Chapter Text
“Can I hitch a ride?"
Billy’s question hangs in the air between him and Joyce Byers where they’re standing on her front porch in the middle of a warm October night, one of those early autumn nights that’s still stubbornly clinging to the end of summer.
Joyce’s expression remains neutral as she considers her answer.
For a moment, he can’t help but to compare her to his own mother, who he’s been allowing himself to think of more often these days. He’s pretty sure that if he were a near perfect stranger who showed up at his mother's house out of the blue, asking to join her family on a cross country road trip (that he’s not even sure they fully want to be taking in the first place) then his mother would have smiled wide and bright, invited him in without a second thought, because she was a free spirit, always ready for an adventure. A light that his father couldn't quite snuff out. Dimmed her, sure. But Billy likes to think that wherever she is right now, she shines. Radiates.
Joyce, though... Joyce hovers in her doorway, quite literally covered in darkness, all but totally closed off. Not that he blames her for the hesitation, really. He didn't exactly have the best track record before the whole... possession thing, and the way she’s kind of glaring at him now has him thinking she most definitely knows that he still owes her a new plate to replace the one he broke over Steve Harrington’s head in her kitchen last year.
"To California?” Billy adds lamely in her silence. "Heard from my sister that you guys are leaving tomorrow…"
"We are," Joyce responds finally, and her voice is gravelly like she hasn't used it in a while. Billy relates to that. It took him a solid month after Independence Day to utter a single word to anyone, and even now his words are few and far between.
(He likes referring to the ‘event’ as Independence Day. Reminds him that he's free now.)
"Listen, I’ll sit in the damn trunk if you want," he offers. “You won’t even have to see me.”
Joyce keeps considering him. Honestly, he hadn't thought the plan through to this point. All he knew was that he had to get out of this literal hellhole, and when Max mentioned their plans to leave, his legs practically carried him here on their own accord. Now that the possibility of leaving is so close he can taste it, he's not sure what he'll do if she says no.
"Hey Billy," he hears a soft voice come from behind Joyce, and they both turn to see El walking up to the doorway, rubbing her eyes. They look red. He's not sure if it's because his knock at the door woke her up, or if she had already been awake and crying. He suspects it's the latter.
"Hey," he says back. Offers a genuine smile, because this girl is basically the reason he's still breathing.
"You're coming with us?" she asks, a hint of something like hope in her tone. She turns to Joyce for an answer.
"Just for the trip. If it's alright with..." Billy trails off, looking at Joyce for an answer, too.
Joyce looks back and forth between the two of them, clearly feeling the pressure now. El is nodding her head subtly. She's vouching for him, he realizes. It means the world to him.
"Okay," Joyce finally gives in with a sigh, and El breaks into a wide smile. Joyce responds with a smile of her own, although it doesn't reach her eyes. She turns back to Billy. "But you're not sitting in the trunk. Christ, I'm not a monst—" she cuts herself off, eyes going wide.
Billy lets out a laugh. Maybe at one point it would have been a bitter one, and he would have said something biting, told her he changed his mind and didn't need her help after all. But he laughs honestly now, because this woman in the middle of her own grief and mess, is so concerned about offending him.
"I know you're not," he reassures her. Clears his throat, blinks a few times, thinking. "Neither am I. Not anymore."
When he looks back up, Joyce and El are smiling at him.
//
The next morning, he's got everything he needs in a duffel bag slung over his shoulder as he stands awkwardly in the Byers driveway. He's got his aviators on, which makes him feel better about watching everyone as they say their goodbyes. He feels safe hiding his eyes behind the dark frames. Max and El are clinging to each other for dear life. Will is sobbing in Mike's arms. Dustin is patting Lucas's back in much too hard a manner to be considered comforting and quickly wiping every tear from his eyes the second they start to fall. Jonathan and Nancy are somewhere in the house, cherishing their last private moment together for the foreseeable future.
