Time travel is real - Zeros83 (2024)

Chapter 1: The naked weirdo

Chapter Text

"There's a weirdo under the pier."

From where he's propped against the wooden parapet, Billy stops letting his gaze float over the people walking by them on the pier and turns to look at Stab. The rest of their group does the same, all keeping their eyes politely away from Stab's busted lip and swollen cheek even as they look at him.

"As if the whole beachfront isn't full of weirdos every day," Jimmy Z. says in a dismissive huff.

Pudge and Lily nod, and she's already back to drawing little black toothy monsters on the green fabric of her shoes. There's a hole in the sole of her right shoe. She said her mom's waiting for her next weekly pay check to buy her a new pair. They've been waiting for the right pay check for two month.

Billy looks away and stomps down the jealous resentment over the fact that at least her mom seems to be the kind of parent that will never stop trying. Unlike his, or some of the parents of the others in their group.

"A different kind of weirdo," he hears Stab insist.

Billy does his best not to snicker when Jimmy F. eyes Stab with all the skepticism a five-foot-nothing kid can muster. Which is a lot, if your name is Jimmy Fernandez.

"Define different," Jimmy F. says.

"I think this one ran from an asylum or something like that."

"Like Roaming Maggie," Jimmy F. is quick to supply.

"No, different! This one doesn't have shit."

"So, like the poncho guy."

"No. He's naked."

"So, like Perv Guy last summer," Lily intervenes without even looking up, and Jimmy F. nods.

"No-ooooh!" Stab is getting closer to the end of his patience. "This one is not approaching anyone."

"Ok, so, like the high lady with the tattoos and the−"

"No, he's not talking to the sirens−"

"Kraken," Pudge says while exhaling a plume of smoke. "The lady with the orange bush said her talking to the kraken was what kept it from eating the pier."

Billy pulls a cig from his own pack as he tunes the diatribe out. There's a good chance they're gonna go on for hours. They've done it before. It's the first weekend of summer break and they still have fuck all to do: inane chatter is perfect for them to waste time but not money.

He likes when it's like this. When they can just sit around, or swim, or talk about shit that doesn't really matter. He likes when they can forget life is shit, parents are a mess, school's a drag, and the future is on fire. Nothing better than to let his friends' words wash over him and make the world seem a little less fucked.

He has just finished his cigarette, making sure to smoke every last bit of it, when he registers what Stab's saying:

"I bet Billy wouldn't."

"I wouldn't what?"

"Find the balls to go and talk to the weirdo under the pier."

Billy scratches his side, making extra sure his fingers stay away from the latest bruise blooming just under his waistband, and levels a bored gaze on his friend. Who is giving him his most innocent, gap-toothed smile.

"Why would I go talk to the naked weirdo in the first place, when you, amigo, are the one who's spent the last ten minutes blabbing about him? If you need to talk to that guy so much, go do it yourself. The fuck do you want from me?"

"I dunno, maybe, since last time you chickened out, I think you need to prove you're not a little pussy."

Billy's almost at Stab's throat before he can even register what he's doing. The sudden burst of anger burning behind his eyes hisses in Neil's voice. It is bright enough to incinerate everything on its path, even how much Billy loves that battered idiot.

Lucky them, Billy finds himself squished into Pudge's arms, his friend pulling him back and with his feet off the ground like he doesn't weight a thing.

"What did you just say?!" Billy screams, wriggling and struggling to get free, eyes trying to burn a hole into Stab's face. He's distantly aware of his friends laughing and a few passers-by shooting him weirded out looks, but he doesn't care.

"I said that−"

Jimmy Z. cuffs Stab in the back of the head, hard. "Stop that shit, dude! Now!"

"Okay, okay!" Stab rolls his eyes like he's been asked to do something terribly bothersome and Billy really, really wants to bother him with a knee to the nuts. But he's still prisoner.

Why does Pudge have to be taller and stronger than him like this? They're only one year apart! It's fucking unfair!

Stab lets out a long raspberry followed by another tiny, "Okay, fine!", and Pudge asks:

"Are you gonna be good, brochacho?"

"Of course I'm gonna be good!" Billy answers with his toothiest, widest grin, and fuck, Pudge knows him too well, because he lets him on the ground again, but keeps a hand firmly clasped on Billy's shoulder.

"You're a jerk, you know, Stab?" Lily says in the tone of someone talking about the weather.

"Of course I know that! And you, each and every one of you," Stab says, swiping his forefinger at them, "love me for it!"

There's a chorus of 'fuck you' and raised middle fingers that only makes Stab laugh with glee. Billy raises both middle fingers. He'd show him even more middle fingers, if only he had them.

"I think this settles exactly how much we love you," Jimmy F. says, and kicks Stab's leg.

Lily snickers and wiggles her fingers inside her shoe to make the little monsters bounce and dance on the fabric. "We just keep you around to be the..." She looks up with a frown. "What's the term again, Z.?"

"Comic relief."

"Fuck you, I'm not the comic relief!" Stab protests, and in a moment, they're all busy discussing whether Stab is a comic relief, an antihero, a sidekick, or just a garden variety pest. Billy is the leader of team pest and Stab grins at him while flipping him the bird.

Later, when the heat becomes too stifling, they go have a swim while Pudge and Lily keep an eye on their stuff, and then they're back on the sand. The sun is beating down on them like an angry parent, but after the cold water it feels nice. Billy can almost feel his skin crackle with the salt water drying on it. It's a good feeling that of course gets fucked over when Stab goes at it again.

"Okay, then," the idiot says, all of a sudden, loud enough to drown what Lily was telling Billy about stick and poke tats. "Five dollars say none of you has enough courage to go under the pier and talk with the weirdo."

Jimmy F. makes to say something, but Stab adds:

"For five whole minutes. Timed."

"We don't even know if he's still there," Lily says.

"He is."

"Or if you even have five dollars," Pudge adds.

"How dare you, sir! I totally have them! Here!"

They watch as Stab scampers to the messy pile of stuff that are his clothes and shoes. He rummages in it until he pulls out a bundle of blue and white fabric tied closed by twine. When he shakes it, it tinkles like coins.

Billy wants to ask why the fuck he's keeping his money in that thing, but the truth is he knows exactly why. Yesterday, some fuckface from another neighborhood punched Stab in the face and stole his wallet, while Stab was on his way to Billy's place. Mr. Loman's answer was to hand his teenage son a kiddie wallet with Smurfs on it and tell him to man up.

How the fuck are you even supposed to 'man up' when you have to use a Smurfs wallet?!

Stab's been angry and stewing over it since yesterday, but it seems he's decided to move past that and straight into the place where he bets against his friends.

Billy casts a quick glance to the darkness under the pier and allows himself a couple of seconds to weigh the situation.

His options.

"I'll do it," he says standing up.

Stab gives him a tight little look that would make Billy bristle if he were a different person. But they know each other well enough that there's no way Stab is gonna say the shit he's thinking, the hurtful one, even if it's the absolute truth.

"Oh, I need to see this!" Pudge exclaims, and jumps to his feet to slap a hand on Billy's shoulder. Hard enough to make his teeth chatter. "I'll spot you the five, 'kay, brochacho?"

Billy nods and dares Stab to protest. His friend just grins in spite of the busted lip.

They all know Billy won't have more than a couple of quarters until he starts working at the grocery store and gets paid.

What comes next are at least twenty minutes of setting up the rules of the bet, because Billy's friends love to nitpick, and holy shit!, Jimmy F. should really be on the debate team!

Billy shoots one last middle finger to his friends, who are staying at a respectable, safe, not-at-all-scared distance from the darkness of the pier, and heads under it.

He takes a moment or two to let his eyes adjust to the penumbra, after coming in from the blinding glare of the sand on a sunny day, and then he gazes around.

It's a shithole, under the pier, and it smells equally as bad, despite the ocean brine.

There's an area that the water only reaches during storms, where a couple of the homeless people who frequent the beach keep their 'houses'. There are boulders with garbage piled around their bases by the waves and the tide, and also all the trash that the junkies leave behind when they come to shoot something up a vein away from prying eyes.

The naked weirdo is white. He's sitting on one of the boulders, left side to the direction Billy's coming from, knees pulled up against his chest, one arm around his shins, face hidden in the crook of the other. He has dark hair and a lot of moles, but there's nothing else remarkable that Billy can see, thanks to how bundled up on himself the guy is.

Billy's glad that his shoes are new-ish, with still decent soles that have a chance of lessening the risk of impaling his feet on a discarded needle. Still, he walks cautiously, sticking to where he can see the sand and be a bit surer that he's not stepping on someone's literal shit, or a syringe.

He stops fifteen or so feet from the man and looks back. His friends are motioning for him to... Well. There are upturned thumbs and also hands gesturing for him to go on, but Jimmy Z. is shaking his head no and using both hands to signal 'come back'.

Very encouraging.

He steps a little closer to the naked weirdo, just because otherwise they won't be able to hear each other.

Why is he doing this, again? Ah, yeah. Dinner.

"Hey!"

No answer. Not even a movement.

"Hey, naked dude! I'm talking to you!"

The guy raises his head and turns it Billy's way, but keeps a hand on his eyes. One point in favor of stoned out of his gourd. Billy really hopes for his own safety that it's on something like LSD or shrooms. Something that won't make the weirdo pivot into the dangerous category on a hairpin.

"Leave me alone, kid," the guy says. His voice is low. Scratchy. Like the voice of someone who smoked a lot of cigarettes, or just shouted for hours. For some reason, Billy thinks it fits the weirdo.

And also, hooray, an answer!

"Talk to me for a while, dude, and then I'll let you go back to communing with the universe or whatever you're doing here."

The naked man groans.

"Come on, amigo," Billy insists, and watches the weirdo's mouth contort in a grimace.

"Did your parents really never teach you about stranger danger?" the weirdo asks. "Never? Ever?"

Billy huffs through his nose and lets himself grin, hard and angry. "No, but they taught me that it's the people you know who hurt you the most."

"That's bleak. And fucked."

"Yeah," Billy agrees. His voice has the cheery tone it slips into when he's lying to reassure people that everything's fine.

The weirdo sighs and makes to move his hand away from his eyes, but seems to immediately change his mind. After a moment, he says:

"Not to be rude, kid, but next time there's a naked guy sitting all alone in a shitty place like this, maybe steer away, uh? Just to be on the safe side of things."

"Relax, dude! I'm just here for a bet, otherwise I would never have set foot in your creepy vicinity."

"A bet."

"Yeah. I talk with you for five minutes, my friend gives me five dollars."

"Wow, am I worth that little?"

"Dude, if you're so ready to spit on five dollars, just tell me where you put your wallet and I'll liberate a few banknotes from it!" Billy waggles his eyebrows even if he knows the weirdo won't see. It's part of the performance. It needs commitment.

The weirdo laughs. The kind of wet, crinkly laughter that Billy was not exactly expecting.

"Fuck," the naked man says, "I'd pay to know where it is, honestly."

"Are you that high?" Billy asks, enough disbelief in his voice that the weirdo laughs again, more broken than before.

"I really, really hope I'm just high as all fucks and having the worst trip ever, because if this is really happening—"

"It is."

"Then, please, kid, leave me alone. I have the worst migraine of my life, I lost my glasses and the rest of my stuff, and I'm in the middle of a fucking existential crisis. I don't need a mouthy twelve-year-old to also bust my balls."

"Fuck you, I'm not twelve!"

Even with his eyes covered by a hand, it's clear that the weirdo's expression right now is one of pure condescension. "Sure, says the squeaky twelve-year-old—"

"My voice is still dropping, fuck you very much. You talk big for a fucker who can't even keep his eyes open!"

"And you talk big for a kid with the voice of a male soprano. Are we done with this? Have you won your fucking fiver already?"

Billy chances a glance back and yeah, everyone is motioning for him to come back, Lily is even jumping up and down while waving her arms.

"Yeah, I have. Have fun with your existential crisis, and fuck you, dude."

"Fuck you too," the weirdo mutters, and bend his head to hide it behind both forearms.

Billy leaves at a swift-but-not-too-swift pace. He can't let the others know how glad he is to leave the shadow under the pier.

Stab reluctantly gives him enough coins to amount to five dollars and the others ask what the weirdo was like.

Billy shrugs and tells them a little about the conversation he had, and soon they're trying to determine which drug the naked weirdo was on. It's way more fun than Billy expected.

***

One by one, the others head to their respective homes and Billy stays behind on the beach. The sun is still up and he has no desire to head back. He knows what waits for him there. He'd rather wander around all evening and night, and catch some sleep tomorrow morning, after Neil is already off to work and before he needs to get in at the corner shop.

He wanders up and down the beach front, nodding to the people he knows, doing his fucking best to look like everything's fine and nobody needs to give a fuck about a fourteen-year-old roaming alone at this time of day. People usually don't care, but there's the occasional outlier. Or the creepo who might be looking for someone to creep on.

He and the guys have all developed an eye for those.

The naked weirdo is still under the pier. From afar, it looks like he didn't move an inch from the position he was in before.

It's lighter under there, now, with the sun being lower and all. Billy walks with more purpose than before and calls:

"Hey, weirdo! Existential crisis still going strong?"

Not even the thunderous crashing of the waves and the distance can mask the guy's loud groan. Billy watches him whip his head back in what is clear exasperation. The weirdo's not looking up at the heavens only because he's still keeping his eyes shut.

"The fuck do you want now?" the weirdo asks. "Do you have another bet to win?"

"No, my friends went home."

"Then what are you doing here?!"

"I'm just curious. Bored, really."

The guy says something low that Billy couldn't possibly be expected to catch, then, louder:

"Get lost, kid. Go home, or take a swim, or get eaten by a shark, I don't care, just leave me alone."

"It's a free country."

"And you absolutely need to haunt this shitty corner of it?"

"Then why are you haunting it, if you don't like it?"

The weirdo rubs both hands on his face. "Because, if you didn't notice, I'm fucking naked like the day I was born! I have enough on my plate without being arrested for public indecency."

Fair.

"You really don't know where you put your clothes."

"Not a single fucking idea."

"Man, you're fucked."

The weirdo barks out a laugh that is all but joyful. "You can't even start to imagine how fucked I am, kid."

Billy rocks on the balls of his feet as he silently weighs his options. He steps a little closer and asks:

"What would you pay for a pair of pants?"

"Are you fucking serious?!" the weirdo shouts, so angry that for a moment he even lowers his hand and tries to glower at Billy. It's ruined by how quickly he winces and covers his eyes back.

"Dead serious."

The man takes a deep breath, wide shoulders rising and lowering, then he rubs a hand on his face and hair once again, while sighing loud enough that Billy hears him despite the noise.

"What was that quote?" the man asks. "The one with the reign and the horse?"

"My kingdom for a horse?" Billy snickers. The weirdo doesn't seem to notice his mocking tone and just snaps his fingers and points in Billy's general vicinity.

"That."

"Yeah, sorry, dude, but I prefer money to fictional kingdoms."

The weirdo makes a face. "Then I'm exactly as fucked as before. Thanks for the attempted extortion, kid, it was fun while it lasted."

"Hey, it was not extortion!"

"You're right, you were being absolutely selfless and generous there, my bad."

Billy shakes his head and leaves the weirdo there, on his fucking boulder, surrounded by garbage and shit.

See if he cares.

***

"God, these things are tight," the not-so-naked-anymore weirdo says while pulling at the shorts for the millionth time.

"My bad, I should have asked Roscoe Bean for a bigger size! What was I thinking, accepting the only pants he was willing to give me!"

Where willing to give is code for willing to trade for actual money. Two shiny quarters for a pair of green shorts that are way too short and tight for the weirdo's legs, but at least the guy is not flashing his whole ass and junk to everyone anymore. Only what can't be contained in the little amount of fabric available.

Generous as fuck. That's what Billy is. Fuck you, weirdo!

"Sorry, sorry," the guy says, squinting. "I know that it sounds like I'm being ungrateful, kid. It's just, you know, difficult to appreciate pants that are trying to squeeze your dick and balls out of existence."

Billy flips him the bird. He's pretty sure the guy doesn't notice. He's been following Billy along the beach like a lost puppy, squinting at everything worse than that time Rob Charles 'accidentally' stepped on Jimmy Z. glasses in third grade and Z. couldn't see shit if it hit him in the face. The weirdo must have a hell of an eyesight.

The up side of it is that Billy doesn't have to wonder if he will get caught staring too much at his scars.

The down side is that Billy stares at his scars way too much.

It looks like the weirdo was in some kind of freakishly bad accident. There's a big scar on his right bicep like some giant scissors tried to cut it off, and his belly is a mess of ridges and valleys made of scar tissue, with whorls of stitches punctuating it all. Some of that damage climbs up to his pecs, leaving bare patches where his chest would otherwise be covered by so much fucking chest hair that it's a bit wild.

"You're always free to give them back," Billy says with a shrug, looking away from the scars for the millionth time.

"Yeah, yeah, the homeless dude will be thrilled to have them back, right?"

"I see you're starting to understand how the world works."

The weirdo rakes a hand through his hair and makes another of his faces like he can't believe what he has to endure, but all he says is:

"Where are we going?"

"We are going nowhere, amigo. I am going to buy myself dinner." Billy helpfully points to the little food cart selling hot dogs that's sitting a hundred feet or so in front of them. Probably too far away for the weirdo.

"Oh, god, don't talk about food, please."

"Why?" Billy says with a wide smile. "Hot dogs are great. I love mine with a lot of ketchup and mustard, but this cart has pickled jalapenos you can add too. So good."

The weirdo is grimacing and looks paler than before.

"This late in the day," Billy goes on without faltering, while the weirdo flips him off and starts walking away, in the direction of the water line, "Pedro lowers the prices to get rid of everything that's left, so I think I will get two, maybe three!"

The weirdo keeps walking and Billy shouts:

"Are you sure you don't want one? They have fried onions too!"

The weirdo lifts a hand high up, middle finger stretched to the sky, and Billy laughs. He's still chuckling to himself when he reaches Pedro's food cart.

***

"You smell like onions and mustard."

"And you smell like shit," Billy replies without missing a beat, as he lowers himself to the sand, a few feet to the side of the guy.

The weirdo is squinting at the setting sun, feet buried under the sand, and Billy has too many questions and, he knows, not enough tact to ask them the right way.

"I thought you'd have mooched some coins from someone and found a payphone to call for help by now."

The weirdo shrugs. "I probably would have thought of that, if, you know, there wasn't a new atomic bomb going on inside my skull every second."

Billy pulls out his cigarettes and lights the last one he's gonna allow himself for today. On the first exhale, he says:

"Sounds fun."

"Yeah, and I'm also seeing all these swirls of color that make everything worse."

"That's the LSD still talking."

"Nah. Never tried it."

Billy shrugs and takes another drag.

"Friend spiked your other drugs with it?" he tries again. "I won't judge, man."

"First of all, I would judge. Second, none of my friends would do that shit. Ever."

Billy ashes his cig.

"That's good."

"Why aren't you home, kid?"

"Why were you naked under a pier, high as a kite, old man?"

The weirdo rubs a hand through his hair and down on his face for the millionth time. He has a lot of hair. A lot of frustration too.

"Because the world is more fucked up than you know," he says, when Billy already thinks he's finally managed to silence his stupid questions that hurt too much. "And sometimes the rules of physics don't matter."

"Less drugs, man. They're clearly fucking with your head."

The weirdo huffs a little laugh. "Thanks, kid, I'll keep that in mind."

Billy shrugs. "You're welcome. I'm wise like that."

"Sure. Spending your time with a stranger you think is high is exactly what a wise man would do."

"You're fucked up in the head. I'm fucked up in other ways. Soon I'll ditch you and you'll never see me again and I'll forget I ever met a naked creepo under the pier, so, you know, who cares. Carpe diem and all that."

"And all that," the weirdo repeats, sounding so fucking tired.

"Come on, man, don't be boring when you could be moderately memorable."

The weirdo chuckles and lets himself fall back to lie on the sand. Billy sneaks a glance and finds he has his eyes closed once again.

"You sure you don't want me to find you a shirt?"

"I already owe you for these torture tools," the weirdo says, pulling at the lower hem of a pant leg and trying to loosen it from where it's probably digging painfully into his thigh.

It's a nice thigh. Billy's been trying not to look at it and its twin too much, but it's going the same as the whole scars thing. Or the chest hair thing. Or the lips thing.

"Also," the weirdo says, pulling Billy away from his list of things he shouldn't be staring at, "I hate the cold, so it's good."

"Dude, that's the least comprehensible thing you've said so far, and you've said a lot of weird shit today."

"Trust me, be glad it doesn't make sense. The day you start loving the cold is the day you're fucked."

"Okay, if you say so!"

"Where are we, right now?" the guy asks after a pause long enough that Billy has finished his cig and let the filter fall on the sand. Not the weirdest question possible. He was expecting something worse, honestly.

"San Diego. California."

"Fuck."

"Dude, how far from home are you?" he asks, unable to keep the mirth out of his voice.

"Far enough that even if I had already called someone on that mystical payphone hours ago, by now they would still be hours and hours away from here."

"That far?"

The weirdo nods, right hand idly following the scar tissue that mars his left flank and reaches up to his ribcage. It looks like a self-soothing motion. Like when Pudge is worried as fuck and starts toying with the beads of his bracelet or the hem of someone's shirt.

"Sometimes, I wish I could be that far from−" Billy stops and frowns. He digs the toe of a shoe in the sand, working on covering the cigarette butt more and more. "No, I wish my father could be that far away from me, so he can never touch me again." He'd swear the weirdo lets out a little fuck!, but he barrels on. If he keeps on talking, the man won't have space to say shit. "I wish he left me here and went somewhere else. Just gone, him and his girlfriend and that fucking little kid."

"Annoying sibling?"

"No, the girlfriend's daughter. Clingy, whiney baby."

"Ah," the weirdo says, then: "That shitty, huh?"

Billy nods even if the weirdo probably still has his eyes closed.

The sun is sinking in the ocean and everything looks orange and purple. It's pretty as fuck. Billy loves it but can't say it out loud.

The last stubborn surfers are headed to the shore. He would love to surf again, but he'd have to buy a new board, first, and find a place to stash it close to the beach. Somewhere that Neil can't find so he won't break it too. Too much hassle, right now. But maybe, with time…

Billy averts his eyes and watches the weirdo wiggle his feet in the breeze, hand still following the puckers of scar tissues and the valleys of his ribcage.

"What does an existential crisis feel like?" Billy asks.

"This one?"

He frowns. "Dude, how many existential crises have you had already?! You're thirty, not eighty!"

"Hey, I'm not thirty!" the weirdo almost shouts, outraged as fuck.

