him through what happened last summer, leaving gaps for Billy to jump in with his own version of events, but he never does.

When Steve's run dry, he's parched. He grabs his forgotten water bottle and downs it. “So, uh, yeah, that’s what you missed,” Steve says after he tosses the empty water bottle aside. It hits the chain link and the metal rattles.

“Fuck.” Billy looks down at Max and smoothes his hand over her hair. “Max gave me the rundown after that night at Byers’ but I didn’t believe her, obviously. I thought she was just bullshitting me and I gave up trying to find out what really happened after a while.”

Steve laughs sourly. “Yeah, I really wish it was all bullshit, but, no can do, amigo.”

Billy glances over at Steve, left corner of his mouth quirked up. “Guess I was kind of a huge asshole to you, huh? That night and at school?”

“I mean, that’s your M.O., right?” Steve asks. And, like, call it his pride or whatever, but Steve is going to feel like a total nerd if Billy apologizes for beating the shit out of him. No matter how unhinged Billy was that night, Steve never thought he would end up losing a fight against Billy Hargrove as soundly as he did.

It’s a weird kind of embarrassment that stings him from time to time. Steve hates that he wasn’t able to protect his little idiots better. Billy took him down with one hit, laid him out and kicked him in the ribs for the effort. Even when Steve managed to get a few good hits in, it was nothing compared to Billy’s bloody knuckles and broken ribs style. Ad, like, Mrs. Byers’ plate had been a cheap move, but one he should have expected from Billy after playing with him on the court at school.

Billy plucks at the headphones around Max’s next and fixes a dirty look at them. “And what you’re telling me now is that the only thing standing between my kid sister and a psychic Exorcist style demon is a pair of fucking headphones and Kate Bush?"

Steve bobs his head side to side. "Uh, yeah, pretty much. But, like, we're working on figuring out how to save her?" It hardly sounds reassuring, Steve knows.

"Jesus," Billy spits. "Like what the actual fuck? At least I deserved what I got. I was a fucking piece of shit and got turned into a literal monster for it. But Max? She's a redheaded bitch when she wants to be, but she's a good fucking kid." He says the last part while looking desperately at Steve.

But, like, Steve, is super not okay with Billy's assessment of the situation. "No one deserves what happened to you, man." At Billy's derisive frown, Steve keeps going. "I'm serious. What happened to you was completely fucked. And I'm really fucking sorry no one was there to help you. Like, I kind of had a lot going on with being trapped in a Russian military outpost, but I know El wanted to save you."

Steve keeps steamrolling. "And there is no deserving with this shit. Will Byers is the nicest fucking person I've ever met. Kid seriously wouldn't even step on an ant. He'd, like, try to save it from the rain or some shit. But this stuff," Steve waves his hand around them to encompass the Upside Down, "it fucked him over not once but twice."

“I’m not a good guy,” Billy says pointedly. “I don’t like people. Most people I fucking hate. Even in California, I had my crew of friends and fuck everybody else. But I came here and suddenly I’m having to jump through bullshit hoops to fit in, or whatever the fuck.” He grins bitingly, “Did you know I antagonized the shit out of you ‘cuz I was trying to see if you were worth hanging out with?”

Steve blinks hard enough that it feels like he’s resetting his brain. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Billy shifts his legs, moving Max so that she’s still within reach but not resting on his leg anymore. “Everyone was yammering on about how you were this big fucking deal and I thought, hey, if that’s true, then this dickhead will be as unimpressed with all this high school bullshit as I am. He’ll be riling for a fight just like me.”

Steve lifts a brow. “Guessing I didn’t live up to the hype?”

Billy presses his lips together. “No. You really didn’t. Instead of pushing me back, you just walked around me. Chasing after some girl who was as vanilla as every other girl in Hawkins. Then I found you with Max and a bunch of middle schoolers and all of Max’s ramblings were fucking nuts aout that night, but one thing was clear, you were there as the babysitter. I couldn’t believe it. I gotta say, I was really fucking disappointed.”

Billy’s presenting an alternate reality that isn’t too far from reality. Billy is exactly the kind of grade A asshole his junior year self would have thrived with as a friend. They would have run the fucking school and been absolute pieces of shit the entire time.

“So that’s why you ignored me after that? Because I was too lame to be bothered with?” Steve asks.

Billy bobs his head. “Yep.” Billy blows a breath out and hangs his head. His eyes, bright even in the darkness, find Steve. “Except, it turns out I was the joke, Harrington, not you.”

“I’m happy to agree, but are you going to provide context?”

“I was a real piece of shit to Max when we got here,” Billy confesses. “My dad is real proud of his step-daughter. She’s all of the things that I’m not, apparently. So anytime something goes wrong with Max, it has to be because of me, right? Because I’m the only bad influence in her life. And the Hargroves correct behavior with a couple of slaps. Always have.” Billy cuts off abruptly. “Not that you give a shit.”

But, like, Steve really, really does. It feels like this is the first time he’s seeing Billy. Instead of that pissed off guy who roared into the student parking lot in October and surveyed all of them like they were the absolute pits of the social hierarchy. Instead, Steve is seeing behind Billy’s perpetual disappointed disinterest. Instead, he’s seeing ugly yellow bruises and screaming matches in nicotine stained bedrooms.

“It’s just you and me down here, like, literally. Whatever you want to tell me, go for it. It’s never gonna go anywhere else.”

Billy thumbs at his eyebrow, the one Steve knows has a white scar running through it. “I don’t give a shit when my dad smacks me around from something I did, okay? But I fucking hate taking a hit because Max has fucked up.” Billy fixes Steve with a stare, like he’s waiting for him to argue.

Billy is sharing dark truths with Steve and Steve wants to show that he gets it. That he can be honest with Billy too. So he shares a secret he never told Nancy. Never told Tommy. Always kept locked hidden in his memories, because if he didn’t think about it, then it’s like it didn’t happen, right?

He takes a breath, meets Billy’s eyes. “First time I mouthed off to my dad, I must have been in eighth grade, I think? I’d just gotten my first D in English, first of many because me and books don’t go together. And he was reaming me out for embarrassing him and the Harrington name. I don’t even remember what I said back to him, just some typical teenage little kid bullshit, you know?”

Billy huffs darkly. “Harrington Sr. didn’t take too kindly to that kind of talk?”

“No,” Steve says the word slowly, “no he really didn’t.”

When Steve doesn’t keep going, Billy prods him. “So what happened, pretty boy?”

“My dad was holding a glass of scotch, you know in those heavy glass tumblers?” Steve can see it all so clearly in his mind’s eye, like it was yesterday not years ago.

“Sure,” Billy says softly like he knows where this story is going.

“When he hit me, he was still holding the glass. He probably meant it as a light smack, you know? But with the glass and his knuckles, he cracked me good, right in the cheek. Caught me at the corner of my eye too. My mom started screaming, like real hysterics. My dad dropped the glass, the scotch got all over the carpet, but the glass didn’t break. Then my dad grabs me by the shoulders, keeps yelling about how he never wants to hear me talk to him like that again.”

Steve runs his fingertips from the hinge of his jaw down the sharp line of his cheek. “It hurt in a way that wasn’t real, you know? Because I was more shocked than anything? My dad had never hit me before. Hell, I’d never been hit before, period. Like you might fuck around with the guys in gym or after school, but we didn’t throw punches. We’re the rich kids, right?”

“What did your mom do?” Billy asks. He is sitting up now, curled over his knees like he’s really invested in Steve’s little sad-boy story.

“She just, like, flew at my dad.” Steve bites his bottom lip, shakes his head. “Like, she just fucking lost it. And my mom is the little thing, all bird bones. But she was trying her best to beat my dad up. He had to hold her off. It was wild, I’ve never seen my mom that mad, ever.”

“My mom used to stand up for me too.” Billy distractedly pinches his pendant between his fingers, the one he’s never without. It’s a real miracle he still has it down here. “Did your dad stop? Or did he hit your mom too?”

That’s not even a possibility Steve’s ever thought of before. His dad might be a fucking prick but he would never raise a hand to Steve’s mom. That’s something Steve knows for sure. “No, he backed down right away. Told me he was sorry but that he was disappointed in me. The whole time he was looking at my mom, though. So I knew the apology was for her, not me.”

Billy huffs. “That’s my favorite game. The only apologies I’ve ever heard from my dad are when a girlfriend caught him knocking me around. He was a lot more careful with Susan, didn’t want her catching on or some shit. Maybe because she had Max and my old man was scared that Susan seeing her soon to be husband smacking his own kid would send her running for the hills.”

“That’s fucked,” Steve says. “Your dad sounds like a real piece of work.”

Billy lolls his head in Steve’s direction. “Come on, Harrington. You thought I ended up this charming from having a satisfying homelife?”

“Mostly I just thought it was because you thought you were hot shit,” Steve admits.

“I am hot shit,” Billy corrects, then laughs sharply. “But what about you, King Steve, was that the last time your dad ever hit you?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I got a real apology the next morning when I woke up with this huge purple bruise on my cheek. I couldn’t go to school without my friends asking what happened, so my dad took the day off work. He took me to the golf course with him and it was so fucking surreal. He was being really nice, way nicer than he normally was. Acting all interested in my life and my friends for once. On the ninth hole he took hold of my shoulder and I thought, shit, he waited until we were out in the middle of nowhere so he could do it again. Hit me again.”

“But he didn’t,” Billy interjects.

“No, he didn’t. He got all serious, looked me in the eye and said that hitting me had been a mistake. He said it wouldn’t happen again because that wasn’t the way we were going to handle things in our family. Then he told me I was grounded for two weeks for talking back to him.”

Billy whistles quietly between his teeth. “So that’s how he played it? You act up and he shuts everything down?”

“Exactly. I embarrass my dad and the car keys are gone or my allowance or I’m grounded. It’s not a big deal. Nothing like you - “

Billy flips him off, cutting him off mid-sentence. “Bet it feels like a big deal to you. I’d flip my fucking shit if my dad took away my car. Rather take a slap to the face any fucking day.”

Steve breathes out a laugh of disbelief. “No way, man.”

“Way,” Billy says nonchalantly. “He’s always hit me, since I was kid. But taking my shit away? That’s my shit, you know? It’s the only stuff I have that’s separate from him and his stupid fucking house and his stupid fucking rules. So when he goes for that stuff, that’s when I feel like ripping the world apart.”

Put that way, Steve can see Billy’s point of view. Everything that defines Billy is the way he presents himself. His clothes, his car, his loud music. It’s almost like, if his actual body can’t be his own, all of those other things are what he’s put himself into instead. Things that he can shelter from his dad. And that’s really fucking twisted and makes Steve really fucking sad.

He shrugs out of Billy’s leather jacket before he’s even thought about it. He holds it out to Billy. “Max saved some of your stuff. Things that she knew you cared about. They’re in a box in the back of her closet.”

Billy looks from Steve to the jacket and then down to his sister. Slowly, his fingers close on the worn leather and he brings the jacket to his chest. “That brat really gave a shit about me when I - you know?”

Steve’s eyes trace the wane glow of the basement around them. “It nearly broke her, man. I lied when I said she was doing okay. She’s been a fucking wreck.”

Billy hisses in a breath as he shrugs on his jacket. He gathers Max back toward him and her arm automatically goes around his waist like it did before. “Billy?” she asks tiredly, one eye blinking open.

“Right here, Mad Max,” Billy reassures her.

She sighs and turns so she can nestle her face against his stomach. “You won’t be unhappy, Billy. Not this time, promise,” she says, words slurred with sleep. She bumps her head against him. “Love you, dickface.” A minute later she’s completely out again.

Billy licks his bottom lip as he looks over at Steve. “We don’t say that,” he tells Steve. “And before I got sucked into literal hell I would have sworn I didn’t give a shit about Max beyond her being my obligation because she was legally my family. But when I woke up down here, she was the only thing I cared about. She’s my fucking sister, you know? I love her because she’s mine. Like my leather jacket, my car, my tapes, all that shit. Max is mine too, even if she’s the reason my dad clocked me hard enough to take a chunk out of my eyebrow.”

“What happened?” Steve asks, stomach tight with nerves. He hates hearing about Billy getting hit, hates knowing that it was happening time and time again without any of them knowing or trying to help.

“He found out about Max and Lucas. After the Snowball. Stupid middle school mailed out the pictures from Snowball. The couples’ pictures in front of the dumb balloon arch or whatever the fuck.” Billy rubs his thumb against his scar. “Neil got to them first and called me out to the garage. He kept it real classy. Threw a glass beer bottle at my head. I wasn’t fast enough at ducking.”

“Jesus, fuck, Billy,” Steve gasps. He gives up keeping to his own space and crawls over the mattress, climbs over Billy’s stretched out legs, and settles on Billy’s right side, their shoulders pressed together. “When we get back, let’s drop your dad through the water-gate, huh?”

Billy chokes on a hoarse laugh. “Sounds like a fucking plan, man.”

They lapse into silence. Steve closes his eyes and can only see Billy. But, it’s not the same Billy he saw before. It’s like that art restoration he saw on a field trip to the Chicago Art Institute in middle school. The lady had used some special oil or something and rubbed at the picture and the grim had come off, showing something that was the same but completely different at the same time. It’s like that with Billy. He’s still the same as he was before tonight, but at the same time, Steve sees him in a completely different way.

“So, your mom’s pretty cool, huh?” Billy’s voice breaks through Steve’s distraction and he realizes he must be more tired than he thought because he’s shifted so his head is resting against Billy’s shoulder. But since Billy isn’t shoving him off, Steve doesn’t move.

“Yeah, I mean, she tries her best. But she and my dad are gone a lot. My dad’s a corporate lawyer and he takes my mom with him when he travels. He’s always going to business dinners and meetings and shit. They’re probably home, like, one week a month.” Steve shrugs, his arm rubbing against the smooth fabric of Billy’s reclaimed leather jacket.

