Archive of Our Own ^beta

Everywhere Billy turns, there Steve Harrington is.

Even with school out of the picture, he’s always there. Part of that’s Billy’s fault, what with the showing up at Scoops Ahoy fresh off his shift, but it’s not like he frequented the joint, okay? He just liked ice cream. 

But even when Billy doesn’t seek him out, he’s there. 

He’s in the driveway of the Byers’ house. He’s lounging at the pool. He’s at the Palace. He’s at the Hawk. He’s leaning against a lamp post, talking to that girl he works with. He’s sitting in his car at a red light, drumming his hands along to whatever song thrums through his BMW. He’s outside of Billy’s house to pick up Max. He’s at the diner on third. He’s walking out of Melvald’s as Billy’s walking in. It’s like Billy breathes, and there Steve is, right on the exhale.

Worst of all, though, Steve Harrington is in his dreams.

That part never changes.

But the lines blur, because when Billy crests a wave seven feet, and the girl- Eleven- reaches up to touch his face, and he feels like himself for just a moment, Billy can swear that he sees him.

Far off, in the distance, out the corner of his eye. In those blue striped shorts, and the blue striped shoes. There Steve Harrington stands, watching him die.

A dream, it must've been.

-

And, still, when Billy wakes up in a clean and white room, when he chokes up black and blood and grips at his hair, at the tube shoved down his throat, and it’s just like that thing- when he looks past Max’s stricken, shocked face, past Neil’s ridged scowl and Susan’s mascara tears, past the Chief Hopper, just to the right, arms crossed and lips tight and eyes glassy, there he is. Steve Harrington.

Billy looks him dead in the eyes, breathes in deep. A sticky, rattling sound.

It could only be a dream, because he lives in no world where Steve Harrington would look at him like that.  

Like he’s worried. Like they’re friends.

-

Billy’s body aches. 

It's broken, fractured. A puzzle jammed haphazardly together. All wrong. But the picture looks halfway decent, so who gives a shit?

At least it's done.

He only rips out the PEG tube three times before he doesn’t need it anymore. He learns to walk again, and he picks out a cane with Max because they say it’ll help. He does the stretches they tell him to. He wears the prescription lenses they give him, and he’d be a liar if he said they didn’t help.

Billy does what they tell him to at the hospital. He wants to get better.

They let him out in October. His dad seems happy about it, acts like he’s proud. Claps him so hard on the shoulder that he almost goes sprawling on the ground.

He almost wishes he had. Maybe they would have let him stay.

At home, nobody tells him to do anything. It’s stupid, he shouldn’t need someone to hold his hand and tell him to do his stretches, or take his medication, or wear his glasses.

He shouldn't. But he does. And they don’t. So he does nothing.

-

He wakes up in the middle of the night, shaking cold.

The blankets aren’t working. The comforter and the throw and the other two piled on top of them. He’s still fucking freezing.

He turns over, ginger, careful, but wincing anyway, and pulls the soft throw blanket tight over him, curling his arm around it. He squeezes his eyes shut.

Tonight could be worse. He doesn’t feel that roiling in his gut, the heat in the back of his throat that means he’s gotta jump out of bed and spew his guts out. If he’s lucky, Neil will only bang on the door for him to shut up.

Tonight, all Billy feels is tired. Maybe, if the monsters would stop swirling behind his eyelids he could get some sleep.

Even staring at the wall doesn’t work. It twists and turns until it’s made of shadows- it morphs everything around him until he tastes blood and chlorine. Until he feels it tear into him. Out of him.

He pulls the blanket over his head. Maybe he sleeps, he’s not sure, but when he blinks his eyes open again, there’s blinding white shimmering through the slit in the curtains. Snow. 

Billy shivers. He doesn’t get up. Nobody knocks, either.

-

The year he was born, it snowed in San Diego.

He doesn't remember it, it’s nothing to him; a story, a phantom. City Gets a Surprise- Wrapped in White the headlines read. The first time in eighteen years. “A whole foot of snow,” his mom told him, “A whole twelve inches- you were amazed, Billy.”

He’s not so amazed now. 

It’s cold. It’s too fucking cold. It sinks into his bones, numbs everything until it folds back in on itself, sending shooting spikes of chill throughout him.

He’s seen snow before- his cousins lived up north, of course he’s seen snow. He’s gotten a snowball to the face, he’s made a snow angel, he’s gone back inside to hot chocolate made by his mom, sneakers soaking wet. He’s been mesmerized and amazed in the quiet hours of the night, alone in the guestroom at his aunt’s house, when the snow fell gently from the sky, illuminating the world like a midnight sun.

Billy’s seen snow. Billy’s experienced snow. 

He hates it.

He’s been up close and personal with cold, but there’s something about snow- about ice and white and biting wind and death- that is utterly, totally, and completely god fucking awful.

California snow was different. And that’s not nostalgia talking, it really was different. Fluffy and pure, loud and alive. It came, and then it was gone, and life went back to normal. But when it was there the snow was all anyone could talk about. Wondrous. Awe-inspiring. 

Billy might’ve even liked it that way. 