"Forty. Same thing."

Suddenly, there's a hand on his arm, pushing him away hard enough that Billy topples to the side, laughing as he falls.

"Fuck you, kid! God, I get no respect ever from you little shits!" the weirdo says, but despite his words and tone, he's smiling.

Billy rights himself while laughing and dusts the sand off from his skin. "Could be because of words like little shits, but I might be wrong."

"Yeah, yeah, you're so fucking wise," the man sing-songs back.

"So?"

The weirdo takes another one of his long pauses before he says:

"This one, this feels like opening your bedroom door and realizing that your best friend has always been right, it's painted green, not white like you thought, it's never been any other color but green. I'm not literally talking about paint, of course, but, you know..."

"Metaphorically."

"Mh."

"And the other ones?"

"Classified."

Billy laughs at that. At how quickly and surely the weirdo said it. At how practiced it sounds.

"I won't tell anybody."

"Nope."

"Come on, amigo. We're friends, by now."

"No."

"Pals."

"As if."

"Practically best bros."

"God, do you ever shut up?"

"Never. Did that count as a yes?"

"It's still a nope."

"Come. On! We'll never meet again, as we established! Whatever the secret, it will be safe with me."

"I've already told you enough shit and I don't even− We don't know each other, kid. You don't get to pry, sorry, and that's my definitive answer."

"I'm Billy," he says, knowing that it's stupid as fuck, but also, yeah, in ten minutes or one hour, Billy will walk away and this guy will be forever out of his life, and he needs to offer something in exchange for whatever supposedly deep dark secret the weirdo is hiding, so who cares, right? No harm, no foul. "Billy Hargrove."

As if he's just been electrocuted, the weirdo jumps up to kneel near Billy and grabs him by the shoulders. He's turning Billy in his direction and pulling him closer to his face and that's a fucking no the size of the ocean!

There's a wave of panic trying to pull Billy under, making icy water run through his veins, but he fights it tooth and nail. He raises his hands and fights the fucker off, manages to land an almost punch to his stomach and smack him in the face. Billy feels scrawny, compared with this guy and his wide shoulders, but the fucking perv was not expecting a violent reaction, because he lets him go and scrambles back, in a way that almost mirrors Billy's own movements.

Billy's just gotten his feet under himself when the weirdo says:

"Holy shit, Billy, it's you!"

It's the kind of words that should give him the mother of all the heebie-jeebies, but instead slows his movements down to a crawl. Because the way he said it… hopeful and… loving. Like Billy matters so damn much… It makes no sense.

"What the fuck do you mean?"

"Holy shit, it's— You're so tiny and young, holy fuck! Billy! It's me!" The weirdo squints at him while indicating himself and saying: "It's Steve! Your−"

The man's face falls.

"Shit, you don't know me. Holy fuck, hoooo-ly fuck! I thought I had just travelled places, but… Hoo, boy, this is− I had no idea that− What the fuck am I supposed to do?! You never said—"

"What the fuck are you saying? Are you completely nuts?" Billy finds himself asking even as he slowly retreats, eyes trained on the man to make sure he won't suddenly lunge at him, but the guy only raises to his knees and talks in an urgent, pleading tone:

"I'm Steve, okay? We-we know each other. Fuck, no, no, we don't know each other, not now, but we will, okay? Trust me!"

Billy keeps retreating, heart beating so hard and fast it's a miracle he can hear the weirdo ramble on.

The guy cards a hand through his hair and looks down, frowning. "I know it sounds crazy, I wouldn't believe myself if—" It's like a light bulb turns on and the man beams, looking in Billy's direction to exclaim: "Neil!"

The name makes Billy's heart drum even faster and his insides churn.

"How do you know—"

"Neil Hargrove. Your father. I know him and Max and Susan. And— Oooooh! Your friends, before, holy shit, were they the Jimmys and Stab and Argyle and Lily and Pudge? They were, holy fuck, I missed a chance to see them! Fuck, no, I need to focus. Okay: what I mean is that I know you. You told me about them, because, and I know this will sounds fucking crazy, you and I will meet and become friends and Neil is gonna leave, okay? I swear to God, it will happen. It's gonna be… holy shit, a total mess but in a few years we'll be friends, you're my best friend, and Robin's too! You were—"

Billy's reeling, he can't think straight, the guy just said too much weird shit, he must have followed Billy, must have spied on him to know all those names, he's a fucking creep and Billy doesn't care at all when all of a sudden, the creepo looks pale and scared.

In a heartbeat, the weirdo is bent in two on the sand, weird gurgling sounds escaping him as he wounds his arms around his middle.

It's a trick. Must be one. Billy reins in the instinct to step closer and check on someone in distress and just stands there, looking at the weirdo shivering and moaning. Then there's a pained:

"Oh, God, it's happening again."

And whatever it is, it sounds like Billy's cue to leave. Fast. Without looking away until he absolutely needs to.

"Billy!" the weirdo calls, urgency and fear in his voice. He raises his head a little and even from where Billy stands, he can clearly see how pleading and scared he looks. "Find me in the future, okay? At the mall, please! You came looking for me, you found me, and I need you to do it again, please, don't leave me there!"

A moment later, faster than Billy can utter a sarcastic, "count on it!" or even just a surprised, "holy shit!", the man turns translucent and disappears like mist under the sun. The only thing he leaves behind are the green shorts.

Holy shit.

Chapter 2: Something impossible

Chapter Text

It should be easy to pretend that everything is as it's always been and nothing out of the ordinary ever happened.

For some reason, it isn't.

As soon as Billy goes home, in the morning, he writes down everything he remembers about the night before. He tries to commit to paper all the details of what the weirdo, Steve, said. What he looked like. It's a lot and at the same time not much.

He spends the summer wondering if it was just some kind of hallucination. He didn't eat or drink or smoke anything that could have prompted it, but it's a possibility, right?

In the spans of dead time while he works at the grocery store, when there's not even the shadow of a customer, he devours what books the public library has about time travel. They're not many. After a while, Billy stops going to the science section and instead heads straight for the sci-fi shelves. It's more interesting and there are enough writers with interesting ideas to keep him thinking.

He tries to tell the guys about Steve, one evening when summer's almost over and they're all on the beach together, even Argyle. He really tries, but everyone thinks he's joking, or too baked to differentiate reality from the plot of one of the books he's been reading. It's a giant failure on that front, but at least the night is fun and, on the way home, he finds the courage to kiss Stab for the first time. They make out for what feels like hours in a dark alleyway. It smells better than under the pier.

It's not how Billy thought the day would end. It feels even better because of that.

***

They're not boyfriends. They're not simply friends either. Billy likes it like it is. Stab agrees.

They don't know other queer people, outside of their group. When Billy's voice finishes dropping and his grow spurt kicks into a high gear, he starts sneaking into gay bars. It's scary. It's exhilarating. It sometimes ends with bruises and insults, but it's nothing new, nothing that Billy doesn't get several times a week back at home.

Every time he's in some kind of public space, he looks out for Steve. For that mop of dark hair that's long and wild on top and cut short at the back and sides, the moles on his cheek, the scratchiness of his voice.

He is double wary when he goes to a mall for any reason. Steve's comment about one doesn't make much sense, but it still nags at Billy's brain.

He wonders if what Steve said will actually happen.

When.

Steve never said when they will meet. He said "in a few years", but that could mean anything. What counts as a few years when you're thirty? And is it supposed to be a few years from Billy's perspective or Steve's?

Maybe they won't meet until Billy's in his thirties too. Oh, Jesus! No, fuck, it might be heartless of him, but good God, he really hopes he can get rid of Neil way sooner than that! He's not sure he can survive 15 or 20 more years near his dad all in one piece. One day, he'll say the wrong shit and Neil will kill him, for real.

He entertains the possibility that Steve didn't time travel, but instead hop dimensions. He decides that parallel universes add too many unknown, uncontrollable factors to the situation. If, indeed, that guy came from a different universe, then there's a high chance there are no best friends Steve and Robin waiting for Billy in his future. Or that he will actually die way before he's thirty.

He doesn't like either idea.

It's gotta be time travel.

***

The day Neil announces that they're moving to some small town in Indiana, Billy feels like he can't breathe anymore. Like he's been pulled out of his skin and is watching everything from a shitty TV screen miles away.

He's old enough that he knows exactly how to provoke Neil, by now.

He says all the right things, one after the other, to make sure his model father will hit him, and Neil doesn't disappoint. When father dearest is done, Billy is black and blue and the pain is burning hot enough to anchor him to reality, into his own body.

He distantly thinks that he understands Steve, now, even if he doesn't know if this, knowing he will get eradicated from all the good thing in his life, does technically count as an existential crisis or not. Feels like one.

Billy spends his penultimate night in California with his friends, holding onto their voices, their faces, their antics, as tight as he can. They drive to a quieter part of the coast and light up a bonfire on the beach. Nobody gives a fuck about a bunch of teenagers sitting on blankets and sleeping bags, cooking hot dogs on a fire. They talk and joke, drink and smoke, like everything's fine, and then lie down when they're too tired for more. He lets Stab fall asleep hugging him but he can't let himself close his eyes. He needs every minute of this.

When he finally drives away from the little blue bungalow where he's lived for the last seven years, he does so feeling hollowed out and alone. He told his friends to stay away, that if would be too dangerous for them all if Neil saw them and got even one, small, wrong idea in his head.

Billy's eyes are still red and puffy from how much he cried during the night, but for once Maxine doesn't say shit, too busy crying her own oceans of tears like a red-faced fountain.

***

The Halloween party is better than Billy had feared it would be. These hicks dress like shit and don't know their asses from their elbows, but they seem to know how to throw a party.

Tommy H. leads him through a throng of variously costumed people so he can gloat in front of King Steve, having destroyed his keg stand record, and Billy suddenly can't find a single word to say.

When Tommy had babbled about the rise and fall of King Steve, Billy hadn't pictured this. Steve Harrington is absolutely the person he met three years ago, and at the same time he clearly isn't.

King Steve is so fucking younger than the naked weirdo Billy stumbled upon. Prissy. No glasses. Once he's done casting a bored, unimpressed look Billy's way, he's way too busy trailing behind his stuck-up girlfriend like a lost puppy to notice anything else.

That is the only thing that really matches the Steve he knows. The lost puppy attitude.

The only reason why Billy handles their meeting as well as he does is the fact he's had three years to get ready for this moment. He's gone over so many potential scenarios of if and when and how they could finally meet, that reality feels like nothing much.

What Billy's not expecting, are Harrington's voice, the first time he hears him talk, and the sight that greets him in the showers, after their first basketball practice.

His voice has none of the scratchy quality of older Steve. It's a nice voice, but it's... ordinary. Young. Normal. It lacks character.

And in the locker room... Fuck, it's stupid and dangerous, but Billy finds it so damn hard to keep his eyes away from Harrington's chest. There's not a single scar. None. And none of the chest hair that Billy remembers.

Who's tiny and young now, uh? he wants to say. Look at me, Harrington! I know you! I know older you! You could be so much more remarkable than this!

He doesn't say a word and instead listens to Tommy poking fun at the fact the stuck-up prissy chick from Halloween apparently dumped or maybe cheated on Harrington. Ignore him, he wants to say, ignore him and look at me instead, talk to me instead, you said we're gonna be friends and I need to know if it's possible! If there's a chance that I could have a friend again, now that I'm trapped in this shithole until graduation!

He barely refrains from punching Tommy in the face for the shit comments he utters, and instead says:

"Don't take it too hard man, pretty boy like you doesn't have anything to worry about. Plenty of bitches in the sea."

He closes Harrington's water just to catch his attention, just to make sure he notices and can't really ignore him, even if Billy's the one who's walking away like he doesn't give a single fuck.

It's a delicate balance between attracting attention and looking desperate for it. He's become a master at it.

***

He's in the shittiest fucking mood he's ever been in since arriving to Hawkins, when Neil sends him looking for Max. There are so much rage and impotence burning in his guts that he almost shouts in Mrs. Wheeler's face the moment he notices how she eyes him like he's just a handy piece of warm meat. Like she's desperate to be fucked by someone young and attractive, and who cares if it's one of her daughter's classmates!

They're probably the creepiest five minutes of his life. He still flirts with her because he needs any information Mrs. Wheeler has more than he needs to not want to rip his skin off to get rid of her gaze on it. The pain in his back is a motivational reminder of what is gonna happen in he doesn't find Max soon.

The good news is that enduring the conversation earns him the address of where Max might be, at last, after way too many red herrings.

The bad news is that the place is a fucking isolated house in the woods that looks like it came straight from a low-budget horror.

Billy has barely had time to stop the car to a halt that Harrington, of all people, is leaving that same creepy house. He stands with his hands on his hips and stares at Billy like... Like Billy's trespassing. Like he's nowhere near welcome here.

Fucking perfect.

Billy mutters a curse as he leaves the car, cigarette at the corner of his mouth. He catches a glimpse of heads, one distinctively red-haired, one wearing a baseball hat, peeking up at the bottom of the front window of the house.

Which, again, is the fucking creepiest house he's seen in years! And Max is in there with who the fuck knows who, and Harrington!

Weird and worrying don't even start to cover this whole fucking situation.

"Hargrove," Harrington says, when Billy has kept silent for too long, at a loss for words to say what's really on his mind. Harrington looks way more serious than he ever managed on the basketball court.

"Harrington. What are you doing here, amigo?" he asks as the other walks towards him.

"I could ask you the same thing. Amigo."

"Looking for my stepsister. Mrs. Wheeler told me she was here."

"Huh. That's weird," Harrington says, his tone managing to be light while also serious, the lie breezing past his lips effortlessly: "I don't know her."

Billy's hands itch to do something stupid. Get in a fight. Shake Harrington until he admits that he's lying, and not even putting much effort in it. Instead, he pinches his thumb and forefinger close. "Small. Redhead. Bit of a bitch."

He really hopes she hears him. He really hopes she knows how little patience he has left for her shit tonight, the fucking brat!

"Doesn't ring a bell," Harrington says. "Sorry, buddy."

Billy nods and looks down while frowning and grabbing his cig out of his mouth. He lets out a little sigh and gesticulates when he says:

"This whole situation, Harrington, I don't know. It's giving me the heebie-jeebies."

"Oh yeah? Why's that?"

"My 13-year-old sister goes missing all day," Billy says, ashing his cigarette. "I drive around half the town looking for her and the bunch of little stalkers who've been harassing her." Harrington frowns at the word harassing, but then he's back to pretending to look innocent while Billy says: "And when I find her, she's at the house from Evil Dead. And Max, who's thirteen years old, I remind you, is alone with a bunch of boys and King Steve, who's a senior and has fucked three quarters of the girls in town! Cherry on top, you lie to me about it. Do you see where it's creeping me out, amigo?"

"Whoa, okay, hold the fuck on with that stuff! I don't do that shit! We— She's not here!"

Billy lifts his cigarette to his face but instead of putting it between his lips, he uses it to indicate over Harrington's shoulder.

"Then who is that?"

Harrington turns back towards the house fast enough to catch a good look at the four idiots being a tad too late in shooting down to hide their stupid little heads from sight.

"Fuck."

"Yeah." Billy takes a deep breath and shouts: "We gotta go home! Now! Move your stupid ass, Maxine!"

"Okay, listen, man, I know it might look bad—"

Billy barks out a laughter and lets his disbelief resound loud and clear: "Might? Might?! It does look bad, Harrington! It looks horrible! This is the stuff a creep does! Which should not surprise me, all things considered."

"Hargrove, you don't understand—"

"If you want me to understand anything, say something, even just one fuckin' little thing, that's not a fuckin' lie!" Billy shifts his attention to the house and shouts: "Maxine!"

"I can't," Harrington say, back to looking so serious and sure of himself, "it's—"

"Classified?" Billy scoffs and sneers at the guy. Old story. Didn't sway him three years ago, won't start now. "Try again."

Harrington frowns, clearly taken aback by that.

"You have five seconds to leave the house, Maxine!" Billy shouts, then looks at Harrington. "Same time you have to say something useful, otherwise I'm gonna kick your ass, go in there, grab that idiot, and drag her back home so my old man won't skin me alive. We clear?"

"No— I— It's—" Harrington rakes a hand through his hair in a move that's so familiar despite the years that have passed since. One moment later, he's huffing: "Fuck! Okay, alright, you win, Hargrove. Come inside, and I'll explain. Just, don't freak out."

Despite Billy's efforts, the hundreds of feet of weird drawings tacked to the walls and floors he sees as soon as he enters the house are doing their best to creep him the fuck out. Luckily, he has a couple of good distractions from the creepy drawings, namely Max's scared face and the trio of nerds shouting at Harrington that he can't tell Billy shit, it's a secret, they're in enough shit as it is!

Harrington ignores the kids and heads, of all places, to the fridge. He grabs the handle and stares purposefully at Billy. He's fuckin' seriousness incarnate.

"Again," Harrington says, ignoring the kids further, "don't freak out!"

"Okay."

"It's a secret!" the one with the hat says.

"You can't show him!" Sinclair shouts while the skinny one pleads:

"Steve, come on, he's—"

Harrington pulls the fridge door open so violently that the whole fridge wobbles. A thing wrapped in an old quilt, of all things, topples out of the fridge with a loud thud that silences the room.

It's a big thing.

A dog.

One of those big ones that are all muscles and aggression.

If a dog was built all wrong and had a head like an angry seed pod full of hundreds of fangs, of course.

The silence stretches and Billy walks closer to the inside-out dog, each step thundering on the old floor. He crouches down to better look at the dead animal, so at odds with the comforter it's wrapped in. He lifts his gaze to Harrington.

"What in the absolute fuck happened to pooch, here?"

***

Decontamination showers suck. It would have been nice if time-traveler-Steve had told him so, years ago, and given him the time to get ready for this experience.

When the guys in hazmat suits decide that he's been sufficiently scrubbed and rinsed, Billy smells of chlorine and other chemicals with names longer than an arm and a whole book of potential harmful side effects.

He's allowed a minute of solitude to stand in a little changing room, shivering and regretting a bunch of his life choices, before Harrington walks in, equally naked. He, too, is armed only with a tiny towel.

They exchange a long, tired stare before grabbing the sweats the government people have graciously supplied them, and getting dressed.

"Do you do this often?" Billy asks while pulling the sweatpants up his legs. They're scratchy and smell like old storage closets.

"The decontamination?"

"The demodogs. The tunnels. The vines. The government people."

Harrington sits down on the little bench pushed along one of the walls and starts toweling his hair dry.

"Not really, no."

Billy nods and looks at the big mirror on the opposite wall. He'd bet his balls that it's a one-way mirror.

That's where he would put people if he was a government piece of crap who needs to know what his 'guests' are gonna do when alone, anyway: in a room where he can spy and eavesdrop, like a true perv with a license to creep.

"You were not freaked out by this shit," Harrington says.

Billy shrugs and turns his back on the mirror and the reflection of the mess that's his hair right now. "I read a lot of sci-fi."

Harrington doesn't look convinced by his explanation, but he doesn't pry more. For now, at least.

A few minutes later, a lady with a face like a sour lemon comes in and leads Billy to the room where he gets interrogated for the next however long by a couple of suits. The two have sticks so far up their asses that, despite how tired their faces look, they can't but sit rigidly upright.

When they're satisfied with his answers, they leave. He waits and waits and waits, and then, after a couple of decades of boredom, the same sour lemon lady leads him to a conference room with many comfy chairs neatly placed around a big table, and tall curtained windows. It's dawning outside.

Max is there. Harrington. The little stalkers and one more kid who looks white as a sheet and ready to keel over. The chief of police. Harrington's ex and her new guy. A tiny lady who's angry as all hell. More government guys.

Billy sits at the table and tries to telepathically murder his stepsister. It's all her fault. Without her, Billy would not have been dragged into this interdimensional mess with murdering hellbeasts. No demodogs, no tunnels, no soldiers threatening him with guns, no Cherry Lane, no Hawkins, no Neil waiting to kill him because he failed the simple task of bringing Max home.

Billy tries to focus on the blabbering man at the head of the table as a way to avoid spiraling and picturing every detail of how Neil's gonna hurt him, but not even the guy's fake enthusiasm or the angry lady verbally eviscerating the fucker can keep Billy's attention.

Turns out that time-traveler-Steve should have told him about something else, that day in San Diego: debriefings and signing paperwork are fucking tedious activities.

***

It's Chief Hopper who drives Billy and Max home from the shady Hawkins National Laboratory, after they've all been given their clothes back, now sanitized and sterile.

They pass people hard at work cleaning the streaks of blood from the walls and floors of the building, on their way out. They're probably leaving the gunshot holes everywhere for the afternoon crew.

He bums a cig from Hopper as they leave the lab's parking lot. Max stares out of the side window. Her elbow is planted in Billy's side but he's too tired to say anything.

Navigating creepy tunnels, setting horrible shit on fire and almost getting eaten by demodogs is tiring work.

"Your car still at the field?" Hopper says, out of the blue, when they're two streets away from Cherry Lane.

"Yep. Unless Dr. Whatsit and his cronies moved it."

"I'll come by later. We'll sort it out."

Billy nods, even if the fate of his car is not the biggest, most pressing issue for him right now.

Neil wins over everything. He has a habit of it.

Neil and Susan leave the house even before the police truck has stopped completely. Susan cuts a running line straight to them through the lawn and Max jumps out of the truck, equally straight into her mom's arms.

It hurts like a motherfucker that all his dad has for him is a cold gaze that conceals nothing else but fury.

Before Neil can start asking questions or telling Billy what a let down he is and all the ways in which he proves himself useless, Chief Hopper is shaking Neil's hand and steamrolling the conversation.

Any other day, Billy would do his best to explain to his father what happened, but this morning he lets the chief take care of it. He was too wired so he can't remember a word of the cover story they've all been briefed to use with anyone who might ask questions about what happened last night.

No, that's a lie. He remembers two words of it.

Rabid dogs.

Despite what Billy expected, the story seems to be enough for Neil. Maybe it's the fact they all look like warm garbage and the one doing all the talking is the fucking Chief of Police. You don't doubt the police. They're the law, they can do no wrong, they're basically saints, right?

Hopper leaves with a tired "See you at four?" and Billy nods. Words are too hard, right now.

Neil leaves fifteen minutes or so later, after having slapped Billy hard enough to make his ears ring. After all, it's ultimately all Billy's fault, because if he hadn't lost Max the day before, the two of them would not have been barricading in the Byers' place to avoid the rabid dogs.

Of course it's Billy's fault. Trust Neil to always find a way to reduce the root cause of everything to Billy's failings.