“Unreal,” Billy laughs. “Fucking wish my dad was gone that much. He and Susan just disappeared during the day so I was stuck watching Max like her nanny or some shit.”

“I’m sure Max enjoyed that,” Steve comments dryly.

“Considering we only admitted to liking each other after one of us fucking died, no, I don’t think either of us appreciated the enforced together time.”

Steve laughs quietly. “But what about your mom?” Steve asks. “Is she still in California?”

“My mom?” Beside him, Billy shifts and Steve knows he’s touching his pendant again. “My mom was a badass. She always stood up for me against my dad. But my old man isn’t like yours. He didn’t back down when my mom got in his face. He just hit her instead.”

“Shit, Billy, I’m sorry,” Steve says in a rush of horror.

Billy shrugs. “Is what it is, man. I wish I could have protected her from him. Wish it was me standing up to him, not her. But I was a little kid, you know? There was nothing I could do against him. So my mom took the brunt of it until she couldn’t anymore and then she left.”

Steve frowns, nudges the side of Billy’s face with his head. “Left?”

“Yeah, packed up her stuff and made a break for it. She was going to come get me when she got herself settled far enough away that my dad couldn’t follow us. Except it didn’t work out that way. Breast cancer got to her before I ever could.”

“Jesus, Billy,” Steve swears softly.

“We didn’t know until it was too late. I was at the appointment with her when they told her. Gave her two weeks to live. My mom made it three. She was a fighter like that, you know?” There’s pride in Billy’s voice and it fucking wrecks Steve.

“Yeah, man,” he agrees, “your mom sounds awesome.”

“She was,” Billy says.

“Is that hers?” Steve asks. He reaches out and taps Billy’s chest where he knows the pendant is hanging.

Billy nods. “She gave it to me on my fifth birthday. Had it on a chain that fit me. My dad called it pussy jewelry. I didn’t give a fuck. I thought it was rad. It was my first thing away from him, you know?”

Steve hums his agreement. He settles more of his weight against Billy, letting Billy hold them both up. “I’m really fucking gald we found you, man. I didn’t believe Max when she said she knew you were alive. It was batshit, right?”

“Still is,” Billy says with a hollow laugh. He tilts his head so it’s resting against the top of Steve’s. “My watch will go off to let us know it’s safe to go upstairs. Get some sleep, pretty boy.”

Steve closes his eyes. Then he reaches out and folds his hand around Billy’s. “Don’t, like, vanish or anything, okay? It would kill Max.”

“I won’t,” Billy promises, curling his fingers through Steve’s.

Steve falls asleep to the steady rhythm of Billy’s breathing.

“I wrote you a letter.”

Steve shifts, turning his body closer to the source of heat he’s resting against. An arm goes around his shoulders, steadying him.

“Yeah? What’d it say?”

Steve frowns. He’s not talking. Who’s talking? He blinks his eyes open but can’t make much out.

“Sh! You’re gonna wake up Steve,” Max’s voice hisses.

Billy huffs. “Then why don’t you shut up?”

Steve tries to drag himself into being fully awake. Instead, he kind of buries his face against Billy’s neck and spends a second wondering how Billy still manages to smell like Clairol Herbal Essence shampoo. He feels himself fading out again.

“ . . . I just wanted to tell you, if I don’t make it out of this -”

“Of course you’re going to make it out of this, Maxine. Don’t be so fucking stupid.”

“You’re fucking stupid! You’re the one with the actual headstone in Hawkins cemetery! You know these things can literally kill you.”

“Well, I’m not going fucking let that happen to you, am I?”

It’s the undercurrent of Billy’s anger that wakes Steve up. He shifts, starting to straighten up.

“Whisper, asshole! You’re waking Steve up again,” Max whispers viciously.

Steve’s mind races back through what he’s just heard, slotting the pieces into place and coming up hard to the idea that maybe right now isn’t the best time to ‘wake up.’ Not if Max and Billy are finally getting a chance to talk to each other.

And they’ve already been in the Upside Down for way longer than Steve had expected when he first plummeted through the gate after Max. Another fifteen minutes isn’t going to really make a difference. Besides, he’s fairly certain Billy’s watch alarm hasn’t gone off declaring it safe to venture upstairs.

So Steve snuggles himself against Billy, because really, there’s no denying that snuggling is happening right now, and gives a theatrical sleepy snuffle. Just in case they got the idea Steve was waking up.

A few beats of silence lapse before Billy whispers, “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Max. I did not get my insides liquified into black sludge for you to crap out on me now.”

“How are you - you know, not liquified now?” Max asks hesitantly.

Steve is also curious about this. In fact, he’s pretty certain that as soon as they make it back to Hawkins, Dustin is going to be calling for blood tests and MRIs. He’s going to want to know every detail on how Billy survived the Mind Flayer and not because he cares about Billy’s welfare, but for the good of science, because he’s a major league nerd like that.

Against his cheek, Steve feels Billy’s shoulder move up and down in a shrug. “I don’t remember everything. Things went sideways Sunday night. I was driving, hit something I thought was a dog or a deer. And then everything was fucking insane. I saw myself, but not me? I guess it was the Mind Flayer? It was telling me what it wanted me to do. The bad things it wanted me to do.”

A shiver works its way through Billy’s body and Steve presses ever so slightly harder against him. Wanting to offer Billy support without giving away that he’s hearing every word of this private conversation.

“You don’t have to tell me, Billy.” Max’s voice is little more than a gentle breath. “Whatever happened, it wasn’t you and I don’t think it’s your fault, and if you think you need to be forgiven, then I forgive you, and I still love you and -”

“Shut it, twerp,” Billy cuts her off, voice ragged with emotion. “Do you want me to finish or not?”

Max’s silence speaks for her.

“When I woke up on Monday, I thought the whole thing was a fucking nightmare.

It freaked me out, but I also felt like hell. Like I was suffering from the worst flu ever. So I blamed it on that, that I couldn’t remember the night before because I’d been coming down with something that was now kicking my ass. So I got up, pulled my pool whistle over my head, went to work, and watched the last of my sanity swirl down the drain.”

Billy shifts, his left hand coming up to touch his elbow. The movement causes his fingers to brush against Steve’s arm, still layered beneath the flannel, but Steve feels the touch like a brand. It’s like he’s hyper aware of Billy, so tuned into him that nothing else matters right now.

“The sun burned,” Billy continues, his voice sounding distant, like he’s falling into the memory. “Not like a normal sunburn. It turned my skin black. Like the sun was burning a layer of paint off of me and the only thing underneath was a black shell.”

“Billy,” Max whispers plaintively.

Steve feels Billy turn his head to look at his sister. “I remember Karen Wheeler - is she? Did I - ?”

“She’s fine,” Max assures him. “I saw her today. She’s permed her hair into this awful frizz. It’s completely hideous.”

Billy coughs out a soft laugh. “Damn. She was looking so good in that swimsuit.”

“Ew, Billy!” Steve hears the smack of Max’s hand against Billy’s leather jacket.

“I’m glad she’s okay,” Billy says after a moment. “I imagined killing her. I smashed her head against a shelf -”

“You didn’t,” Max interrupts. “She’s fine and making horrible hair choices.”

Steve feels Billy nod ever so slightly, like he’s trying not to disturb Steve. The small kindness leaves him with a pit in his stomach for eavesdropping on this conversation. But if he ‘wakes up’ now, it might stop Billy and it’s clear Billy needs this. So Steve keeps quiet; keeps still.

“What about Heather?” Billy asks. Steve feels Billy take a breath and hold it.

“She - “ Max starts then breaks off.

Billy doesn’t exhale, keeps waiting, and Steve finds himself holding his breath with him.

“It wasn’t your fault, Billy,” Max states firmly.

Billy’s fist hits the mattress. “Fuck. Fuck!” It’s still whispered, still kept quiet enough to try and not wake Steve.

“Will said it was like he was trapped inside of himself. That he knew everything the Mind Flayer knew and was doing or going to do, but he didn’t have any control over himself. He said it felt like he was a puppet whose strings were being pulled.” Max speaks quickly and confidently, like this is a speech she’s had prepared for a while.

Again, it hits Steve that Billy, what happened to him, and his death have been preying on Max’s mind for months. Twisting her away from her friends and pulling her out to a dark sea. It’s clear that as much as Billy needs to hear the truth, Max needs to be the one to tell him.

“I remember Heather asking me,” Billy says slowly. “I remember that she told me to take her to him. It was after Karen, when I was certain I was losing my goddamn mind. I shut myself into one of the showers and the hot water was burning me. Peeling away more of my skin and displaying that sick, black shell. Heather came in. She was probably trying to see if I was okay. But I only remember her turning off the water and then she asked me to take her to him. That’s what she said. Take her to him.”

“But Heather couldn’t have asked to be taken to the Mind Flayer because she didn’t know the Mind Flayer existed.” Max sounds confused and Steve’s with her on that because he doesn’t know what it means that Billy was, like hallucinating while he was Mind Flayed?

“I know that now,” Billy says, “but when it was happening, it made sense because everything felt like double vision. The way I imagined killing Mrs. Wheeler and then getting a flash that I didn’t. I think . . . “ he pauses, then continues, “It was like I was in two places at once. One was real and the other was just in my head. Except, I think the real place was here. The Upside Down.”

“You think you were here?” Max asks, her voice pitched high in surprise. “But how?”

“When the Mind Flayer took me,” Billy says, “I think it actually took me, not just my head. Because there are things I remember, but it’s like I was looking through a window instead of experiencing the moment with my body.”

“Holy shit,” Max whispers.

Steve feels Billy move, then he hears Billy roll up his sleeve. “And if that was really me, the one that was up there in Hawkins, then where are the black marks?”

“You had one on your cheek too,” Max says. “I hated it. I hated seeing you hurt but this was worse because - because it wasn’t right.”

Steve thinks about seeing Billy for the first time at the mall that night. Billy had been a mess. His entire right arm had been a patchwork of black, oil slick marks. They wound around to his back too. But that’s not what Billy looks like now. And Steve gets that wounds heal and everything, but those marks didn’t look like the kind that heal. They looked like the kind that remained. So that would mean that the Billy who died in Hawkins, the one buried in the cemetery is what?

“It’s like the invasion of the pod people,” Max says. “When you first interacted with the Mind Flayer, it, what? Portaled you down here and took over as you up in Hawkins?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Max,” Billy sighs. “I just know sometimes I was the other me. Sometimes I could hear and see the things that were going on. That’s why when that girl, Eleven?”

“El,” Max confirms.

“When El was talking to me, she got through to me, the me stuck here, or whatever. And I don’t know what happened, but it was like I was in control of myself again for the first time in what felt like endless days.”

“You saved us, Billy,” Max tells him. “If you hadn’t fought the Mind Flayer, it would have gotten El and it would have ripped Hawkins apart. But I - “ Max breaks off and Steve hears her swallow hard.

Steve thinks about Max at the graveyard, sitting in front of Billy’s grave with her letter in her hands. He doesn’t know what the letter said. He doesn’t know if Max even has it anymore. He certainly didn’t think to grab it when they ran back to the car. All Steve had cared about was that Max was no longer floating in the fucking sky with her eyes rolled to the back of her head.

“El saw my mom,” Billy says softly when Max doesn’t continue. “That’s what broke through everything. I kept looping this memory of me and my mom at the beach. It was just this one stupid day, but it was the memory I held onto the hardest after she died. And when the Mind Flayer went for people, that’s where I would go, back to that memory, where everything was perfect and safe.”

“I - I tried to bring you back. But I just couldn’t. I didn’t know what to say.” Max’s words spill out in an anxious rush.

“I don’t think anyone could have except El,” Billy tells her. “Because that was the only safe place I had in my own head and she saw it. She made me feel safe for just the split second I needed to understand everything that was going on around me. There’s nothing you could have done, Max.”

“I should have tried!” Max gasps on a hitching sob. “I - I should have pushed you out of the way. I should have thrown myself on you and pushed you to the ground. I should have - “ She can’t keep going, her words lost completely as she breaks down crying.

“Max, stop. Nothing was your fault, okay? None of it,” Billy says, frustrated, no longer keeping his voice whisper quiet.

There’s no point in even pretending the crying and talking wouldn’t wake Steve up even if he was dead to the fucking world. So he stirs carefully and pulls away from the warmth of Billy’s body. “What’s going on?” he asks, feeling like the world’s biggest liar.

“Nothing,” Billy says, using his newly free personal space to drag Max over to him. He wraps his arms around her and tucks her head beneath his chin. “Get us some water? It’s behind the bar.”

Steve nods and crawls out of the chain link cage. He hears Billy shushing Max behind him as he crosses to the bar. He casts a quick glance over everything stock piled on the bar shelves before grabbing three bottles of water and some protein bars that are also piled there.

When he gets back to Max and Billy, Max is curled against her brother’s chest, eyes pinched tight as she works through getting her tears to stop. Steve tosses the protein bars and water bottles toward Billy, then crawls back into the bedroom cage. He settles in against Billy’s left side and runs a hand down Max’s back.

“How are you doing, Maximum Overdrive?” he asks.

Before Max can answer, the alarm on Billy’s watch begins to Beep. “Is it safe now?” Max asks, sniffling back her tears.

Steve looks at Billy as he clicks off his watch alarm. “Yeah, we should be okay to go upstairs now. So what’s the plan, pretty boy?”

Billy doesn’t let them stay upstairs. He lets Steve literally sprint up to his bedroom, grab the walkie-talkie and sprint back to the basement. He lets Max sprint into the kitchen and scavenge some canned fruit to eat for ‘breakfast.’ He lets them do this while he stands with a fire extinguisher aimed at the shielded front door.

“The foam fucks ‘em up,” Billy had explained as he hefted a fire extinguisher from his gunslinger surplus before they headed up the stairs. “Doesn’t kill them or anything, but they freak the fuck out and back off for a couple of minutes. Enough time for us to make an escape.”