Billy stands there and he feels like a ghost, like maybe he really did die that day and this is all he gets to be now— the observer. Kind of makes him feel better about his decision to leave, honestly, because clearly there's not much love for him here, even if he is trying now. He’s done too much damage. It's too late.
He looks down at his boots, suddenly overwhelmed. Takes a shaky inhale and an even shakier exhale. Tries that again and again until the feeling passes.
When he looks back up, Steve Harrington is looking right at him.
He had driven Dustin here, Billy knows, but he also knows Harrington’s gotten pretty close with these kids and probably wants to say his own goodbyes, too.
So why the fuck is he standing there looking at Billy?
A few moments pass where neither of them makes a move to look away, and it goes on long enough that it starts to get weird for Billy. Well, weirder than it already was. Because Harrington's not looking at him with contempt or mild disinterest, both of which Billy is used to. No, Harrington looks unmistakably... sad. Shining eyes. Knitted brows. Worrying his lower lip.
Then it occurs to Billy: he still has his glasses on. Harrington has no fucking idea that Billy even sees him right now.
He wonders, briefly, how many other times he's been under Harrington's gaze and not even realized it. Probably not many, considering how locked in he's been to the guy ever since showing up last year. Shit, he thinks. That was only last year? A single year in Hawkins, and I've got enough trauma for a fucking lifetime.
He kind of doesn't want to look away. Like, ever, if he's honest. But then Joyce, Jonathan, and Nancy have all joined them and are packing the last of everything into the back of the U-Haul... so. It kind of has to be over.
Jonathan bumps his shoulder, friendly. "Hey, man. We're heading out in a few."
Billy nods, heads over to the back of Jonathan’s car and slings his bag in the trunk, then walks back around the side of the car. He leans against the passenger door with his arms crossed, his new shield now that his bag is gone, and looks back to the group. Lucas has his arm around Max now. She looks at Billy and offers a small smile, tears slipping from her eyes, then lets her head fall back onto Lucas's shoulder. Billy feels like she's telling him: I'll be alright here. Don't worry.
He pushes his glasses up into his hair then so he can meet her gaze properly. Feels a lump in his throat but smiles at her anyway. She’s better off without him, he thinks. He’s been a dark cloud in her life for too long. Time to clear, let her soak up some sun.
"Hey.” A voice emerges suddenly at his side. Billy jumps.
“Shit, sorry.” Harrington freezes where he is, raising his arms as if to say he’s not a threat. Billy locks eyes with Harrington and wishes he still had his glasses on.
"It's cool, man," Billy says. His voice is sandpaper. He clears his throat as he looks away and leans back against the car, re-crossing his arms and trying to look like he’s perfectly relaxed in this situation. Harrington follows suit and leans his hip against the hood of the car, facing Billy.
"So you’ve had enough of Hawkins, huh? Let me guess— too boring?” Steve asks. Billy exhales a laugh through his nose. The conversation could end right now and Billy would be completely happy with it, but Steve keeps it going. "Suppose you’re off to conquer a new land, then."
"Re-conquer," Billy corrects him. He keeps his eyes trained ahead. "Hopefully."
Harrington doesn't question that, must know that Billy means he’s not planning on staying with the Byers for long. The thought of going back to San Diego gets Billy thinking that this really could be the last conversation he has with Harrington, and now he kind of wants to keep it going as long as possible.
"What about you, King Steve? Time to reclaim the throne?" Billy asks, leaning into Steve’s space a little. He actually is kind of curious about that, now that he thinks of it. It would be kind of amazing to see Steve go from the little sailor boy slinging ice cream at the mall back to the center of everyone's attention.
"Fuck no," Steve laughs. "God. Absolutely not." He seems absolutely horrified at the thought. "Not sure I could take it back even if I wanted to."
Billy shakes his head at that. "Nah, you definitely could.” Billy hadn’t been around for the peak of Steve’s reign as king of Hawkins High, but he could always see some kind of power simmering within him, just under the surface. “You've got that… fire in you." He can’t hide the admiration in his tone. He lifts his head then, meets Steve’s eyes, and there’s something almost like fondness in Steve’s expression.