Indiana snow is a whole different thing. It’s cold, for one. It’s so, so cold. The denim and the leather was enough last year, but this year-

This year, it’s not. Billy doesn’t leave the house (he doesn’t leave his room if he can help it), but when he does, when he has to, he wears a coat, big and stupid and warm, emblazoned with Indiana Dunes National Park that Max stole from the school’s lost and found for him.

“You look like you need it,” She’d said after she’d thrown it onto him without much infliction at all. The look in her eyes said it all: she was sad for him.

He sat in Susan’s Jetta with the coat for a while before he followed her inside.

Hawkins is not a whimsical winter. It’s snow that comes in a torrent, whipping through trees and blasting the town in white. Then, it’s ice. It freezes and slicks up the roads and makes driving a chore rather than a release (but Susan’s car and his dad’s pickup have nothing on his Camaro. Nothing. Besides, there isn’t much release at all when it isn’t your car. When you can’t stake a claim on it, and someone counts the miles you drive). He’s gotta go ten miles an hour unless he wants to wrap the damn thing around a tree. And before he even gets to drive the goddamn thing, he’s gotta spend ten minutes scraping frost and ice off the windows while the engine idles and the heater blasts. First, with a credit card, then, with a plastic ice scraper Susan got him, smiling like it was a gift.

When the temperature rises above freezing, the snow starts to melt and the road kicks up brown slush that sticks to the cars and splashes onto whatever remains of the white snow; this trench of dirt and rocks and salt piled on the side of the road. It’s unavoidable, there’s no getting away from it, from the dirt, the ugly.

Hawkins is bearable in the summer. Well, it was- it could’ve been. Sitting atop that tower, the sun on his face, the splashing of the water. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend he was on the pier, or the beach, or the diner, the one he went to with Max before things got bad, with the fries and the milkshakes (chocolate for her, strawberry for him).

But in the winter- it doesn’t stand a chance.

It’s hell. 

It’s like what Neil said, when he dragged them here in the first place. 

You’ll burn in Hell for this, Billy.

He only got one part wrong:

Billy would freeze there.

- 

“You’ll drive your sister to the Harrington boy’s house, Billy.”

The thing is though, he really, really can’t. There’s not a why- why can't you drive her- it’s simply that he cannot.

His body’s been on fire, from the inside out. It's like the November chill has crept into his very core, lighting up every nerve with pinpricks of pain. The action of moving sends the ache through his bones. The pink scar tissue is tender to the touch- the fabric of his shirt or the press of the air fucking burns, like a frosted metal pole.

He just barely managed to drag his ass out of bed today. He shoveled the driveway, picked Max up from school, and collapsed back down.

Harrington’s babysitting tonight, he guesses. Neil’s making it his problem.

“I can’t,” he says to the wall.

Neil takes a breath, deep and slow. It could be mistaken as steadying. Billy knows better.

He pulls the blanket off, throwing it to the floor. He yanks Billy up by his shirt, twisting him so they're facing. Billy whimpers at the sudden jolt, and Neil’s jaw clenches, eyes ablaze. He bunches the fabric in his fist, leans in close and says, “You will drive her there, and you will pick her up, like the useful, respectful older brother you are. You do want to be useful, don’t you, Billy? Won’t be much reason to keep you here- rent free, might I add- if you don’t pull. Your. Weight.”

He spits out the last part, punctuates each word by pulling Billy closer, and ends the sentence by tossing him back to the bed like he’s nothing. His vision whites out. Billy feels hot tears pool in his eyes.

“Now, drive your sister to her friend's house, okay?”

He blinks rapidly, swallows it down.

“Yes, sir.”

“Glad to hear it. You’ll take the truck.”

And then he’s gone, door left wide open, and Billy squeezes his eyes shut against the tremors. He can’t make it stop.

He throws on the coat, grabs Kill ‘Em All, bangs on Max’s door, and they’re gone.

Neil’s truck is good in the snow. That’s pretty much all anyone could say about it. It’s gray. It has a tape deck. It’s a piece of shit. If you're lucky, it craps out at red lights, or the battery dies in a parking lot. If you're not, it’s the highway, and then he beats your ass like it’s your fault it broke down. He’ll skin you alive if there's so much as a scratch on it.

Billy plays the music loud, but he’s got his hands at ten and two, like that’ll stop the shaking of them.

Like it’ll stop the pounding of his heart.

Billy used to drive to Harrington’s place often. He’d park across the street, get the best view of the joint as he possibly could, and just sit there, like reconnaissance. 

He’d pop in something good (or flick through the radio to find something he thought Harrington might’ve been into), and he’d watch.

The house was like a fishbowl; lights would flicker on, Harrington would crop up, fiddle around in a room, and he’d leave, the light still on behind him. The whole house was usually lit up, and it used to get on Billy’s nerves. 

He thinks he gets it now. 

With all the lights on, it looked more like one of these little houses people put out on Christmas, the kind with the people inside, all happy and bright, with the warm light shining from the small glass windows, a tiny lamp post poised beside it in the fake snow. Harrington fit pretty well- a ceramic boy in a ceramic house- but Billy saw when he didn’t.