Now, securely back in the basement, Steve fiddles with the walkie-talkie’s frequencies. He keeps coming across channels of static.

Billy watches him with a critical eye as he toothpicks out slices of canned pear. “How do you know Henderson even has his walkie-talkie on?”

“The kids never turn them off,” Steve says with a roll of his eyes.

Max carefully investigates the weaponry Billy has amassed. “How have you stayed safe for so long?” she asks, casting a look over her shoulder at Billy.

“Trial and error,” Billy says flatly. Then he sets down his can of pears and yanks up the cuff of his jeans. Around his ankle is a set of flower shaped teeth marks. “And don’t touch any of that shit, Maxine. You blow your hand off or something and your mom is definitely not letting me crash at your shitty trailer.”

Max flips him off, but leaves the weapons to stare at Billy’s ankle. “Dog or Gorgan?”

“Dog.”

Max pokes at it and Billy slaps her hand away. “How much did it hurt?”

“I puked.”

“Sick,” Max appraises. “Worse than when I broke my wrist falling off my board in the Wilson’s empty pool?”

“Worse than when I broke my ankle jumping off of Manuel’s roof,” Billy counters.

Max hisses out a breath between her teeth.

Steve listens half to their conversation and half to the endless static. “Come on, Dustin,” he mutters.

“You don’t think those dipshits will try diving in after you two, right?” Billy asks, leaning back on his palms.

Similar to when they ventured upstairs, Billy has positioned himself at the center as a buffer between Steve and Max and the possibility of Demogorgans and Demodogs. He’s sitting on the floor nearest the door to the basement, his legs splayed wide, a gun and fire extinguisher within easy reach.

Max sits down cross legged near the tips of his boots. She holds her shoe up against Billy’s and makes a face when her shoe looks tiny next to Billy’s boot. “I think I’m the only one crazy enough to dive head first into a gate.”

“Nancy wouldn’t let them,” Steve says, sitting on the edge of the mattress, legs outside of the chain link.

Billy flits his eyes to Steve. “Wow. Big shocker that your cheating ex wouldn’t put her life in danger to rescue yours.”

Steve snaps his attention away from the walkie-talkie and over to Billy. “Fuck off, man.”

Billy holds up his hands innocently before digging his cigarettes from his jacket pocket. “Then I’m wrong and Princess Wheeler will come rappelling down to save us at any moment.”

“We’re saving ourselves, smartass,” Max snaps.

Steve keeps clicking through the channels. Static. Static. More Static. “St - “ Static.

Steve drops the walkie-talkie in surprise. Max perks up, tugging on Billy’s hand to come with her. They crowd Steve further into the bedroom cage with the walkie-talkie in the center.

Steve clicks back to the previous channel. The three of them sit silently, staring at the walkie-talkie hopefully. When nothing happens, Steve picks it up and holds down the talk button. “Dustin? Buddy? It’s me, Steve. Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

“Steve!” Dustin screams through the walkie-talkie.

Steve rocks back at the volume, breaking out into a huge grin. “Holy shit! Dustin, man, it is so good to hear your voice!”

“Max! Is Max there?” Lucas’s voice breaks over Dustin.

Max snatches the walkie-talkie from Steve. “I’m here! Oh my god, chill out, Lucas.”

“They’re alive!” Dustin shrieks.

There’s the sudden clamor of a bunch of people crowding around Dustin, their voices overlapping in an unintelligible babble. Steve is blissed out that his stupid plan worked. He looks up, happy and excited, to see Billy look completely mind blown.

It hits Steve again that Billy’s been in the Upside Down for months. For almost a year without seeing, speaking, or interacting with another person.

“Steve! What the fuck!” Robin shouts from the walkie-talkie, clearly claiming it from Dustin and everyone else. “I am so fucking mad at you! How dare you throw yourself into an underwater abyss without me! Without me, Steve! We are supposed to die on the same day, Stephen. Eighty-three with two cats and two dogs and rocking chairs and -”

“Breathe, Robin,” Nancy instructs, taking over the walkie-talkie. “Steve, where are you? Are you and Max hurt? Are you okay? Are you safe?”

Steve glances over at Billy. “Yeah, we’re safe. But, we’d really rather be in Hawkins than the Upside Down. Do you guys think you could help us with that?”

“We’ve been working on that!” Nancy hurries to say. “There’s a gate in Eddie’s trailer. They’re occurring everywhere Vecna has - “ she hesitates “ - taken someone.”

“Chrissy?” Steve asks, shoulders slumping. He doesn’t want to go where Chrissy died.

Steve liked Chrissy. She was a year below him, just like Robin and Nancy. But they’d had the same math class Steve’s senior year because Chrissy was like a math genius or something. She had helped Steve in class during their Sine, Cosine, and Tangent unit. SOHCAHTOA and all that bullshit. And now, just like Barb, just like Bob Newby, just like Heather, and just like Billy should have been, Chrissy is dead.

“Eddie Munson’s trailer?” Billy asks. He’s talking to Steve, but Steve’s still holding down the talk button, so the Hawkins side of their group hears him.

There’s a hushed silence when Steve belatedly releases the talk button. Then Robin says, “How the fuck is Billy Hargrove’s ghost talking to me right now?”

Max grabs the walkie, angrily informing everyone that, “Billy’s not dead! He got trapped in the Upside Down just like Will and I’m bringing him back with me and if any of you have a problem with that, I will personally gut you like a fish. He’s my piece of shit brother and nobody else gets a say in it, got it?”

Max’s outburst leaves Billy with a smirk, one that tilts up the corners of his eyes and makes him look genuinely happy for the first time ever in Steve’s recollection.

“Metal as fuck,” Eddie praises into the walkie-talkie.

“Munson,” Billy says, taking the walkie-talkie from Max, “did the new Metallica album drop yet?”

“Hell yeah, man!” Eddie enthuses. “It’s fucking sick too! You’re gonna fucking love. Get your ass back here so we can rock the fuck out to it!”

Steve takes the walkie-talkie back before Billy can start insisting Eddie play the tape for him over the walkie-talkie or some bullshit. “So, the plan for us getting back to you guys? We get to Eddie’s trailer and the gate is where?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says with a half-laugh, “about that. It’s kind of, like, in the ceiling?”

Steve blinks slowly because of course it is. “Right. Well, does your place have a ladder or anything?”

“I live in a trailer, Harrington. What is there to reach?”

“People own ladders,” Steve insists. “Lots of people. Most people.”

“Well, I don’t. Sucks to be you.” Eddie laughs again, lighter this time.

“Steve,” Nancy says, “we’ll figure it out from our end. Maybe we can, like lower you a ladder or something. The important part is, do you think you can safely get to Eddie’s trailer?”

Steve glances over at the bar littered with every conceivable weapon. “Yes, I think we’ll be okay.”

“But Max,” Lucas says and the sounds of the others grow distant, like Lucas is walking away from them. “Are you okay? No Vecna visits? You still have your tape player and Kate Bush?”

Max’s hand goes to the headphones circling her neck. “I’ve got them,” she assures. “I’m okay, Lucas, really.”

“Then hurry up and get back here so I can freak out properly, okay?” Lucas entreats.

Max smiles softly. “Yeah, okay, stalker.”

Lucas laughs. “Thanks, Max.”

Billy snatches the walkie-talkie out of Max’s hand. “Stop flirting with my sister, Sinclair. I can literally hear you and it’s nauseating.”

“Billy!” Max shouts, punching her brother hard in the shoulder.

Billy flips her off, still clinging to the walkie-talkie. “Oh Max, I love you so much. I’m so boring without you. I - Fuck! Max!” Billy breaks off as Max grabs his left hand and bites down as hard as she can.

Steve watches it all with dazed bewilderment. Then he calmly reaches over and plucks the walkie-talkie from Billy’s lax hand as Billy pounces on Max and starts wrestling her to the floor. “Yeah. So, like, give us forty minutes to get there? We’ve got to load up on weapons and stuff, then make our way to Eddie’s. Okay?”

“Uhm, yep. Okay,” Nancy says. “Is, uh, everything alright with Max and Billy?”

“They’re fine,” Steve tells her. In front of him, Max is trying to dead leg Billy before he can pinch her in the floating rib. He laughs as Max manages to knee Billy in the kidney and Billy grunts before throwing Max over his shoulder.

“He’s not, you know, Flayed or anything?” Nancy asks, her voice hushed.

“No, he’s good,” Steve attests. “And, like, maybe happy? So that’s pretty unreal.”

“Fuck you, Harrington!” Billy shouts before shoving Max into the bathroom and pulling the door closed on her.

“Uh, I’m gonna go before Max or Billy concuss each other,” Steve says, biting back laughter.

“Come home to me, Stephen!” Robin demands. “I am not taking the bus to high school after I started the year getting dropped off in your car.”

“Tell Billy I’m taking a blood sample!” Dustin adds.

“Master of Puppets, Hargrove!” Eddie shouts. “It fucking rules, man!”

“See you soon, Max,” Lucas says.

“I’ll find a ladder, Steve,” Nancy promises.

“Bye, guys,” Steve says. “I’ll turn the walkie back on in forty minutes, okay? Same channel.”

“Same channel,” Nancy confirms.

And then walkie-talkie goes to static. In the bathroom, Max is pounding on the door and ranting at her brother. Outside the bathroom, Billy is leaning his back against the door, keeping her securely inside. Billy tilts his head, looking down at Steve. “Think she regrets coming to find me yet?”

Steve grins. “I think she’s loving every second of it.”

“I hate you both!” Max screams from behind the bathroom door.

Abruptly Billy steps away and Max comes tumbling out. She’s on her feet in a flash, darting directly at Billy. She jumps up and wraps around him like an octopus.

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” she chants, while holding onto him like she never intends on letting go.

Billy holds her tight against him. “Yeah, back at you, shitbird.” He carries her over to the bar and sets her down on top of it. “Now let’s talk about what we’re going to need to make it to Eddie’s without getting eaten.”

Steve points to the backpack he brought from Max’s trailer. “I’ve got Farrah Fawcett and about three lighters. What have you got?”

Chapter Text

“The main goal is silence, dipshits,” Billy tells them, as he squashes a bike helmet onto Max’s head. The bright pink of the plastic brushes the tops of Max’s headphones. Her cassette player is safely tucked beneath her coat.

Billy tugs on the straps until Max is bitching that it’s too tight and Billy is telling her to ‘suck it up, buttercup.’ Then he helps her slide on a pair of Steve’s mom’s tall winter boots. Steve had rolled a pair of socks into the toe of each boot so they would fit better on Max’s smaller feet.

“Keep quiet, keep to the edges, don’t get seen, don’t get heard, don’t get dead.” Billy says the words with a rhythm that suggests this is a daily, maybe even hourly, mantra for him. He grabs a motorcycle helmet and tosses it at Steve.

Steve grabs it before it can punch him in the stomach. He pulls it on and flips up the visor so he can see. A motorcycle jacket comes sailing at him next. It doesn’t look cool or anything, just padded out and black. He slips it on, the sleeves are too long and run past his fingers, but with his other layers it fits fine.

“Boots,” Billy directs.

Steve dutifully walks over to Billy and kicks through the selection of shoewear from his own home and other unknown sources. He holds up a pair of tall rubber rain boots. “I’m not going to be able to run in these.”

Billy shakes his head, his bangs brush his eyebrows, but the rest of his curls are caught in a bun at the base of his neck. “If you’re knocked off and need to run, it’s probably already too fucking late for you, amigo. But if by some miracle a sprint is going to save you, just kick off the boots and haul ass.”

Steve slips on the rain boots and feels the weird inside foot thing instantly bunch up at his heel. “This sucks.”

Max laughs. “Yeah. We all look stupid as hell. I thought we were going to look badass.”

“Speak for yourselves, nerd herd.” Billy picks up his riot helmet and unwinds his hair from his bun.

Steve would like to say that Billy looks just as stupid as he and Max do. But that would be a lie. Wearing a pair of motorcycle pants, his own leather jacket with a bullet proof vest over it, and the riot helmet with his long curls tangling past his shoulders, Billy looks like an avenging angel, so some shit. Steve has to look away before he does something stupid like compliment Billy on his face.

“Yeah, whatever, Billy. You’re so cool with your new gross beard and Tarzan hair.” Max rolls her eyes and points her flashlight into Billy’s face.

Billy flips her off. “Think I see a new pimple, Maxine. The Upside Down doesn’t seem so great for your pasty complexion.”

Steve fails to suppress a laugh because Billy’s comment is petty and stupid and funny. Max glares at Steve like he’s betrayed her. And like, he probably has because in their trio, Max is supposed to be the one he’s siding with, not Billy. Never Billy.

But maybe that was the old Billy? The one who hated everything and everyone. Maybe with this new Billy -

“Are you fucking coming or what, Harrington?” Billy snaps, slicing through that train of thought. “Get your shit and let’s go.”

Five minutes later, Max is slightly in front of Steve on her bike as they ride down Loch Nora. Max has a fire extinguisher strapped against her like a backpack and she’s holding the nozzle in her right hand aimed straight ahead.

Steve has the walkie-talkie hanging around his neck and probably causing vertebrae damage or something with how heavy it is. He’s also got a fanny pack strapped sideways across his chest with about a dozen or so flares inside of it.

Billy’s the only one with a gun. Well, three guns actually. His fanny pack is holding a gun he assures Steve will work against the Demodogs and at least slow down the Demogorgons. He’s got another two guns in the backpack he’s wearing along with water bottles, jerky, and an assortment of first aid materials.

They’re riding in a slight v-formation. Max at the point, Steve to her left and Billy to right and slightly behind the both of them. They aren’t riding for their lives like Steve and Max had, heading first to Max’s old house and then to Steve’s.

“Keep quiet, keep to the edges, don’t get seen, don’t get heard, don’t get dead.” Billy had repeated as they straddled their bikes. “These fuckers are attracted to noise and movement.”