Then Billy thinks of his mother, the light that couldn’t be dimmed forever, and smiles at Steve with one of those wicked smiles that he hasn't used in months.
"Don't let ‘em snuff you out, Harrington.”
//
Here's the thing: Billy kind of... likes the Byers family.
Like— okay, they're fucking weird, sure. Jonathan and Will can have like full conversations without saying any words, just throwing creepy wide eyed looks in each other’s direction. Sometimes Jonathan will shoot Billy one of those looks in the rearview mirror, and Billy kind of shudders from his place in the backseat. He wonders if the reason Jonathan doesn't ask Billy any questions is because he already knows all the answers, and that’s just unnerving. But then, it's kind of nice, too, because Billy really isn't up for much talking these days anyway, and it's nice not to feel like he has to.
On the drive, Billy finds a lot of his thoughts drifting back to the last time he took this trip, in the opposite direction. Max had been riding with Neil and Susan for most of it, but there was a stretch somewhere around Missouri where she saddled herself into Billy’s passenger seat. She had mostly given up on trying to bond with him by that point (thanks to all of the work Billy had put in to make it that way) so something must have happened in the other car that made Billy seem like the better option. She was fidgety, flipping through radio stations without letting any song play for more than twenty seconds, and that went on for what felt like a half hour before she finally settled on one. It was some folk rock song from the seventies, nothing close to what Billy was into these days, but he found that he didn’t mind it much. It made him want to roll his window down and catch a breeze, so he did, and then Max did the same with hers, and when her hair started whipping all around from the wind she started laughing freely, and Billy didn’t complain about it.
The Byers’ music taste does not align with Billy's like, at all, so that part is kind of torture because with all the, you know, not talking, there's a lot of room for just sitting and listening to music. At one point, Will puts on Should I Stay or Should I Go, which Billy didn’t mind at first, but then the two of them up front start having this fucking laughing fit that dissolves into tears, which Billy’s certainly not gonna question, but…
Weird.
When they hit the first rest stop, they all get out and roam around the convenience store pointing out regional snacks that they didn’t have in Hawkins. El suggests they make it a competition, her and Billy versus Will and Jonathan. Each team has two minutes to find as many things they've never heard of and the team with the least points has to unpack the other team's stuff.
"Not fair. I've got one bag," Billy finds himself saying. He didn't intend to be a part of this but, oh well. Now he is. El smiles. Then he adds, "And I'm not even staying."
El's face falls. "Good point, Billy." She turns to Will and Jonathan. "If we win, you two have to unpack all of Joyce’s stuff too."
"Fine," Will and Jonathan agree. "You're on."
Will and Jonathan win. Billy ends up not minding though, because when he's unpacking Jonathan's stuff he finds a few records that he actually wouldn’t mind borrowing.
When they get back to the parking lot, Will offers Billy the front seat so Billy can pick the music for the next leg of the journey. El steps beside Billy and grabs his wrist, shaking her head at Will.
"Billy rides with us now," she explains, then looks up at Billy with a smirk. "We have to strategize."
Will rolls his eyes and heads back to Jonathan's car while Billy lets El drag him back to the truck.
Riding with Joyce and El is different, but not in a bad way. El sits between Joyce and Billy, and for a while she just keeps looking back and forth between them, waiting for one of them to break the silence. The kid's itching for a conversation. With the way Joyce looks off in her own world, Billy suspects this truck has been even quieter than Jonathan's car, which he would have thought was impossible.
Billy clears his throat, asks casually, "So what town is your new place in?"
"Lenora Hills," Joyce answers from her fog.
"It's one hour and fifteen minutes from San Diego,” El adds. “So we can visit."
She says it in a matter-of-fact way. No question about it.
Billy feels a warmth bloom in his chest.
//
In the end, when they finally arrive at Lenora Hills, Joyce insists that he at least stay the night. They've got a spare room anyways and it's late, two o’clock by the time they unpack all of the mattresses and get all of the necessities into the house, so the buses aren’t running at this time of night anyways.
