Chapter Text
The beeping is the first thing Billy registers. Shit. He must have forgotten to turn off his alarm. Better get that before Neil wakes up.
He goes to move his arm, smack the damn thing to make it stop, but nothing happens. He can't feel his arm, come to think of it. Can't fucking feel anything. The beeping continues, insistent and obnoxious. He must have drank too much at the party last night. Yeah, that had to be it. Just too drunk, the only way he could deal with that god-awful brunette. Jean? Jessica? Hell, it didn't matter. What matters is making that fucking noise end.
He cracks his eyes, searing white light making him slam them shut again. What the hell? He had dark curtains for this very reason. Jesus.
The beeping grows faster, more focused, and along with it come strange but distinct smells. Alcohol, plastic, cotton linens. Pain be damned, he forces his eyes open.
The sterile hospital room is blinding, and all at once everything hurts, and Billy is panicking because his body won't cooperate. The beeping is harsh, erratic, as his chest heaves. There's a tube in his throat and needles in his arms and he doesn't know how the hell any of it got there.
There are alarms blaring now, along with the beeping, as he finally gets his hand to work. He starts grabbing wires and pulling them, ignoring the pain it brings. Two nurses run in, palms raised, and he flings the first one that reaches for him across the room. She's quick to recover, and as he grabs the front of the male nurse's shirt to send him flying as well, he sees the other nurse quickly jab a needle in to his arm.
As the edges of his vision go dark, he swears he sees Max's terrified face in the doorway.
~~~
The next time Billy opens his eyes, the room is dark, and his wrists are strapped to the bed rails. That fucking beeping is still there, but thankfully the tube in his throat is gone. He tries his best to swallow the rising panic, but the damn monitor gives him away.
How did he get here? What happened? He had been at a party. He remembers a keg stand, some dark haired girl leading him to a room, then it was just blank. Had she drugged him? That seems like a stretch. He's taking deep breaths through his nose when a nurse comes in. She's the same one from before, but she approaches him completely unafraid.
"Can you tell me your name?" she asks, all business.
Billy snorts, "You mean you strap guys down without knowing their names?"
She blinks slowly, expressionless, "Name, please."
"Billy Hargrove," he rolls his eyes.
"Do you know where you are?"
"Some shitty hospital in Shit-hole Hawkins, Indiana."
"What year is it?"
"1985. Look, can you tell me what's going on? I'm sore, I just want to go home." Billy sighs.
The nurse doesn't respond, for a moment, scribbling something down on her clipboard. She finally steps closer to him, shining a light in his eyes. Every instance tells him to pull away, throw the walls up, but he knows he's more likely to get out of he cooperates.
"What's the last thing you remember?" She asks softly, backing up and picking up her clipboard again.
Billy recounts the party, glossing over a few details, all the while she's taking notes. She's silent again, longer this time, before she turns and leaves the room without a word.
Billy resists the urge to yell after her, demand answers. His mind is racing now, trying to force it's way through the fog.
Party. Girl. Blank.
Party. Girl. Blank.
He groans in frustration, glaring at the ceiling. He's not sure how long he lays like that, circling the same things over and over in his mind.
Finally the door opens, and Billy sighs as he sits up for more questions.
His breath catches in his throat as his eyes land on Max, not a nurse.
She's different, he thinks. Taller, leaner, cheekbones more defined. He'd just seen her the day before, how had she changed so much? Why was she looking at him like that? Concern, raw and sincere in a way that only children can really pull off.
"Billy?" She crosses over to stand beside the bed. "I snuck past the nurses, I wanted to check on you myself, " she gives him a small smile. "They're not-"
He leans away from her, "What the hell is going on?"
He doesn't understand the flash of hurt in her eyes. They weren't friends or anything, he wasn't nice to her. They tolerated each other's existence at best, necessary evils. Ever since that day she'd smacked a nail-studded bat to the floor between his legs, he'd made a point to speak to her as a little as possible.
The door flying open makes them both jump.
"Miss Mayfield, if you and Mr. Harrington can't abide by the rules we will have you both removed!" The nurse scolds from the doorway.
"Harrington?" Billy starts.
"No one will tell us anything!" Max interjects loudly.