So they are keeping a sedate pace, hugging the side of the street closest to the houses, farthest from the woods. The trailer park is a fifteen minute drive from Steve’s house which makes it a half hour bike ride with the speed they are going. Steve can feel sweat gathering at the collar of his motorcycle jacket. He’s not hot, he’s scared. Really, really fucking scared.

When they come to the first turn, Max eases her bike to a silent stop ten feet from the intersecting road, just like Billy instructed. She waits while Billy bikes up in front of her. He takes his gun out of his fanny pack and edges forward, carefully eyeing the street in all directions. When he ticks his head to the right, Max gets back in motion and Steve settles in behind her, Billy slides into place alongside him.

They make it down two more streets before the piercing primal screech of a Demogorgon stops Max in her tracks. She breaks hard, the bike tires squealing in protest. Steve’s heart hits a double beat, his eyes snapping left and right, trying to see if they’ve been located.

Billy’s already off his bike, sprinting in front of Max to shield her with his body. He’s got his gun out and aimed. They stand frozen for one minute and then two. Finally, Billy exhales a hissing breath. He tucks the gun back into his fanny pack.

“Jesus, Max,” he whispers furiously, “you can’t fucking do that! You can’t make noise like that or -”

“I know! I’m sorry, Billy,” Max whispers back, just as angry.

Billy ignores her, continuing to lecture, “I don’t fucking care if I die here, but I’m not letting your dumbass -”

“You don’t get to die, jackass!” Max punches him hard in the chest, wobbling on her seat even with her legs spread even on the asphalt beneath the bike.

Billy rocks back, like the hit actually hurt, but Steve knows it’s Max’s vehement refusal to let something happen to Billy that hit him square in the chest.

“How about,” Steve says, joining the whisper-fest, “none of us die and we keep heading for Eddie’s trailer before the Demos find us?”

Billy clocks a look in his direction, tongue running across his bottom lip. Then he grabs Max by the helmet and turns her face up to his. “Anything happens and you better make it back through to Hawkins or I swear to god, Max, I will spend the rest of my afterlife hating you.”

Steve squints because he’s pretty sure Billy would have failed every lesson in being a comforting big brother if that was something they tested you on in high school. Like, honor roll kid or not, and wasn’t that a kick to the nuts when Steve saw Billy’s name on the list in the school newspaper, Billy’s social skills are beyond subpar. A sudden far off growl abruptly reminds Steve to check their surroundings for impending death.

Not that Max and Billy seem to care about that. Max is grabbing Billy by the collar of his leather jacket and yanking his face as close as their helmets will let them get. “You don’t get to die until you teach me how to casper flip with my skateboard. That was the deal, remember? You promised.”

“I promised, like, last night when I was all compromised by you gross fucking crying all over me, Maxine,” Billy complains.

And honestly, it’s almost weirder hearing Billy borderline whine than it is to be in the Upside Down. Steve can’t help but slide a glance in his direction.

Billy catches him looking, because of course he does, and flips Steve off. “Pretty sure I caught you crying too, pretty boy,” he adds with a curl of his lip.

Which is completely fucking untrue. Steve leans over and picks up Billy’s bike by the handle, rolling it along beside him as he pedals over to the siblings. “Looking at your ugly mug had my eyes watering.”

Billy rubs his hand along his jaw, against the dark blonde hair of his beard. Steve really wants to stop staring. “Bet I’m still the best looking dead guy you’ve ever seen.”

“Fuck off,” Steve groans, cheeks suddenly burning. He shoves Billy’s bike at him. “Can we get the hell off this street before we all get eaten? No more hard stops, right, Max?”

She nods with her chin. “It just startled me, is all.”

“Totally understandable,” Steve assures her.

Billy climbs onto his bike and looks to Max. “Let’s go, roadkill.”

Steve catches the blink and you’ll miss it smile that flits across Max’s face. Then she bends low over her handlebars and starts peddling.

Steve’s thinking that they actually have a chance of making it when the shit hits the fan. They’re on Kerley, only about a hundred feet from the trailer park when the branches of the forest trees begin to snap. It reminds Steve horribly of the music from Jaws. The branches snap with increasing frequency and volume as the Demodogs or Demogorgan races toward them in the perpetual twilight of the Upside Down.

“Go, Max, go!” Billy shouts which Steve knows is a really bad sign.

If Billy is willing to break his silence rule, then Billy already thinks they’ve been found out. Max kicks it into top gear, standing tall on the pedals as she takes the right hand turn at a skid into the trailer park.

Steve’s right behind her, choking on the dust the dirt road kicks up. He shoves his left hand into the fanny pack across his chest and grabs hold of one of the flares. At the house, Billy had explained that while the flares won’t hurt the Demos, the sudden brightness and the sparking flame will keep them at bay for the precious few minutes it can take to get somewhere safe.

Craning his neck back, Steve sees Billy holding up his hand. “Light me up, pretty boy!”

Steve tosses the flare to him, Billy catches it one handed and snaps the cap off against the handle bar, then he hurls the suddenly hissing and brilliantly red flare toward the woods. Shrieks and growls erupt from the forest and the Demodogs converge on the flare. Steve can see their gruesome shapes amidst the shadows cast by the flare.

“How much farther?” Steve yells to Max.

“Not far!” Max’s red hair whips behind her like streamers as she rides as fast as she can.

Steve turns back to Billy “What do we do?”

“We gotta get them off us before we get to the trailer. Otherwise we’re fucking fish in a barrel.” Billy throws his leg out and swerves to a stop.

Steve squeezes down hard on the breaks and drops his feet to the dirt road. He hurtles into a hard stop and spins the back of the bike around so he’s facing the woods with Billy. “Another flare?”

Billy shakes his head, gaze never leaving the tree line where the flare burns bright and the Demodogs cry out to one another. “Get Max to the trailer.”

“No fucking way!” Steve says. “Max isn’t leaving here without you, man.”

“Then it’s your job to make her!” Billy steps off his bike and lets it drop to the ground.

“No, nope, not happening!” Steve bikes the short distance to Billy. Casting his bike to the side, Steve steps up behind Billy and starts unzipping his backpack. “You are going with your sister. You are going to make sure she gets back to Hawkins, with you right behind her. There is no room for discussion.”

“That’s not the fucking plan,” Billy argues, trying to twist out of Steve’s reach. “I’ve been living this day in and day out. I know where to shoot these fuckers so they stay down, not dead, but down, and that’s the best I’ve got.”

“Great, tell me how, because it looks like we’re on the clock with those things.” Steve gestures to the woods where the Dogs are beginning to move past the flare.

Billy shoves Steve away with a hand to his chest. “I’m not letting Max die here. So get back on your fucking bike go shove her skinny ass through the gate!”

Steve shakes his head. “You’re not listening, Hargrove. Max isn’t leaving without you. It almost killed her last time. You haven’t seen her, Billy. A piece of her died the day you did. So if you’re serious about wanting to save her now, then give me the fucking gun!”

Billy’s big blue eyes are wide and scared. “They’re going to get you, Harrington! They’re not going to stop, even if you take one or two down, they’re pack animals. There will always be another one coming.”

“I know.” Steve reaches out and rests his hand on the gun. “I know what the risks are. So tell me where to shoot.”

Billy presses the gun into Steve’s hands, the metal still warm from Billy’s palm. “The joints. Where its knees should be. Shoot it there. Even if you just hit the front two, it won’t be able to keep going.” He drops the backpack from his shoulders and unzips it for Steve.

“Got it.” Steve nods. “Now go.”

Billy hesitates, his gaze sweeping frantically over Steve. “Steve, I - “

“Go,” Steve directs. He turns around so he doesn’t have to watch Billy look at him like that. Look at him like he matters to Billy, like Billy cares about him. It’s not real. It’s bullshit. They don’t even know each other.

Behind him, Steve hears Billy start running. In front of him, Steve listens as the Dogs scream and leap past the arcing red light of the flare. Steve drops to one knee, braces the gun with his left hand and aims with his right, one eye shut, just the way Nancy taught him.

They had spent weeks out in the woods behind Steve’s house setting up target practice after the Demogorgan burst through the Byers’ wall. He just didn’t let Nancy know that. Steve had thrilled at Nancy bossing him around, telling him off for holding the gun wrong or breathing out at the wrong time or shooting the wrong target. Unlike school, shooting was more physical than logical, so it was something he had excelled at easily.

Now, as the first Demodog bursts out of the trees with its petal shaped head open, razor sharp teeth white pinpricks against the pink flesh of its mouth, Steve zeroes his focus in on the creature’s knees. He pops off two shots.

One hits and the Dog flips over, landing on its back. Steve aims for the back legs as the Dog attempts to right itself. He gets the left knee, watches the leg snap to the side at jagged angle. “One down,” he murmurs, sliding his attention to the second Dog as it barrels past the first.

At first, Steve thinks he might live through this. It’s a pack of six and Steve manages to take down the first three without them getting closer than twenty-five feet. But he misses the fourth Dog entirely. He switches to the flares, grabbing one and chucking it so it lands and blares to life at the heavy, fleshy paws of the fourth Dog.

It howls scathingly, pacing the barrier of the flare. Steve uses the reprieve to run towards the trailers. He gains another twenty feet of distance before he hears a fifth and sixth Demodog. He drops back to his knee, gun in hand, and aims for the oncoming monsters.

As one of the Dogs leaps through the glow of the flare, Steve shoots. It clips the Dog in the leg, but it doesn’t stop it. Soon, Steve knows he’ll run out of bullets. He takes a breath to steady himself and lets the Dog get into an even stride before taking his next shot. This time, he hits it square in the knee and the Dog falls forward.

Before Steve can aim for another leg, the fifth Dog bounds over its fallen packmate and charges at Steve. “Fuck!” Steve kicks off the godforsaken rain boots, readying himself to run.

He shoots where he knows the Dog will be with its next stride, clipping it in the back leg. Momentum carries the Dog another few feet closer. The distance between Steve and the Dogs is rapidly shrinking, only fifteen feet between them now. The fourth Dog limps up toward its fellow Dog. Behind them, a sixth Dog charges full tilt, smashing its way between the other two injured Dogs.

“Fuck!” Steve scrambles to his feet and takes off sprinting. He knows he can’t out run the Dogs. Billy had said so. But there’s nothing left for him to do now.

It’s close now, so fucking close. Steve can hear its shrill breathing and wet snarls. He doesn’t dare look back, keeps running. And at first, Steve thinks he’s tripped. He’s falling forward, feet still moving while his body jerks to a halt.

Then the sharp bite of teeth sinks past the padding of the motorcycle jacket and stabs viciously into his waist. Steve grunts, too shocked to even cry out. Angling his leg, Steve kicks hard at the Demodog’s head. The beast releases long enough to snap at his foot, but the jacket pulls away with it. Steve skins out of the motorcycle jacket while the Dog’s teeth are still caught in the padded fabric.

There’s this brief, brilliant moment where Steve thinks he’s going to make it. He gets back to his feet and bits of asphalt stab against his heels since he’s only in his socks now. He starts to run, gets two good strides in, can hear the Dog still struggling to free itself from the jacket.

And then he’s hit by a truck. Or at least that’s what it feels like. One of the injured Demodogs smashes into his side, tossing Steve across the road. He lands in a heap near the front yard of one of the trailers, the wind knocked out of him and his shoulder screaming in agony. Before he can so much as roll onto his back, the Dog is there. It goes for blood, petal shaped face biting down over the other Dog’s initial bite.

This time, Steve screams. This time Steve feels hysteria bubble up inside of him. This time, Steve knows he won’t be getting back up.

It’s a blessing, really, when the pain crescendos, another Dog snapping its jaws closed on his other side, and Steve blacks out.

Steve’s first thought is that Dustin is never going to forgive him for dying down here. The second is to wonder how Nancy is going to explain this to his parents. Steve doesn’t want to be another Barb, he doesn’t want to leave his parents wondering forever why their son ran away and if he’s still alive out there somewhere. He hopes Nancy comes up with a good explanation for how he died and why there’s no body.

His third thought is that dying hurts like a bitch. The bites the Demodog took out of his sides feel like they are on fucking fire. Steve can’t help but clutch at the ragged flesh, curled up on the filthy ground, groaning low in his throat. He doesn’t know if he’s trying to apply pressure to the wounds like he was taught in first aid or if he’s just trying to squeeze out the fiery pain that is seemingly eating its way through him.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he whimpers, eyes pinched shut tight. He’s trying to mentally block off the pain, let himself float back into the black void before the burning, jagged ache eats its way into his bloodstream. Or before another Demodog decides to chomp down on him.

When the next Dog clamps down on his shoulder, Steve kicks blindly out even though that’s beyond stupid. If the Dog is biting his shoulder, then it’s nowhere near his feet. But it’s not like he can punch it because he’s too busy holding his body together at his waist. So like, yeah, if he wasn’t dead before, he is now because the Dog is inches from his neck and that’s the next logical place to bite.

“Fuck you,” Steve groans. He digs his fingers into his sides feeling his skin go instantly slicker with blood. “This was my favorite sweater.” Because, yeah, with those jaws and teeth, even if by some miracle he doesn’t die, his yellow J. Crew sweater is fucking toast even beneath all the layers.

The Dog drags him across the ground. The knuckles on Steve’s right hand split open against the hard rocks and gravel beneath him. The back of his head thunks over a bump and even behind his closed eyelids, Steve sees momentary stars.

Then, abruptly, Steve’s whole body experiences a swooping motion, like a dive on a rollercoaster. The stars blaze across his darkened vision and Steve realizes this is the end. The finale. There isn’t going to be a third act for him. He’s going to die down here, eaten by Demodogs, his corpse left to rot as nasty-ass black vines slowly twist through his skeleton and claim him as part of the landscape of the Upside Down.

Steve’s last thought, as his head lolls to the side and he throws up from the pain flaring through his entire body like a wildfire, is weird. He expects to see, like, a flashing montage of his life. Or maybe a collage of the good times with Dustin and Robin highlighted. Perhaps a quick blur of Dustin and Robin mourning him mixed in with Max and Nancy, the people he thinks about the most.