He falls asleep seconds after his head touches his pillow. He dreams of being in the tunnels with Harrington and his friends from back home, they're lost, going in circles, it's been hours, the demodogs are trailing them. Toying with their preys. When they find the hole in the roof of the gallery and the rope, he and Harrington push Billy's friends out one by one just before the demodogs swarm around them. No, it's not Harrington, it's the time traveler.

"How does an existential crisis feel?" older Steve asks just before a demodog pounces on him, and Billy wakes up covered in cold sweat, ears filled with phantom screams.

***

"Leave the house for even just one minute while I'm gone, and your ass is grass, shit bird!"

Max's stare, from where she's huddled under a mound of blankets on the couch, says that she's contemplating not leaving the house unaccompanied for the next few weeks at the very least.

Good.

Harrington is sitting on the passenger seat of Hopper's idling truck. It's a tight squeeze, but they manage.

"Did you sleep some?" Hopper asks around a cigarette, while they're passing through downtown.

"Not much," says Harrington.

Billy just shrugs.

"I dreamt my house was swarming with those things," Harrington volunteers, like it's the most normal thing to do. "One was chewing on my dad."

"I—" The Chief catches himself and grimaces. All he says after that is: "Bad stuff."

"Same," Billy mutters.

"Max?" Harrington asks.

"Didn't ask and she didn't say."

The others grunt like it makes perfect sense and Billy just watches the buildings swish by. He's very glad that Sharing Is Caring Hour is over.

His car is, indeed, still in the field where they drove last night. The hole that gives access to the tunnels has been filled.

It takes a bit of gentle maneuvering to pull the Camaro out of the field without getting stuck in the upturned earth, but soon Billy's baby is back on the dirt road.

Small as it is, it feels like the only victory he'll enjoy today.

Hop pulls him and Harrington aside, pointedly a few dozen feet away from both their cars, and says:

"You should check your car for bugs, later. The electronic ones, not the insects. Both of your cars, just to be sure."

Harrington starts to say why would but then his mouth clicks shut as his expression turns angry. Dangerous like it was while they were driving here last night.

"I don't know where to even start with that," Harrington says, and Billy must be too tired to stop himself, because he says:

"I can do it, if you need."

He has never touched a BMW, but it can't be that hard, right?

"It's gonna be hidden somewhere where it can leech electricity," is all Hopper says, and Billy nods. Makes sense.

They nod to each other in salute and Billy heads to his car. Harrington jumps on his passenger seat like it's the most normal of things and offers him a cigarette. Looks like he knows he needs to buy his presence in Billy's car.

"Now that we're alone," Harrington says, as if a potential government bug does not count as a massive company, "tell me the truth: how freaked out are you, really?"

Billy rolls the cig between his fingers as he licks his lips and thinks about three years ago. About the shock of meeting a young Steve Harrington, a few days ago. About last night. About the nightmare, this morning.

"Not much, sorry, King Steve."

"Yeah, I don't buy that."

Billy shrugs and watches the police truck drive away.

"Suit yourself," Billy says, and clamps his teeth around the filter. Harrington motions for him to get closer, so he can light for him.

"Come on, man," he croons, so close to his face that a shiver runs down Billy's spine. His voice is so soft and gentle that Billy wants to roll in it. It's not as good as older Steve's voice, but it still does things to him. "You saw impossible shit and monsters, it's normal to be freaked out. Even just a little."

Billy pulls back and keys the ignition, shrugging again as a way of answering the pretty boy. Apparently, it's still Sharing Is Caring Hour, because Harrington says:

"I could not wrap my head around this shit when it happened the first time. Took me weeks to stop feeling like..."

Out of the corner of his eye, Billy sees him squirm on the seat, making it squeak.

"I felt like there was a monster ready to jump out of every wall."

"They do that?!"

"The one last year did. The Demogorgon."

"Well, thanks for the nightmare fuel, pretty boy!"

Harrington nods and smokes in silence for a while.

"I wasted so much money on gas. I kept driving around, headed nowhere, just for the sake of not standing in one place. I thought, if I'm constantly moving, speeding, even, that shit can't follow me. It can't rip though a wall if there's no wall, right?"

Billy exhales a noncommittal grunt and keeps his eyes on the road. He's pretty sure that line of thinking has a giant hole in it, but panic is not known for making people exceedingly rational.

"Yeah, it was stupid," Harrington says while exhaling smoke, "but after a while, I don't know, it got better?" Harrington nods to himself and ashes his cigarette in Billy's ashtray. "So, yeah, nobody with some brains would expect you to be totally fine after your first encounter with this shit. Just, don't try to tell me it's because of the books, okay? That's— That's just a lie. A shitty one, by the way. Turn there."

Billy doesn't reply, just follows Harrington's ever more annoyed instructions, until the pretty boy tells him to park near a big house in a posh as fuck neighborhood.

"This your place?" he asks, even if he recognizes the BMW parked in the driveway.

"Yeah. Thanks for the drive, fuckface."

Billy kills the engine and follows Harrington out of the Camaro and all the way to the door.

"I can come and check your car tomorrow after school, I think. Do you have tools?"

"I don't know. I have… something."

Harrington motions for him to follow and leads Billy to a garage big enough for three cars. It's empty aside from metal shelves piled with boxes and a single toolbox in a corner.

"This will do," Billy says after he checks the box, even if he's already thinking of all the stuff he'll bring from Cherry Lane anyway.

"Okay. Five? Five-thirty?"

Billy nods. "I think you're right, by the way," he says, fighting a self-satisfied smile off his lips.

"About what?"

"Me not being freaked out. It's not because of the books. I think it's because this is not the first time something impossible happened right in front of me."

"What?!" Harrington exclaims, eyes going wide in an expression of pure incredulity.

Yeah, the highlight of this day is definitely gonna be Harrington trying to pry the story from his lips. Sadly for him, they're sealed.

"Sorry, pretty boy, it's classified."

***

Billy doesn't exactly steal King Steve's kingdom and crown. More like finds them abandoned on the side of the road, tries them on for size, and never gives them back. Also, older Steve promised him his kingdom for a pair of pants. Billy's just taking what is rightfully his.

Besides, Harrington clearly doesn't give a fuck about either anymore. Billy knows that well, because after the tunnels and removing the bug in Steve's car radio, they've become fast friends.

It's hard not to, when you battle monsters together. Or when you confidently say "You're gonna survive this, trust me, pretty boy!" in response to the guy freaking out at the idea he'll be eaten alive in the damn tunnels of horror.

Billy's starting to like Harrington, even if he doesn't understand him. Too self-sacrificing. Too ready to bend over backwards for people who so often treat him like crap. So eager to... To be loved.

It irks Billy.

Still, they eat lunch together at school, and meet at the quarry on weekends to drink stolen beers and talk about basketball. The first time Harrington catches Billy writing home, he asks so many fuckin' questions, holy fuck!

Because, yeah, Billy writes home once a week. He has a stack of blank envelopes in the trunk of the Camaro. Argyle's address is tattooed on Billy's brain, he's sure he'll still remember it when he's old and grey and doesn't know what to do with his dick anymore.

So, every week, Billy grabs a piece of paper and writes at the very least a few empty lines, tucks them into an envelope, and sends them back to Cali. To let his friends know he's still alive.

"Why don't you put a return address on it?" Harrington asks from where he's smoking a cigarette and watching Billy lick the envelope closed, one December afternoon.

The million-dollar question.

The question that could out him and fuck him, if Billy's not careful enough.

He frowns down at the envelope.

"My dad hates my friends."

"Which dad doesn't? Wait, does that mean your friends don't write back? Do they know where you live?"

"Not yet."

"Oh."

"He'd probably trash their letters anyway."

"That shitty?"

Billy hopes Harrington doesn't notice how his fingers tremble at those two words. For a moment, it almost feels like he's back to the beach, talking with older Steve.

"Yeah, that shitty, and then some."

"You know," Harrington says, later, stopping mid movement as he enters his maroon BMW, "you could always put my address on it. My parents won't give a shit about one more letter in the mail."

Billy tries not to frown too much, but he clearly fails at it, because Harrington is raising his hands in surrender.

"I'm just saying, man. Just a silly offer. Nothing more. Just... Think on it?"

***

He thinks on it hard and long, and ultimately decides to accept.

Argyle is the one who writes more often. Long, rambling letters about school, his family, his job at Surfer Boy Pizza, what he and the others are up to. It's Argyle who tells him about Lily's quest for hormones and Jimmy F. kissing his first boy at a beach party.

News about Stab dating some guy who's in college comes from Stab himself, luckily. It's odd enough for your fuck-friend to tell you about his brand new boyfriend, it would only have been worse had the news come from Argy. He answers that he's happy for him. He really is, even if it hurts.

Pudge sends him little notes that are almost cryptic and movie ticket stubs, while the words in Lily's letters are surrounded by little monsters and snakes.

Harrington delivers every letter from Cali, either at school or later, at the garage where Billy works a few afternoons a week, and more often than not the pretty boy ends up asking him about what the latest letter said.

And Billy tells him about his friends, stories about the years they've known each other and what they say they're up to now, but always carefully skirting the fact that they're all as queer as they come.

It feels like the worst kind of lie, but it's the only way to keep himself safe.

And, yeah, it's the only way to make sure this friendship he's developing with Steve Harrington survives and doesn't get the axe Harrington might think it deserves.

In exchange for his stories, the pretty boy tells Billy stuff about himself. His parents. Nancy Wheeler and how she broke his heart. The pack of kids. The shit that happened last year, with way too many details about the Demogorgon breaking out of the fucking walls and all that.

He goes at length about how scared he is about the future.

That makes two of them.

***

They're opening a mall.

It should just be another piece of news, but it sends Billy into a figurative tailspin for a whole week.

He doesn't know what to do.

He doesn't know if he's brewing a storm in a teacup or if he's absolutely right to think something's gonna happen.

Something bad, judging by the urgency in Steve's voice that summer night.

Billy has months to mull it over and realize that, once again, he's facing so many unknowns that he might as well give up.

Something happened (is gonna happen) to older Steve at a mall, no idea which one or when, and Billy found (is gonna find) him.

That's so little to work with that it makes him wanna cry.

When summer comes and Steve announces that his father found him a job at Scoops Ahoy as a punishment for the shitty grades he graduated with, Billy wants to laugh hysterically.

Whatever is gonna happen, he's not gonna be ready for it. He knows it.

Chapter 3: We're fucked

Chapter Text

The sun is shining, the pool is full, Billy perches on the lifeguard chair, and the married ladies of Hawkins are putting themselves on display like as many roasted chickens in the window of a deli. All is as good as it can be, aside from the parade of women ogling him and giving him the creeps.

Until there's a gaggle of kids who just finished middle-school standing at the base of his chair.

"We need to talk. It's important."

Billy casts exactly one glance down at his stepsister. Supergirl stands by her side, serious as hell. He's never seen her around town like this, in the open.

That should probably be his cue to pay attention, but instead he says:

"I'm working."

"It's about the secret stuff," supergirl says.

"Probably," Whiney Wheeler corrects.

Billy makes to tell him that then he's probably gonna listen to them after he's done here, when Max says:

"It's about Steve."

Billy grits his teeth and stifles a sigh. Fuckin' brat and fuckin' Steve and fuckin' time travel and fuckin' everything.

It's gonna be about the mall, he'd bet his left nut on it.

"Then go grab Adam at the office and tell him that I need him here."

It takes Billy exactly one minute and a promise of putting in a good word with Heather on Adam's behalf (even if Heather would rather become a nun than touch Adam) to convince the guy to take on the last half hour of Billy's shift so he can take care of a family emergency.

Three more minutes go into getting changed out of the red and white uniform and into his jeans and tank top; and another four into reassuring one of the five-year-olds from the swimming course that soon she's gonna swim like a true champion.

When he manages to exit the gates of the pool, the kids are assembled around their bikes and look one antsier than the other. Sinclair has a duffel bag tied to his bike.

"Talk. One at a time!"

The long and short of it is that for some convoluted reason that has to do with the fact boys are total idiots (Billy can't completely disagree, being a boy who's into boys), Jane and Max used supergirl's powers to spy on Harrington and saw him do "something bad" to Robin. It's Harrington day off from work, but he wasn't at his house, and when the kids entered it, there was a lot of melting ice in the bathtub. The AC was set to super cold. The fridge was gutted and there were a lot of empty bottles of weird chemicals lying around. And when they ran to Scoops to check, earlier, Robin was there, with Steve, and she was perfectly fine, they both were perfectly fine, except for the fact that they creeped the fuck out of everyone.

Of course it has to do with Robin, too. Since the first time Harrington mentioned her, Billy's been convinced she is that Billy's-other-best-friend-Robin that older Steve mentioned. And now the pieces fit all too well.

"Billy?"

He shakes off all thoughts of older Steve's cryptic words about the future and focuses back on his stepsister.

"What did Hop say?"

"We can't find him," Will says. "Or my mom. But something's going on."

Billy stares at the kid and gives him his attention, so he knows he's allowed the time he needs to say whatever's weighing on him.

"It liked the cold. The Mind Flayer. It wanted−"

Billy closes his eyes and hears an echo of older Steve saying that the day you start liking the cold is the day you know you're fucked.

That's what he meant.

That's what's happening.

"Sometimes I get these... goose bumps," Will mutters. "Like the Mind Flayer is back."

"Are you sure?"

Whiney Wheeler protests that Billy should believe them by now, but Will just nods, like he understood what Billy meant. It's not a matter of disbelief, but of wanting this shit to be over and done for good.

No such luck.

***

It doesn't take more than a couple of minutes to make sure that the BMW is still in the mall parking lot. There aren't many burgundy BMWs around.

Scoops is closed already. The sign outside it says it should be open and not close until nine, but clearly today it's not a day where the employees follow those hours diligently.

There's no trace of either Harrington or Robin behind the rolling shutters, only empty tables and the glass display behind which are the ice cream tubs. The sliding window and the door that lead to the back are both closed. Everything is still and eerily empty.

"What do we do?" Whiney Wheeler asks, pressing his face against the shutters as if he can squeeze inside the ice cream parlor and find something useful.

Billy heads straight to the clothing store opposite Scoops. The little shits follow him so loudly that he can hear it over the din of the mall.

"Hey, Sarah!" he calls as he nears the counter. "I'm looking for Harrington. Have you seen him?"

He and Sarah were in the same world governance class and, this summer, he's talked to her enough times, when he was here to mooch a cone from Harrington, to know she absolutely hates her summer job and doesn't give a fuck about rules.

She now pops her pink gum and lets her gaze drift up from the magazine open on the counter to his face.

"They closed early," she sighs wistfully. "One hour ago, I think, after a lot of clients came in. Must have sold all the ice cream they had, to have to close that early. Lucky them."

"Do you think… Can I go in the back? I really need to check if Harrington's still here."

She shrugs and pushes the door to the clothing store's back room open for him. The kids hurry after Billy, and Sarah doesn't give a single flying fuck about it. He loves her a bit for that.

Billy knows his way around the maze of corridors decently enough to know where to head from here. Since Harrington started working at Scoops, there have been more than enough times where they slid in the back of the shop and through the service corridors so they could catch a movie without paying.

They watched Back to the Future that way, and at the end Harrington asked him what he thought about the whole time travel thing, as the resident sci-fi expert.

Billy pushes the memory away and leads the kids in a long circuit that brings them at the back of Scoops. The air smells of chemicals to the point it feels like it's clawing its way inside Billy's nose on every inhale. Jane stares at the locked door with a focused face and a moment later it clicks open.

Inside, it's a veritable mess. Now he knows exactly what the kids meant before with the words 'gutted fridge'. The usually clean and orderly back room looks like something made of guts, bleach and pinesol exploded inside it. The smell is even worse than back in the corridor.

Lucas and Whiney Wheeler slowly tiptoe around the room, while Max and Jane keep to the door with Will, forming a disgusted trio.

"What's this?"

Billy looks at what Lucas is holding. A whiteboard. It doesn't display anymore the tally Robin was keeping of how much Steve sucked at picking up girls (enormously, which made some part of Billy feel smugly satisfied). Instead, it has weird shit written in Cyrillic alphabet and what is probably its translation in English. The words don't make a lick of sense.

"Guys?"

Everyone turns in the direction of Whiney Wheeler. He's holding up what looks like the cover of a ventilation shaft in one hand and a baseball hat covered in weird goo in the other.

It's Henderson's hat.

***

Sinclair and Whiney Wheeler can't seem able to stop fighting over whose fault it is they didn't notice Henderson was missing, so Billy exiles them to the service corridors while Jane tries to use her super powers to find Dustin.

"I see him," she says a few minutes of tense stillness later, her voice stark against the white noise of a fan whirring in the corner of the room.

"Do you know where he is?" Max asks, her voice low and steady despite how nervous she looks.

Billy envies her, he can barely keep still, right now, let alone make his voice sound that calm.

"I… He's… surrounded."

"What does that mean?" he barks and winces at the angry look Max shoots him.

"There are people. Steve's there. Robin. Men and women I don't recognize. Many people. In a… A store room. It's—"

Jane gasps and what Billy can see of her face pulls into a grimace of fear. No, fear is too little. She's absolutely terrorized.

The moment she starts to hyperventilate, Max and Will start calling her name and telling her stuff, and Billy just grabs the dishcloth they used as a makeshift blindfold and pulls it off her face.

Her eyes are big, pupils so blown out they make him think of black holes, but she blinks at him as she blindly grabs for something or someone to steady her.

"You're here," Billy says. "Deep breaths. Slowly. You're here."

Jane nods and grips his arm and Max's even harder. Will goes to fetch the two quarrelling shitheads and after a couple of minutes of breathing and calming down, Jane manages to say:

"They're flayed."

"Who?" Lucas asks.

"Dustin," Jane tells him, her voice suddenly small and broken. "Steve. Robin. All the people in the store room."

There's a round of curses and expletives and a tight "What do we do now?"

Billy grits his teeth and forces his hand to be gentle as he turns Jane's face his way.

"I need you to tell me everything you saw. With all the details you remember. Can you do it?"

She nods and looks down. With a start, she lets both him and Max go. Must have just now realized she had grabbed onto them.

"Dustin and the other people were in a room. With metal shelves. There are cardboard boxes on all the shelves."

Which explains why she thought of a store room.

"How many people?" Max asks, and Jane's eyes swipe side to side, fast and frantic.

"Twenty? More, maybe."

"Was there space for more?" Billy asks, and after a moment Jane says:

"A little? Maybe? But not much. They were standing there. Silent. Sweaty. There was a woman who was bleeding but she didn't care. Her blood was weird. Black."

Not creepy at all.

"Were they looking around?"

"Not really. They were all…" she makes an aborted gesture, "facing in the same direction. That's why it scared me when Dustin turned to look at me. Like… Like he saw me. Same as Steve had done when I had spied. But Dustin grabbed my hand and—"

There are enough encouragements from everyone, so Billy just nods at the kid. She can do it. She has to. She has to give them something useful to work with.

"Dustin looked straight into my eyes and said he could see me. That he had stuff to do, but once they were done down there, they were gonna come back up and take me in."

Over the chorus of inventive curses Sinclair and Whiney Wheeler let out, Billy asks:

"Are you sure that's what he said? Did he use the words down there and back up?"

"Absolutely."

Billy nods and feels himself smile as he pats her on the shoulder.

"Okay, that's good. You did a great job, supergirl."

***

There are four kids piled up in the back of the Camaro. Nobody even thought to protest to Max riding shotgun.

Billy heads to City Hall keeping just shy of the speed limits. He doesn't need to attract the wrong attention now, when there are twenty or more flayed people roaming around and their only potential solution is on the backseat of Billy's car.

He doesn't even have to use the whole content of Scoops' tip jar to get the mall floor plans from City Hall. It just takes waaaaay longer than he had hoped for. By the time the clerk hands him a roll of blueprints, he's ready to jump out of the window just to save some time.

He hurries out of City Hall and finds the kids still huddled on a bench near his car, trying to either come up with a plan to solve the mess or a more precise explanation for what's going on. Probably a bit of both.

Billy unrolls the blueprints on the hood of his car and starts studying them, soon with the kids crowding in.

"It's like a dungeon map," Will Byers whispers with a bit of awe in his voice.

"It's probably on the ground floor or under," Billy mutters to himself as he scans the first blueprint to try to orient himself.

"Actually, we don't even know if it's in the mall."

Billy ignores Whiney Wheeler and pulls the plan for the ground floor on top of the pile, with the kids helping him keep the paper flat.

"This?" Max points to a room. Billy considers it for a moment and then shakes his head.

"Too small. And the walls are too thin for it to be an elevator."

"Weren't we looking for a store room?" Sinclair asks, index finger still roaming on the plans and following walls and corridors.

"They were standing," Billy says, "all looking in the same direction. And going down to then come back up."

"Oh. So, the store room is also an elevator," Will says, and out of the corner of his eye Billy can see the other kids nodding.

"What about this one?" Max offers.

"Too big. But this..." he taps his finger on what is labeled as storage B5, "this might be the one."

***

Storage B5 is absolutely the right place. The splatters of dried blood on the asphalt, just outside its outer metal doors, are all the confirmation Billy needs. The blood and goo on its floor are an even bigger, uncalled for confirmation he would have done without.

They don't need to look very hard to find the board with the buttons to command the lift. Sinclair jabs one and the door closes. Another moment and the whole room starts shaking and whirring in an alarming way.

"Definitely an elevator," Will says. He's pale as a ghost, sweating buckets, and swaying on his feet.

Billy wants to tell him that all is gonna go well, but he also doesn't want to lie to the kid. He doesn't deserve it. And the only thing Billy's more or less sure of, is that he, Steve and Robin will survive. Everyone else is an unknown quantity.

As the elevator goes down for what feel like hours, Billy seriously regrets not having gone back to Cherry Lane to fetch the hatchet they have in the tool shed. As it is, the only sort of weapon he has is Steve's baseball bat covered in nails, which Sinclair produced from his mysterious duffel bag.

When the room lurches to a stop, the doors don't open. Nothing happens. Not a single thing.

"How do we leave?" Sinclair asks, voice small all of a sudden.

Jane pushes everyone to the opposite side of the elevator and stands in front of the doors. One second. Two. Metal hums and grinds and then the doors open with a loud lurch.

What's on the other side of them is a room with bare floors and walls covered with pipes. The red, uglier cousin of a golf cart sit a few feet away. A well-lit corridor opens at the opposite end of the room and it looks like it goes on forever.

More blood and goo are splattered on the floor and on the walls. The flayed clearly came through here.