His parents were never around, not when Billy was there, at least, and he was there pretty consistently last winter (and spring, and even the summer). Billy heard about the party’s at Steve’s house, how he was lucky his parents didn’t give a fuck, let him do whatever he wanted. Billy had agreed.

He saw Max’s friends there sometimes, especially the curly one. Sometimes, his coworker was there, too, but usually, Harrington was out of sight. Probably in his bedroom or the living room or something. Billy was equal parts disappointed and relieved that he couldn’t see into those. No need to breach into actual creep when he already walked the line.

There were nights when nothing would happen, when Harrington would escape to his room, and all the lights would flick off, except for one still gleaming in the hallway that led to his bedroom. Billy would stay anyway. Watching the quiet Harrington house was better than going home. Besides, it was nice to know he was safe, locked away in his mansion. 

There were nights when everything happened. Those nights usually started quiet, until the steady thrum of music would pulse out from the house, and Harrington would pass by a window, dressed to the nines, spinning and dancing along to the music.

Billy remembers the way his heart picked up, the scoff the sight pulled from him. He probably looked like a moron, sitting in his car, radio off so he could catch any of the music Harrington was playing, and definitely grinning like one.

It happened again a few times after that, but those seemed to end just as soon. Like Harrington couldn’t dance away his troubles anymore. The lights would flick off, the music would end. The owner of that tiny Christmas house would pull the plug. Billy would stay until he couldn’t anymore.

Billy didn’t think there was much that Harrington needed protection from, but, in the quiet recesses of his mind, he felt like a protector. He couldn’t keep much safe. Max, himself. His mom. Even if it wasn’t true, even if he was just a borderline creep sitting in his car, he felt like he could protect Harrington. If not from any real danger, then from himself.

Billy wouldn’t leave the car. Even if the urge washed over him like a wave, even if the riptide pulled him out, even if it filled his lungs with sand and water- he wouldn’t. Just to stand outside- one less layer of metal and insulation separating the two of them- was too much. It put Steve too close.

Billy wouldn’t.

He was the wave, the riptide, the sand and the water. Steve didn’t deserve that.

But Billy couldn’t stop himself from watching.

He hasn’t even considered driving this route since Starcourt.

Billy doesn’t leave the house. He doesn’t put his coat on for anything but to drive Max. 

He certainly doesn’t think about Steve Harrington. 

That spectre in the hospital, that brief moment- Billy knows that was the end. All he deserved. A final Steve Harrington themed kick to the teeth. A you lived, bastard, now move on. A tease, a friend. A Fuck You, paired with double birds.

His heart rate picks up the closer they get. He turns the music up a few notches. Hands stay at ten and two, but he hums along quietly, can only feel the vibrations of it.

He pulls up, shifts into park in his spot on the other side of the street. When Max doesn’t get out, he turns to look at her, tries not to flinch when he finds her already looking at him.

“What?” he snaps.

“Nothing,” she says, like there definitely is something.

He turns away, but she keeps looking at him- he can feel it. It’s like she’s tearing him apart, like she knows what’s in his dirty mind.

He crosses his arms over himself.

Maybe she finds what she’s looking for, maybe she gives it up. Either way, she opens the car door, cold rushing in. “Pick me up at ten,” she tells him, closing the door before he can so much as roll his eyes and half-heartedly say aye-aye or some shit.

He says until the door swings open and the gaggle of kids pull Max inside. The house is glowing, even the marble floor of the foyer looks warm. 

He doesn’t see Harrington, and he’s not sure how to reconcile the twisting relief and sinking disappointment. As if he ever was.

-

Billy helps Susan unclog the shower drain, pulling out red and blond hairs in a big clump. He helps her make dinner, too, ignoring the twinge in his ribs whenever he twists the wrong way, and the shooting pain in his legs, and the headache building behind his eyes because he’s got to squint to read the recipe. 

It doesn’t matter, he can deal. Pain and Billy Hargrove are not newly acquainted. He can deal. Besides, helping makes his skin feel like it fits, even if it’s just for a little bit.

Neil works late tonight. It’s just him and Max and Susan for dinner. They have chicken and rice, because they never do. It’s really, really good.

“How are your scars, Billy?” Susan asks delicately, like she’s asking Max how school was.

He shrugs. “They’re fine.”

They’re not. They fucking hurt, they’re everywhere. They’re there, and they’re ugly and rough and jagged, and even if it wasn’t freezing, he wouldn’t be able to wear any cropped shirts. He wouldn't want to.

“You’ve been using the salve? Doing your stretches?”

“Yeah.”

No.

He does the dishes. He goes to his room. But Susan says, “Oh! Billy, could you drive Max to Steve Harrington’s house?”

He wants to say no, no, he’s too tired, it’s too cold, his body feels like he’s slept in poison oak and he can’t. He doesn’t even think he should, given the headache still pushing relentlessly behind his forehead.

“Yeah, sure. Take your car?”

“Yes, please. Thank you.” She smiles. He doesn’t.