What Steve does not anticipate, in any situation involving his imminent demise, is to picture Billy. To see in photographic bursts Billy dying at Starcourt; Billy shooting hoops at practice; Billy grabbing hold of Max in the basement; Billy driving by in his Camaro; Billy hesitating before running after Max to Eddie’s trailer.

“You’re stupid,” Steve says, words slurring together. He means himself for thinking about Billy as he literally dies, but he also means Billy, for being so typically abrasive and rude by interjecting himself into Steve’s last moments of existence.

“And you make me feel weird,” he tacks on, stretching a hand out as if he can reach into his subconscious and touch the angle of Billy’s jaw. Because his body parts don’t feel attached anymore. The pain in his side has consumed him and left him numb, which he thinks means shock is setting in. His arms feel like floaty noodles that could stretch on forever. He’s not even sure he has legs anymore.

“And I think I maybe like you,” Steve sighs, words a garbled mess. His arm drops down, or maybe detaches completely. It’s impossible to tell.

The image of Billy looking back at him with wide, unsure, ocean blue eyes fades to nothing. And so does Steve.

“Oh my god! He’s dying! Oh my god! What do we do?”

“He’s not dying! Jesus. He just lost a little blood.”

“A little? What are you talking about! He’s soaking through -”

“Shut the fuck up!”

Steve tries really hard to open his eyes to find out who is screaming and to ask them to please fucking stop.

“Steve!”

Something whacks against Steve’s cheek and he gasps out in surprised pain.

“The fuck did you hit him for, Maxine!”

“I don’t know! They do it in the movies all the time, asshole!”

Lifting an arm that feels a lot more like playdough than bone and muscle, Steve tries to touch his cheek. He misses, by a lot, and ends up smashing his palm against his nose instead.

“He’s alive!”

“Stop shrieking! Holy shit!”

“Steve! It’s me! Max! Blink twice if you can understand me.”

“His eyes aren’t even fucking open, genius! How is he going to blink?”

“Oh my god! Shut up!”

A set of warm fingers wraps around Steve’s hand and guides it down to his side. Then those nice warm fingers pull up his eyelid and Steve doesn’t think those fingers are nice at all now.

“Hey, Steve, you in there?”

Everything is fuzzy. But Steve thinks he would recognize that shade of blue anywhere.

“Ow.” He tells the outline with Billy’s eyes.

“He’s alive,” Billy reports.

“Hallelujah! Now let’s get the fuck out of here before something else tries to eat us.”

“How, Max? Harrington can’t even sit up.” Billy’s body shifts and Steve feels his do the same.

Slowly but surely, Billy levers Steve up until Steve’s back is resting against Billy’s chest. Steve lets his head lull forward so he can see how badly his stomach is fucked up. But the damage is concealed by a towel that seems to have been ripped down the middle and used to wrap around him twice.

“I don’t like this fashion statement,” Steve garbles. The pain from his wounds is starting to spike through the haze of having passed out.

Billy secures an arm around Steve’s ribs which keeps Steve from sliding bonelessly back to the floor and -

“Hey!” Steve exclaims, lightning striking him. “We made it!” His voice is shot, all croaky and unattractive, but at least his words aren’t running together anymore. “This is Eddie’s trailer, right?”

“Give the man a prize,” Billy deadpans.

Max crouches down in front of Steve, she peers critically into his eyes, then proceeds to flick him hard in the center of his forehead.

“Ow!” Steve complains, turning his face and burying it against Billy’s shoulder in the hopes that Billy will be enough of a deterrent to keep Max away.

“Max,” Billy chides, but there’s laughter hiding in his voice, “stop fucking with Harrington. He’s half a dog toy right now.”

Careful arms wrap around Steve in a hug. Max’s head bumps up against Steve’s chin.“I would have seriously been so mad at you if you died, you jerkface,” Max mumbles against Steve’s chest.

“How am I not dead?” Steve asks, because he had really been betting on that one.

“My psychotic brother when fucking Rambo and grabbed a fucking axe! It was raining Demodog guts when he carried you fireman style in here,” Max says, sounding both proud and scared.

“Oh.” Steve blinks. Then he lets his head rest against the curve of Billy’s collar bone, blinking bleary eyes up at Billy’s jawline. “Thanks, man. It would really have sucked to die here.”

Behind him, Steve feels Billy’s huff of laughter. “Yeah, whatever, Harrington. Don’t count yourself as alive until we’re back in Hawkins.”

A fair point. Steve squints into the trailer where only their flashlights are providing illumination. “Whoa. That it?” He lifts a shaky hand and points to the red ripple in the far corner of the ceiling.

“It is,” Max agrees, turning to look at it. “And now that you’re not dying, we can get the fuck out of here.” She marches over to the red ripple and picks up the walkie-talkie from the end table near it. “We’re ready for the ladder!”

“Cool.” Steve closes his eyes, gives himself another minute or two of letting Billy hold all of his weight. It feels fucking magical after being chewed on. And after sleeping on Billy’s shoulder last night. And after the seemingly endless weekends spent in the arms of girls whose faces all blend together.

“Hey, pretty boy,” Billy says quietly. “You doing okay?”

“I’m tired,” Steve says. “And you’re warm. Even through the layers.”

Billy’s head turns, his chin presses against Steve’s temple, like he’s looking down at Steve. “You up for climbing a ladder out of here?”

“Have to be,” Steve says. Then he carefully straightens up, feeling the burning pull at his waist where the Demodogs have marked him on either side. “Think my scars will match the one on your leg?” he muses.

Billy stands up and circles around Steve, offering his hands to help Steve shift slowly to his feet. “If they do, I dare you to get a tattoo to match mine too.” He pokes his tongue out with his smirk.

And Steve knows he’s really off-kilter because he’s staring at how the soft bridge of Billy’s nose crinkles when his smile is genuine. A hand that seems disconnected from Steve’s body and brain reaches out and his index finger traces across Billy’s cheeks and nose.

“You’re freckles are gone,” Steve says dumbly, yanking back his hand when he realizes what it's doing.

Billy licks his bottom lip, brows furrowed as he watches Steve. “No UV down here, pretty boy.”

“Right.” Steve bobs his head and tries to feel less stupid.

“Billy!” Max shouts, breaking the weirdness of the moment. Over Billy’s shoulder, Steve sees her jab her finger up at the bottom of a ladder that is being lowered through the red ripple.

Billy hesitates, eyes still locked on Steve. “You’re not going to faint or some shit, right?”

A tired smile quirks the corner of Steve’s mouth. “I’m good.”

Billy gives him a look that screams he doesn’t believe Steve. But with the ladder continuing to creep downward, he doesn’t have any other choice but to leave Steve’s side and go grab it, hauling it the last of the way through.

“Thanks, Munson,” Billy shouts up at the ripple.

Curiosity piqued, Steve shuffles his way over to the ripple. Tilting his head back, Steve looks up. His mouth opens in a surprised ‘o,’ before he’s grinning wide and strong. “Hey, buddy,” Steve says, lifting a hand to wave at Dustin’s wavery, worried face.

“Holy shit, Steve!” Dustin shouts. “I thought you were dead! Max was freaking out -”

“You fucking dingus!” Robin cuts him off, shoving Dustin out of the way so she can look through the tear in reality. “I thought I was going to have to Ellen Ripley myself down there and save you! Oh my god!”

Steve laughs then winces as it pulls painfully at his fucked up sides. “Not my fault the Upside Down is filled with shit that wants to kill anything human that moves.”

Billy pushes Steve’s shoulder, moving him to the side so he can open the ladder directly under the ripple. “Can you hold the chit chat until we’re out of hell?” Billy grouses.

“Right,” Steve says sheepishly. “See you on the other side, Robs?”

She salutes him. “Get your ass back in my dimension, Stevie.”

Billy visibly rolls his eyes. “So, I’m guessing you didn’t get your crown back while I was dead, King Steve? Dorkier than fucking ever is what I’m getting.”

Steve’s careful to let his laughter be only a puff of breath. “Shut up, Hargrove.”

“Uhm, okay, so who are you sending through first?” Nancy asks, appearing in the ripple, replacing Robin.

“Max,” Billy and Steve say in tandem.

Except she doesn’t respond.

Max is leaning up against the back of the counters. Her thick braids hang forward, obscuring her face from Steve’s view. But Steve already knows what he’s going to see when he shoves past Billy and falls to his knees in front of Max. He tips her chin back and feels ice slide through his stomach.

“Fuck! Fuck.” Steve fumbles for Max’s cassette player as Billy crashes down next to him, wrenching Max out of Steve’s grip.

“Max!” Billy is screaming. A terrible aching sound torn from his fucking soul, if Steve had to name it. “Max! Wake up! Wake up, Maxine!” Billy cradling her face in his hands like she’s a porcelain doll.

“Billy, man, there’s nothing we can do! We gotta get this to the right song!” He snaps Max’s headphones over his own ears and slams his thumb down on the play button.

“Running up this hill!” Lucas shouts through the ripple. “That’s her favorite! It’s the first track!”

Steve pushes the stop button then jams down hard on the rewind button. He holds it there as he waits for the stupid tape to rewind all the way back to the beginning. In front of him, Max’s awful milk white eyes stare at nothing.

“Come on, come on,” Steve mutters, left foot anxiously tapping out a frenetic beat.

“Max, please, please, Max. Don’t do this to me,” Billy pleads. Steve hears his words dip into tears and catches their gleam on Billy’s cheeks. “It was supposed to be me, Max. I’m the one who's supposed to die, not you. Not you, Max. Please!”

The tape clicks and the rewind button jolts up against Steve’s thumb. He snaps down on play and rips the headphones off his head. “Here!” He jerks forward and shoves them over Max’s ears.

Before Steve can even guess if the song is getting through, Max surges forward with a heaving breath. She collapses into Billy’s lap, arms instantly curling around his neck.

“She’s back!” Steve shouts over his shoulder to the rest of the group on the other side of the red ripple.

Held safely by Billy, Max buries her face against her brother’s chest. “I’m okay,” she gasps. “I’m okay, Billy. I’m okay. Let’s just - “ she meets Steve’s gaze over Billy’s shoulder. “Let’s get the fuck out of here, okay?”

“Fuck,” Billy groans, holding Max tight. “Fuck. Jesus. You cannot fucking die, you got it, Max?”

She leans back, cups her brother’s face in her small palms. “No dying until we’re both eighty, living in some shitty shack on the beach in SoCal with, like, five cats, promise?”

Billy chokes on a laugh. “Yeah, okay, I promise, Mad Max.”

“I promise too, Billy.” She lets go of his face and tugs at his bun. “Last one up the ladder is a Demogorgon.”

Billy shoves her out of his lap and pushes her toward the ladder. “You’re going up first, brat.”

Steve grabs the base of the ladder to steady it. “Ready?”

Max hoists herself up the first step. “See you on the other side, Ray,” Max says to him.

Steve smiles faintly. “Nice working with you, Dr. Venkman.”

Max bites her bottom lip, looks over at Billy. “Go, Maxine,” Billy instructs, “I’m growing old waiting for you.”

Max laughs, a bright, surprised sound. Then she looks up at the red ripple, and climbs steady toward it.

Steve and Billy watch together as Max tumbles through the other side and drops down onto a mattress. “Trippy,” Steve murmurs.

“You next,” Billy directs.

Steve looks at him with a frown. “Uh, no. You next. You’re the one we came to rescue after all. No fucking point in me making it through if you don’t.”

Billy doesn’t move. “You’re wounded and shit. You go.”

“You’re undead,” Steve argues. “That’s, like, way more dramatic than my cool new side scars.”

“If I go through first, nobody’s going to be here to catch your stupid ass when you faint off this ladder.”

Steve scoffs. “I blacked out from shock - or maybe blood loss - or unknown Demodog diseases. I did not faint.”

“You were lying in a puddle of your own drool,” Billy says with disgust. “You fucking fainted.”

“What -”

“Hey! Doofuses!” Robin shouts, interrupting them. “Get the fuck up here and then you can argue about whose the prettiest pretty princess of them all, okay?”

Inexplicably, Steve blushes. “We weren’t -”

He doesn’t get to finish that sentence either, because a moment later, Billy is grabbing him around the back of the legs and forcing Steve to cling to his shoulders. Billy has maneuvered him into a nonconsensual piggyback ride. Before Steve can protest, Billy is grabbing onto the ladder one handed and hauling them up it together.

At the top of the ladder, Billy stops. “You first, shithead.”

Steve’s grinning as he pushes off of Billy’s shoulders and drops through the gate. He lands with a soft ‘oomph’ on the mattress. “Fuck,” he groans, rolling out of the way as Billy drops through the gate after him.

“Fuck you!” Billy shouts, flipping the gate off with both hands.

“Hargrove!” Eddie cheers, grabbing Billy by the collar of his leather jacket and yanking him to his feet. “My man! Back in the flesh!”

Billy throws out his arms and gives a quick jazz hands. “Can’t keep a good metal head down.”

Eddie throws his head back and howls. Then he tackles Billy in a hug while everyone else looks on in disbelief. It’s a stark reminder that even before his death, Billy was never a part of their world. Upside Down or otherwise.

Sitting on the floor, Steve feels a wave of discomfort pulse through him. He puts it down to the chomp marks on his side. Because it definitely doesn’t have anything to do with Billy and Eddie looking so comfortable together. So in each other’s space without question. With ease, actually, and glee.

Steve looks away and presses a hand to his right side, just above his hip. “Eddie, you got aspirin here? Or something stronger?”

Eddie pulls back from Billy and grins gleefully. “You bet your ass I do, Harrington.”