***

It takes Billy way too long to convince these damn stubborn kids that someone must return to the surface and find help, but in the end they, too, accept the reality that if their whole group stays down here and things get fucked, nobody will know where to go to fix shit, or even that there's shit to fix.

The fate of the world might be in their hand and they need to have a fucking backup!

While discussing the situation, they've come to the agreement that, as crazy as it sounds, this fucking secret underground lair must belong to Russian spies. And that they're probably doing some kind of shady, dangerous shit that has to do with the Upside Down. And that there must be some piece of the Mind Flayer that survived Halloween and gets excited every time the Russians do the right (wrong) thing. They're probably prodding at another gate to that nightmare dimension, and every time they do Will feels the Flayer stir.

"So if you ever feel that fucker stir too much, that's the signal shit's hit the fan and we've probably failed," Billy summarizes. The kid looks paler than before but nods in understanding.

"Go with him," Jane tells Whiney Wheeler. He tries to object, but she's decided. "You and Lucas protect him. Find Dad."

"How?!" Wheeler protests, but Sinclair just slaps a hand on his friend's back and nods, all serious, while saying:

"We'll find a way."

One look at Max, and Billy knows she's not going up without Jane, and Jane is not going up if they don't solve this shit, so the decision's made.

The moment they hear the elevator start climbing up, Billy hands Max the nail bat and hops in the golf cart. It doesn't take him long to find how to hot wire the cart.

"Can you teach me to do that?" Jane asks in her always serious voice.

Billy puts the cart into motion and nods with a shrug. Sure, if they survive, he'll absolutely teach the daughter of the chief of police how to hotwire stuff! It sounds like a brilliant idea.

He has a feeling Hopper's wrath won't even compare to whatever they're gonna face soon.

The cart is probably faster than they'd be if they ran, but it still feels like it's slow as fuck. It's because the tunnel is endless and never-changing, Billy reasons to himself, so it feels like they're not making any real progress. They're always in the same spot, with yards and yards of polished floors, pipes, lights, and support struts extending forever in front of them and at their backs, eternally the same.

The moment they meet the first couple of broken bodies, Billy regrets having wished for some change in the scenery. A potted plant or a Lenin portrait would have been more than enough. Better, even.

He stops the cart long enough to pull one of the corpses to the side so that they won't have to drive over it. Both are men, dressed in military uniforms. Just, not US ones. Despite the blood, he can clearly see that the patches sewn on their jackets, the ones that would have their last names, are embroidered in Cyrillic.

One more point in favor of the Russian theory, even if it's totally bonkers.

He checks the soldiers' pockets and the only interesting things he finds are a weird key, a flask of booze, and a packet of smokes. He eyes the guns discarded near the corpses.

"Did your dad teach you to use a gun?" he asks supergirl.

She shakes her head no. Max does the same.

Neil didn't either.

Billy pockets the key and the booze and returns to the cart.

On what passes for a passenger seat, Max grits her teeth and stares fiercely ahead. As soon as he's sat and pulling the cart back into motion, Jane leans over the seats to put a hand on his shoulder and the other on Max's so she, too, can have a good view of the tunnel. It's not eagerness, more like the need for the wait to end and the real confrontation to start.

There are more signs of struggle the further they drive, and Billy stops counting the cadavers after the number reaches two digits.

The sounds of gunshots, screams, and a siren blaring tell them they're approaching the fight. They ditch the cart and walk the last twenty or so feet, only to find what is probably the heart of the Russian base, and it feels like everything goes to shit faster than Billy can say "heebie-jeebies!"

The good thing is that the Russian soldiers they can see are very busy shooting in the direction of the big monster made of meat, blood, bone shards, and goo, so they don't even notice the three of them.

The bad thing is that the monster even exists, towering over everyone around it, the top of its pointed head almost reaching the walkway where the soldiers have taken refuge.

The more Billy looks around, the more fucked the situation is. There are only two sweaty, clearly flayed civilians in sight: an old man in a gingham shirt and beige pants that's pummeling the face of a soldier into meat paste; and a woman in peach-colored designer clothes who's grabbed a different screaming soldier by the ankle and is dragging him at a businesslike pace towards the monster. He can't see Harrington anywhere, nor Robin, nor Henderson, and the idea of having lost them is scaring the fuck out of him.

Max pulls on Billy's arm and points at where a door has clearly been torn from its hinges. Considering what one flayed old man seems able to do, a group of flayed people could totally have busted through the door like that.

Billy turns to tell Max something but, whatever thought he had, it evaporates and the words die with it in his throat. The woman is keeping the soldier pinned to the ground while a long tentacle extends from the main mass of the meat monster. Billy's line of sight is not ideal, but he can still make out what happens next: the tip of the tentacle opens up in an approximation of a demodog's head, a seed pod full of fangs that immediately plunges down on the face of the struggling Russian and silences his screams. It's so close to what happens in Alien that Billy shivers and takes a half step back.

Max mutters a horrified "No!" and that's what gives him the strength to look away from the scene.

"Come on!"

The girls don't need more encouragements. The three of them run to the open door while the soldiers keep on raining bullets on the monsters from the upper floor walkway. He thinks he catches the sound of something breaking, but the sound of fire blazing is distinctive, and it's immediately followed by the monster roaring in what feels like anger. If Billy had to guess, he'd say someone threw an incendiary bottle at it.

They're running through a corridor when a sweaty soldier with black veins creeping up his neck and cheeks turns the corner and stalks their way. Billy skids to a halt but before he can even raise the nail bat, the soldier is thrown to the side and hits one of the support struts with a horrible crunch. Jane wipes blood from under her nose. The flayed soldier is still on the floor, motionless.

"Let's go!" Max says, grabbing her best friend's hand and pulling her further on.

As they run past the soldier's still form, Billy would swear he hears something pop and break in a series of incredibly wet sounds.

He glances back and instinctively barks:

"Run!"

Because the soldier's body has literally exploded like a corn kernel made of meat, and now muscles, bones and sinew are rearranging, refashioning themselves into a shape that is nowhere near human. He thinks of the dog and the skull-spider from The Thing. He thinks of stuff that can only be killed by fire. He thinks of stuff so other that it can't but end up breaking every living thing it stumbles upon.

He thinks he's fucked.

"Find the others!" he shouts, and hears the girls scuttle away without a protest, thankfully.

He takes a deep breath as he plants his feet and steels himself for a fight with a thing that shouldn't be.

Instead of coming his way, however, the wet, bloody thing crawls and skitters away in the opposite direction on a bunch of mismatched appendages, leaving behind a streak of darkening bodily fluids that glisten on the floor.

It's probably headed to meet its bigger cousin.

Or fuse with it, his overactive imagination supplies.

He should have watched more comedies and read way less sci-fi books, holy shit!

He pivots and sprints to catch up with the girls. He glimpses Max disappearing on the other side of an open door, but before he can reach her, something comes from the side and tackles him to the ground. His head thuds on the floor and everything turns fuzzy around the edges. He tries to fight the feeling, but his whole body goes lax and noodly for a moment, and he has the distinct impression of the nailbat slipping out of his limp hand as he gets shoved and pinned down.

When Billy manages to blink most things back into focus, he realizes Harrington is straddling him. And there's a hand closed around Billy's neck. A big, cold, sweaty hand.

Harrington is wearing the silly sailor uniform, but there's nothing silly in how he looks right now. Not in the emptiness of his gaze, or the grimace on his lips, or the strain of the muscles of his shoulder, or the webs of black creeping under his skin. His lower lip is busted and oozing black. His right arm hangs limply, barely still attached to his shoulder by a few strands of blackened muscle. More black stuff pumps from the severed blood vessels in his arm and splatters around with every heartbeat, and Billy can see where the wound is trying to heal itself under his eyes like something from a bad horror.

"You should plant your feet, Hargrove."

That's the really creepy thing, Billy realizes in the panicked moments before his brain comes fully back online.

The complete lack of intonation.

It's not Harrington that's speaking. Harrington's gone. This thing pinning Billy in pace is not him, even if it has his body, his voice, his memory too, apparently.

As the flayed tightens his hold on Billy's throat and cants his head to the side, Billy grits his teeth. Two human arms against a single overpowered one is one hell of an unbalanced fight. That's not something that's ever deterred Billy from diving head first into a mess, though. He just needs to be a bit more tactical than usual.

It's a dirty move in a dirty fight, so Billy doesn't feel anywhere near bad when he punches the flayed right on the gaping wound in his arm, again and again.

Right fist trying to collide with Harrington's face, left fist getting coated in black goo, breath cut off by a too strong hand.

He punches and bucks, kicks and squirms and tries to get free, mind halved between screaming his fear and thinking of older Steve. The urgency in his voice as he was vanishing. The fragile certainty that Billy would find him in the mall.

No, Harrington is not gone. He's still somewhere in there. Billy just needs to get free and find some way to pull his friend out from under the Mind Flayer's hold.

The lights dim and Billy hears the scream of some machinery being pushed to its limit. A distant corner of his brain tries to make a connection between that and the struggle of fighting the alien being puppeteering his best friend into strangling him, but the idea quickly gets lost in the cacophony of his fears.

The lights brighten again as Billy lifts his hips enough that he can grab the flask of booze from his back pocket. He somehow manages to open the cap and throw the content around, splashing both himself and Harrington with it before the flayed slaps the flask out of his hand, letting his throat go for long enough to allow Billy to take a couple of agonizing breaths.

"What do you think you're doing?" the thing moving Harrington asks despite the punch Billy manages to land just under his left armpit. It should hurt like a motherfucker, but the flayed barely flinches. Harrington's revenge punch misses Billy's head by a nothing and the flayed doesn't seem bothered by the fact he must have broken at least some bones against the concrete floor.

"Don't fight," Harrington says, and it's all the incentive Billy needs to fight even harder, holy shit!

It's turning into an uncoordinated, messy brawl, which is exactly what Billy needs. He starts tapping at his right front pocket and, as he'd hoped, Harrington's hand closes around his wrist. Billy struggles against the inhuman strength pinning his hand in place, makes his face go surprised and scared. His reward is Harrington's face smiling a tiny sadistic smile at him as he squeezes his wrist harder, so hard it feels like the bones are grinding against each other and it hurts like there's a fire burning inside.

The fucker's too distracted to notice that Billy wiggles his left hand in the other front pocket. Fast enough to grab his Zippo. One deft click and he's blindly pressing its flame to Harrington's sailor shirt.

It immediately catches on fire.

Harrington lets him go and scrambles away, trying to bat the flames off his clothes as he does, but Billy follows him. He needs to press Harrington, there's no time to waste on coughing or catching his breath or feeling like crap. He needs to press his advantage, and not care if he's hurting his friend.

He's pure shit for doing this, but he can't see another way, so he grabs onto Harrington and does his best to keep him still while the flames expand on his stupid uniform.

"This is not you," he shouts as he fights to keep Harrington pinned on the floor and ignore the heat, the way the flames are burning him too. "That thing is using you! You don't want to do this shit! Henderson's been flayed! Robin too! Spit this shit out, come on, Harrington! You can do it, spit it out! I know you're in there, Harrington, and I know you will survive this shit! Spit it out! Show that fucker who's king!"

Harrington screams and wriggles and shouts, and Billy thinks he'll never forget the smell of burnt fabric and flesh as long as he lives. Harrington thrashes, and thrashes, and thrashes some more, and then, with a horrifying sound that has nothing human, he vomits a mass of smoke and blood and meat, something so wrong that Billy doesn't have the words for it. Something that drags itself away, slowly, painfully, while Harrington cries and screams in Billy's arms.

Billy jumps to his feet, takes off his burning tank top and lets it fall on the bundle of monstrous shit. The thing hisses and squirms, black smoke rising from the fabric, and Billy goes back to Harrington.

"I'm so sorry!"

They're the only words Billy can seem to say as he does his best to extinguish the flames devouring Harrington's clothes and skin. He rips the shirt off of Harrington and pats the flames off, before heading to a heap of discarded, bloodied clothes. All that's left behind from another flayed. It's not hygienic or sterile, but he still rips the cleanest thing he finds into strips and uses it to start to summarily bandage the still open wound in Harrington's arm. It's still oozing weird stuff, but more slowly. Whatever the thing inside him was, at least it healed him enough that he's not gonna die within the next minute.

"B-ll?" Harrington rasps while Billy works on his arm. Harrington winces in pain and Billy's not sure if it's from the arm or the attempt to speak. His throat must be hurting, after that thing crawled out of it.

"Yeah, it's me."

Harrington grabs onto Billy's arm with his working hand and squeezes.

"'m sorr-."

"Don't talk."

"'m sorr-, B-ll."

"I know, but don't talk, you're hurting yourself. We're gonna talk when we're out of here and you feel better, okay?"

Harrington nods even if there are tears in his eyes and he looks like he doesn't think they'll make it out of here.

"Do you think you can walk?"

He makes a face that Billy decides to interpret as let's try.

Turns out he can more wobble than walk, and only if Billy slings Harrington's arm around his shoulder and keeps him upright with an arm around his waist.

"Where to? Any idea?"

He follows Harrington's nodded directions and the sound of people shouting and machinery whirring.

On the other side of the glass panes of the control room, the gate looks both beautiful and horrid. Like a giant, shiny tear in the rock wall of the room, made even more scary by the way there's a beam of light or whatever hitting it and making it burn too bright to watch for long. It makes him think of a wound, for some reason.

Buckley is hunched down at the foot of a bank of instruments lit up with a myriad of lights and buttons, hands covering her ears as she rocks back and forth and looks unseeing at the floor. Max, Henderson and Jane are caught in a shouting match, a couple of feet from her, all in one piece even if the boy looks frazzled as fuck.

"How do we stop this shit?" Billy shouts, loud enough to be heard over the quarrelling kids, and immediately three pairs of uncertain eyes turn to him.

He's never wanted to be the center of attention less than now.

***

The worst part of being a teenager that has to deal with mysterious machinery built and designed by mad Russian scientists, is that you have no fucking clue of how to use it or safely destroy it. If they did, they would make the thing that looks like the Death Star cannon stop blasting the gate open. As it is, Henderson says in a slightly scratchy voice that they probably have equal chances of breaking the machine safely and killing themselves in the process.

Billy looks at the Death Star cannon, at Buckley and then at Harrington. He's gonna survive. The other two are gonna survive. He has to believe that the kids, too, will all survive this shit.

They end up choosing to hold the fort: that is, going down to the area leading to the platform on which the Death Star cannon is mounted, and standing guard there while Jane makes the cannon explode. It's not the strongest, soundest logical reasoning ever, but there's a chance that if Billy, Steve and Robin stick close to the kids, their positive fate will rub on them. Maybe the kids will survive this shit by sheer din of closeness.

It's the stupidest thing he's ever thought.

That's all he has.

All they're armed with is dumb hope, a nail bat, a big wrench Max found somewhere, Billy's Zippo, a lot of paper, and a couple of bottles of flammable stuff they nabbed from an abandoned cleaning cart. Good thing that Russian danger signs, too, use images to convey simple concepts like 'this takes fire easily!'

Robin is still huddled in a corner, Harrington's working arm wound around her shoulders to keep her steady while he croaks to her in a raspy voice. He looks on the verge of collapse himself.

"We're fucked," Max mutters, loud enough to be heard over the screaming machinery and the distant, irregular pop of gunfire.

Billy bites his lips so he won't say anything wrong. He can't tell her about... anything.

God, he's not ready to watch a bunch of kids die.

He probably will never be.

***

The moment Max touches the lit Zippo to the nearest line of flammable liquid, fire spreads along it.

The meat monster apparently can shrink or squeeze itself enough to pass through human-sized doors, so it was only a matter of time before it made its way to them. Now that it's standing right in the middle of all the paper they scattered on the floor and the crisscrossing lines of flammable liquid they drew on it, it's not liking it very much. It roars its fury, turning its tentacles and its pointed head this way and that as if looking for a safe, non-fiery place to move to. There aren't that many.

Near one of its paws, the woman with the designer clothes looks like a black and peach monstrosity, goo oozing from so many bullet holes Billy won't even try counting them. She takes a running start and jumps over the nearest line of flames, landing gracelessly a few feet from Billy.

He's already swinging the nailbat towards her head when a strong arm wounds around his middle and pulls him back. His swing completely misses the target and Billy's mind reels at the thought that some flayed managed to go around them and catch them by surprise, somehow, but it's Harrington, just Harrington, he stopped Billy, what the fuck?!

"Mom, wake up," Harrington croaks near Billy's ear as he tries to hold Billy back one armed. His voice is so low and broken that nobody else could have a chance in hell of noticing he spoke, let alone understanding what he said.

"Oh shit."

Oh shit, shit, and triple shit!

His eyes must be going wide in surprise. He wasn't exactly expecting a miraculous exorcism, but Mrs. Harrington doesn't even flinch when faced with her son. She totally ignores the fact that Billy's still got one of Harrington's arms wound around his middle and pounces on them, hollering:

"You should not have left, Stevie!"

Harrington involuntarily cushions their fall when his mom makes Billy lose his footing and they're all dragged down together. Before they can disentangle from each other, Mrs. Harrington is already punching Billy in the face, one, two, three times. It hurts like a motherfucker, but less than he had thought it would. All the bullet holes in her torso and arms must be sapping some of her inhuman strength.

The meat monster keeps on screeching and roaring as it tries to amble closer to the platform, but can't thanks to the flames, and Henderson and Max start pummeling Mrs. Harrington's back, one with his fists, the other with the big wrench. They clearly can't hear or understand that Steve is croaking "no, don't hurt my mom!" on repeat.

Billy has managed to land a couple of good, blind punches to her sides, and now he snatches Mrs. Harrington's fist. She's hardy and the horrible grin spread on her mouth never wavers, not when Billy wrenches her arm in a way that should be painful, not when he punches her in the face before rolling her off of himself. Between the four of them, they somehow manage to pin her face-down on the ground. Billy presses his knee in the middle of her back and pulls her arm back, twisting it in a way he knows from experience strains the shoulder painfully as fuck.

"Mom," Harrington calls, wretched and broken.

"Mom?!" Max screeches.

"You're supposed to stay with your dad and me, Stevie," she says from the floor, emotionless. "But if you really want to bring your friends along, we can, sweetie. We can be together forever."

"Oh, shit!"

Henderson looks even more horrified than Max at the revelation.

"How did you free Steve?" Max asks, from somewhere near the woman's legs, desperation and physical effort straining her voice.

"Fire."

He wants to add that maybe what he said to Harrington helped, but he can't even remember what those magical, useful words were anymore. And also, keeping this bucking, thrashing, possessed woman vaguely still is requiring too much focus and energy to say much more than that.

Harrington is crouched by his mother's left shoulder, resting his weight on part of her back while he pins her head down with his working hand. He's talking to her, but too low for Billy to understand the words.

Behind Billy, the monster is roaring too loudly, bumping into stuff and making shit fall in a continuous cacophony that somehow covers the crackling hum in the air. That humming sound was creepy when he could clearly hear it with his ears, and it's even creepier now that he mostly feels it reverberating in his bones. It's one more reason to hate that fucking Death Star cannon and the gate.

"What do we do? What do we do?" Henderson keeps repeating in his scratchy, panicked voice.

Billy chances a look in Jane's direction and sees her float a good foot off the floor of the platform, arms extended towards the machine. The cannon is shaking so much it's visible from where he is. Makes him think that it's ready to explode any moment now.

They need to hold on just a bit more. They're almost there. Just a little more.

He feels Mrs. Harrington shift under him and then sees that Max has moved, she's heading to the pile of paper they kept handy.

"Hurry!" Dustin screams as the woman bucks harder under Billy's knee. He pushes down with his legs and bends back, muscles pulled taut as he does his best to keep the flayed woman still.

Billy registers the way the monster bellows and then the next instant Mrs. Harrington has thrown him off her back with a sudden, powerful bucking jolt. The fact he falls to the side is not reason enough for Billy to let her wrist go, just to scramble to find some purchase against her with his legs and feet while the kids shout and Harrington tries to wrestle his own mother one-handed.

Billy grits his teeth, gets a lungful of smoke and burnt hair when Max shoves a bunch of papers on fire less than an inch away from Mrs. Harrington's face. Maybe they can−

"No!"

It's the blink of an eye. That's how fast everything seems to happen.

Harrington jumps to his feet.

His mom kicks and screams.

An angry, thunderous Max thrusts the paper even more in the lady's face.

Henderson throws himself on the flayed woman's hips.

Harrington screams.

It's the loudest sound Billy's heard him make since he puked out the bloodied meat-thing. It's so sudden and loud that Billy has to look at him. See what's happening.

He's grabbed a tentacle.

King Steve has grabbed a tentacle mid-air with both his naked hands and is pushing against it!

Before Billy can do more than think your arm! and you're not supposed to die today!, one more tentacle shoots forward, sailing over the dying flames and stabbing Harrington in the belly. And then another tentacle does the same. And another. And another. And−

A cacophony of sounds of metal breaking and bending fills the air as Billy gives one last kick against the back of Mrs. Harrington, and then there's a booming crash, the light from the cannon dies out, the red glow from the gate is gone, and Harrington and the meat monster are falling to the ground.

Mrs. Harrington is seizing, but Billy doesn't have time for her. A part of him thinks he should feel horrible and callous for ignoring her like this, but honestly, he can't make himself care, her son is more important right now.

Her son who's covered in black blood. Her son who has five limp tentacles still stabbing through his torso. Her son who is struggling to breathe and that's wrong, he's meant to survive, he should come out of this still alive!

Billy turns him face up, gently, trying to remember all the pertinent shit from the first aid courses he took in Cali and then again here.

Don't pull the foreign object out of a stab wound.

Don't move the patient if there's a chance the spine's been affected.

Don't apply a tourniquet if you don't know what the fuck you're doing.

Do chest compressions to the rhythm of Stayin' Alive by Bee Gees.

Look for help.

Right.

Help is not on its way. Help is miles of tunnels away. Might as well be in China, right now.

"You're not gonna die," Billy hears himself say as he eases Steve down. He grabs one of the tentacles, a span away from where it's embedded in Steve's abdomen. It's... moist. Solid and at the same time squishy. Like some weird, tough Jell-O.

"We're gonna leave this place, amigo, and you're gonna get back in shape."

Harrington is saying something, his lips keep on moving, pale under the black goo covering them and his teeth. His voice is too low, even in the sudden silence of the monster being dead and the Death Star cannon destroyed.

Billy holds the tentacle in both hands, keeps one steady and pulls with the other. It's disgusting and slow, but the tentacle slowly rips apart and Billy can throw the wrong part away, towards the still form of the meat monster.

"See?" he babbles as he grabs the next tentacle. "We're gonna go back to Hawkins and you'll just have a few scars to show for it. You're gonna look badass."