He doesn't sleep much that night, tosses and turns for a while before throwing in the towel at six o'clock and stumbling into the kitchen, prepared to rifle through some boxes to find the coffee. And the coffee maker. And a mug to pour it in. Hell, maybe he’ll just find a bottle of beer and call it a day.
When he walks in, Joyce is already there.
"Sorry," he blurts, turning on his heel to give her the privacy he's sure she wants in her new home.
"No, no, come back.” She waves her arm at him. "I was just about to cook some eggs... if I can find the pans. Shit, did we bring those in last night?" She starts rummaging through boxes, and over her shoulder she asks him, "Are you hungry?"
He's starved.
"Sure," he answers.
"Well if you can find the pan, I'll make you some. Deal?"
She doesn’t wait for his response, just heads to the fridge to grab the eggs and starts cracking them open in a bowl to whisk.
Something feels funny to him about this exchange, but he’s not sure what.
Then suddenly it hits him— he doesn't think his father ever asked him if he was hungry. Or cooked for him. Or would ever so casually ask him to do something as simple as finding a damn frying pan. That’s it. No hoops to jump through, no impossible task designed for him to fail.
"Deal," Billy says, and if Joyce were to question why his voice wavered he would blame it on the lack of sleep. But she doesn't question it, just continues whisking the eggs and reaching back into the fridge for some bread to pop in the toaster.
Where silence in his old home was filled with tension, with the knowledge that inevitably the other shoe would drop and it would be all shoves and slams and smacks— silence from the Byers family is filled with no expectations. Their silence says: I accept you, as you are. No question about it.
Billy starts digging through all the boxes to find the frying pan, decides right then that he's not going anywhere right now if he doesn't have to.
//
It’s not long before he settles into a rhythm, starts thinking he’s got himself a pretty good deal here.
Every morning he drives Jonathan, Will, and El to school so that he can use the car while they’re in classes. Joyce had gotten an at-home gig, so he could probably borrow her car, but he doesn’t want to risk inconveniencing her if he doesn’t have to.
He’s picked up some work at the beach, a few lifeguard shifts here and there plus surfing lessons on the weekend. When the kids he’s teaching ask him about the scars on his abdomen, he tells them they’re from a shark attack, and he gets to watch their eyes nearly pop out of their heads as they declare him the coolest person in the world.
Jonathan starts hitching rides to and from school with his new friend Argyle, so Billy ends up with just El and Will a lot of the time. As the months go by, he notices that they both start to lose their optimism about the move. They miss their friends. El misses her dad. She keeps mentioning this girl Angela who’s giving her trouble at school, and Billy offers more than a few times to have a ‘talk’ with her. El always declines, but he thinks it helps her to know that he’s willing to go to bat for her like she did for him all those months ago.
Sometimes he joins in on Jonathan and Argyle’s smoke sessions, but Jonathan has a tendency of getting kind of mopey about missing Nancy and it bums Billy out so he doesn’t make a habit of joining them too often. On one such occasion though, Jonathan takes his camera out and starts snapping photos— Billy lying back on the couch with a sheet of aluminum foil draped over his chest pretending he’s in a lounge chair at the beach, Argyle with three slices of pizza stuffed in his mouth making his cheeks puff out like a squirrel’s, Will walking in the room and looking absolutely horrified at the three of them. Billy asks Jonathan to make him copies of all the photos, buys a cheap album at the consignment shop to store them in. It’s no family album, but he thinks it could maybe be a start to one.
One Saturday afternoon in February, El and Will surprise him at the beach, demanding surfing lessons.
"You dorks know I charge by the hour, right?" he complains, but he's secretly kind of touched that they want to spend some of their precious weekend time with him.
El reaches into her beach bag and pulls out a five dollar bill. That's enough for approximately one half hour, and he has a feeling she's going to need a lot more time than that before she can even stand up on the board in the sand, but he takes it anyway and then turns to Will.