"So, you're not going to bleed to death, but I can't make any guarantees about rabies. And, seriously, rabies is one of my top fears because as soon as you start showing symptoms it's already too late and I really don't want you to die, Steve, but -"

Robin hasn't stopped rambling frantically since she pinned him to the couch and ripped his shirt off. There had been a terrifying moment where Steve thought seeing him covered in Upside Down grime was somehow doing it for Robin. But then Dustin had swooped in with an ear splitting shriek and doused Steve's chewed up middle in vodka.

"Sanitization!" Dustin had shouted and Robin had dropped to her knees, scrubbing out Steve's wounds with a rag.

Being taken care of had hurt so bad that Steve ended up hurling on the floor just as Eddie came back with some pills guaranteed to make Steve feel 'groovy, man, absolutely high as a fucking kite groovy ' Which was when Nancy had snatched them out of Eddie's hand and stormed toward the bathroom with Eddie chasing pitifully after her.

Currently, dazed and smelling like a shitty frat party, Steve looks balefully down at his wrapped sides. Nancy had practically mummified him with gauze after Dustin and Robin’s vodka bath.

“I don’t really care if I’m high, Nancy,” he calls toward the bathroom. “As long as I stop feeling like I’m being ripped in half.”

Billy emerges from Eddie’s room and shakes a bottle of Advil at Steve, lips curled in a smirk. "I told Munson Little Miss Muffet was going to throw a hissy fit."

Steve blinks dully. "Honestly, as much as I appreciate everyone's shitty as fuck attempts to take care of me, I think I'd really rather be dead."

Max winds her way around Billy, snagging the Advil and popping open the cap. She drops four pills into her hand and offers them to Steve. "Lucas, he needs two glasses of water," she directs.

"On it." Lucas darts for the kitchenette.

Steve takes the pills and the first glass of water that Lucas shoves toward him. Under the critical eye of his two best friends, Max and her boyfriend, Billy, and the background soundtrack of Nancy and Eddie arguing about the ethics of self-medicating, Steve swallows the Advil.

"How you feeling, pretty boy?" Billy asks, tilting his head to the side.

"Like a chew toy," Steve answers, draping his forearm over his eyes. "Can everyone stop staring at me? I feel like a failed science experiment or something."

Billy coughs out rusty laughter. "If anyone here is a science experiment, Harrington, it's me."

At this proclamation, chaos breaks out. Dustin starts peppering Billy with questions about survival in the Upside Down; Robin demands to know what the hell the Upside Down looks like; Lucas tentatively asks how Billy kept his beard trimmed; Nancy, voice anxious and desperate, asks if Billy ever saw anyone else in the Upside Down; Eddie tries to drag Billy back to his room to listen to Master of Puppets; and Max shouts for everyone to shut the fuck up and leave her brother alone.

"I'm not a fucking NPR think piece!" Billy tries to yell through the questions. But it doesn't matter.

It only prompts Dustin to claim any and all rights to Billy's first national interview, which leads to Eddie asking if coming back from the dead would be a rad enough reason to get them free backstage passes to the next Metallica concert.

Grinning tiredly beneath his arm, Steve lets his own exhaustion along with the cacophony of voices and the numbing healing power of the Advil pull him into a blackout sleep.

Someone is tapping his shoulder. It’s really annoying. Steve grunts his displeasure and tries to turn onto his side.

“No! Your sides, Steve!”

Hands clamp on his shoulders and wrench Steve upward and awake. Steve rushes back to the present with Dustin insanely close to his face. Steve lifts a hand and shoves in against Dustin’s face, pushing him back into the realm of appropriate personal space.

“Hey, champ,” Steve says tiredly. His voice sounds all groggy and weird, pretty much how he’s feeling in general right now. He glances down and sees some pink seeping through the gauze Nancy had wrapped tightly around him. “So, am I dying?”

“You’re not dying,” Max snaps, kicking him in the ankle. She’s perched on the arm of the couch, chewing on her thumbnail like she’s pissed at it. “You’re, like, draining ooze or something else disgusting.”

“We changed your bandages while you were sleeping. Or, unconscious, because you didn’t even twitch a muscle, man,” Lucas tells him from where he is sitting on the floor, back pressed up against the couch.

Steve blinks at this information. Then he swings his attention around to find Nancy or Robin. Nancy’s cross legged on the floor with Robin leaning her head on Nancy’s shoulder, eyes falling shut every few seconds. Robin flashes Steve a lazy thumbs up. “Pretty sure it’s not rabies though, so that’s good.”

Nancy brushes her hair behind her ear. “I think your body is processing the toxins in the Demodog bite. Which is a good thing! Just, you know, also gross.”

“Right.” Steve frowns at his apparently oozing wounds. “Do I need stitches or anything?”

Dustin is up in his face again. “They aren’t that deep, the bites, I mean. But there are a lot of them because of the arrangement of the teeth on the Demodog’s petal shaped features. I took pictures,” he adds excitedly. “Eddie has a polaroid camera he let me use.”

“Awesome,” Steve says. He lolls his head to the side and tries to find where Eddie and Billy are. The door to the back room is closed and if Steve really focuses he can hear the sound of music and muffled voices coming from beneath the door. “What time is it?”

Dustin checks his watch. “Twenty-seven minutes after midnight.”

This announcement jolts Robin upright. “Shit! My curfew is midnight!”

There’s a beat where everyone processes this and then breaks up laughing, because curfews during the ongoing apocalypse are such a bizarre worry. Steve doesn’t laugh because he knows that shit is going to hurt, so he settles for being alive and able to listen to his friends laugh instead.

“Uh, I need to get home too, actually. There’s only so long Erica can cover for me and I’m already dreading what she’s going to demand for her silence,” Lucas says morosely.

Max smirks at him. “I love Erica.”

“Max,” Lucas whines. “She’s going to make my life a living hell.”

“But she does it with such sincere enjoyment.” Max grins.

Robin runs harried hands through her hair and looks pleadingly at Steve. “Can you drive me home?”

“I’ll drive you and Lucas home,” Nancy assures. “Can you take the fugitives, Steve?”

“I’m going with Steve,” Dustin pipes up.

“Uh, no,” Nancy corrects, “you’re going with me because you aren’t one of the fugitives and your mother will be looking for you.”

There’s a moment of awkward silence that Steve knows Nancy and Robin are oblivious too. They don’t know Max. They don’t know that her mom gets home so late from her second job that Max rarely even sees her anymore.

“You can have shotgun,” Steve says, nudging Max’s thigh with his foot.

She pulls a face at him. “I want to drive. You’re too drugged out on painkillers and Dustin said Eddie is a terrible driver.”

“I did not!” Dustin hisses, cheeks going bright red with betrayal.

“You did,” Max snaps back, eyes wide and accusing, “multiple times.”

Dustin gasps. “I would never -”

“Man, give it up,” Lucas sighs. “Eddie drives like a bat out of hell and he’s proud of it.”

“Which means I should drive,” Max says, rounding back on Steve.

“No?” Steve’s brow furrows. “You’re fourteen. You’re not driving my car. Billy can drive.”

Max throws her arms up like this is a preposterous suggestion. “That idiot hasn’t driven in, like, a year! And he’s a way worse driver than Eddie, I”m sure. And -”

The back door cracks open and Billy leans around the frame. “You talking shit about me, Maxine?” He glares at her and it’s fucking unbelievable that he even heard her in the first place.

But there’s some kind of sibling telepathy going on because Max glares back at him like she isn’t surprised he heard her at all. “Tell Steve I’m the one who's going to drive us to his place.”

Eddie’s head pops up behind Billy’s. “I can drive,” he offers cheerfully.

“No!” Lucas and Dustin shout at the same time.

Eddie presses his hand over his heart. “Et tu, Brute?”

Nancy sighs in annoyance. “Okay, whatever. You guys figure this out. But I’m taking my half of the delinquents and leaving this very literal crime scene. We’ll meet back up at Steve’s tomorrow at noon, okay?”

It still takes a lot of grumbling and some actual shoving before Robin, Lucas, Dustin, and Nancy are out of the trailer and piled into Nancy’s car. Which leaves Steve still spaced out on the couch listening to three potential car wreckers haggling over who is going to drive the BMW.

“I’m driving,” Billy says and holds his hands out for the keys.

“You got a valid license?” Eddie asks with seemingly genuine interest.

This throws Billy for a second who actually pats his jeans down like he’s expecting to find his wallet in them. And this, of course, makes Steve laugh which then makes him groan, which then starts Max arguing again that she’s the best suited driver among them.

“You don’t even have a fucking license,” Billy yells at Max.

“Fuck you, Billy! You’re legally dead!” she yells back.

“And you’re legally a bitch!”

Billy dives for her. Max shrieks, but she’s grinning when Billy tackles her ankles and takes her to the ground. She grabs a fistful of his hair and pulls. Billy grunts and wrestles her so she’s face down against the carpet.

“Five dollars on Max!” Eddie cheers.

“Fuck you, Munson,” Billy growls, pining Max’s arms over her head and using his free hand to tickle her side.

As Max squeals and giggles, she also gets her foot up and smashes a kick against Billy’s stomach, toppling him off of her with a groan.

Steve shoves a hand down his pants pocket and pulls out his keys. As Max lets out a banshee scream and jumps onto Billy’s back, Steve pitches the keys into Billy’s lap.

Billy snaps up the keys and braces one arm around Max’s back as he stands up. “Alright, shithead, I’ve got the keys and I’ve got you. If you’re lucky, I won’t lock you in the trunk.”

“Asshole!” Max complains, but her arms link around his neck, head resting against his shoulder.

“Shotgun!” Eddie shouts, then turns an apologetic look on Steve. “I mean, I know you’re all wounded and shit, so you can take it, but, like, I’ve been living out of a boat house for a few days so . . .”

Steve pushes himself slowly to his feet. “I want the trunk.”

“Steve!” Max says aghast. “What are you even talking about?”

“I’m not listening to the three of you battle over the cassette player for the whole ride,” he explains, walking stiffly so his sides are kept as still as possible.

“Fuck off,” Billy says. He digs a brand new pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket, clearly a gift from Eddie. Then he snaps his fingers at Eddie who lights one smoke for Billy and one for himself. “You’re in the front seat, Harrington. I’m not getting pulled over by the cops and having them find your dumbass dead in the trunk.”

“Because it’s so much better if they find me dead in the passenger seat?” Steve asks, annoyed that no one has offered him a cigarette.

Dumping Max on the couch, Billy takes a drag from his cigarette, smoke curling through his shiteating grin. “I’ll just explain how my dear buddy Steve Harrington was too drunk to drive so I’m driving him home like the good citizen that I am.”

“Good, undead, citizen,” Steve corrects. He tries to pull open the trailer door but the movement tugs at his sides and he ends up freezing up with a grimace.

Billy scoffs aground his cigarette, and pushes Steve out of the way, hand gentle against the middle of Steve’s back. He yanks open the door but turns to look pointedly at Eddie. “Maxine and Munson, you’re in the backseat. Deal with it or walk.”

“So lame,” Max mutters.

“Come on, Max,” Eddie says, swirling through the open door with all of his usual theatrics. “It’ll be great. We can heckle your brother’s driving from the backseat. Moon some cops, if we’re lucky.” He waggles his eyebrows, tongue between his teeth.

“There will be no mooning in my car!” Steve says hastily.

“Come on, grandpa,” Billy cajoles. “Get your skinny ass out to the car before the neighbors call the cops on me for kidnapping the elderly.”

“Eddie’s older than me,” Steve grumbles nonsensically, feeling kind of unsteady on his feet.

Then Billy’s arm is sliding around his shoulders, guiding him toward the passenger side. Eddie opens the passenger door and bows deeply. “After you, King Steve.”

It’s all bizarre, not remotely how Steve thought anything would go when he first dove through the gate after Max. And it’s infinitely better.

"Holy shit, man!" Eddie crows, waltzing through Steve's front door and throwing his head back to stare all around them. "Your Majesty is right!"

Steve's cheeks burn. "I mean, it's a house."

"It's a mini mansion, Harrington," Billy says, shutting the front door behind him. Max is sticking to his side like glue and Billy has to elbow her away to get some room.

Steve shrugs uncomfortably and shuffles himself toward the stairs. "We've got two showers. One in my parents' ensuite and one in the main bathroom. I'm calling dibs on the ensuite because I got chewed on."

"Billy, you take the other one," Max directs, hands on her hips in a pose Steve recognizes as his own.

Eddie slides on his socks across the front hall tile. "Uh, what about me? I've been on the run and smell like ass so -"

"Billy's been dead for a year," Max says fiercely, rounding on Eddie with sparking eyes. "He gets the first shower, the first dibs on the guest room, the first -"

Billy scoops up his sister, hanging her over his shoulder while she shrieks in surprise. He carries her into the living room and tosses her down on the couch. "They get it, brat. You're glad I'm not worm food. But chill, okay? You're in danger of seriously damaging my rebel without a cause reputation."

Max grabs a couch cushion and throws it at his face. "You don’t even own a car anymore, William. James Dean is infinitely cooler than you.”

Billy lets the pillow hit him and fall harmlessly to the floor. “All I’m hearing is blah, blah, fucking, blah, Maxine.” Steve watches Max bite back her smile. Then Billy chucks the pillow with extreme force at Eddie who's trying to slink up the stairs. "I'm still taking that shower, Munson."

Eddie holds up his hands in defeat and slouches toward the couch. "What am I supposed to change into anyway? Steve, do you even have any clothes for people who didn't stop growing after middle school?"

"Fuck you!" Steve laughs then grimaces, his sides still stinging even with the aspirin. But like, Eddie's not wrong. He's got at least a couple inches on Steve so even if one of Steve's shirts fits him, none of his sweats will.

Not like Billy who's around the same height as Steve. And like, beyond stretching out the shoulders of Steve's T-shirt with his overall bulk, anything Steve has should fit him.

"I've got some half sweats you can borrow," Steve says, chewing on his lip as he thinks. “I cut them at the knees because I use them when I'm cleaning the pool."