He wears Indiana Dunes National Park and cranks the heater, but it’s still too cold. The car slips on the black ice and his heart rate kicks up. Max grips the dash, and before he can stop it, a sorry slips out.

“It’s okay,” she tells him.

He grips the wheel tighter. It’s not okay.

He pulls up to Steve Harrington’s lit up mansion, his BMW parked in the drive.

Max hesitates on the way out of the Volkswagen. She's got one foot on the ground and the other in the car. She turns around, mouth open on words she doesn’t say.

“Same time?” he asks, when the silence is too much. He doesn't even want to hear what she’s got to say.

Her brows pinch minutely. She’s upset. Billy bites down on the inside of his cheek.

She nods once, and slams the door shut, wrapping her arms around herself as she jogs up.

Billy leaves before she gets to the door.

-

Billy’s been in his room. He’s pulled the sheet that covers his window back, lays in bed and watches the snow drift down from the sky. It doesn’t stick to anything other than a light dusting on the dead grass.

His head hurts, so he can’t do anything. Can’t read, can’t drive, can’t move.

So he stares out the window, and watches the snow.

He gets up to get water, maybe some painkillers so he can actually do something. Susan’s… somewhere, and Max is at the kitchen table, doing homework. She looks up when he comes in, making this concerned face that he kind of hates, so he tries to be quick.

But he can’t find the painkillers. No ibuprofen, no tylenol, no aspirin. He’s rattling all the bottles and he can’t find anything, not even his prescription meds.

“What are you looking for?” Max asks.

“Where’s all the painkillers?” he says, turning towards her.

Inexplicably, she looks, guilty? Her eyes widen and she glances back down at the table.

“What? What is it?” 

“I’ll… just grab them for you.”

He doesn’t say anything as he watches her turn into her room, emerging later with a rattling plastic bag full of pill bottles.

He snatches the bag from her when she holds it out to him, clutches it to his chest. “Why do you have these?”

She looks up at him briefly, then back down at the floor, curtain of red obscuring her face. She shrugs.

He feels a surge of anger well up inside of him, clenches his jaw around it, because why does she have these? Why did she take them, hide them in her room? For the briefest second, his brain tells him that she’s glad he’s in pain. It’s retribution for what he did to her, for how he hurt her, how awful he treated her. She’s got every right to be, but it’s either be angry or completely collapse, implode.

He wants to stay angry, he wants to hold onto that sparking coal of rage that he missed, because if he was angry, at least he felt like himself. He wants to throw the pills on the ground, maybe watch as they break open, fly everywhere. Maybe it would feel good, watching something else break.

He stands there, clutching the bag and looks at her, at her ducked head and crossed arms, like she's waiting for him to snap. Honestly, so is he.

But as soon as the flame catches, it's gone. The anger rises, crests, and falls. He tumbles underneath it and maybe it would be a good thing, but he can’t surface. He can't tell what's up and what's further down. He’ll drown in this, whatever this is.

He hugs the pills to his chest. 

“Max,” he says.

She looks up at him. She doesn’t look scared, just, apprehensive. Nervous.

“I didn’t want… I thought you might…” she shrugs again. “Take too many.”

“Take..?”

Oh. Take too many.

Probably a smart move on her part. If he wasn’t so scared he might’ve. Would’ve been easy to down the whole bottle. 

Still would.

But he’s a coward. Sure, life sucks, but death might suck worse. At least there's something to hold onto still, even if it's just a mirage of warm sand and crashing waves. 

“I just need a few,” he says more for himself than for her. He opens the bag, takes out three ibuprofen, and hands it back to her. She looks at him with wide eyes, mouth parted on words she doesn’t say.

“I wouldn’t,” he tells her. “I won’t.”

Her face crumples, he can see tears well in her eyes. She closes them tightly, two tears rolling down her face as she nods vehemently.

He feels his own eyes burn, and he blinks rapidly before he says, “I’m going back to my room. You can come, if you want.”

She looks back up at him like he’d just told her the sky wasn’t blue, or Indiana was better than Cali. It makes sense. It’s been months, he hasn’t talked to her, done anything with her since the hospital. He drives her around, and that’s pretty much it. He thinks of Indiana Dunes State Park. He thinks of Steve Harrington’s house.

Billy turns before she can say anything, but she’s close behind. He hears her gather her papers and push her chair in. 

He swallows the pills dry, lays back down and looks out the window. Max closes his door behind her, and settles next to him.

It’s easier to watch the snow fall, to breathe through the pain, to breathe, with her sitting there, pencil scratching against paper.

-

He’s trying very hard not to cry.

It’s not working.

Things had been okay; he’s been hanging out with Max- if her sitting in his room when he can’t get out of bed or watching TV in the living room when he can can be considered hanging out- he’s been stretching, going for drives after he drops Max off, his dad’s been avoiding him, only the occasional disgusted glance or scoff when he says something.

Of course it wouldn’t last.

His stomach is in knots. He’s sitting in the place between his bed and his nightstand, choking on the tears. They’re caught in his throat, this lump of dread and hate and anger, caught there like lead.