He works as fast as he can while, out of the corner of his eye, he can see Max and Jane talk, near Mrs. Harrington, and Dustin kneeling in front of Robin.

"The scars'll give you character, man," he says, and sniffles, his nose feels so fucking stuffed and his eyes are all watery.

He knows that it's true. They will not be a pretty thing, sure, but he knows he couldn't keep his eyes away from them, that day, and it wasn't in a morbid way. Steve's gonna survive and be still the most handsome person Billy's ever laid eyes on. It's gonna be okay. He's not gonna die here.

Time travel, not parallel universes.

Robin crawls to the two of them and bends to press her face to Harrington's. It's not a kiss. It's something feral and scared, something instinctual. Her voice is scratchy and lower than it ever was when she says:

"I'm so sorry, Dingus."

Billy breaks off the last tentacle and rubs the back of his hand against his face. So sweaty and wet.

A deep breath and then he's gently guiding Robin to sit straighter, even in spite of Harrington's hand trying to grab her back.

"Shhhh, man, I just need to talk, she's here, okay?"

Harrington nods. Each breath is a frantic little thing.

He has to survive. It's the only thing that can happen.

Time travel, not parallel universes.

"Robin? Buck? Can you walk?"

It takes her a little too long to focus her gaze on Billy, and longer still to nod yes.

Okay.

Time travel, not parallel universes.

He rubs a dirty hand on her upper arm, hoping it comes off as reassuring, while he looks to the kids.

"We need to leave. Now!"

Max is helping a pale Jane keep steady on her feet. Dustin is biting his lip raw but nods.

"Mom?" Harrington asks, finding some voice who knows where, the vowel turned into something closer to a whine of pain.

Billy needs just one glance her way to know that Mrs. Harrington is too still to be alive.

Shit.

Shit shit shit!

Why didn't older Steve tell him any useful thing?!

Not the time for that.

Not the time.

Time travel, not parallel universes.

Time travel, not parallel universes.

Time travel.

"This is gonna hurt, pretty boy," he mutters.

Harrington shakes his head in denial, his lips moving but no real sound leaving them, and Billy gently slips one arm under Harrington's knees and the other under his shoulders.

"On three."

Harrington nods, lips still moving without a sound. He gives them both the time for one last deep breath, then counts:

"One. Two. Three."

He lifts his friend and Harrington shouts, then his head lolls to the side, mouth open in silent pain, skin paler than white. He's crying.

Time travel, not parallel universes.

As he follows the kids and Buckley through a Russian base strewn with cadavers, black sludge, and blood, holding his best friend in his arms, Billy keeps talking.

"We're almost done, Bambi. Almost out of this mess. So, you can't leave me. You won't leave me. I know you won't. Just, don't try. You're not allowed. Hold on, because we're gonna leave this place soon."

The cart is where they left it. Dustin drags a crate near the back of it and Billy uses it to climb into its loading area, where he sits with Harrington in his lap, his clammy forehead touching Billy's throat.

Max hotwires the cart and drives them towards the exit. Harrington's half-curled on himself and cries. He keeps on mumbling his garbled version of "Sorry," again and again and fucking again.

He'll never be as sorry as Billy feels right now.

Chapter 4: Waiting and sitting

Chapter Text

Billy's hospital stay is short. He still doesn't head to Cherry Lane even once the doctors who visited him tell him he's free to go.

He has burns, and a ton of bruises and shallow cuts, but nothing serious.

He has an eye swollen shut, for once not courtesy of his own father.

He has a bag of ice, courtesy of a tall, plump nurse with a soft smile and strawberry-shaped earrings.

He has clean clothes and shoes, courtesy of Susan, who dropped a bag in his exam room on her way to see Max.

He does not have dirty jeans and boots anymore, since they've been taken away by a janitor that looked a lot like a thinly disguised government agent.

He has food, courtesy of the vending machine in the lobby.

He has a book, courtesy of the old lady pushing around a cart of old paperbacks.

He has a chair.

He has hours and hours of waiting ahead of himself.

He sits with Claudia Henderson and Robin's parents, and waits for news about their kids and Harrington.

A couple of suits asked him the more pressing questions in the minutes immediately after their little group emerged from the Russian elevator, but there are more of their colleagues hovering around the waiting room. Ready to poke and prod with all the tact of a bulldozer. Too scared at the idea of the story getting out.

You can't tell the public that the Russians infiltrated the corn-fed heart of America and built a secret base under it.

It's not good for morale.

Not that Billy cares.

All he cares about is in an operating room somewhere, surrounded by doctors who are trying to keep him alive.

Time travel, not parallel universes.

He's read half of a novel without really registering its content when a doctor enters the waiting room.

"Mr. and Mrs. Buckley?" she asks.

Robin's parents jump to their feet and follow her just outside the door. She speaks in a low voice, but she's smiling enough that even if he doesn't know what she's saying, Billy knows for a fact that it's some sort of good news. Or not terrible news, at the very least.

A different doctor comes to fetch Claudia Henderson an hour later. That man, too, looks close to optimistic.

Almost another hour and Hop plops down in the chair next to Billy's. The Chief rubs a hand on his face and mutters:

"What a fucking day."

Billy swipes his thumb along the edge of the pages. The paper's gone soft thanks to age and low quality. It has that vanilla smell of old glue and decomposing cellulose that always makes Billy's nose itch.

"You should go home, kid."

Time travel, not parallel universes.

"Later."

"At least wash your face."

Billy frowns. He's sure he already did, earlier, but maybe he just thought about washing his face and didn't actually do it. He had other stuff on his mind.

"If news come while you're away, I'll have them wait for you. Sounds alright?"

Billy just leaves the book on his chair and finds his way to a restroom. The person in the mirror looks like he had the worst week of his life, and it's only Monday. His eye has swollen shut and his face is still caked in residual sooth, blood, and sweat. He can clearly see tear tracks down his cheeks.

Time travel, not parallel universes.

Steve's gonna survive.

He has to.

Billy washes his face two times and then rubs at it with a few scratchy paper towels until his skin is an angry pink and there are no more outer traces left of what happened to them.

Hopper is still sitting where he left him, when Billy returns.

"No news," the Chief says.

Time travel, not parallel universes.

Billy sits down and waits.

***

There's a lot more waiting and sitting down where that first batch came from.

Some dozing while laying down in fetal position on a couple of chairs.

Joyce coming in with a thermos of coffee, two kiddie plastic cups, and a bunch of sandwiches.

Claudia Henderson bringing them a Tupperware of snickerdoodles, hugging Billy so hard it hurts his ribs and leaves him short of breath, and repeating thank you so many times Billy feels awkward.

A second paperback that he reads without really reading it.

One of the fuckers from back in November trying to be friendly and Hopper towering over the fucker and telling him to stay the fuck away for a few days at least if he doesn't want to eat all his teeth.

And there's Neil.

Who at some point in the late Tuesday afternoon comes in and shows his fucking face. Demands explanations. Tells Billy that he's an irresponsible little kid that will never do anything good in his life if he keeps this shit attitude up, why did he involve Max in whatever he was doing at the mall?

There's a whirlwind of too many emotions and not enough control, inside Billy's chest, and something black and angry cracks open inside his head, thoughts filled with the echo of older Steve's voice as he pleaded for him to find him, and when Billy can sort of think straight again, both he and his father are bleeding, and Hop is restraining Billy and telling him that it's over, to take deep breaths.

It's hard to do, with his nose feeling like it's absolutely broken, now.

The hospital security arrives a minute later, while Billy's still struggling for breath and reeling with a mixture of anger and confusion. Hop points at the plastic chair Billy had been sitting on until a few minutes ago and, like he's nothing but a dog, tells him:

"Sit!"

Billy ignores Hopper and the fact the Chief ignores him back, and instead paces the room while the policeman and the hospital security guys take Neil to the side to discuss… who knows! Probably the best way to punish Billy.

Just what he needs.

After he's done a few laps of the waiting room, and rubbed the scrapes on his knuckles to the point they're bleeding and smarting, he can't hear them anymore. It must mean they moved to some other room for more privacy. Who cares.

Billy paces and minutes go by, slow, unrelenting.

Time travel, not parallel universes.

He just needs to be patient and have faith. He's alive. Buckley is alive. The kids are alive. Soon a doctor will come and tell them that Steve, too, is alive and okay.

Hop has time to return, read Billy the riot act, tell him that after they're done here Billy needs to come to the station for paperwork, send him to have his nose and hand checked by a nurse, and then pat Billy's back in a clumsy way, before at last a doctor fucking appears to save Billy from whatever fucking sappy thing is happening here.

The doctor wants to talk to the Chief only. Billy starts protesting, but there's a look in Hop's eyes, a tired kind of let me handle this shit, and Billy relents. Of fucking course, the doctor won't tell Billy stuff. He's nobody important. He's just a friend.

And a shitty one at that.

He didn't notice Harrington had been possessed. He burned him. Hurt him. Couldn't save his mom.

God, Harrington's mom is dead! Not away, not gone to live a new life who the fuck knows where. Dead. He can't imagine how Steve's gonna take it.

There aren't many friends worse than Billy.

When Hop comes back, he looks grim. Billy keeps his teeth gritted all through Hop's explanation of how shitty Harrington's conditions are.

He almost died a couple of times, Hop says. He's still in critical conditions but the doctor who talked with Hop is cautiously optimistic.

There are several civilian doctors and a couple of specialists from the Lab taking care of Harrington.

Billy wants to laugh.

Wants to demand to see his best friend to make sure they're not lying.

Wants to ask how the fuck someone can be a specialist in inter-dimensional monster possession when this shit has happened only once before, last November, and the government people did fuck all to actually help Will Byers.

The look in Hop's eyes says he has the same questions and worries.

Fuck!

Cautiously optimistic.

The doctor is cautiously optimistic.

It's a drop of hope in all the vast sea of pure shit of this situation, but at least it's something.

Time travel, not parallel universes.

Older Steve and Billy's Steve are the same person and his best friend is not gonna die.

He has to hang onto that idea or he's gonna lose his mind!

***

They leave the hospital after that, and instead of dragging him to the police station like promised, Hop drives him to the woods, where they have to sidestep booby traps to reach a wooden cabin and knock a secret code on the door. Jane and two enormous portions of mashed potatoes are waiting for them on the other side of that door.

Billy falls asleep on the couch after eating. He sleeps like a log for twelve hours. Without ever stirring, Jane tells him when he wakes up. He really needed some rest.

***

It's become a habit, sleeping on that couch. It's a shitty enough couch that it should keep him awake, but not even a small, old couch can do anything against how fucking tired Billy is every time he leaves the hospital.

He hasn't returned to Cherry Lane for more than one hour at a time since the accident, and it's August, now. Even if Neil left town and Susan said Billy's welcome back whenever he wants, he can't go back to that house.

It's way better to drive all the way to the cabin, and dodge traps, and knock the secret code on the door, and eat a microwave dinner with the Chief and Jane, and fall asleep on the couch while watching TV.

At least in the cabin there are Jane, and Hop, and sometimes Max too when she comes for a sleepover with her best friend, and none of them not-so-secretly hates him for having been the reason their shitty marriage went down the drain.

Also, he knows both girls would manage to exorcise him if the Mind Flayer ever possessed him.

Hop doesn't say anything about this shit. The nights he's at home when Billy comes back from the hospital, the Chief eats with them, then sits on the La-Z-Boy and drinks a beer while they watch TV and Billy slowly falls asleep, and, come morning, Hopper makes breakfast for three like that's what he's always done.

Harrington's still in intensive care. Two days ago, the doctors said they're waking him up. It will take a few days more for him to be completely awake, for now he stares unseeing and turns his eyes in the direction of sounds, but he doesn't seem to know what's happening, or who's talking, or that he almost died.

Every day, Billy works his shift at the pool and then heads to the hospital to stay with Buckley a bit before being allowed thirty minutes or so at Harrington's bedside in the ICU. He's now a pro at putting on the protective garments that reduce his chances of tracking bacteria and viruses into the place housing some of the most fragile people in the whole hospital. He has also charmed enough nurses and doctors that he's always bound to know exactly how his friends and their poor internal organs are faring.

The short answer is: not great, but improving.

Buckley's stomach has more holes than Swiss cheese, she says with a silly grin. Her new chain-smoker-rough voice does weird things when she pronounces her Rs. She has trouble sleeping and she can't wait for the day they'll let her out of the hospital. She's not bed-bound anymore, but she also tires super fast, which she hates with a vengeance. Every day, they walk together and talk for as long as she feels like it. Her parents and the hospital staff think she's Billy's girlfriend. She's still horrified by the notion, but it was easy to convince her that having him as her beard could have its use, if only for a while. He'll never forget her surprised expression when he leaned close to her and whispered "I know you like girls, Buckley. It's okay, I'm gay as hell". Priceless.

Harrington's improving too. It's just slow as fuck.

"Hey, pretty boy," Billy calls, from behind his protective mask.

On the bed, Harrington turns his eyes his way and blinks. Like an owl who got a whole beach worth of sand and dust in his eyes.

Billy waves and Harrington moves the hand that is not in a cast, more or less mirroring him.

"So, they tell me that soon you're gonna be all awake and able to tell me to fuck off. For now, you're still stuck with me and my bullshit."

Harrington's fingers move in some erratic way and Billy, as he often does, decides to take it as his half-awake way of telling him to go to the juicy part. So, he smiles, even if there's no way his friend can notice it, between the half-awake state and Billy's mask, and tells him all about the latest drama between the other lifeguards at the pool, and all the other terrible gossip he overheard this morning.

It's the best he can do.

It's useless as fuck.

***

"-illy?"

The voice is scratchy, like older Steve's was. A bit broken by disuse, and yet, somehow, sure.

Like Harrington knows exactly what is happening even if Kathy Anne, one of the ICU nurses, said he's only been really awake and completely aware no more than a cumulative four hours since the first time he spoke, yesterday night.

Kathy Anne also said that the Chief and a couple of suits came to visit him, so yeah, there's a chance Harrington is more aware than Billy would have expected otherwise.

"Yep, amigo, that's me."

Harrington frowns and raises his healthy hand. Billy grabs it and holds it, hating the gloves and the rest of the shit separating them.

"-eeere?" his friend pushes out.

"Where are we?"

Harrington nods.

"Hawkins. At the hospital. Intensive Care."

Harrington nods in what looks like relief, which is another thing Billy wasn't expecting. A moment later, the pretty boy's frowning some more and with a grimace says:

"I don't-"

"You've been asleep for a while, Bambi. A bunch of stuff happened. I don't know how much will make sense."

Harrington nods and licks his lips. "Long?"

"A month and change."

He looks so surprised that Billy would bet nobody had the decency of telling him about shit. They probably just asked question after question, the fuckers.

"Mom?" Harrington manages to ask after a moment.

It's the question he's been dreading since July. He had weeks to get ready for it. He still knows that he wouldn't be any better prepared to answer if he'd had years to try.

God, he'd hoped it would be someone else's job to answer it! He wonders if Harrington tried to ask that question to his other visitors. Fuck, if he did, they clearly ignored it or skirted around it, since he's still asking.

Like there's even a point in trying to postpone answering such a direct question. Harrington's not dumb. He must know the implicit meaning of someone dodging the question.

There's no point in Billy trying that shit too. He owes Harrington something better than that.

He takes a little breath and says:

"She died just after the Mind Flayer did."

There's no emotion on Harrington's face. None. He's blanker than an empty piece of paper, but his hand is gripping Billy's hard. Or as hard as a person who's been in a coma for more than a month can.

"Dad?"

"We think he had already melted into the monster by then."

"-kay."

They stay like that for a minute or two, Harrington stone faced, and Billy waiting for him to stop squeezing his hand so tight.

"Others?"

"Henderson's home, he's doing good, his mom is coddling the fuck out of him. Robin's a floor down. She says hi."

Harrington smiles a bit and nods. It's all the encouragement Billy needs to fill the silence with all the updates he can think of. He already told all this stuff and more to his friend during the past weeks, but Harrington was asleep. He's gonna repeat everything a thousand times, if necessary.

He's too happy to see him awake, and able to understand what Billy's saying, to care about anything else.

***

The school year starts and Max corners him in the school parking lot.

"I'm not saying this so you'll do it, because we both know it won't happen, I'm just saying so you know it: I'd be happy if you came back home."

"Okay."

"So, if you ever change your mind, just know I'd be happy."

"Okay," Billy repeats, forcing the word to be flat. Inflectionless.

Max nods and even graces him with a small smile, and with that, the school day can start and Billy can spend hours wondering if that was Max's way of saying she gives a fuck about him.

The fact is Billy still has not returned to Cherry Lane. A thrifted dresser appeared in the living room of the cabin one day, just like that, and the clothes that used to be in Billy's duffel bag by the TV disappeared from the bag and reappeared, carefully folded, in the drawers. Like magic.

The fact is Billy drives Jane and Max to school every morning, goes to his part time job at the garage in the afternoon, visits Harrington at the hospital in the evening, and falls asleep on Hopper's couch every night while Jane does homework and a movie fills the TV screen.

Jane's discovered the beauty of nicknames and she's still trying to find one that suits him perfectly, she says. On the other hand, he calls her Elly the one time and she's set. From then, all he needs is to call her Elly and she lights up even if she's in the shittiest of moods.

Every time he gets paid, he leaves some money in the jar labeled GROCERIES that sits on the counter in the cabin.

It takes him way too long to realize he's been adopted, sort of.

Life is weird. Compartmentalized.

School Billy is focused on having the best grades he fucking can. Work Billy trades jokes with the other mechanics and has no real care in the world. Hospital Billy can't speak too loud, but keeps on charming everyone to make sure they keep an eye on his friends and inform him about anything important. Cabin Billy is treading water, barely avoiding sinking down, fighting nightmares about the Russian base and his inescapable guilt for not doing more.

Their group and the town as a whole are trying to go back to normal. It's not working. Forty people have disappeared and the government doesn't have a handy exploded bus or wrecked train to use as a cover up story. Rabid dogs won't cut it, this time.

The only ones who got explanations are Robin, Dustin and Steve on one side, with a defective fridge exploding and hurting them in the back of Scoops; and Mr. and Mrs. Harrington on the other, killed in a tragic car accident. Everyone else is either missing or ran away from home.

It's the shittiest cover-up ever.

Buckley comes back to school for less than an hour on the fifth day of school.

"I had a panic attack in the girls bathroom," she confesses to Billy when he goes to visit her at home, later that afternoon. "I thought I could do it, but I kept thinking about what would happen if a piece of the Mind Flayer was still inside me, all those people I could take and hurt…"

Billy can't do much better than sit with her, hold her hand for as long as she needs while she cries, and tell her that maybe it was just too early, maybe she just needs to have a bit more patience.

In the end, she decides to finish high school from home. It probably saves her a lot of panic attacks.

Elly has nightmares almost as often as Billy does. Max, when she comes to the cabin for their sleepovers, seems to have her fair share of nightmares too. Both girls hug Billy, sometimes, and he never knows how the fuck he's supposed to react to that stuff. If Hop is around, his face says that he has no explanation either for what's going on, and to hug the girls back.

Billy's not made for this mushy shit, but he still tries to at least not be a complete piece of crap. Since the random hugs continue, he must not be terrible at whatever they're doing.

Harrington remains in the hospital until late September. Billy, Robin and all the damn kids are there on the day he's discharged, but Harrington still looks so lost and alone that it's painful.

They have readied the house for him, cleaning the mess he'd left behind at the end of June and the dust of more months of emptiness. The kitchen has a new, second-hand fridge; it works like a charm and is stocked with both fresh and frozen food, either from the supermarket or made by Claudia Henderson from scratch.

Billy hovers in the back of their group and feels like he doesn't know what the fuck he's supposed to do. He's good at breaking stuff, or fixing cars, or punching people. Not at hugs. Not at helping his friend settle down into his new life as an orphan.

For the millionth time, he wishes the time traveler had told him something useful or prepared him for the mess that is life.

***

Billy goes to visit Harrington on the evening of the second Saturday after the hospital.

Five minutes in and he already feels so out of place and fumbling that he's looking for an excuse to leave. Ten minutes and he doesn't know where to look, what to say, how to keep his face from showing all the shit crowding in his head.

The family pictures are gone from the walls and the credenza. The stack of unopened mail is still exactly where it was the day Harrington came back. The house feels so empty and dead that it's creeping the everliving fuck out of Billy.

Harrington puts a record on and it takes Billy a whole song to realize it's the fucking Doobie Brothers. He grits his teeth and tries to ignore the shitty music.

Twenty minutes in, and Harrington slams his empty glass of water on the coffee table and growls:

"Get out."

"What? I— What the fuck, man! What's wrong?"

Steely-eyed, Harrington says: "You are wrong. Get out."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that if you're gonna treat me like I'm fucking broken all night, you might as well leave now, before I break my hand again on your fucking face!"

"Calm down, pretty boy!"

"No! Fuck you and fuck your calm downs!"

"It's not—"

"I don't care!" Harrington shouts.

"Holy shit, you're an asshole! One tries to be nice one fucking time—"

"No!" The pretty boy points an accusing finger at him and prods him in the chest every other word: "Everyone fucking tiptoes around me like they're scared I'll die if they look at me wrong! Not you too!" A breath, and then, still angry but with some pleading mixed in to make Billy's heart go all stupid, he repeats: "Not you too. Okay?"

"Okay."

"No, I'm serious, assface!"

"And I'm serious too, fuckwad!"

"Good."

"Good!"

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you, too."

"So, are you leaving?"

"Only if you keep on playing that shit."

"Only if you treat me like I'm broken."

"Deal."

Harrington pulls the record off the turn table, his movement painfully slow thanks to all the still healing wounds. The radio is tuned on a Top Whatever station, which is miles better than a whole record by The Doobie fuckin' Brothers, but still…

"God, not even a coma could improve your shitty taste in music!" Billy groans, and judging by Harrington delighted laugh, it was the right answer.

After that, there are a lot of late nights where the two of them sit somewhere in the empty house and talk about nothing, filling the silence with things that don't matter. Billy makes fun of Harrington and his stupid polos, his lack of success with dating and his love for pop songs; in exchange, Billy is spared The Doobie Brothers and similar stuff. When it's too late to keep going, Billy retreats to that one guest room that's become unofficially his for when he's here, and sleeps the mess in his head and his heart away.

"God, I miss beer," Harrington mutters at least once per evening while they chat, and every time Billy offers him his bottle, because his job is to be a dick.