Eddie’s grin is bright enough to rival the sun. He bats his lashes at Steve. "A king and a cabana boy?"

Steve makes a face. "Do you have an off button? Or is it just pure Energizer Bunny all the time with you?"

Immediately, Eddie jumps up and starts pantomiming as a marching band drummer. It cracks Max up, which helps Steve find it less annoying. Anything that has Max smiling is a good thing.

There's a sharp pull at Steve's hair. "Fucking ow, Billy," Steve bitches, massaging his brutalized scalp and turning to the perpetrator.

Billy jerks his head toward the stairs. "I'm covered in a year's worth of grime. Mind getting your ass in gear and showing me the shower?"

"Down the hall on your left, can't miss it," Steve snipes back. But he doesn't make a move to go up the stairs himself. Because now that he's looking at them, he's got serious concerns about what climbing the stairs will do to his sides.

It's like Billy reads his thoughts because suddenly he's looping an arm under Steve's shoulders and leaning most of Steve's weight against his side.

"Oh - uh - thanks - I - " Steve fumbles like a moron.

"No rush," Billy says, ignoring him and easing Steve up one step then pausing before easing them up the next. "We've got nowhere to be, pretty boy. We already made it."

The words sink in like rain against Steve's skin. Home. They're really and truly home. "Yeah," he says reverently, "We made it."

Once everyone's showered, Steve and Billy having sat outside the ensuite while Max showered and making her sing the entire time so they know she isn't Vecna'd, and changed into a haphazard assortment of Steve's clothes, Max is drowning in one of his old swim hoodies and had to roll up the waistband of his sorts three times, they all sprawl across the living room furniture.

Eddie waltzes into the living room carrying a huge mixing bowl. “I present, orange noodles.”

“Food!” Max enthuses.

Steve takes his time walking stiffly to the kitchen to bring out bowls for everyone. Eddie grabs a handful of silverware from one of the many open drawers in the kitchen. When Eddie had offered to ‘whip something up’ he had also barred the rest of them from the kitchen. It’s clear he had to look through every cabinet and drawer for what he needed which Steve couldn’t care less about. It’s more use than Steve’s ever shown his kitchen.

Max's freshly washed face is sporting an orange mustache in minutes. For some reason, Eddie is eating his macaroni with chopsticks. Steve is just shoving spoonfuls of the stuff into his mouth. "Fuck, I love real food," he groans.

Billy rolls his eyes. "It's from a box, Harrington, with cheese powder. Cool your jets."

"Fuck you, Billy," Eddie laughs, aiming chopsticks at him. "This is Munson gourmet, you goddamn snob."

Billy flashes a grin at Eddie. It's a quick exchange but it makes Steve's stomach drop. Because they're friends. Real friends. Eddie Munson and Billy Hargrove are the kind of friends who probably have inside jokes. Billy has probably slept on the shitty couch in Eddie's uncle's trailer.

It blindsides Steve in a way he could never have expected. From the rapt attention Max is giving them, Steve thinks she didn't know about this friendship either.

"Thought Munson gourmet pertained to weed only," Billy grins, tongue stabbing between his teeth.

Eddie lashes out, kicking Billy in the thigh. And Steve hadn't realized how close they were sitting. Eddie and Billy on the couch, Max on the carpet next to Billy's knee, and Steve on his knees at the corner of the coffee table.

"I'm multifaceted, asshole," Eddie teases back.

Billy flips him off before kicking his feet up into Eddie's lap. Another casual intimacy that somehow feels like it's stabbing through Steve's newly formed conception of Billy.

"Man, you're such a cat," Eddie laughs, but he doesn't shove Billy away.

Leaned back against the couch, Billy keeps rubbing at his freshly shaved jaw like he's rediscovering the feel of his own skin. For his part, Steve can't help but stare at that newly revealed skin either.

Billy looks more like before now. Baby soft cheeks with a dumb bristly little mustache. His hair is still too long, caught up in a messy bun of wet curls at the back of his neck. His curls drip down and dampen the hem of his borrowed T-shirt.

But the shadows in his ocean blue eyes, the curve of his mouth that even in a smile looks somber, the way his hand reaches out to play with the ends of Max's hair like he's reassuring himself that she's there. It all shows how Billy has changed.

Steve’s gaze slides to Eddie and he finds Eddie cataloging all of the same changes Steve is. If Steve had to guess, he’d say that Eddie is probably cataloging changes Steve wouldn’t even know to look for.

Steve pushes himself up from the coffee table and runs an anxious hand through his hair. “I’m, uh, gonna clean this up.” He gestures to the bowl covered coffee table before he starts gathering them up.

“I’ll help you.” Max jumps to her feet, one hand reaching behind her to run down Billy’s arm. A simple gesture that says I’m here, I’m not going anywhere. A tension Steve didn’t notice relaxes in Billy’s shoulders.

Max carries the other half of the dishes and together they dump them into the sink. Steve takes a second to stare at all of them piled up before turning on the hot water and grabbing the soap. He squirts a couple of lazy z’s of dish soap on the orange coated bowls and utensils.

At this side, Max chews on her bottom lip. She blinks her big blue eyes, so eerily similar to her step-brother’s, up at Steve. Then she steps forward and wraps her arms around Steve, careful of his gauze wrapped sides, burying her face against his chest.

Steve curls around her immediately, holding her close and safe. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong Maximum Overdrive?” he asks, brushing hair behind her ear.

She shakes her head, her nose stabbing into his sternum. “I’m scared. And I’m happy. And I’m tired,” she mumbles against Steve’s shirt.

Steve huffs a laugh. “Yeah, I think I know the feeling.”

Max sighs then pulls herself away. “Thank you, Steve.” She bites her lip again. Squints up at him with all her fourteen year old determination. “Thank you for going to save my brother with me.”

Steve squeezes her shoulders. “Anytime, but, you know, let’s not make a habit of it?”

A lopsided smile lifts the corner of Max’s mouth. “Deal.”

Steve tips his head to the dishes in the sink. “I’ll wash, you dry?”

When Steve and Max rejoin Eddie and Billy in the living room, Billy is pawing through Steve’s VHS collection with a glare. Over his shoulder, he says, “Your movie taste is shit, Harrington.”

Steve rolls his eyes, flopping back on the love seat and kicking his feet up on the side of the coffee table. “I work at a video store, man. I don’t need to buy anything. Whatever I want, I rent for free. So, like, you’re looking at the movie taste of me when the only reason I bought movies was to show them to girls before making a move.”

“Uhm, fucking ew?” Max glowers. She launches a couch pillow at him but Steve easily bats it aside.

“That makes it worse, King Steve,” Billy informs him. He lifts up a VHS and displays it for the others. “Somewhere in Time?”

“Chicks dig Christopher Reeve,” Steve defends.

“Chicks?” Max mouths, aghast.

“I vote for Harrington,” Eddie says. “Like, I’ve never seen it, but the dude plays Superman. That’s gotta count.”

Billy makes a show of rolling his eyes, but he tosses the VHS to the side and grabs a new one. “An Officer and A Gentleman?”

“There are, like, legit sexy scenes in that,” Steve says, pointing at the VHS cover.

“The dude’s wearing a uniform, Bills, of course he’s gonna get all the ladies,” Eddie says.

Steve glances to Billy to see how the nickname lands, but Billy doesn’t look the slightest bit phased. Which means it’s nothing new. It’s a nickname he’s used before, one that Billy is familiar with.

The same weird twist of discomfort shifts through Steve. He tries to push it away by reminding himself he had no reason to ever try and befriend Billy. Billy was the one who cracked a plate over his head. Billy was the one who scared the shit out of Max. Billy was - he was never only that person, that single solitary side of him that Steve ever saw.

He was always more complex and layered than that and Steve is only now getting the chance to see it. And it burns at him, like a flame held too close to the skin. There was always so much more to Billy but Steve never got to see it, never got to know him. Because this town is so damn small and once you know one thing about a person, it informs everything you think about them. And, like, once they crack a plate over your head, you just really don’t feel like extending the hand of friendship.

Billy pitches the VHS on top of the other. “You dating Harrington?” Billy asks Eddie, smirking.

Eddie faints against the couch, jarring Max with his knee. “The King and the Freak? Impossible.”

“You’re a freak because you walk on lunch tables,” Steve says dryly. “That’s fucking gross, man. People eat off those tables.”

“Dustin tell you about that?” Eddie asks, popping up with a wide grin.

“Of course. He tells me about every move you make. Kid thinks you walk on water.” It’s not something that bothers Steve to admit. Dustin’s a nerd. Eddie is King of the nerds. It’s not a title Steve would even want.

“Jesus,” Billy groans, dragging himself over to the couch and sitting down in the space between Max and Eddie. “When are you gonna graduate, man? You have got to get out of this bumfuck town.”

Billy’s thigh presses against Eddie’s and neither of them moves. Eddie loops an arm around the back of the couch, it brushes against Billy’s neck. Max stretches out, propping her legs in Billy’s lap, ankles hanging over his thigh and pushing into Eddie’s space. It presses Eddie and Billy closer together and they both seem fine with it. So perfectly at ease in each other’s personal space.

Steve curls himself around one of the pillows on the love seat and pretends the space around him doesn’t feel empty.

“‘86, my man,” Eddie says, “this is my year.”

Billy gives him a flat stare. “A girl died in your trailer, you’re wanted for murder. Sounds like a bullshit year, Munson.”

Eddie’s easy smile slips away. “Yeah, well.” He clears his throat, fingers plucking at his borrowed sweats like he’s searching for the strings of a guitar.

“We’ll get through this,” Max says, her words soft and hushed, “like we do everything else.”

Billy scoffs, one hand flinging out to point accusingly at the cassette player and headphones occupying the center of the coffee table. “With what? The power of Kate Bush?”

Max bites her lip, darting a glance to Steve. He frowns, releasing the pillow and leaning forward. “What’s up, Max?”

“Before? In the Upside Down, I mean. It wasn’t the music. I - It wasn’t the music that saved me,” she says like it’s a confession.

At her side, Billy straightens up. “What do you mean, Max? We put the headphones on you and you snapped out of it.”

She shakes her head. “I was already coming back when that happened.”

Eddie leans around Billy to ask, “Then what brought you back?”

Max rubs her hands up and down the pair of Steve’s sweats she’s drowning in. “Vecna plays on our guilt, right? On the worst things that have ever happened to us, but that we feel responsible for?”

Steve nods in tandem with Billy and Eddie. He doesn’t know where this is going. He knows what Max’s worst moment is and he doesn’t think that’s changed, even after getting Billy back.

“So what happens when you stop feeling guilty?” She glances up at her brother.

“It was never your fault,” Billy says sharply.

“Wait, wait,” Eddie says, shaking his head. “What isn’t Max’s fault?”

A tense pause fills the living room. Billy scraps his teeth over his bottom lip. Steve watches him, waiting to see how this will go.

Tipping forward, Billy snatches the pack of cigarettes off the coffee table and taps one out. He lights it up before belatedly looking at Steve. “This okay?”

It startles a laugh out of Steve, Billy having the courtesy to ask Steve if he cares about smoking in the house. Steve shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

Billy nods then takes a drag. “You remember that mall fire?” he asks Eddie.

“It doesn’t matter,” Max cuts in before Eddie can answer. “The point is, Billy died in the mall, or at least that’s what everyone thought. But when he died - “ she breaks off, mouth pressing into a harsh line.

Eddie’s big eyes are even larger than normal. He bobs his head slowly. “I feel you,” he tells Max. “Thought, what if this happened? Is there something I could do? Should I? And then it’s too late.”

Max gapes. “How? How do you know?”

Eddie pulls the cigarette from between Billy’s fingers, takes a shaky inhale. “I’m the Freak, remember? That shit isn’t always easy to deal with.”

Steve’s skin crawls. He was one of those people. Eddie is two years older, so Steve wasn’t in the same classes with him until junior year. But he remembers taking turns with Tommy shooting spitballs into Eddie’s long hair. He remembers inviting classmates to parties and being sure Eddie knew he was being skipped over.

“Eddie, man,” Steve rasps out.

Eddie flicks him a look, smile already in place. “Don’t even sweat it, Harrington. You’re helping save my ass now, we’re all good.”

Steve chews on the inside of his cheek, wishes making good with himself was as easy. Eddie stretches forward, handing off the cigarette to Steve. He places it between his teeth before letting his lips press over the shadow of Billy’s and Eddie’s.

“So this time, when you got Vecna’d?” Steve prods once he’s exhaled a trail of smoke.

Max nods, like she’s getting herself back on track. “This time, when Vecna was trying to tear my soul apart, I kept seeing Billy.” She looks at her brother. “I told you all of my worst thoughts. All of the awful shit I’ve been replaying every day since you’ve been gone. And you just - “ Max’s breath hitches.

Billy drags Max onto his lap and shields her with his body. It’s a hug in essence, but it’s more than that. It’s a protective cage. It’s Billy trying to block Max from all of the things that could hurt her, past, present, and future.

“None of it matters, Max,” Billy says fiercely. “It’s you and me, Maxine. You stabbed me with a fucking tranquilizer and I still drove you to the fucking arcade the next weekend, didn’t I?”

Max gives a wet laugh, burying her face against Billy’s neck. “You were being an asshole.”

“Status fucking quo, Max. And you were being a little bitch, just like always.”

“But - but it worked, right?” Eddie asks tentatively, like he wants to respect their moment but he’s dying to know the answer too.

Max wriggles out of Billy’s hold and slides back into her own spot on the couch. She pushes her hair out of her face. “I was there, with Vecna in his version of the Upside Down. It’s not like the one we just came from. It’s red. Everything’s red and Vecna pulls the strings. Like he can make the world how he wants it. So when you try to escape, there’s nowhere to go because he changes things like a house of mirrors.”

“But you did get out,” Steve says. “At the graveyard, you came back.”