And for what?

His dad smashed Kill ‘Em All.

Found it in his car, had a shit day at work, came inside and busted it over Billy’s skull, like it was his fault, or Metallica’s fault.

It broke into bits, right over his stupid fucking head.

Billy doesn’t usually care. He doesn’t get attached because getting attached means that it hurts more when it’s taken away. Fuck that. So, he doesn’t care.

Or, he didn’t.

Kill ‘Em All was special. It was his, he bought it the day it came out. He can’t buy a new one, but even if he could, he wouldn’t want a new one. He would want his.

His car is gone. Totaled, rusting in some scrapyard, probably. His body is gone. He can’t workout. It’s jagged and broken and irreparable. Unrecognizable. Weak.

He doesn’t work. He doesn’t go to school. He can’t walk right. He can’t see. 

Billy feels a trail of blood weep down his forehead from his hairline. There's still broken bits of plastic in his hair.

He tries to breathe, but it doesn’t work. It’s short and ragged and the lead in his windpipe is getting bigger, if anything. 

-

He drives Max to Harrington’s the next day.

He does it again two days later.

Then again the next week.

Calling Billy useless implies that he had a use at one point. Which he knows he didn’t. He’s a scumbag, a shit person. Always has been, and now, he’s a murderer, too.

Billy drives Max to Harrington’s.

-

Max doesn’t break that script. Sometimes she hesitates on the exit, sometimes she demands a pick up time, usually ten. Sometimes she asks: “Can you pick me up at ten?”

Yes, he can.

She doesn’t break the script.

She doesn’t.

“Do you want to come?”

“...where?” he asks.

She rolls her eyes as if it isn’t a totally valid question. 

“Inside.”

He looks at Harrington’s gleaming house. Light streams out the windows, warm on the still soft snow. It’s only a few hours old, after all. He pictures Harrington and Max and her friends- the ones he babysits, although Billy’s convinced that he just likes hanging out with them- out there, in the snow. Playing like people are supposed to. Getting their gloves soaking wet making snowballs, or falling back and making angels, trying not to step in them as they stand.

He pictures it, he can see it so clearly, feel it like it’s his gloves soaked through. He sees himself there, with them.

“I’m good. Have fun,” he says.

He doesn’t dream that night. He sees nothing but black.

It’s nice.

-

Billy shovels the driveway. It takes a long time; he has to stop and lean against the garage, or go inside and warm his hand so they feel less like the ice he’s chipping off the drive.

He finishes, best he can do. It’s shit, slippery and frosty, but better than it was. 

Billy fishes the car keys out of his pocket, climbs into the driver's seat to move the car back from the street. 

The heat blasts out of the stale vents. It almost hurts, how hot it is. He puts his hands out over them, lets them melt some of the chill away.

Billy knows what he should do: put the car in drive. Move it back where it belongs. Go inside. Stay there.

Go inside.

Stay there.

The air is too thick. He can’t choke it down. Or, maybe his lungs are filled with blood and antifreeze and interdimensional black goo, and he’ll choke that up any second.

Before he even knows it, before he even feels his glass hands on the gearshift, the car’s in drive and he’s flooring the gas, feeling the tires spin on the icy road before they catch, and he’s gone.

He’s going too fast. He’s going to hit black ice, and Susan’s Volkswagen is going to wrap around a tree, and they’re going to find him, frozen and cold like he was supposed to be, and they’ll go, poor Billy Hargrove, he lived just to die, what a shame, and nobody will ever think about him again.

And the world will be better for it, he knows.

But he doesn’t hit black ice. And he didn’t know where he was going until he got there, but he knows now.

Billy steps out of the car, leans against the hood and watches the snow drift down into the quarry. His breath ghosts out in front of him, and when he closes his eyes, he sees that place, the one Max and Harrington called the Upside Down. 

When he opens them, it’s like he’s still there, and it’s cold and dead and gross, and he knows it’s right, it’s where he’s supposed to be, for what he did, and what he’s done.

If Billy could move, he’d stand on the edge of the quarry, look down and watch as those snowflakes get to fall further than the others. If Billy could move, he’d sit there, right on the edge, and watch the rocks and dirt chip away from under him.

If he could, but he can’t. And even if he could, he wouldn’t. He’s a coward, after all.

He thinks of Max, the bag of pills stashed away in her room somewhere. He thinks of  warm sand and crashing waves.

He’d light a cigarette if he had any, but he can’t smoke. Coughs like it's his first time, everytime. It’s not worth it.

Billy doesn’t think he’ll ever be warm again.

-

Max asks again, the next time he drops her off.

“Do you want to come inside?”

Right before she gets out of the car, but he can tell it’s not an afterthought by the set in her jaw, the upturn of her brows.

It’s a close thing. He can feel the words on his tongue, sitting right there, ready to tumble out and make him look like a moron.

He can see her laughing at him around a you thought I was serious? but he can’t see himself, can only feel the curl of humiliation, hot inside of him. He doesn’t know if he’d get angry, if he’d shut down or just lay in the snow until he froze to death.

It wouldn’t happen, she wouldn’t do that.