Every time, Harrington smells the content of the bottle, sighs all wistfully, like a pretty girl in love, and says that he doesn't want to deal with the pain. His stomach, too, is fucked, not just Robin's. The list of stuff he can't eat without drinking Pepto Bismol by the gallon or doubling down in pain is never ending. He's been told he shouldn't smoke either because his lungs are better off without that stuff, but that apparently cigarettes are not as much of a loss as alcohol is.

They're all still very far from being all in one piece again.

***

The least said about Spring Break 1986, the better.

Suffice to say that Billy now has a bunch of scars of his own and a new hate for bats and grandfather clocks.

And a new thing in the list of "shit older Steve should have told me".

But at least, by the end of spring break, Henry Creel, also known as One, also known as Vecna, is dead for good.

***

"I thought you'd have left by now."

Billy's a bit drunk and very high from the joint he smoked, so there's a couple of seconds of delay between when Harrington says shit and when the words start making sense inside Billy's brain.

Harrington is stone cold sober. He hasn't even touched a joint once, not since Starcourt. Billy asked why only once. The face Harrington had on when he did… It said that, if and when he'll get an answer, it will be on Harrington's time.

Billy licks his lips and turns lazy eyes towards his friend as he maybe, sort of, kinda pieces together what the fuck those words are supposed to mean.

It's late night, they're sitting by the pool, shooting the shit and listening to the radio, and until a moment ago Billy though everything was fine, but he clearly was wrong.

"If you didn't want me at your place, you only needed t' say it, pretty boy," he says, and compliments himself for slurring his words only the tiniest bit.

He starts to lifts his sorry, fumbling ass from the pool lounger, but Steve swats at his arm and says:

"No, I mean: I thought you'd have left Hawkins. What with, you know, Neil, and being eighteen—"

"Nineteen," he corrects.

"Yeah, exactly that! You're nineteen!"

Billy frowns and slumps back on the recliner. "Don't follow."

"Last summer. I thought you'd leave. After…"

"The Russians," Billy summarizes. Brilliant as fuck.

"Yeah," Harrington says with a tight little smile. "Instead, you're still here."

"That's an astute observation," Billy says with a douchey smirk, but instead of taking the bait, Harrington asks:

"Why?"

From someone else, the question would hurt, but not from Harrington, not when he says it like this, like he can't fathom the reason why Billy's sticking to this God-forsaken place.

Billy lights a cigarette and gingerly rubs at the still healing demobat bites on his obliques. His t-shirt is soft enough that it doesn't irritates the new skin. Elly bought it expressly for him while he was in the hospital.

"Honestly, that was the original plan. Work the summer, put together some money, get back to Cali."

"To your friends."

Harrington's voice sounded a little too flat for Billy's tastes, so he corrects:

"To some of my friends, yeah."

He smokes in silence and stares up. Too much light pollution to really appreciate the stars. He tries to imagine saying goodbye to Harrington and Buckley. Suddenly, his chest feels too small for his heart and lungs to coexist inside it.

"What happened?" Harrington asks.

Billy blinks away a tear and looks at his friend. "I'm… waiting, I think."

"Waiting for what?!" Steve sounds even more incredulous than before. Absolutely unprepared for these words. "You were old enough to leave already last summer and there was nothing keeping you here! What the fuck are you waiting for?! The new monster that will manage to kill you?"

Billy laughs and shakes his head.

"No, seriously, Barbie," Harrington insists, "don't take it the wrong way, but why the fuck are you still here?"

"It's confidential."

Steve rolls his eyes. "God, I hate when you say that. You have way too many things you refuse to tell me."

"Sorry, princess. But I will tell you, I swear, just… not now."

"Then when?"

"When we're best friends."

Steve splutters and sits straighter in his recliner, and then a shadow darkens his eyes.

"We're not best friends yet?"

Cigarette filter safely between his teeth, Billy lifts both arms and offers Steve his wrists. "Where's my damn friendship bracelet, fucker?"

"Where's mine?" Harrington barks back, and a moment later they're both laughing.

Steve flips him off while drying tears of mirth from the corner of one eye, but for the rest of the night there's still a sad shadow in his eyes, even if he smiles like he usually does. Harrington traces the scars on his belly and ribs too often for things to be okay.

Later, as they're standing in the upstairs corridor, saying goodnight, Billy says:

"Soon, okay? I just need a little more time and then I'll tell you."

Steve nods and closes the door to his bedroom behind his back.

Billy lies on the bed in his bedroom, like he's done so many other weekend nights, and stares at the dark ceiling, fingers tracing the thin ring of scars around his throat.

Harrington looks almost like the Steve Billy met when he was 14. He's got the scars, the chest hair, the low and scratchy voice that makes Billy's knees go weak and his dick chub every time he hears it call his name.

The glasses and the haircut are the only things that are still wrong.

It's the kind of thought that makes a sort of low-level dread churn in the pit of Billy's stomach the moment he entertains it.

***

"What do you plan to do, now that you graduated?" Hop asks while looking forward. He has one arm around Billy's shoulders and the other around Jane's. They're doing their best at posing for graduation pics. They'll probably look like three mannequins.

Presenting for the viewing pleasure of our esteemed, refined clientele: green graduation gown; Hawaiian chic; as-punk-as-small-town-Indiana-can-stomach punk.

Jesus fuck, these graduation pictures are gonna haunt Billy until retirement, if he can't manage to make them disappear.

He's gonna use fire, just to be sure nothing survives.

"So?" Hop insists. He doesn't know about the university admittance letters, since Billy's mail still gets sent to Steve's address, out of habit.

"Stop frowning, Hargrove!" Steve shouts, lowering the cheap camera, and Billy thinks, fuck it, he might as well say it now.

"I got in at Chicago and another place."

"What?!" Hopper shouts, letting them go and turning around. Instinctively, Billy clenches his fists and plants his feet. Braces for violence. Instead, Hopper is smiling as wide as his face can, the apples of his cheek burning bright with excitement.

Billy fights the tightness in his chest at the realization that his own father has never looked at him in any way even vaguely comparable to this.

"Guys?" Harrington calls.

"You got in at two colleges?! Why didn't you tell me? Kid, did you know about this?"

Elly shakes her head with a scowl that anyone else would think is angry but Billy has learned is just her being supremely offended at being left out.

"I didn't tell you because I don't know if I want to go."

"You're going!" both Hopper and Jane exclaim, and Billy has to stop himself from recoiling under the force of their words.

There are no objections allowed.

None.

"That's what I've been telling him too," Harrington says, camera still in hand; standing by his side in her own green graduation gown, Robin nods wisely.

"He knew," Hopper exclaims, pointing an accusing finger in Steve's direction, "but you didn't tell me or El?!"

He must have not noticed Robin nodding.

"Not our fault we're his best friends," Steve says with a shrug.

"Buckley! You too?!"

"Sorry, Hop!" she says with the smile of someone who's nowhere close to sorry.

"Now give me a family smile, you three!" Harrington exclaims, cheerful as fuck. If he hopes to distract them from this stuff, he's only partially successful.

What he gets instead are Billy's raised middle fingers, Jane's offended expression (and one surreptitious middle finger), and a murderous look from Hopper.

Harrington still snaps a picture, the fucker.

Despite Billy's best efforts, Hopper gets several copies of all the graduation photos. He frames the one with Billy and Jane flipping off Steve. He places it on his desk at work, where Billy can't make it disappear easily. He knows. He tries. Multiple times. The other policemen are no help.

He even tries to bribe first Jane, then Steve, and lastly Robin, but everyone refuses to help him, even just with finding out where the negatives are stashed.

And to think Billy considers them his best friends!

***

Billy's not sure it's a good idea.

Everyone else insists it is.

Even Argyle, Lily, Stab, Pudge, and the Jimmys agree, from all the way in California: since he got an academic scholarship, he might as well use it.

Build himself a future, Argyle says.

The part Billy is more concerned about is the one where he will share a place to live with Harrington and Buckley. Specifically, the section regarding Harrington.

He's man enough to admit that, somewhere pretty early in his stay in this damn town, he's gone from caring about Harrington like one cares for his best friend, to being a bit in love with him. A lot, probably. Billy's not great with romantic feelings. Or feelings, in general. They're squishy and messy. One wrong move and you've broken stuff irreversibly.

Still, he spends the summer trying to find a good, rational reason to weasel out of the whole thing, but he fails, so come the start of the school year, he's in Chicago, living with his lesbian best friend and his straight crush in a two-bedroom apartment.

One bedroom for Steve. One for Robin. The pull-out couch in their small living room for him. It's more comfortable than Hop's couch, believe it or not.

It takes Billy less than a day to realize that their apartment is in an area of Chicago called Boystown. Or that Boystown is called like that because it's the neighborhood where all the gay people come to live and have fun.

"Why here?" he asks, when he succeeds at cornering Robin in the kitchen while Harrington is in his bedroom unpacking stuff.

"Because it heightens my chances of getting laid, duh!"

Billy looks at her for a moment longer and then pretends he believes her.

The fact she drags him and Harrington to a gay club every chance they have is not lost on him. "For moral support," she says every time one of them objects, and they each time give in. It's double the normal amount of torture for Billy: he's around so many potentially interested guys, and also has to watch his crush rebuff so many advances. He endures it mostly because of Robin and her occasional panic attacks.

Okay, he also endures it because sometimes Steve can't accompany them and Billy gets to be out and hook up freely and expend some energy on meaningless sex.

"Don't you want a girlfriend that lasts more than one weekend?" Harrington asks, one evening when they're all on Buckley's bed, for some reason they have already forgotten.

Buck blows a loud pfffft! and then elaborates:

"Not now, good God, no! I'm a mess!"

"You're not a mess," Harrington says, already up in arms to defend their best dyke from herself.

"Babe, let's be real: I am. I'm working on it, but Jesus, I wouldn't wish myself on my worst enemy. No, right now, I want to try stuff, and kiss girls, and not have to deal with all the emotional mess I'd create. It's exhausting enough to watch your relationships crash and burn, babe. I just want to be a slut for a while."

"You're doing a great job of slutting it up," Billy says, squeezing her ankle, and she beams his way. By her side, Harrington is frowning. When Billy lets his eyes fall lower, Harrington's right hand is tracing his scars, like clockwork.

"But you used to want a girlfriend, right?"

"Yeah, babe. Just… Not now. Not until I'm sure."

She doesn't need to explain of what she wants to be sure. The fear that the Mind Flayer might still be around somehow still lingers in the corner of their lives, months after Vecna's death.

"What if tomorrow you'll meet the woman of your life?" Harrington asks with a tiny smirk.

"Then I'll have to ditch you two and move in with her. It's the rules!"

Billy dutifully laughs at that, but he hates the idea of a house without Robin.

Before the Spring Break from hell, Harrington had put his family house up for sale; before it was even summer, he'd managed to find a buyer and sell the house, and most of the furniture, too. Despite the money he has in the bank, Steve still finds himself one odd job after the other, and Billy's grateful when their schedules don't align too well thanks to that, because seeing Harrington too much some days hurts in an almost physical way.

"Did you ever tell him?" Robin asks in her chain-smoker voice, one cold autumn afternoon, as she and Billy head to the library to study.

"About what?"

"The thing you told me in the hospital," she says, wary of how many people are walking within earshot.

Billy shakes his head and keeps the door open for her.

"You should, Barbie." The fact that she whipped out that nickname says volumes about how serious she is with this. It only makes him want to clam up even harder.

"I thought you'd have already told him by now," he replies, doing his best to make it sound like the joke it is. "You tell him everything."

"Take that back!"

He barely stops himself from making a joke about the two of them being still in a hive mind. Harrington's the only one who ever initiates that kind of jokes, never the others. Most times, Robin follows him, yes-and-ing merrily along, and every time Billy holds his breath and watches them poke some fun at the shit that still gives them nightmares. The possession that's the reason why no bottle of bleach ever comes near to their apartment, or why some of their nights out end abruptly with a panic attack in an alley and a teary-eyed ride on an L train.

They head to the table they often use in the reading room, and Robin whispers one last "You really should tell him" before they get shushed into silence by another student.

She's such a busybody!

Despite her insistence, Billy still doesn't tell Harrington about being gay. Midterms are near and this is not the right time or the right state of mind to come out to one's best friend.

***

Thanksgiving and Christmas might be sort of bearable, when you're surrounded by people who give even just a single fuck about you. The problem is that his roommates drag him back to Hawkins for both holidays, and both times Billy shares Hop's new pull-out couch with Harrington.

It's torture. Pure and simple torture.

Either he spends way too many hours half-buried under the covers and talking with Steve instead of sleeping, or he stays awake because he's too scared to touch his best friend in his sleep.

The need to reach out and bury his face against Harrington's neck is like a fever burning through him all winter break.

He should have stayed in Chicago and frozen his ass off in their little apartment.

***

In February, Steve gets fired from what is his twelfth job since they moved to Chicago. The bakery he works at doesn't like that he's gotten in the third small accidents while driving their delivery truck since he started working there, three weeks before.

He starts on job number thirteen less than a week after that. Billy always marvels at how Harrington changes jobs like he changes polos. Like he changes girls.

The current girl is a tiny blonde named Sammy who wants to be a teacher. Robin insists that she's good company, she's just got the most unfortunate snorting laughter ever. Billy thinks that Sammy's laughter is like a donkey that's having his balls cut off without anesthesia.

He's not jealous. Not too jealous, at least.

Job number thirteen is as a late night host for a small, shitty local radio. Harrington often jokes that, at the very least, he has the voice for it, if not anything else.

Many nights, Billy stays up reading or studying, the radio turned on to catch Steve talking with his listeners about current events, or dating problems, or the latest movie, in between one popular song and the other. More or less once a week, Steve or his producer let heavy rock or some light metal slip by in the unbearable sea of pop tunes.

On the anniversary of them killing Vecna, with Sammy already discarded and replaced two times, Steve plays "Master of Puppets" and pretends a listener named Jay dedicated it to his brother Eddie on his birthday. Billy's pretty sure they don't get this shitty station all the way in Indianapolis, but one never knows. Maybe Jason did actually call or write to Harrington for this. The fact remains than only someone from Alabama would see something brotherly in the relationship between Munson and Carver! Robin laughs so much about it that she's in tears, back at the kitchen table, where she's supposed to be reviewing the mess of her notes for her gender studies course.

"Jason will go bananas when I tell him," she wheezes while still laughing, and Billy has to agree.

On Billy's birthday, Steve plays Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law", of all things. Robin is with Billy this time too and as the song plays, she gives him a funny look that Billy decides to just ignore. There's no point entertaining her, some days.

***

The club is packed and Billy's buzzing with all the booze flowing in his veins. There's a slight guy with big doe eyes and bleach-blond hair who's been eyeing Billy since he and Robin made their way onto the dancefloor. The guy quirks an eyebrow at him and smiles all promising as he dances closer and closer.

Robin clearly notices the guy, because she taps on Billy's arm to get his attention and then mouths have fun! The music's too loud to actually talk. Billy nods and, while still dancing, maneuvers to be within arm's reach of the blond guy.

Not even ten minutes later, Billy drags the blond guy into one of the bathroom stalls. They're both hard and panting. The guy's slight and pale, he's wearing a tiny scrap of shimmery black fabric that's supposed to be a tank top. His arms and chest are hairless in a way that's freaky. So wrong. The kisses taste like sugary cocktails and mint, his skin like cologne and sweat. Billy pushes the guy against the partition between the stalls and devours his lips, his neck, his nipples. The mewling sounds are so fake they almost make him soft, but the feel of hands undoing his fly and going for his cock manages to keep him still interested in the proceedings.

"I wanna suck you," the guy mumbles towards the ceiling, sounding drunk, or high, or both.

"Do you have condoms?" Billy asks against the guy's neck. He's already sucked a pretty red hickey there. He forgot to bring condoms, tonight. He wasn't even sure he'd be in the mood for sex. Or free from Harrington's eyes to find a hook-up.

"Don't need 'em," the fake blond guy says, and with just three words manages to start making Billy's interest evaporate faster than the speed of light.

"A handjob is okay," he offers, trying to salvage the encounter, but the guy does more of his annoying mewling thing and tries to pull Billy's dick out of his jeans.

"But I wanna suck you..." the guy whines.

"Sorry, amigo, no condom, no deal."

The little fucker dares to roll his eyes and pout, like Billy's the one being silly here. "It's just a BJ, nothing's gonna happen," he whines.

Billy disentangles from the guy and steps back while pulling his dick back to safety and the zipper up. He definitely is not in the mood anymore.

"No, everything might happen, dude. You have no idea where the fuck my dick has been. Jesus, man, take better care of yourself."

The guy pouts and whines and Billy ignores him. He unlocks the stall and leaves it with a huff. The guy is still in there, spluttering his objections like Billy gives a single damn about them. People are getting sick and dying because they're not careful, he's not gonna chance that for a blow job from a stranger who's probably so altered he doesn't even know what he's doing!

Billy takes a minute to shake off the sudden feeling like he's a scaredy cat who can't enjoy life anymore, and then goes back to the crowd on the dancefloor.

"How was he?" a grinning Robin shouts, a nothing from Billy's ear, once he finds her again.

"Stupid!"

Robin says something that he can't understand not because of the loud music, but because the words don't sound right.

"Stupid fucks well," she explains a moment later.

Billy shakes his head and points in the direction of the bar. She nods and follows him. The music is a little less loud, there, so, while they wait for their drinks, he can ask her:

"Where does that priceless nugget of wisdom come from?"

"The German exchange student."

One of Robin's many hook-ups during the past months. This one was named…

"Inga?"

She mock slaps the back of her hand against his arm. "Kari. So, was she right about the fact dumm fickt gut?"

"I don't know. We didn't get that far."

"Why? What happened?"

"He didn't want to use a rubber."

"Ewww."

"What are we ewww-ing about?" Harrington's voice asks from just behind Billy, making a tidal wave of warmth course all through his body. Billy forces his hands to stay put and tries to keep his expression relaxed. Friendly. Well away from if only I could kiss you, it would fix some of my problems! He watches the pretty boy move around him to go hug Robin, who promptly answers:

"People who don't want to use condoms."

"Ewww!" Harrington concurs, a little frown disappearing as fast as it appeared on his face.

"What took you so long, man?" Billy asks. "We had to start celebrating without you!"

He gets rewarded with a sheepish expression that makes him want to kiss the guy even more and Harrington avoiding his eyes.

"Got held up at work and then I couldn't find you. Too many people."

For a weekend night, the place is pretty empty, thanks to the fact a new club opened a couple of streets away and is keeping the prices on booze super low to attract new customers.

Billy grabs the glass of rum and cola the bartender has put on the bar for him and tries to avoid sighing. He's been trying to convince Harrington to have his eyesight checked for weeks, but the stubborn asshole is being stubborn. What a surprise.

He really needs to get Robin in on this.

Just, not the evening they're celebrating Billy's belated birthday. Not on an evening in which Steve's new girlfriend is nowhere to be seen.

***

They left the optician's ten minutes ago, headed to the closest L station, and they're still not even a block away from the shop. Billy sighs. Harrington keeps on stopping to stare at stuff through his brand new glasses, remove them to scowl at the world, put them on again, remove them, put them on again.

"Keep on like that, and we won't be home before dawn," Billy says after the millionth stop, trying to focus on the annoyance to avoid looking too much at what the glasses do to Steve's face. He's turned into a fool in love who can't stop thinking about how handsome his crush is. There's something in the image of Steve Harrington wearing a pair of dorky glasses that does things to Billy's heart.

And his guts.

And his dick.

Harrington frowns a little, but starts walking, thank God. Only to stop a hundred feet later and repeat the operation again!

"Bambi?"

Harrington doesn't deign him of a single glance and just makes a quizzical sound, too busy looking around and scowling to say words, so Billy asks:

"Are the glasses that weird? What the fuck is going on?"

"What? No, no, I, uhm…" he puts the glasses back on and with a sheepish grin says: "I'm just realizing that you were right, I should not have been driving without glasses all this time…"

He rationally already knew it, but suddenly having it confirmed by Harrington himself is so scary that Billy can't even find the strength to say "I told you so!"

He thinks about all the times he could have been maimed in a car accident because he was a passenger in Steve's car, and shivers. It's almost as scary as the idea of either Vecna or the Mind Flayer somehow returning.

***

Max drives into Chicago on the Friday of the pride parade week, with Jane in the passenger seat. Billy still can't fathom the idea the girls are sixteen.

As soon as Elly bolts out of the car, he gets engulfed in a crushing hug and stabbed by the spikes of her leather cuffs. He's missed this feeling. He rocks her side to side until she's laughing and saying:

"Let me go! Let me go!"

The moment she steps to the side to go squeeze first Steve and then Robin in her arms, Max is there. Her hug is a tad more restrained, but it lingers longer. She's been calling often, lately. She's worried about Susan drinking too much, but she hasn't said so out loud in as many words yet.

"How was the drive?" he asks, when his stepsister starts to let go.

"Oh my god, so many fucking people who don't know how to drive, you have no idea!" she says with an eyeroll, and just like that the ice is broken.

Friday and Saturday fly by, except for the fact that on Saturday morning Harrington goes to the barber and when he returns Billy has to retreat to the bathroom to have a little freak out in peace. It's Steve, it's older Steve, everything matches, now, all the conditions have been met. Whatever is gonna happen to send him back in time, there's a chance it won't be too long, now.

Everyone gives him weird looks when he leaves the bathroom after calming down. Looks like he failed at pretending everything was alright when he left the living room, but that's nothing compared to the knowledge that this is the Steve he met so many years ago.

***

For him to go to the pride parade is not a great idea, but Billy can't weasel his way out of it.

Not with Robin giving him the abandoned puppy eyes.

Not with Max and Jane looking at him like he's a total loser.

Not with Steve wondering why he doesn't want to come support Buckley at her first parade ever.

So, he regrets everything beforehand, slathers on some sunscreen, wears a pair of shorts that is not too slutty for a guy going around with two sixteen-year-olds in his group, and then rummages in his drawer in Steve's dresser until he finds the t-shirt Robin made him.

It's cheap white cotton with MY LESBIAN FRIEND IS ALWAYS RIGHT written on the chest in big pink letters. Robin gives him her patented smug look as soon as she sees him wearing it. Predictable as fuck.

Instead of walking the parade, they find a good spot along the road where there aren't too many people and some shade from a tree. Harrington sets up a lawn chair and a cooler with their drinks, and they cheer the actual parade from their little corner. Robin looks both ecstatic and antsy as fuck, ready to jitter out of her skin at the first occasion. Despite the meds, she still doesn't always do well with crowds or attention. During summer it seems always a bit worse.

In a few days, it's gonna be the anniversary of the Russian base and, from past experience, Billy knows it's gonna be peak bad for his friends. That's why Jane and Max are here.