"I didn't bring any money," he says. El looks at him, annoyed. "But! I have it on good authority that when Jonathan turns eighteen, Mom's gonna start charging him rent, and I don't think she realizes you're eighteen already. I won't tell her, I swear. If—"
"Yeah, yeah..." Billy waves him off. "Smart move, kid. You're saving me buckets." He doesn't bring up the fact that he already offered to pay Joyce some rent money and has been giving her a chunk of his paycheck for months. He'll let Will think he's won this round.
The two of them are... absolute disasters. In and out of the water. Billy's never seen two bigger lost causes, if he's honest.
But he also laughs harder that day than he's laughed in a long, long time.
//
Max calls him once a week. Tuesdays. 6pm. Like clockwork.
He doesn't know how it ended up that way, but he kind of likes the certainty of it.
Susan had broken it off with Neil in mid August, when Billy was just about to be discharged from the hospital. Neil refused to visit Billy there, no matter how much Susan tried to convince him. The way Max tells it, the fights started about Billy, but then they turned into one thing after another until finally her mom said: "I can't do this anymore, Neil. It's not worth it." Neil had looked like he was going to get violent, but Max called the cops and Neil took off before they got there. Took as much stuff as he could grab and then fled. Funny that’s how it ended when he was always the one telling Billy not to run away. Not very respectful or responsible, if you ask Billy.
Billy wonders sometimes if he’s going to end up bumping into Neil here in California. He's learning to live with the fear that he's going to show up behind every corner. Like one time he goes to the convenience store (to pick up an extra carton of eggs, because they’re doing breakfast for dinner and Billy can easily clear at least half a dozen on his own, so they all bullied him into going out before dinner to buy extra) and he sees a man who’s roughly the same build as Neil buying lotto tickets at the register, and Billy just kind of freezes in the aisle so abruptly that another customer bumps into him. Or when he takes El to visit that same beach she saw in his head, the one that was near their old house, he’s jittery the whole fucking time, until El gives him a comforting smile and says she likes their beach in Lenora Hills better, and they leave. He wonders what would happen if he and Neil did run into each other. He imagines they’d make eye contact, and the world would slow, and then they would both just slide their eyes over each other as if they were strangers. He finds comfort in that, mostly.
Max and Susan are living in a trailer now. He had seen something like that coming, although he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. It’s part of the reason he decided to leave, because he didn’t think he should be a burden to them. He may not have ever really gotten along with Susan, and he had his reasons for that, but he had to respect that she was sticking around, she was trying, mostly for Max, but she was trying for Billy now, too, and he didn’t think she should have to.
Now sometimes when he's talking with Max, he hears all sorts of unusual commotion in the background. Screaming, mostly, which… yeah, that’s concerning. Then there’s this dog that’s always yapping, and Max tells him that she goes over to feed him in the middle of the night when no one's around, and he worries then, but she assures him that they're fine. They're better. Or, they will be.
But on the third Tuesday in March, he doesn’t get a call from Max. He knows spring break is coming up next week, so he figures she’s probably cramming for some of her midterm exams. No big deal. He’s sure she’ll call him when she gets a chance.
Except he doesn’t hear from her on Wednesday, either.
Or Thursday.
He knocks on El’s door that night and asks if she’s heard from Max. “Yes, I called her yesterday and we talked for a little while.”
Billy’s heart sinks. Did he do something to piss Max off enough to start avoiding him? He replays their last conversation in his head, but nothing sticks out. It was the same as all the others.
“Did she sound alright?” he asks.
“I think so,” El says, then considers it more. “We do usually talk for a lot longer, but she said she had another headache and she had to go.”
He really wishes the word ‘another’ was not a part of that sentence. He tries not to think the worst, he really does, but he’s kind of freaking the fuck out. Because Max would never admit it but she is scarily like him, and when that thing got into his head last summer, he remembers his head pounding constantly, and he remembers wanting to avoid absolutely everyone that he could.