She wouldn’t.

But he would.

“Nah, I’m good. I’ll be here at ten.”

She lingers, half in the car, half out the door. The chill makes him shudder.

“You know, we want you there.”

And then she’s gone.

You don’t. You shouldn’t.

-

He wakes up in the middle of the night, shaking cold.

The blankets aren’t working. The comforter and the throw and the other two piled on top of them. He’s still fucking freezing. 

He doesn’t want to be here anymore.

Neil drained his bank account to pay for the last of the hospital bills, and Heather’s birthday is tomorrow.

Billy is suffocating. The air around him isn’t enough- it’s like someone’s syphoning the oxygen out, laughing in his face as he tries to figure out why the fuck he can’t breathe.

He turns onto his back and clenches his jaw against the ache, fists his hands into his hair and pulls, feels the strands rip out.

She died thinking it was him, and now Billy will never get out of this place.

He’s gotta do something.

He throws the blanks off him and stands, mind dead set on the task he’s laid out that he forgets that he can’t fucking walk and he pitches forward, just too far from his dresser to catch himself. He lands on his knees heavily, can’t stop the cry he lets out as his body jolts with the electric impact. He squeezes his eyes shut against the pain and the tears and he breathes deep. Feels his lungs rattle with it.

After a moment of trying to breathe- and it’s easier now, the pain real, there- he reaches for the cane that’s propped on the wall, dusty and unused, and pulls himself up with it.

His legs still don’t really work, but it's the middle of the night, he’s not stretching, he’s gotta do this now.

The cane and the wall are the only reasons he even gets to the bathroom. Usually he could do it, would have to be able to do it, but he hasn’t moved in twenty four hours, and it hurts.

He closes the door slowly, flicks the light on, and sits on the toilet.

But he needs a mirror. For once, he needs to be able to see.

He opens Susan’s drawer and pulls out her hand mirror and a pair of scissors.

Billy doesn’t like to look at himself. The one thing he ever had was his looks. He was pretty, even if he was an unbearable person. At least he was pretty.

There's a scar that runs under his right eye. It would probably have healed up if his dad hadn’t reopened it the week Billy got home. At least it’s white, and not the pink of the other ones. There's dark circles under his eyes, made even more obvious by how pale he is. He can see the freckles on his face, just a little.

And his hair, it’s long. Still cut in the mullet, but it’s grown out. Five months worth of it. It’s also tangled, especially the back. He doesn’t brush it. He doesn’t take care of it.

Billy can hear himself from a year ago groan in disgust. Get your shit together, Hargrove. Buy some fucking conditioner.

He’d tell himself that he’s got more important problems than knots in his hair, but it feels like a load of shit.

Billy’s so tired. He’s so, so tired. But he’s been laying around for months and he’s not better. Fuck, he might even be worse, because now he’s used to it. Used to being broken. Used to being pushed around by Neil, even like this.

Where does he even go from here? Where is there to go? He has no money, no car, no job. He can’t even walk. He can’t even die.

Where does he go?

Since the day Max told him about the Camaro, since he’d felt that first bit of his freedom drip and drain away, he doesn’t know.

He sees a flash of himself in Steve Harrington’s house. He sees those brown eyes smile at him. He feels that hair under his fingers. It’s crazy how soft it is. 

He can feel hot tears burning his eyes. He doesn’t try to push them away.

He grabs the scissors and his hair in a fist, the back, where it’s the longest, and he cuts it off. 

Billy holds the knotted hair in his fist, twists the strands around in his fingers, and cries.

Someone knocks. At first he thinks it’s Neil, coming to tell him to shut the fuck up, other people live here for Christ’s sake, but it’s too soft, too quiet.

“Billy?” Max.

He tries to swipe away the tears before she comes in, but it doesn’t matter. No way she can’t tell.

She looks surprised as she closes the door behind her, probably expecting him to be how she usually finds him, curled up on the tile in front of the toilet.

She’s wearing fleece pajama pants and a tank top he recognizes from California. He wants to ask how she’s not freezing.

“What do you want, shitbird?”

He thinks she almost smiles at that.

She seems to bounce back quickly from whatever surprise he inspired, because she gestures to his hair and says, “Do you want me to help you fix that?”

He sniffles. “Is it really that bad?” He tries for sarcastic, but it just comes out a little sad.

“Nah,” she says. “Just a little uneven.”

He sighs, tries to be put-upon, and hands her the scissors. She seems far too relieved to have them. Shoulders slumping minutely and eyeing him weirdly.

Shit.

“Turn,” she says, facing him towards the counter and moving behind him. “How short were you going?”

“Not short,” he tells her swiftly. No, not short. Neil hates it long, fucking detests it, takes every chance to mock him for it. Like a girl, Billy. You look like a girl.  

For however long Neil Hargrove has to look at his son, he’s gonna have long hair. Billy will make sure of it.

“I’ll just even it?” Max asks, unperturbed.

“Yeah,” he tells her. “Thanks,” he tacks on.