Moral support.

A reminder that they survived the base and then the Upside Down.

Dustin prefers to be away, hundreds of miles separating him from Indiana on the worst day of the year. He says the distance does it.

To each his own coping mechanism.

Billy sets aside his preoccupations for the anniversary and lets himself get swept in the happy atmosphere. He cheers and jeers, claps his hands, pretends he doesn't know the words of "I Will Survive" and that his foot doesn't itch to tap the rhythm.

He and Robin exchange nods and smiles with all the people they know who walk by. He's had his fair share of hook-ups since they came to Chicago. Robin is in an almost identical boat, just painted a different color.

A couple of his past hook-ups stop to exchange a few words, one even goes as far as to wound his index finger into the elastic band of Billy's shorts with a little, coy:

"Tú siempre tan bonito, Papi."

"Y tú siempre tan descarado," Billy answers with a grin that probably goes a little too close to annoyed.

Despite that, the guy laughs, a deep belly laugh that Billy once again thinks is at odds with the rest of him.

"See you around, Billy!" the guy says with a little wave before hurrying up to rejoin his friends in the parade.

"Who was your friend?" Harrington asks. His voice sounds flatter than Munson's ass.

"Ricardo. He's a baker," Billy says.

Which is one truth and a lie.

He doesn't remember the guy's name. He had already forgotten it even before they had set foot in the bathroom stall of the Blue Stallion where they'd fucked. He has a vague memory of it being something with an R. Ricardo. Rodrigo. Hernando. Something like that. The baker thing is the only detail that really stuck. It's probably because the guy had smelled of vanilla and cake, under the layer of cologne he was wearing that night.

"You two close?"

"No, not really, pretty boy." Billy lets the tip of his tongue flick to the middle of his lower lip and grins, all smarmy and over the top. "Trust me, you are the only man of my heart!" Harrington's face is pure skepticism, so Billy thumps his chest and dramatically adds: "There's only space for Robs, the shitbird, supergirl, and you, in this black thing."

"And your friends from Cali!" Jane pipes up.

"Okay, them too," he allows.

"Not Munson or Jason?" Robin asks with a mock pout.

"No."

"That will break their hearts," Max says, with a sneer.

"Yeah, well, they'll understand. It's getting crowded in there."

Jane laughs and then stops as her eyes go wide and curious, held fast on the group of men and women in black leather attire that have just come into view.

He looks to the side and Robin intercepts his gaze. He really hopes she understands what he's trying to tell her with his silent look: I refuse to have to explain this to the kid, you brought us here, you explain!

Robin's face scrunches for a moment in an unhappy moue before she gives him the smallest nod.

There's a chance he'll survive the parade with all his residual sanity intact, without having to explain leather culture to supergirl, and without having to come out to his straight crush.

***

Harrington is the epitome of silent during their walk back home. The three girls are chatting incessantly and it's giving Billy a headache, but his friend's silence feels louder and more pointed than the other voices combined.

"What got your panties in a twist now?"

"Nothing."

"Because it was a nice day, and now you look like someone pissed on your parade, man."

"I said it's nothing."

Billy carefully turns his annoyed sigh into a slow exhale. "Okay. Fine."

They've come a long way from the first-but-technically-second time they met, yet there are still these moments when Harrington can't talk, or even just lie better than this. It pisses Billy off to no end. Which is hypocritical as fuck of him, since he does the same, but he never said he was perfect. He's never gonna be anything but a piece of shit. It's in his DNA. In his upbringing. He's made peace with it long ago.

Harrington mutters something that sounds angry under his breath and walks faster, so he can be closer to the girls. Billy slows down a little and flips him the bird even if Steve won't see it. He hoists the cooler higher to prop it on his shoulder so that having to keep the container balanced will distract him from this stupid shit.

He's the last one in the house and, by popular vote, the last one who will get to have a shower.

"We need a bigger place," Robin says with a tiny shake of her head. The girls have been sleeping in her bedroom and she's been sharing Steve's bed. A second bathroom would be a godsend right now.

But they don't have a second bathroom, or a second shower, so taking turns it is. Jane's gonna go first, then Max, then Robin, then Steve, and lastly Billy, because somehow his is the really long haircare routine, who would have guessed.

Billy's nodding along to the radio while putting together a couple of sandwiches when Harrington comes to lean against the counter. One glance to the side and Billy returns to focusing on sandwich-making. He doesn't like that Harrington has his arms crossed and his gaze fixed on him. Accusing, almost.

It's Robin's turn in the shower, the girls are giggling and chatting loud as fuck in her bedroom. That must be the reason why all of a sudden Harrington wants to talk.

"You seemed to know a lot of people, today."

Billy shrugs nonchalantly despite the way he feels his chest constrict. He can barely breathe at the prospect−

He's not ready for this conversation.

He'll never be.

Harrington seems to have never batted an eye at Robin's preferences, but her preferences are safe, right? All girls are affectionate. It's normal. It's not the same as a gay man hiding it from his male friends. It's not remotely the same as Billy having shared a bed with a man who had no idea about who he liked.

A lesbian girl is safe, a gay man in dangerous.

"Robin knew a lot of people too," Billy says.

Which, on second thought, is not much of a defense and almost more of an admission of guilt. Robin knew a lot of gay girls because she's chatted them up in bars, or had sex with them. The fact Billy knew as many gay men…

"Is there anything you want to tell me?"

The flatness of Harrington's voice chills him to the bones. It takes him a moment to realize what it reminds him of. Neil's voice on those days when he was so angry and itching to hurt Billy that he could feel it in the air, on his skin, in the buzzing of the fridge, down in the soles of his feet.

"I can't do this," he hears himself say. He watches like from a great distance as he delicately lies one last slice of tomato on one of the sandwiches. He's scared of his own movements. Terrorized at the idea of the tremor he can feel down in his every bone escaping and making his hands shaky.

Neil always hated when he couldn't control himself. A real man is always in control. A real man doesn't shake, doesn't cry, doesn't stutter around words.

"Billy?"

"I can't do this," he repeats, lips numbs and fingers number. He dodges Harrington's suddenly outstretched arm and heads to the door. He grabs his keys and wallet on autopilot.

There are words and voices, and a hand on his elbow, but he shrugs everything off and in the blink of an eyes he's out of the apartment, out of the building, already a whole block away.

He walks straight ahead even if aimlessly, needing to just put more distance between himself and that flat, cold voice. It's not Harrington's fault, he couldn't know. It's one of the things Billy never told him because it hurts too much.

It takes him probably twenty minutes of weird stares to realize he's still wearing Robin's t-shirt. Well, it's a hot day anyway, so who the fuck cares. He pulls the t-shirt off and stuffs it half inside the back pocket of his shorts.

He tries to remember what white is supposed to mean in the hankie code, but can't for the love of all that is gay. Honestly, that's the last of his real concerns, right now, but it's sort of a good distraction from whatever just happened.

He keeps on walking aimlessly while looking at people and doing his best not to obsess over how he's gonna explain what happened, aside from "I freaked out".

He stumbles upon an ice cream truck parked on the side of the road, busy selling all kinds of cold and frozen treats. He buys a bottle of cola and uses its cold surface to cool his neck before downing it in a few quick gulps.

He finds a vaguely shaded bench at a nearby little park and sits there, letting the world float in and out of focus.

When he met older Steve, time traveler Steve didn't know about it having already happened for older Billy. Did he know about Billy being gay? Billy's not sure and he doesn't have a way to know until−

Until he tries to tell Steve before he leaves for his jaunt through time!

Because older Steve said they were best friends, so if Billy tells him before, then Steve will take it well and still want him as his friend even despite the fact he kept such a huge thing a secret! But if he doesn't tell Steve before he time travels, there's no guarantee what will happen when…

Holy shit, why is he wasting time?!

Billy's in decent shape, so he manages to run almost all the way home, slowing down only at intersections, because even if he knows he's gonna survive this, nothing older Steve said pointed at Billy never ever having been hurt. Case in point: the fucker never mentioned the scars that now mar Billy's abs and neck!

He takes the stairs as fast as he can and then has to stand on the landing of their floor for a minute, trying to compose himself and not look like he lost his mind somewhere along the way.

The closer he gets to the door to their apartment, the louder the female voices on the other side of the flimsy wood panel are.

That's not a good sign.

It's an even worse sign when he gets tackled in a snotty, spiky hug as soon as he sets foot inside the apartment.

"I lost Steve!" Jane blubbers, and whatever comes next, it gets drowned in the biggest, shakiest sob.

Chapter 5: Back home

Chapter Text

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" are the next coherent words he can get out of Jane. Max and Robin are of slightly more help and coherence, but not much.

An eternity later, he manages to put together enough of their words and visual evidence to come to the sinking realization that he absolutely managed to waste enough time to arrive here too late.

Steve has left for his little time travel trip before Billy could tell him.

"Fuck."

Several cups of cold tea, two eggos, and a whole sleeve of saltines later, the women of Billy's life are settled enough to paint a vivid picture of what happened while he was out trying to stop his brain from freaking out.

Namely: in a well-intentioned attempt to relax Steve out of whatever Billy had done and/or said to him, Robin convinced him to smoke some weed together and relax. Weed turned into those pills Munson had given her last time he and Jason came to visit, and in a spectacular display of genius, nobody stopped Max or Jane from taking one too.

"You gave drugs to−" Billy clacks his mouth shut and glares daggers at Robin. He was gonna complete the sentence with my sisters, but that's a stupid mushy place where he's not gonna go, not now, not fucking ever!

"I know, okay? It was stupid!" Robin cries, her face contorted in sincere distress, a new ocean of tears ready to fall from her eyes.

"New rule," Billy growls, "we are not giving drugs to the underage kid with superpowers!"

"No objections from me!" Robin says, raising her hands in surrender, and Elly nods with such seriousness that he thinks she won't have a problem following the rule. Max squeezes her best friend's hand in support when Billy asks:

"What happened next?"

"We were talking," Max says. Her eyes are still red and puffy. "And Steve said that he was having an existential crisis."

Billy motions for her to speed along while saying:

"Yeah, of course he was. Go to the important part."

Robin eyes him in what can only be described as a considering way, while Max opts for a strange, strange look before saying:

"He was rambling about how much he wished he had done stuff earlier than he actually did, I think?"

"No, it was about meeting someone earlier," Jane corrects with a tiny sniffle.

Oh.

"What else?" he asks, slower. Softer.

Elly rubs a sweaty hand on her knee. "I thought that it would be nice to be able to do that. To meet Mama before Papa hurt her."

Shit. Fuck.

"I'm sure it would, Elly. Did you do something?"

"I didn't mean to!" she shouts. Her eyes are so sad and sorry that he feels like shit.

"Hey, we know," Robin says, rubbing a comforting hand along Jane's arm. "Sometimes it happens that you do something without meaning to, right?"

God, she sounds so pained. If he could, he'd be kicking the living shit out of the Mind Flayer, right now. It's almost a pity that they destroyed that thing.

"You were a bit high," Robin is saying to Elly, "and you didn't know it would happen, right?"

Jane nods. "I just felt good. Floaty. Like in the tank."

"The one where...?" Max stops mid-sentence, doesn't seem to know how to end it. Jane still understands and nods again.

"I was relaxed and… safe. I-" She frowns. "I thought that I really wanted to help Steve. And it just happened."

"Like that?" Billy asks.

"I think so. Yeah. He sounded sad. I wanted to help him. With his wish. Yeah. I think I wanted to help him and I just pushed him along."

When Jane falls silent, eyes downcast at where Max is still holding her hand, Robin adds:

"He said he was feeling weird. When I looked at him, he was in pain, and then he…"

"He disappeared," Billy finishes for her.

"And now he's lost," Jane adds before Robin can give him an affirmative nod.

Billy glances at Steve's glasses, resting over the carefully folded pile of his clothes, on the scratched coffee table at which Billy studies and works on his assignment when he's home.

It feels like the opposite of how he was left that summer, standing alone on the beach with a pair of green shorts as the only proof that any of that had actually happened.

"What do we do?" Robin asks, rubbing her knuckles over her breastbone. Her worry is mounting. No surprise there.

"When did it happen? For how long has Steve been gone now?"

The girls look at each other and after a brief consultation they agree that it must have happened two hours ago, more or less.

"Then we wait," he says.

"Just that? Just wait?"

Max sounds incredulous. The others look worried.

"Yeah. Just wait."

"What if he's in danger?" the shitbird insists. "What if he's wounded? What if—"

"Stop!" Jane shouts, horrified, and Max hastens to apologize and say she's sure Steve is fine. Her tone belies her, and Jane's little, wounded glance at her best friend says she knows it.

"Listen," Billy says, before they can get derailed into a new instance of the diatribe over the nuances and exceptions to the friends don't lie rule. "We have to wait. For one, we don't even know if he's gonna come back on his own or if he needs to actively be brought back."

"How would he come back on his own?!" an incredulous Robin asks. "He's just Steve! He doesn't… We've never…"

"Yeah, exactly, we've never!" Billy interjects. "That's why we have no way of knowing if this thing will revert itself spontaneously or not!"

"What if it doesn't?!" she insists.

"Then, for second, we let some time pass so Jane gets all that shit out of her system and recharges her psychic batteries. And then, after she's rested a bit, we try to bring Harrington back!"

"Who the fuck are you, rational dude, and what did you do with my jackass stepbrother?"

He casts a glacial glance to Max. "Wow, that's so very funny," he deadpans. "You three are panicking, shitbird, someone needs to think!"

"And also, he reads science fiction," Jane adds with a little nod.

Yeah, also that.

***

After it's been almost six hours since Steve disappeared and there's no sign that points to him coming back on his own, they decide that it's time to start working on actually bringing Harrington back.

Robin gives him a silent look. There's a question in her raised eyebrow and Billy doesn't need too much brainpower to figure out which one it is.

"No, we're not giving her another pill," he says in a low voice, and Robin's relieved face says she was scared he'd have insisted on the contrary.

They fill the bathtub with tepid water, but they don't have enough salt (or a place open on Sunday where to buy it) to heighten the salinity and make Jane float 'properly'. No matter how much they try to replicate that damn sensory deprivation tank from her days at Hawkins National Laboratory, their set up is still a far, far cry from it.

Despite that, Jane steps inside the tub with no hesitation and curls up to submerge herself completely before sitting back up. She pushes her wet hair off her face and then giggles at the way the air trapped under her suddenly wet t-shirt forms a big bubble under the fabric.

"Ready?" Robin asks, and Elly looks at them one by one.

"Yeah."

"Be careful," Max says as she ties one of Robin's gauzy scarves around Jane's head, covering her eyes.

"I'm always careful."

As soon as Elly's horizontal, vaguely floating in the water, Max holds her hand, her chin resting on the lip of the tub.

They drew the curtain close and the only light comes from a couple of scented candles that make the room smell of sugar and cinnamon. The radio is on, volume low, tuned to the white noise between two stations.

As more and more seconds pass, Billy stuffs his hands under his armpits as a way to contain his restless energy. He needs her to find Steve and bring him back, but he knows that he'd just ruin her focus or whatever, if he were to speak at the wrong time, say the wrong things. This shit's hard already on Elly without the added stress of a loud audience.

He watches the kid's breathing turn slow and perfectly paced, like it does when she focuses on stuff. Robin twirls the ring around her thumb, even in the dark he can see she's already bitten her lower lip almost raw. He can't see Max's face from where he's standing, but he thinks she's frowning as much as he's doing, if not more.

The wait is slow, still torture.

"Billy?" Jane calls all of a sudden. "Can you talk to me?"

"Yeah, Elly, sure. About what?"

"I don't know. Something nice?"

Billy tries to come up with something to tell her, but he's too worried for anything to really come to mind, right now. Despite his earlier optimism, all he can think of are the worst case scenarios. Robin motions for him to take her place by the bathtub, near Max, so he comes closer and sits on the cool tiles of the floor.

"Why aren't you scared for Steve?" Jane prods when the wait has probably gone on for too long.

"I'm scared, Elly."

"Not like us," she insists.

Billy grins even if she can't see him.

"Because I know he's not in direct danger," he says, doing his best to keep his voice low and soothing.

Despite the scarf, he still sees the furrow of her brows. Yeah, doesn't make sense, does it?

"You sent him back to 1981, supergirl."

Max's expression is pure bewilderment, but she motions for him to keep talking. It might be a smart idea. Maybe if he tells her the right things, she'll have less problems finding Steve. Maybe he can lead her to Steve, in some way.

"He's in California. It's summer, the first Sunday after school's out. There's a pier on the beach. Tourists and families everywhere. Steve's been under the pier for hours."

"Is he okay?"

"Been better. He was disoriented. Scared. In pain. But he's never been in immediate danger while there, you know?"

"Yeah."

"Then someone got him clothes, got him to talk and get out from under the pier. The sun has set, now. It's getting dark, and Steve−"

"I see him."

Max sits straighter and Robin makes a little sound, something scared and hopeful at the same time.

"Where is he?" Billy asks, heart beating fast as hell.

"On the beach. He's talking with a young boy. He's scared again, but different."

Billy grins to himself. "Yeah, he is. Can you bring him home?"

"I don't know."

"I think you can, Elly. Just…" He thinks back to what she said when she described how Steve disappeared. "Try to pull, this time. Pull Steve back home. Back where he needs to be. I know you can do it. You already did."

There are no electric lights on for her to make flicker, but, as Billy looks around the penumbra of the bathroom and meets Robin's gaze, he realizes that he's not the only one who can feel the power in the air, the way the rules of the world are being bent and broken by the will of a teenage girl.

"Jane!" Max calls, all of a sudden, but the next moment supergirl is already sitting up in the bathtub, panting and gasping, blood dripping from her nose, and a naked Steve Harrington is curled up in a ball on their orange bathroom carpet.

"You did it! Oh my god, you did it!" Max screams and hollers, while Robin jumps to hug her best friend and tell him how worried she was for him.

Billy slowly stands up and tries to convince his heartbeat and breathing to calm down. He hates when Jane does this psychic shit, each time he has to fight the fear that this will be the time something breaks inside her head and they lose her. But it worked, Steve's back, just like he was supposed to, holy shit, it's done! He's back!

Max is busy reassuring Jane that she did a great job, and Robin stands to turn the lights on. Billy hurries to grab her wrist, as gently as he can in the heat of the moment, and pulls her back.

"Don't. He's got a migraine, darkness is better, right, Harrington?"

Steve nods feebly, one arm wrapped around his middle and the other plastered to his eyes.

Billy readied all the stuff he could think of beforehand, so now he's quick to spread the fluffiest of Steve's bathrobes on the pretty boy's shoulders to cover him.

"I have your headache meds, Steve, and some water. How's the nausea?"

"Bad," Harrington says in a tired, hoarse voice that Billy suddenly remembers all too well. A beat, then: "The light…"

"Just two candles. They're on the sink, so if you keep your eyes low, they shouldn't hurt too much."

"Good. Then hand that stuff over."

Billy grabs the pills and the glass of water he had prepared, and watches as Harrington takes a deep breath. Slowly, cautiously as hell, the pretty boy raises his head and moves his hand away from his face. When he seems to decide he can tolerate the penumbra of the bathroom, he offers Billy his open palm.

Once Steve's swallowed the pills and downed the whole glass of water, and Jane has stepped out of the bathtub to almost flood the room, she comes to crouch near Steve and whisper:

"I'm so sorry, Steve. I didn't mean to. I'm so, so sorry."

"It's okay, El. I know you didn't do it on purpose. Just… can we not do it ever again?"

"Never, I swear."

Steve nods, eyes still squeezed shut, and pulls the bathrobe closer. "I really need to lie down."

"Yeah, sure, babe," Robin says.

Between her and Billy, they manage to make Steve vertical and decent, and soon the three of them leave the bathroom to the sopping wet supergirl and her worried best friend.

It's only a few steps from the bathroom to Steve's bed, but they seem to take ages. The moment they reach the mattress, Steve crawls on it, still wearing only the fluffy bathrobe, and hides his head under one of the pillows. Billy had already closed the curtains before they started the retrieval operations, and it's dark outside, so once Steve will decide to pull his head out from under the pillow, there won't be too much light in here either.

"Can you take it from here?" Billy asks, low enough that it won't aggravate Steve's migraine.

In the darkness he can't be 100% sure, but he'd say Robin looks worried as fuck and ready to object to his request. Instead, blessedly, she hugs Billy, out of the blue.

"You have some explaining to do," she mutters against his shoulder, and Billy nods.

"Later. He's the priority now."

"Yeah," she says. "Thanks, B. Seriously."

Billy nods and slowly, carefully, she extricates from their hug to go and lie on the bed, so close to Steve that…

Billy pulls the door close behind himself when he leaves and returns to the living room. He falls asleep on the couch even before Max and Jane have left the bathroom. If he dreams of something, no memory of it remains afterwards.

***

Billy jolts awake and sits up before he can even register what he's doing. It takes him a moment too long to realize that what woke him up was the sound of Steve locking the main door. Or that last evening he didn't even set up the pull-out bed. He had been more tired than he had realized, clearly.

"You're up," Billy says.

Back where he's still standing by the door, Steve almost startles out of his skin. He even lets out a little yelp of surprise that makes Billy smirk.

The smirk is short-lived and dies the instant he remembers why he was so tired, last night, and everything that happened after the parade.

Shit.

Harrington is tapping his forehead against the door hard enough that Billy can hear the sound. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Then, without a word, the pretty boy rakes a hand through his hair and heads to their little kitchen.

Fuck. The day is off to a spectacular start already.

Since they're apparently ignoring each other and being dramatic little assholes, Billy heads to the bathroom. It's only while he's washing his face that he notices how he hasn't seen any sign that Robin, Jane or Max are home yet. No sound either.

Okay. It means that Harrington probably cleared the house so he can rip Billy a new one in peace and tell him all the horrible things he needs to without three nosey people intruding and interrupting.

Great fucking prospect.

But what's the alternative? Doing an encore of yesterday and flee the house again? It would only delay the problem and solve nothing, not in the long run. So, no, he's gonna face Harrington. He's not gonna leave the apartment, his home! Not without fighting. Even if things really turn out to be so fucked there's no remedy, he'll try to hold on to this.

"On with the show," he says to his reflection, and then, after a deep breath, he leaves the bathroom.

Harrington has made coffee and put their open tin of Danish cookies in the middle of the table, and now he's sitting there with his hands splayed on the green Formica and his eyes on his cup of coffee. Waiting for Billy's stupid ass.