He goes searching for the house phone and finds Joyce in the living room using it for one of her work calls. When she sees the look on his face she puts a swift end to the call and hands the phone over to him. His fingers are shaking as he dials Max’s number at the trailer.
There’s no answer. He knows Susan is probably working late, but it’s 9 o’clock in Hawkins. It’s been dark out there for hours. Max should be home.
He dials again. No answer.
“Fuck!” The phone slips out of his hands from his outburst and it clatters loudly on the ground.
Joyce steps over it and places her hands lightly on Billy’s shoulders. “What’s going on?”
“Max—” he starts, wishing he didn’t sound so panicked. “I didn’t hear from her the other day. She always calls on Tuesdays. Always. And I didn’t think anything of it at first, but I’m an idiot. I should have called her. She always calls me. Now she’s not answering. Why didn’t I fucking call her!?”
Joyce squeezes his shoulders. “I’m sure one of her friends knows where she is.”
He runs through the list in his head. Wheeler, Sinclair, and Henderson have their Hellfire Club on Thursday nights and that usually runs late. Max had complained to him about that a few times because she felt like she hardly got to spend time with Lucas anymore. Of course Billy has no idea where these meetings take place, so that’s like all of her friends in Hawkins right there, all conveniently unreachable.
Jonathan strolls into the kitchen then and stops in his tracks when he sees how upset Billy is. “Everything okay?”
“Have you talked to your girl tonight?” Billy asks, hoping Nancy may know where Max is.
“No,” Jonathan replies, glancing down at his watch. “Tonight’s the deadline for the paper, so she’s probably just leaving the library now.”
“Of fucking course.” Billy crumples onto the couch, dropping his head in his hands and trying to will his heartbeat to slow the fuck down.
Then an idea occurs to him, and he doesn’t know why it wasn’t the first thing he’d thought of. He jolts into action, reaching for the phone. “Thanks,” he says to Jonathan and Joyce, who are both still looking at him with matching expressions of concern. “Got a solid lead now, I think,” he explains. They nod and then leave him to it.
He obviously doesn’t have the number memorized, so he has to go through the operator. It takes a couple of minutes but thankfully his call is answered on the second ring. “Thank you for calling Family Video, this is Robin. What genre are you in the mood for tonight?”
“Uh,” Billy starts, thrown off by how this girl’s somehow managed to sound like both the peppiest and most miserable person he’s ever heard. He’s about to ask for Steve when Robin says, “I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with that genre. Can you provide some titles that fit its criteria?”
Is that another prank call? Billy hears Steve asking in the background. God, what is it with prank calls on Thursday nights…
“Harrington!” Billy says in an embarrassingly excited tone. He clears his throat before trying again. “Can I speak with Harrington, please?”
“Who is this?” Robin asks. “And why do you think that Steve can help you any better than I can? Is it because I’m a girl? Because I’ll have you know, I’ve watched over a hundred movies this year alone and he couldn’t even tell you who directed Star Wa–”
Steve snatches the phone out of Robin’s hands. “So very sorry about that, sir. My coworker must have forgotten to get that stick out of her ass this morning.” Smack. “How can I help you?”
“Hey Harrington,” Billy greets.
“Billy!” Steve’s voice has the audacity to fucking soften when he realizes it’s Billy. “Hey, man. What’s up? How’s uh… how’s the weather? Over there? In the uh, the golden state…”
Billy can practically hear Steve shaking his head at himself. Billy’s noticed this habit of Steve’s in the few conversations they’ve had before, his tendency to ramble. He remembers Steve asking him during practice that first week he got to town if Billy ever stopped talking, and he thinks part of him was directing that question at himself.
He almost says that last thought out loud, but then he remembers the reason he’s calling in the first place and cuts right to the chase. “Have you seen my sister?”
The last time he asked Steve that question flashes in his mind. That night at the Byers house looks a whole lot different in his head now that he has some context for what else was going on. ‘Small, redhead. Bit of bitch.’ A lot of things have changed since then, but he thinks he’d probably still describe Max that way now, though it would be said with total reverence.