It doesn’t take her long. She brushes it first, gets it wet, brushes it again. It feels so fucking good. She touches him like he might break, and it’s something he hates, he should be mad, tell her to quit it. But this time around, he thinks he actually might. He feels tears on his face again. She’s quick, and she does pretty good. She helps him stand when she’s done, holding the mirror up so he can see the back. 

He wants to say thanks, but the words don’t come out. He doesn’t think any will. He just smiles at her reflection, and she smiles back.

-

The next time Billy is tasked with driving Max, she doesn’t want to go to Harrington’s.

No.

She wants to go to Wheeler’s.

So he does it, and he feels the swirling relief and disappointment that comes with Harrington being so close, and yet just out of reach. 

He does it, and he watches the setting sun cast the sky a pink and orange haze, and he doesn’t feel much of anything at all.

He does it, and he doesn’t expect her to ask:

“Do you wanna come? It’s D&D night, but you don’t have to play.”

He’s already got the words in his mouth before he pauses, really thinks about it.

Harrington is probably not here. Seeing as this is the first time in a long time that the kids are doing something not at his house. He’s probably busy or sick or something, and he’s probably not here.

There’s that.

Billy doesn’t really know why Max is inviting him to D&D night at the Wheeler’s (he doesn’t really know why she’s been inviting him for the past month and a half) but honestly? He can’t think of a convincing reason to say no. 

We want you there, you know.

He shrugs like it doesn’t mean anything at all and says, “Yeah, sure.”

She looks surprised, like she didn’t expect it to work, but she quickly smooths it over, and she might even look triumphant. Like she just won a bet or something.

“Cool,” she says, just as nonchalant.

So he parks on the street, and follows her down to the basement, brushing off Karen Wheelers how have you been’ s and we hope you're doing okay’ s with a tight smile and cut off nods. He descends the stairs and before he even sees them, he can hear the kids arguing loudly about wizards and elves and character sheets and dungeon masters, but it’s like his head gets dunked underwater when he descends the stairs and sees Steve Harrington sitting on the futon, with furrowed brows and parted lips, nodding like he doesn’t really know what's happening while the curly kid animatedly points at things on a sheet of paper. 

Billy freezes, pulls back, but Max has her hand on his sleeve, like she knew he’d try to make a run for it.

He kind of hates her for it, and he tugs his arm back half heartedly. She doesn’t let go.

“Max. I changed my mind. I have stuff to do,” he hisses.

She whips her head back, eyes narrowed and blazing. “You do not, you liar.” She tightens her grip on his sleeve. 

Billy feels cold panic coil in his gut, and he flicks his eyes back to Harrington. He’s got his eyes on the curly kid, who grins and holds his hands out. Harrington still looks perplexed, and the kid sighs, shoulders slumping.

Billy’s not been seen. He can still get the hell out before he is. He hunches his shoulder and brings up the arm that Max isn’t holding to clutch at his bicep. His heart is beating too fast. It’ll likely explode.

“Max,” he says, tugs again.

“Billy,” she shoots back, eyes intense.

He tries to match her, show her that he can’t, but she holds, and he feels his resolve crumple. It’s all too much.

“C’mon,” she all but pleads. “Please.”

He sighs, blinks away the stinging in his eyes, and says, “Fine. But I’m not playing.” 

“That’s okay,” Max says, grinning, and pulls him the rest of the way down the stairs. 

The place goes silent the second they hit the landing. Mike Wheeler is the first to look up, attempting to smooth out his it-smells-like-shit expression into something more neutral. The rest of them follow like dominos, all looking at him in dead silence. Then Harrington looks up.

He looks Billy dead in the eyes, and it takes everything in him not to avert his gaze. He digs his socked foot into the floor, clenches his jaw against it, and looks into Harrington’s eyes.

At first, he looks shocked, surprised. Then, for the briefest second, he looks hurt, and Billy doesn’t know why the fuck he’d look hurt. But then it’s gone, and Billy’s not totally sure it was ever there to begin with, and Harrington just smiles. He smiles and says, “Hey.”

Billy rips his gaze away, casts it to the floor. “Hey.”

His heart hammers in his chest, but maybe in less of an I'm going to die way and maybe more of a this is how I know I’m still alive way. 

Someone speaks, and the volume of the room gradually rises until it’s what it was before he showed up. Max drops his sleeve and sits down between Eleven and Sinclair, who both look equally happy to see her.

Billy stands there like an idiot for what feels like an hour before he sees a plush chair in the corner of the room, and beelines towards that.

He’s got a pretty good view of the place from where he’s sat, and it feels like somewhere. There's toys scattered around the place, posters on the wall. Board games on the shelves and blankets on the couches.

It feels alive. Light and free, like there's no bad memories here. 

He watches them crowd around the table in the center of the room, setting up characters and dice and books. Lucas poises himself at the head of the table (if a perfectly symmetrical table can have a head) and if Billy has any critical thinking skills, he’d say he’s the dungeon master. 

It feels wrong, for him to be here. Intrusive. Creepy. This place is too good for him. This place feels loved.

Billy sits there, aware of nothing, yet everything, voices bleeding together, yet every one of them is looking at him, when he hears Harrington’s voice break the buzz.