As if the day couldn't get any weirder, Harrington whips in to the room around the nurse and slips his hand in to Billy's. It's all too much, all at once. His head is pounding, his body aches,, he's strapped to a bed, and thanks to that damn monitor the whole fucking world can hear his heart racing.
"SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING," he shouts.
Max and the nurse flinch at the noise, but Harrington just looks down at him in confusion.
"Let go of my fucking hand before I break yours, Harrington," he snarls.
Max grabs Harrington by the elbow and pulls him away, backing against the wall. The nurse clicks her tongue impatiently, closing the door before spinning on her heel to face the room.
"Mr. Hargrove, you were in an accident. There's been some head trauma, and unfortunately some memory loss. Your sister-"
"She's not my sister," Billy snaps, almost as a reflex, but for some reason it feels hollow on his tongue.
A flurry of motion draws his attention momentarily, Max is moving her hands quickly as the nurse speaks.
"Back to the memory loss," she clears her throat, and Billy's eyes flick back to her, "Mr. Hargrove, it's 1987. We need to run some additional tests and see how extensive the damage is."
The air rushes out of him at once. He's lost 2 whole years. The room starts to spin and Billy can't even catch himself when he falls back against the pillows.
He hears Harrington speaking, but he sounds far away, and Billy vaguely registers that he might be passing out. He blinks, and suddenly the nurse is gone. The room is still dark, but he's not alone. Max is curled up in a chair against the wall, a big coat thrown over her as she sleeps.
He takes a moment to really look at her, wondering what transpired in the last 2 years that made her want to wait by his bedside. He remembers nothing but being cruel to her, taking out his father's abuse on her like it was her fault.
His life couldn't be that different, could it?
~~~
Eventually, the sun rises and Billy doesn't want to murder any nurses when he wakes up. He's alone again, but still restrained. They've swapped the padded restraints for long handcuffs, so he can at least move his arms enough to feed himself from the pale yellow tray next to his bed.
The powdered eggs might as well be chalk and the toast is chewy, but Billy doesn't care. It's food and he's starving. He drains the orange juice in two gulps, setting the cup down right as his door cracks open. It's Max, of course. Her eyes are wary, but a small mischievous smile plays across her lips. In her small hands, is a steaming styrofoam cup.
"I convinced Steve to give me more coffee, hurry and drink it before he notices."
She presses the cup in his hands and slips back out of the room. If not for the heat scalding his hands, he might think he was hallucinating. He stares down in to the cup, utterly lost. It's black, but he can smell the hints of sweetness. She even knew how he likes his coffee?
Trying to wrap his mind around it all was giving him a headache. The coffee is weak, cheap hospital stuff, but it helps to ease the pain a little. He takes the time to try and work through what he's gathered so far, though none of it make any sense.
It's 1987.
Max doesn't hate him.
He was in an accident, but aside from some soreness and apparently amnesia he doesn't notice any injuries.
He runs out of coffee far too soon, and take to picking apart the cup with his fingers. Just something to keep him grounded. He watches the hands of the clock tick by as he tears the styrofoam in to smaller and smaller pieces.
The nurse comes in after a while, checks his vitals and asks more silly questions, then leaves again. She scoops the fragments of his cup, mostly tiny fly-away beads, and dumps them in the trash on her way out.
Max comes back a little while later with what Billy assumes is the lunch tray.
She doesn't say much this time, but he can tell she wants to. Max is fidgety when she's got something on her mind. Like the words are bouncing around trying to escape through her skin. It always annoyed him, how she has no poker face at all.
"What, Maxine?" Billy sighs heavily.
"What's the last thing you remember?"
"I was at a party with some dark-haired girl. And then I was in this fucking place being asked a million questions and strapped down to beds."
"What about Steve? What do you remember about him?"
Billy groans, eyes rolling skyward "I remember beating his ass at that house. And that bat. I avoided him after because I like my balls attached to my body. Why is he so fucking important?"
Max squints at him, her face contorting slightly, "Was he at the party you remember?"
Billy pinches the bridge of his nose, metal from the cuffs cold against his skin. "I have no idea. Like I said, I avoid him. You made it pretty clear to stay away from your merry band of freaks."
She's thankfully quiet, Billy's not sure his head could take much more questioning. He picks over his lunch, his appetite gone for the moment.