“That time, it was like the music and you guys, you ripped a hole into his world. Because it can’t be the Upside Down, not really, right? Because I didn’t go through a portal to get there. And my body was still here in Hawkins. So he can take your conscience to his Upside Down, or your spirit, or whatever.”

“And this time? What pulled you out?” Eddie asks.

She looks at Billy again. “It was like waking up from a dream. I was there with Vecna in his Upside Down, but when I remembered Billy, when I pictured him and what we talked about, it was like I snapped back awake.” She shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”

Billy’s nodding along with his sister. “It’s like a bruise.”

Eddie and Steve look at him for further explanation.

“Say you’ve got a bad bruise, if you keep pressing on it, it’s going to be the same sharp pain until you let off, right? But when the bruise heals, there’s nothing left to press on. You can’t bring the same pain back because the skin has healed.”

“Shit,” Eddie laughs, impressed. “They got college classes down there in the Upside Down?”

Billy smacks him upside the head. “Stupid fuck.”

Eddie grins blindingly. “You’re the professor. You gonna keep me after class for extra lessons?”

Abruptly, Steve stands. “This is good, Max, this is great. We should - we should tell the others. I’ll call Nancy, she’ll pass it on for us. I mean, it’s not like we can solve everyone’s lifelong trauma to protect them from Vecna, but this is something we can work with, right?”

“Does this mean Max doesn’t have to listen to Kate Bush on loop anymore?” Eddie asks. “Because, milady, we have got to introduce you to some better tunes.”

Billy laughs at Max’s hiss of disgust. “Eds, I tried to raise her right, but the brat wouldn’t take to anything I played.”

“Well I wasn’t going to let you know if I liked it,” Max snaps back.

This catches Billy off guard, Steve watches him frown then narrow his gaze at Max. “The fuck?”

“And it’s not like I was going to listen to anything that reminded me of you after - after -” Max cuts herself off.

“Master of Puppets!” Eddie fucking shrieks, jumping off the couch and tripping over the coffee table in his haste to grab Steve by the shoulders. “You’ve got a tape player here, let’s go!”

Steve’s laughing as he pushes Eddie off of him. “Yeah, I do. In my room.”

Eddie takes the stairs two at a time. Billy hangs back, offering his support to Steve so he can make it up the stairs without oozing through his bandages. Max follows behind them, turning off the downstairs lights.

They disband from Steve’s room when Max falls asleep against Billy’s shoulder even with Master of Puppets screaming in the background. Eddie takes the couch downstairs, claiming he’s not fancy enough to stay in a guest room. Billy dumps Max in the guest bed and when her hand flashes out to clamp around his wrist, he asks Steve for a sleeping bag.

Alone in his room, Steve stares up at his dark ceiling. He can’t sleep. He’d popped another set of aspirin after brushing his teeth so his chomped on sides are just a minimal sting rather than a gnawing ache. He’s probably going to have to go to the doctor’s tomorrow to get it checked out. But, like, how he’s going to explain how he got injured and how the doctor is even going to know if something insidious is wrong with him, is way the fuck beyond Steve.

He blinks, settling his hands over the top of his chest. He taps out a steady beat with his index finger. He closes his eyes and sees Billy. Not just Billy. Billy and Eddie. And alone in his room, Steve can finally name the emotion that rises in him when he sees them together. Jealousy.

In general, Steve isn’t a jealous guy. He has no reason to be. He can buy anything he wants, within reason. He can ask out any girl he wants and the answer is hardly ever no. His jealousy only flames to life when someone tries to take something that is his. The same way he was as a kid. If he had a toy and one of the other kids tried to take it, Steve threw a fit.

So he wasn’t really surprised by his reaction to thinking Jonathan and Nancy were sneaking around behind his back. He threw a fit. A fucking big one. One that woke him up. He was an asshole.

But Nancy had been his girlfriend, so Steve could understand why he was jealous of Jonathan being with her. The second time around he’d been jealous too, when Jonathan carried Nancy home on Halloween and she clung to him like he was the only safe haven in a stormy sea. But he hadn’t thrown a fit, had held it in as best as he could. It hadn’t ended up mattering anyway. This time he had been right, Nancy was with Jonathan and this time around, Steve was the one tossed to the side.

Which is all to say, there is no reason for Steve to feel jealous of the easy camaraderie between Eddie and Billy. Eddie certainly isn’t Steve’s friend, he barely even knows the guy. And Billy -

See. That’s the problem. Deep in his secret heart of hearts, Steve has always considered Billy his. Not in a romantic sense. Not in a platonic sense either. No. Billy is his in the way the waves belong to the shore. Billy is a force crashing forward and Steve is supposed to be the ground he breaks on.

Except that has all been in his head. Billy doesn’t need him. Has never needed him. Billy crashed up against him and found Steve lacking. He sought out other places to wash ashore. He found Eddie and probably a bunch of other guys Steve would never hang out with. Billy carved out a life for himself in Hawkins that had nothing to do with Steve and that fucking burns so bright Steve could swear he could see the glow of his jealousy in the night.

Steve rolls over and smushes his face against his pillow. He needs to go to sleep. He needs to shut all this shit down because it’s stupid and he’s stupid. His time in the Upside Down with Billy is nothing compared to the months of friendship Billy has been building up with other people in Hawkins.

When Steve’s bedroom door opens, he assumes it’s Eddie caving to needing a sleeping bag instead of just the afghan blanket. But as the door eases shut, Steve realizes the silhouette isn’t as tall and gangly as Eddie. Steve sits up in the bed, the sheets pooling around his waist.

“Billy, you okay?” he asks.

Billy crosses the bedroom and climbs onto the mattress, crawling over Steve’s legs to sit up against the headboard next to him. “Why is your room plaid?” Billy asks, judgment heavy in his tone.

Steve huffs quietly. “Uh, I don’t know? Because that’s what my parents wallpapered it with when I was a little kid?”

“Fucking lame, man. It’s a goddamn miracle you ever scored in this room.” Billy shakes his head. He’s released his curls from his bun and they sway against his shoulders, sweeping past his collar bone.

“That’s what’s keeping you up at night? My shitty wallpaper?” Steve lolls his head back against the wall and stares openly at Billy. In the darkness, Billy is smooth angles that Steve so badly wants to map.

“You think what Max said is right?” Billy asks, turning to watch Steve just as avidly as Steve is watching him.

“About Vecna?”

Billy nods. “About him using shit you feel guilty for, shit you believe deep down is your fault?”

“Billy,” Steve says firmly, “what happened with the Mind Flayer was not your fault.”

Billy waves him off. “This is gonna sound fucked, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

His words catch Steve off guard. “Oh, uh,” Steve frowns, “then what are you talking about?”

“This,” Billy says.

And then Billy is leaning in, erasing the spare inches between them, and sealing his lips over Steve’s in the gentlest kiss Steve’s ever known.

Steve gasps. He presses forward on instinct, keeps his lips soft and warm against Billy’s.

Billy pulls away, tucks his curls behind his ears. Steve wants to close in after him, keep Billy in his space and in his lungs. He fights back the impulse. “That’s what you feel guilty about?” Steve asks quietly.

Billy scoffs softly. “Yeah, Harrington. This is the Bible Belt. I feel guilty about wanting to kiss a guy.”

“A guy,” Steve repeats, his stomach churning with sudden regret. “Yeah, right, kissing guys is -”

Billy’s fingertips pressing against Steve’s arm stop his words mid sentence. “Not a guy,” Billy confesses, words so soft Steve has to lean in to hear them. “You. Wanting to kiss you, Steve.”

“Me,” Steve says with equal reserve.

“Yeah, you. With your dumb big hair and your dumb big eyes and your dumb big heart that had room for everyone but me.” Billy tilts his head back against the wall and stares up at Steve’s ceiling.

Billy’s confession leaves Steve speechless again, but Billy fills the silence. “I chased after you like a surfer after a beach break. But you didn’t give a shit, man. Closed me out at every turn. So I got mad. Who the fuck were you to say I didn’t matter, you know?”

Steve nods dumbly, listening to their interactions from Billy’s perspective.

“Then that night, jesus, that night was a fucking mess. I was so fucking mad I would have laid you out in a hospital without ever thinking about it. I hated everything that night. I hated Max, I hated Lucas, hated my dad, hated this shitty town, and I really fucking hated you. Standing there in the driveway telling me I didn’t fucking matter, trying to blow me off like I was wasting your time. I wanted to fucking destroy you, make it so you could never forget me.” Billy laughs, self-deprecating and vicious.

Steve’s hand lifts to his hairline, he fingers over the scar Billy gave him. “Mission accomplished,” he says with a hollow laugh.

Billy turns to look at him, sees where Steve’s hand is and covers it with his own. Billy’s thumb caresses over his mark on Steve’s skin. “Nah, it didn’t get your attention like I wanted it to. Made you block me out even more. You acted like I didn’t even exist. I knew it was my reward for making you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” Steve says.

Billy’s hand drops away. “Yeah, well, I’m a bleeding heart now, aren’t I? Died in the mall trying to be the big hero, then you had to save my ass in purgatory. Don’t get hung up on it, Harrington, you’re having a moment of Florence Nightingale syndrome, it’ll fade.”

Steve shifts so he’s cross legged, facing Billy. “Heather ever mention me at the pool?”

He sees Billy’s brow furrow. “Why would she?”

“We used to work together,” Steve explains, “every summer for the past three years. At the Hawkins Public Swimming Pool.”

“Wait, what?” Billy sits up so he’s mirroring Steve’s position. “The fuck were you doing at Scoop’s Ahoy then?”

“The day I went to hand in my application, one I knew would get approved the second it landed on Agatha’s desk, I saw this fucking asshole from school leaning over her desk and handing her his application.” Steve rubs his jaw self consciously. “You were wearing these fucking stupid shorts, teal blue and barely halfway down your thighs.”

“Hated me so much you couldn’t stomach having to spend the summer working with me?” Billy asks, tone dripping acid.

Steve shakes his head. “I was staring at your ass, man. I didn’t know what the fuck to do with that.”

Billy barks out a laugh, bright and sharp. “No shit?”

“No shit. I was fucking furious with you. Standing there, arms buff as hell and all tan already even though it was only the end of May. And you were grinning all cocky, like you just knew you were going to get the job because where else would a beach boy like you spend the summer? I wanted to fucking deck you, man. I was so mad and hassled that I turned around right then, ditched my application in the trash and drove straight to Scoop’s.”

Billy whistles low through his teeth. “I got you all hot and bothered, Steve?”

Steve rolls his eyes dramatically. “Like, yeah, I get that now. But at the time, I was just so fucking pissed at you. So no, I don’t hate you. I think I’m kind of obsessed with you instead. I never thought - I mean, fuck, Billy, you were dead. And now you’re not and -”

Billy leans in, licking the words off of Steve’s tongue. Steve’s hands come up to frame Billy’s smooth jaw. Billy cuffs his hands around Steve’s wrists. They tangle together on the bed, Billy kissing Steve like he has no intention of ever stopping.

They separate to gulp down heated air, but Steve can’t stop petting at Billy’s face. “What the fuck,” he gasps, “I find you in the Upside Down and you’ve grown out a sexy lumberjack beard? What the hell was I supposed to do with that?”

Billy laughs roughly. “You’re so fucking easy, Harrington. How did I not know this?”

“Because you were so busy trying to, like, fucking pants me on the basketball court,” Steve whines. He crawls onto Billy’s lap, relishing in the way Billy can effortlessly support his weight.

Billy hums, eyes closed like he’s imagining the scenario. “Your ass would have been a peach, would of had to take a bite out of it.”

Steve squirms, groaning. “I don’t even know what that means. Stop talking. Keep kissing me.”

Billy cocks his head to the side, blue eyes gleaming in the scant light coming in Steve’s open blinds. “You ever done this before? With a guy?”

Steve shakes his head briskly. “Really thought I was staring down the long barrel of six kids and a family camper.”

“Six kids?” Billy chokes. “What the fuck, man? Who wants six kids?”

Steve doesn’t have an answer for that so he counters Billy’s question with his own. “Have you done this with a guy?” He hesitates then plunges on. “With Eddie?”

Billy throws his head back and laughs deep. “Are you fucking serious?” he asks, meeting Steve’s blush head on. “Eddie’s cool, yeah, but the only guy’s throat I want to shove my tongue down is yours.” He follows this up with tipping Steve back on the bed and prowling over him.

Billy kisses along the line of Steve’s throat, sucks a mean bruise into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, then trails his tongue along Steve’s jaw. Beneath him, Steve shivers and pants. His hands tangle in the mess of curls that Billy clearly hadn’t bothered to brush after his shower.

“Why me?” Steve asks, hips canting up to press against Billy’s. It’s all new and it should probably scare the part of Steve that never realized he wanted anything like this. But it’s Billy and Steve wants to possess every inch of him. He’s melting under the weight of knowing Billy wants to own every inch of him back.

“Because you’re the moon pulling my tides, pretty boy. I play hard in basketball, you push me back. I take a swing, you throw one back. I snap your name, you bite mine back.” Billy nips at the hinge of Steve’s jaw.

“Don’t feel guilty about this,” Steve rushes to say before Billy consumes him in kisses again. “I want this too. It’s the only thing I want, okay? You and me. Max in tow. Just don’t - don’t regret me, okay?”

Billy pulls back, traces Steve’s face with hungry eyes. “Jesus, Steve. You really take the whole ‘go big or go home’ thing to another level, huh?”

Steve flushes in embarrassment, waiting for Billy to say this is a one time thing. An itch he had to scratch.

Instead, Billy bites his jaw, pulling back to say, “I’m not going anywhere. Just climbed my literal way out of hell, didn’t I? Nah, you’re stuck with me and so is Max. We’re gonna beat the shit out this Vecna fuck, then I’m packing you and Max into your ugly ass burgundy BMW and we’re heading for the ocean.”

Steve nods eagerly, knots his fingers in Billy’s curls, pulls him back down so their lips are brushing. “Welcome home, Billy.”