“Not since this weekend,” Steve answers. “Why? Is everything okay?”
Billy considers how to answer that. For some reason he feels kind of embarrassed to admit the position he’s in, but he pushes that aside quickly. “Thing is, I haven’t heard from her all week,” he starts, aiming for casual. “She always calls me on Tuesdays. Same time every week since I left, I can set my fucking watch by it. But not a word from her this week. I’ve tried calling, but she’s not answering. Then El said something about headaches—”
“I’m actually just about to get off work,” Steve jumps in. “Let me swing by her place and check on her.”
Billy hears Robin whining in the background Hey! We’re open for anoth— but Steve must fix her with a look or slap his hand over her mouth or something because she stops talking just as soon as she’d started.
“You don’t have to do that,” Billy says. He doesn’t want Steve to risk losing his job over this freakout that Billy is having. Max is probably fine and he’s worrying for nothing.
“It’s no trouble, Billy. Really.” Steve’s voice has gone soft again, like he’s offering reassurance. Billy actually does feel his heart rate start to return to normal. “I’ll call you later.”
//
It’s 9 o’clock in California when the phone finally rings.
“I’m so sorry, Billy!” Max jumps right into apologizing. She says El was right about the headaches. She’s been having them for a few days now and she’s been losing track of time. She could’ve sworn that she called him, but she must have gotten her weeks missed up.
“Are you still having them?” Billy asks.
It takes her a beat to answer. “Yeah, a little. But the tylenol helps.”
Billy sighs. “You should go to a doctor, kid. That’s not normal.”
“I know,” Max says. “It’s just… Mom doesn’t have health insurance right now and we can’t really afford any unnecessary visits.”
Billy pinches the bridge of his nose, tries to stay calm, and longs for the days he didn’t give a single shit about her well-being. “This is a necessary visit.”
“I know,” she says again. “I’ll go. If I have to. Just… let me give it a few more days and see, okay?”
He’s pretty sure that if he was still living with her, he’d throw her over his shoulder and drag her to the doctor’s office himself. But as it is, there’s nothing he can do for her besides offer his opinion and trust that she’ll make the right call.
They talk for a little while longer, until Max starts yawning and says she still has some homework to finish up before bed. He hears a blood curdling scream in the background just before they hang up, and he feels a pang of guilt for not being there.
He’s just started dozing off a little while later when the phone rings again. It’s nearly midnight now, which means it’s 3 o’clock in Hawkins so… not a good sign.
Billy can’t help the panic in his tone when he answers the phone. “Hello?”
“Hey.”
It’s Steve, and he sounds perfectly calm. Billy lets out a breath of relief and leans back against the wall, closing his eyes. The house is totally quiet now that everyone’s gone to bed, so when he speaks again it’s a whisper. “Everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah!” Steve is quick to reply. “Yeah, all good. I just… I know Max called you already, but I said I would call you too. So. It’s just these kids have fucking drilled ‘friends don’t lie’ into me so much that it wouldn’t feel right to say I would call and then not call so—” He’s rambling again. Now that Billy’s not freaking out about Max, he can appreciate how adorable it is… and try to ignore the fact that he can count on one hand the amount of things in his life that he’s ever called adorable.
Then it hits him.
“Wait a minute,” Billy cuts in. “You saying that we’re friends, Harrington?”
“Am I saying that we’re friends…” Steve repeats, whispering like he’s talking more to himself than to Billy. Then he laughs. “Yeah, yeah I guess I am. Is that alright?”
“It’s alright,” Billy says, then starts walking back to his room so he won’t have to whisper anymore. When he gets there, he sprawls out on his bed comfortably. “I’m just wondering when exactly that happened, is all. Was it all those times I kicked your ass on the court?”
Steve plays along. “Hm, no I don’t think it was then. I don’t think it was the time you literally kicked my ass, either.”