Billy pours himself a cup and brings the carton of milk to the table. He sits down, carefully adds milk to his coffee, and pulls the cookies closer. The only ones left are the ones with the little cherry. Nobody seems to like them. He carefully plucks the cherry off a cookie so he can eat the only good part. He dumps the discarded cherry on the table and then waits. And waits. And sips his coffee. And waits some more. He's for sure not gonna be the one to kick off the actual shitshow!

When Harrington breaks the silence, at long last, is by asking:

"Is that why you knew all that stuff about time travel, the afternoon when we watched Back to the Future?"

"Yeah."

Harrington nods to his cup. It takes him another half minute of silence to slowly look up at Billy for the first time. Serious bordering on angry.

"That's what I don't get," Harrington says. "That would have been the perfect occasion to tell me about everything! Why didn't you ever even hint at the fact you had already met me?"

Billy takes a deep breath, lining his reasons up in his mind for the millionth time, and says:

"There are paradoxes, with time travel."

"I don't care about your novels−"

"I'm not talking about novels, Steve. I'm talking about what science says."

Harrington's eyes go wide and surprised for a moment, before he asks:

"What do you mean?"

"Remember Marty almost erasing his own existence?" When Steve nods, he explains: "That's the type of paradox in which if you change the past, you change the future too. Maybe the change is for the best, or maybe…"

"You fuck shit up," Harrington concludes for him.

"Yeah. Another one is called predestination paradox. It's about going into the past and trying to change stuff, only to cause exactly the future you came from because the shit you did in the past was always part of the plan."

The pretty boy frowns. "There's a plan?"

"Not really, no, just time being a weird thing and scientists still not being sure about shit."

Harrington's face says that so far it makes enough sense.

"And then there's the possibility that when you time travel, you're not actually going back in time, you're going in the past of a different universe."

Steve had stopped frowning but now goes back to it, harder than before, and shakes his head. "I was not in the Upside Down."

Billy chuckles, tapping his fingertips against his mug. "No, I'm talking about parallel universes that are so similar they're almost identical. In that case, even if you change the past you travel to, the consequences stay in that universe and you return to an unchanged present."

"Are you trying to give me a new migraine?"

"No, pretty boy, I'm trying to say that I didn't know how it worked because the scientists who study this shit for a job don't know in the first place." He rubs a hand on his face and stares right at Steve. "You have no idea how hard it was to never know if I was gonna fuck something up and ruin any chance of us still being friends by the time you'd go back in time!"

"That was your concern?! Being friends?!"

"After Starcourt?! Hell yes, Steve! You almost died, there! What if I had somehow fucked something up simply by knowing shit?! What if the you that I had met was from a parallel universe?!"

"You're losing me, Hargrove! What does it have to do with not telling me about time travel?!"

Billy squints at him while licking the corner of his mouth. It should be so easy to understand…

"Older Steve didn't know that his Billy had already met him in his past. So, depending on the rules, I would change stuff by telling you, or be predestined to not tell you, or be free to tell you and change stuff because that Steve came from another universe and nothing he said would really matter in this universe and it could be possible for us to stop being friends. Either way, there would be so many chances for me to fuck things up..."

To make you hate me, Billy doesn't say. Instead, he just makes a resigned gesture and bites his tongue.

He really craves a fucking cigarette, but he can't leave the house to go smoke on the sidewalk while he's in the middle of this. His first dose of nicotine of the day will have to wait.

"This shit is really giving me a headache," Harrington says while tiredly rubbing at his temples. "No wonder you always look so serious, that's a lot of stuff to worry about."

"Hey, fuck you, I don't look serious, take that shit back!"

Harrington ignores his words and says: "You could have found a way to, I don't know, give me a heads up of some kind."

He's tempted to bitch about the fact that Steve didn't give him any heads up either, but doesn't, just to avoid derailing the topic.

The truth is Billy never felt like he could risk even just a little hint. He couldn't stand the idea of jeopardizing his chances of having a new best friend when he had just been uprooted from home and dragged half a continent away. And later, he couldn't risk ruining his friendship with the guy he's stupidly in love with either!

The problem is that they're all words so big, emotions so dangerous, that he can't push himself to let even just a sliver of them out.

Another thing he can't risk: the chance of his best friend laughing at him.

When he doesn't say anything, Steve stuffs one of the cookies in his mouth and chews it so aggressively that it feels a bit like it's aimed at him, physically.

"Was it weird?" Billy asks when Harrington's washed down the cookie with some coffee.

"What? Being stranded and naked in a strange place? No, not much, I do that every Tuesday!" the fucker deadpans. Like he's the only one who's had fucked up experiences ever! Like Billy's never been dragged into the Upside Down, or into Vecna's mindscape!

He flips off Steve, who reciprocates while Billy's already saying:

"I meant meeting me, fuckwad. Was it weird?"

"Yeah, of course it was, asshole! Weird as hell. You were−"

"Don't fuckin' say so tiny or I swear to God−"

"But you were so tiny, B!"

Fucker!

"I was not."

"You were."

"Was not."

"Okay."

"I was starting my growth spurt!"

"Which you clearly needed because you were the size of Thumbellina," the asshole says with a wise nod.

Billy throws his discarded candied cherry straight at Steve, who catches it in his open mouth and chews it while grinning, the smug fucker.

"What was the existential crisis about?"

Way less smug, now. Suck it!

"You sure you wanna know?"

"I'm officially your best friend. I think you have to tell me. It's in the contract."

"Holy shit," Steve whispers, "you were waiting for this…" Billy starts shaking his head, but the outraged fucker adds: "You stayed behind only for this?!"

Billy points his fingers at him and sits straighter in the chair. "No, hey, that's not what I said! Ever! I did not stay just because of the time travel thing, I swear, okay?"

"You swear?"

"Yes, of course I swear, Bambi."

"On your car?"

Billy nods.

"Your dick?"

He squints his eyes at Harrington and drawls out: "Yeah."

"On Max and Elly?"

"Yes, Bambi, even on Max and Elly." Just for the added drama, he draws an X on his heart with his finger and says: "Cross my heart and hope to die if I did stay here only because of the time travel thing."

"You're not allowed to die," Steve says, low and with a slight tremble in his voice. He and Robin always get touchy when someone talks about death. Being possessed into causing some forty people you knew to die horribly tends to have that effect.

"That's not a problem because I didn't lie, Steve."

"Okay."

"So?"

Harrington takes a deep breath and rakes his fingers through his hair. Billy grabs his coffee mug with both hands to avoid doing something stupid like intertwining his fingers and Steve's to still him.

After a long silence, all that comes out of Harrington's mouth is:

"You."

Uh? Billy's lips part on the beginning of a question and immediately close back up as the possible meaning of that one word starts to sink in.

Another rake of his fingers through his hair and Steve starts rambling. "I— Hoo, boy! I know I'm gonna say all the wrong things, now, even if I'll try not to, so can you not kick my ass until I'm done?"

Billy nods, too scared for words, too scared of what Steve's words might be, and that's not a problem for once because Harrington is already steamrolling ahead.

"I saw how many people you knew, back at the parade, so many guys, and the way they smiled at you. I had thought… I don't know, I had thought you were dating girls but didn't want us to meet them because then Robin and I would tease you about them, like you and Robin do when I'm dating someone new, or maybe that you thought we'd make fun of your girls the way you and Robin make fun of my exes once we break up. I never even imagined there could be another option. Or that you could be coming to the gay clubs with us also because you wanted to, not just because Robin asked us to. And yesterday, all of a sudden, I realized I had never seen what was literally under my eyes and I felt so stupid and so angry. It was like with Robin, but also not at all like with Robin, because with Robin, we had barely started to be friends and suddenly there was the Mind Flayer and that's how I found out, we were all together, linked so tightly and deep it hurt to be separated again, and I knew she liked girls and it couldn't be anything but okay because that was just another part of us, like the fact Dustin hates anchovies, or that my mom had always wanted a girl, or that my dad cheated on my mom despite loving her more than he could ever love any other woman, or that Mr. Morrow and one of his squadmates in 'Nam had been together all through deployment, or that Vladimir loved Coca Cola, it just… was, right?"

Billy nods, for lack of anything better and smarter to do, because it does make some sense, even if in a fucked up way.

"But with you, it was still different," Harrington continues, "because yeah, you never told me, but I'm your best friend away from California and it hurt in a different way to be separated from the truth of who you are like that. All these years and you didn't ever tell me! And also, I was, I mean, Robin says I should own to this stuff and tell you everything, and I want to, even if it's shitty on my part, so, yeah, the truth is I was angry at you but also at them. That guy, the baker?"

Billy nods and Steve's eyes flit away, suddenly can't seem to stay on anything for more than a tenth of a second.

"I wanted to rip his hand off. He touched you like that and… It was like there was Conan the fucking barbarian in my head. For a moment, it was like back down in the Russian base, the Mind Flayer was back in my head and all I wanted was violence, I wanted to pin him down and break him into his components, Jesus, it was so wrong but I was so angry."

"Why?"

"Because he had no right, he—" Steve clamps his mouth shut and swallows. One breath, two. "You didn't look happy when he touched you. It made me even angrier than the rest. They…"

"Holy shit," Billy whispers when it hits him. "Were you jealous?"

"Of all the guys you've fucked without me ever even suspecting you could be gay? Yes!"

"Wait. It's because I didn't tell you?! Yesterday, you were that cold and angry because of that?"

"Yeah! No! Sort of?"

"Very clear, pretty boy," he says with a little grin.

Steve slumps to hide his face between his crossed arms and thunk his forehead on the Formica table, but after a moment he raises his right forearm high enough that Billy can't miss the extended middle finger.

"I wouldn't have called it an existential crisis," Steve says from his hiding spot, "if it was something very easy and linear, now would I?"

"Fair."

"I think…" He lets his hand fall down with a thud and after a moment starts speaking again: "I think it's a bit of both. You didn't feel like you could tell me something so big, so there's that. But also, all those guys… They're so…"

"What?" Billy scoffs. "Interchangeable? Forgettable?"

"Whole," comes, low and pouty as fuck, from down on the table top.

Billy frowns as he taps his finger against Steve's arm, insistent enough to hopefully be annoying and make the pretty boy stop hiding. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Tap tap tap ta-tap tap tap ta-tap ta-tap…

Steve swats Billy's hand away and slumps back and away, out of easy reach. His right hand has disappeared under the hem of his t-shirt and he's following the scars on his belly as he clearly struggles to come up with the words.

"They were all… fit. Tanned. Blond… Not one who needed glasses, or lacked a complete range of motion in their arms, or had…"

Steve purses his lips and looks away, hand stilling under his t-shirt, and holy shit, holy fucking shit!

Billy's heart is thundering in his chest, so loud it's close to being the only thing he can hear. He takes a slow breath.

"Bambi, can I say something now?"

"As opposed to how utterly silent you've been so far?" Steve mocks. When Billy just says yes, he replies: "Yeah, I guess it's your turn."

"Good. First thing: yesterday, when I came back from my…"

"Freak out?" Steve offers.

"Yeah."

"What was it about?"

Billy shrugs and fiddles with the band of his wristwatch. "You reminded me of Neil. It's stupid, but, you know…"

"Holy shit!" Steve's hand lands on Billy's wrist unerringly, it squeezes gently. Softly, almost. "I'm sorry, B. I'm so sorry. I don't know how I did it, but I'm sorry, I didn't mean to."

"It's okay. Just… I needed space, and to think for a bit."

Steve nods and pulls his hand away, goes back to tracing his scars under the t-shirt. Billy's wrist has never felt this naked.

"When I was done thinking, I decided to come back because I wanted to tell you about, you know…"

"Liking men."

Billy nods. He feels pathetic. He can't even say it out loud, for fuck's sake. How is he gonna say the rest?

But there's an expression, on Steve's face… Expectant. Ready for anything that might come next. So, maybe he can do it. If Billy correctly understood the subtext of what Steve said earlier, there's a chance that this will not be a total disaster. That by the time they're done talking about this, things between them won't be one giant radioactive wasteland.

"Yeah," Billy pushes out. "I came running home to tell you, but you were already gone."

"I was pressuring you to come out, wasn't I?"

Billy feels his face scrunch up in a grimace without his conscious input. "Maybe. I don't know. Robin has tried to convince me to do it for ages, but it never felt like the right time."

"And yesterday was?"

"Yeah." Billy sighs and lets a tiny smile curl on his lips. "You looked so much like the older Steve I had met in California that I knew there wasn't much time left. And I thought that if I was living in a predestination paradox, as I had hoped all along, then I should come out to you before you went back in time, because that way we'd still be friends after I told you."

"Because in Cali, I told you we were best friends."

"Yeah. And now that we're after your time travel…" He lets the sentence trail off and licks his lips with a tiny shrug.

"You don't have that crutch anymore," Steve decides to finish for him.

If Billy's first reaction to the word crutch is to frown, he quickly realizes that Steve's not wrong. He did use the few, small details he had about the future as a safety net to help him keep his cool through some of the worst shit they had to deal with. He can't try to deny it with a straight face.

"And now I'm in totally uncharted territory like everyone else. So? Now that you're back and slept on it, what do you think about me being into guys?" Billy asks, hands once again clasped around the mug, this time to hide how they're shaking with terror at the idea of Steve hating his guts.

"Do you also like girls?"

"No, guys only."

Steve nods and utters the flattest cool ever.

"Have you known for long?"

"Elementary school."

Another flat cool hangs in the air between them and Steve's eyes, behind the lenses of his glasses, look almost sad.

"I've…" Billy takes the millionth deep breath of the weekend and flings himself in the most dangerous territory he can think of. "I've got a crush on a guy. It's been for some time, now."

"Oh." Steve sounds so fucking surprised that it hurts, but he's quick to add: "That's, yeah, that's very cool."

"Is it?"

The pretty boy pushes on the enthusiasm pedal with more force and smiles widely. "Yeah! Of course it's cool!" It still sounds forced. Wounded. "Someone I know?"

"Yeah."

"Ah. Uhm, the blond guy from the uni gym?" Steve tries, with a brittle smile on his face. "The one who you were chatting with at that party last month?"

Billy has so little idea of who he means that he has to take a moment to orient himself. "Who? Kevin? No! God, no!"

"Sorry, he just, you know, seemed like your type, and you two talked a lot."

"Yeah, about our chemistry professor. Kevin's not my type, at all. That's the other thing, Bambi. I have a type, yeah, but it's for hooking up. For stuff that doesn't mean anything."

"Uh?"

"Yeah. The guy I have a crush on? Nothing like Kevin. This guy has the best hair ever. A beautiful chestnut."

Steve just blinks, so Billy goes on:

"The day he got his glasses, I couldn't stop looking at him."

Steve's mouth turns into a little surprised O and his eyes go round. "Really?"

"Yeah, they suit him." Billy props his elbow on the table and his chin on his closed fist. His grin is probably a little smarmy when he says: "He's seen some weird shit, you know? He's killed monsters, with and without me, he's pretty badass when he wants to."

"He sounds like a cool dude."

"He's a dork," Billy says, which earns him a quick middle finger that goes away with a smile as soon as Billy adds: "But he's also a great person."

"How long has—"

"Years."

Steve mouths fuck and Billy decides to pause and leave a little opening for him, just in case. Which was a good idea, because…

"My latest existential crisis?" Steve asks, once more raking his hands through his hair. Billy nods. "It was about you being into men, and me being jealous of those guys, and also about how much I wanted you to look at me, just me, nobody else, like suddenly I'm some kind of caveman."

Billy takes a slow breath despite the way his heart is beating faster and faster. "Shit, pretty boy."

"Yeah, I know, it's…" he shakes his head. "While you were out, Robin and I talked and she said that I'm a dingus for never noticing how you've been looking at me all this time. Or how I look at you. Or the fact that all my girlfriends after Nancy were blondes."

Billy makes to object, but then realizes Robin's right, all of Steve's dates and short-lived relationships have been blondes, whether the color was natural or bottled.

"Fuck, she's observant, isn't she?"

"It drives me mad," Steve grumbles, and Billy stands up with a chuckle to round their little kitchen table and stand near his pretty boy's chair.

"Crisis resolved?" Billy asks, and when he gets a little nod in answer, he dares to place a tentative hand on his best friend's shoulder. Harrington doesn't shrug it off, nor flinch, nor have any other negative reaction. Instead, he places his hand on Billy's as he slowly stands up.

"Steve?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I kiss you, now? I've wanted to do it for ages."

Steve's answer is to kiss him first, the asshole.

They chuckles through that first kiss and a few more after, but mostly… mostly it's just one of the best making out sessions of his life.

Damn, if it feels long overdue!

Chapter 6: Forty dollars

Chapter Text

Dating someone who turns lobster-red the moment they're under the sun for more than ten minutes is a novelty in Jason's life. The fact the someone is a guy is the real novelty that has upended Jason's life and makes him feel weirdly free for the first time, but the sunburns…

Eddie moans loudly and pitifully as he slowly crawls off the bed and shuffles to his feet.

"What do you need, Eds? Just tell me and I'll bring it to you."

"You're too sweet, Angel," he replies, cranking the mistreated puppy dog eyes lever to the max. "I don't know what I did to deserve you."

Jason closes his copy of "Jacques Cousteau's Calypso" and leaves it on the bed while standing up. With one of those stupidly fond smiles he can never keep at bay, he says:

"You were the perfect combination of hot and annoying, baby, that's how you nabbed me."

"Aw, you're too sweet."

Jason shakes his head and comes to stand in front of Eddie.

"For real, what do you need?"

"Nothing, just heading to call Dustin and then Chicago."

"Okay," Jason says with another smile. He heads to the fridge while Eds slowly shuffles into the living room and then to the phone propped on their wobbly little side table by the couch. It's time for the weekly call to see if the rest of their group is still alive and moderately sane. They never miss one.

Jason prepares a couple of glasses of cold tea while keeping an eye on how Eds moves. Someone said they had put on enough sunscreen. Someone did a terrible job at it. Someone fell asleep face-down on their beach towel and now someone's back and most of the back of their thighs and calves are sun-burnt, and someone has to sleep on their stomach and can't bear anything touching their inflamed skin.

It's been a miserable couple of days during which Eddie has sworn enmity to the sun at least a hundred times, each more outlandish than the other.

He tried exactly one time to say he's the wrong boyfriend for a jock and that Jason would be happier with someone different. Jason didn't let that specific brand of bullshit fly. He won't tolerate that stuff, not as a joke. After they fought Vecna and his lies together, that shit is not tolerated in this crappy apartment.

Eddie slowly lowers himself on the couch until he lies face down on it and dials a number from memory. He starts talking rapid-fire with Dustin, a bit more energy entering his voice, and Jason places a glass of tea with a straw within reach of his boyfriend.

Eds mouth an exaggerated my savior! and even sends him a kiss before going back to his conversation with Dustin.

Jason brings his own glass to the bedroom and sets in on the nightstand, with one of the coasters painted with clearly possessed chickens that they absolutely had to buy from the thrift shop the moment they saw them.

He's getting engrossed in his book again when he hears Eds say goodbye. A couple of seconds later comes the whirring sound of more dialing. Jason raises his head and waits with Eddie. There's always a moment of fear, when they call around. The irrational thought that maybe this time, when someone won't answer, it's not gonna be because they're out having fun, or working, or what-have-you, but instead because the monsters are back, and now they will have to kill more bats, or travel to more cursed places, or have more waking nightmares, or watch someone else die.

"Hey, man, how's it going?" Jason hears Eddie say, pleased as punch, and he knows he can relax.

He half-listens to Eddie recounting his misadventure under the sun for the joy of Hargrove, Steve, or maybe Buckley, and tries to just chuckle, not laugh, at the way Eds spins the story. He's turning it into an epic, doomed-from-the-start battle of man versus nature, instead of an admission of his own mistakes, and Jason thinks you need at least a tiny bit of talent for that.

"What have you guys been up to?" Eddie asks, and after a few "Uh huh"s, comes a surprised "You two are— Are you kidding? No, no, I'm happy, just… Would you be amenable to…"

Eddie's voice goes so low Jason can't hear it for a while, nothing more than an indistinct, very suspicious murmur, and then it's back to a normal volume for a defensive:

"Yeah, no, okay, I get it, sure. Well, congratulations, man! How did it happen?"

More silence, then Eddie almost-shouts: "What?!"

Jason lowers his book and stares at the printed screen that is all that divides bedroom and living room, even if he can't hope to see Eddie through it. He has a thousand questions and that tone is making him worry.

There's a little pause, then:

"How— What?!"

Another longer pause.

"Don't joke like that."

Silence.

"It's real?!"

Jason counts the seconds of what he imagines is astonished silence, and then there's a loud:

"Jay?"

"What?"

"Next weekend! Chicago?"

He doesn't even need time to think about it, he knows they don't have anything planned for then, so he resists the need to ask what the fuck is happening and instead shouts back:

"Sure!"

"Yeah," his boyfriend immediately says, "we'll swing by next weekend. Do we need— Ah, okay, cool! Yeah, sure, see you next week. Say hi to everyone from us!"

A couple of minutes later, Eddie is shuffling back towards the bed, armed with his tea and a morose expression on his face.

"What?" Jason asks.

He watches Eddie take a tiny sip of tea and then place the glass on his nightstand, which is bigger than Jason's and covered with ten times the random stuff. Among the rest of the shit, there's a possessed chicken coaster that has found a permanent home there.

"I owe you forty dollars," Eddie says with a very aggrieved pout.

Jason can't contain his smile as he once again sets aside his book. "Which wager did I win?"

"Billy and Harrington are together."

"Yesss!"

"I was so sure it would take them at least a year more!" Eddie whines, and flops face-down on the bed.

Jason cards a hand through Eddie's hair and lightly flicks the tip of his ear.

"There's no way they wouldn't have reached critical mass way before the new year, baby, sorry."

"Don't be smug."

"Then don't be a sore loser."

Eddie grumbles something unintelligible against the bedsheets and Jason grins.

"I love you, miserable man."

"I love you too, smug asshole."

This time, Jason allows himself to laugh openly as he wiggles down to align to where his shirtless boyfriend is lying. He kisses one of the still pale spots on Eddie's upper shoulder, one of the few patches of skin where the sunscreen actually landed.

"That's nice," Eddie murmurs. "Can I have more kisses?"

"Yeah, sure."

"And the aloe gel?"

Jason hums affirmatively as he trails little kisses on not-inflamed skin.

"You're the best, Angel."

"I know."

Eddie mutters a mock-offended smug jocks! but then goes back to making little happy sounds as Jason keeps on kissing him, a straight line down along his arm and then zigzagging patterns back up.

"Oh, I almost forgot," Eddie says, voice gone dreamy and sleepy soft, "apparently time travel is real."

"What?!"