Billy’s heart drops a little at that. Sure, he has some more context about that night now, but he still wishes he never did that. He’d never even dream of doing something like that now, especially to Steve. He just is still finding it hard to reconcile that even though he feels like a better person now, or that he’s at least on his way to becoming one, that the person who did those things is still inside of him somewhere. But Steve doesn’t seem to be holding any grudges about it, so that’s something.
Steve says, “I’d wager on it being around the time you, you know… tried to sacrifice yourself to save us all from a giant interdimensional monster.”
Billy sits with that for a moment. He’s spent an ungodly amount of time thinking about that night and everything that led up to it. He’s not sure if he’ll ever be in a place where he can speak about it as casually as Steve just did. But then again, a few months ago if he’d heard what Steve just said he would have been locking himself in his room and spiraling for a week minimum, so the fact that he doesn’t have the urge to do that now shows good progress.
In Billy’s silence, Steve must think he’s said the wrong thing. “Sorry, man. I–”
Billy cuts him off. “Around that time, huh? So when you t-boned me with your car, then?”
That gets a laugh out of Steve, a good and full one, not that breathy one Billy usually gets from him that always sounds at least ninety percent sarcastic.
“Yeah, it must have been then,” Steve agrees, his laughter dying down.
Silence settles between them again. Billy starts absentmindedly twirling one of his curls around his finger while he considers what to say next, when he suddenly gets a full picture of himself: lying in bed after midnight, playing with his hair while he talks to a boy on the phone like some lovestruck—
“So, you got to talk to Max?” Steve asks at just the right moment to pull Billy back to reality.
“Yeah,” Billy answers with a cough as he sits up straight in his bed. He thinks back to his call with Max, remembers that screaming he heard just as they were hanging up. “Level with me, Harrington… how bad is that place she’s living in?”
“The trailer park? It’s, uh… it’s pretty bad. Yeah. But Max is handling it.”
“I’d like that sentence a whole lot better if there was a ‘well’ on the end of it,” Billy deadpans.
Steve hums in agreement, then sighs. “Ok. Well if I’m being honest, and I don’t know if you want to hear all this but… she misses you, man. She misses you a fucking lot.” Billy’s not expecting that. Steve continues, “She’s got this denim jacket of yours that you left behind that she wears, like, every day, and it’s way too big for her, and I’m pretty sure Lucas’s new teammates make fun of her for it, but she still wears it, and uh, I think her mom’s been drinking a lot. Dustin just told me the other day that she’s been going to the school counselor lately too, so. I don’t know… I don’t know if she’s managing everything as well as she’s trying to make us all think she is.”
Now it’s Billy’s turn to sigh. He feels like an idiot for the millionth time tonight for thinking that everything could just be okay, for letting Max push him away when he knew that, for once, it would have been good for him to push back.
“Yeah, she uh… she didn’t sound too great when I talked to her tonight, honestly,” Billy admits.
There’s a few moments of silence before Steve says, like something brilliant’s just occurred to him: “Hey! Maybe if y— well, no. No that would be—”
“Just spit it out, Harrington.”
“Ok. Maybe you could… come visit her? Next week is spring break, so the timing is pretty perfect. It, uh— it’d be nice to see you.”
Hm. Yeah, that… that’s actually not the worst idea he’s ever heard. He could probably handle a visit back to the hellhole that is Hawkins. It will be hard, sure, but it’s been quiet there, and it’s not like he’s moving back. He’s got a comfortable home here now and—
Wait.
“It’d be nice to see me?” Billy repeats before he can stop himself. “Nice for Max? Or are you saying that you miss me too, Harrington?”
Steve chokes on air. “What!? No! No, I mean… yeah, it’s weird without you around. Constantly like, annoying the shit out of me.”
“Well, alright then.”
“What?”
“You convinced me, Harrington. I’ll be there in a day or two.”
“You’re serious?”
“Friends don’t lie,” Billy says, only a little mockingly.
Steve laughs, and it’s one of those breathy sarcastic ones, but it’s never sounded better to Billy. “Alright then, I’ll… see you in a couple days?”
“See you then, pretty boy.”