“Hey guys, I don’t think I can play this time,” he says apologetically, standing from his spot around the table.

“What?” the curly kid exclaims. “Steve, I just spent fifteen minutes explaining it to you!”

Steve hesitates for a moment, like the kid has a pretty good point, before he aborts on a word he was about to say, and says instead, “Yeah, true. But I’m not feeling it. You guys have fun, though!” He grins, claps the curly kid and the little Byers on the shoulders (the former just rolls his eyes and glowers, and the latter winces and tries to smile). Nobody else seems too cut up on Steve electing not to play, though, as Lucas jumps right into explaining his campaign and the others listen with rapt attention, interjecting with questions or, more often, critiques.

But that doesn’t fucking matter, because Harrington sits himself back on the futon, right across from Billy. 

“Hey,” he says again, smiling.

Billy doesn’t know what to say. It’s too simple. It’s too easy. He lands on, “Hey.” Charted waters, right?

“You came,” Harrington says, smile faltering. He shifts on the couch, pulls his legs up to his chest.

Billy swallows. Guilt sinks in his gut like a stone and he berates himself for it. He’s got nothing to be guilty for, for fuck’s sake. They're not friends.

They're not friends. They never were.

But there Steve sits, looking at him with his brown doe eyes (and, in this light, they might be a little green) and his pink lips still curved in the faintest smile and his brows upturned in what? Concern? He doesn’t know, but they’re upturned all the same. He’s looking at Billy with his hair all fucking perfect, curling around his ears, this swoop of it falling down on his forehead. He’s looking at Billy, with his eyes, and it’s- fucking a lot. Too much, maybe, but it also feels like a dream, like the ones he used to have every night before they were overthrown by interdimensional monsters.

A good dream. But still a dream. Somehow, this one’s even more unbelievable than the monsters. 

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad you did,” says Harrington, and Billy must be unconscious. He crashed the truck, that must be it. He’s dead. “I’ve been meaning to, uh, you know- thank you. For what you did. So. Yeah. Thanks.”

Billy pinches his arm so hard he’s sure it’ll bruise.

“Are you fucking with me?” Billy asks. Skeptical, guarded.

“What?” Steve recoils. “No! No, no,” he insists. “I’m serious, man.”

Billy doesn’t say anything for a moment, just tries to level Steve with a withering stare. “Deadly?”

“Very.”

Billy looks away. Harrington is surprisingly good at eye contact. “Why?”

“Why… what?”

“Why are you thanking me?”

“What?”

Billy glares at him. “Why. Are. You. Thanking. Me,” he grits out.

Harrington takes a deep breath, looking at him like Billy’s lost it. “You saved us, man. You saved El. I mean, we’d probably all be dead if you didn’t… do what you did. All of Hawkins, honestly.” Harrington shrugs, like it’s obvious. “So, thanks. For doing what you did. I mean, you almost bit it, standing up to the Mind Flayer. I think that deserves some recognition.”

A few beats pass in silence, cut up by the kids playing their game and chasing after stray dice. Harrington looks like he’s doing pretty much all he can to keep his mouth shut. Toying with a loose thread on his sweater, bouncing his leg. Billy wishes he was next to him, so he could wrap his hand over his, trace the veins under his skin.

“You don’t need to thank me,” Billy says quietly, eyes on his hands. He traces an index finger over the scars there. Something curls in his gut.

Harrington frowns. “Why?”

Billy doesn’t want to say it, but Harrington doesn’t understand. He needs to. 

Billy needs him to. 

“I killed people,” he says as quietly as he can get away with without having to say it again. “Why would you thank me for that?”

He doesn’t know why he’s saying this. He should just shut his mouth and take it. Let Harrington say what he wants. It was no thing, Steve. Just who I am. 

Except it’s not. He was ready to die. It wasn’t brave, or heroic, or worthy of thanks. It was retribution. He had it coming.

Harrington is looking at him like he just told him he’s gonna shave his head while he sleeps. “You didn’t kill anyone, Billy. It was him. He was using you.”

Billy.

Billy swallows around the lead in his throat.

“You know that, right?”

Nobody’s thanked him before. For this. Nobody’s really said much about it to him. They talk around it, the mall fire, but they don’t say what happened. Neil and Susan don’t know and Max doesn’t talk about it. Not much, that is. Billy doesn’t really see anyone else. He was supposed to go to a doctor, talk about what happened, but he didn’t, and nobody made him.

Fucking pathetic. He curls his arms around himself. He casts his eyes to the ceiling, feels the lump in his throat rise.

“It doesn’t matter,” Billy says. “They’re still dead.” 

And he’s alive.

“A lot of people are still alive because of you. And, uh,” Steve swallows. “I’m glad you are. Alive. Y’know. And I’m glad you came tonight. I think they all are.” He shrugs.

Billy glances over to the kids. Eleven rolls a dice and they all watch with bated breath as it tumbles across the table, cheering when it lands. She looks up at him, and Billy looks back. She frowns, and he looks away.

He tries to pull his other leg up onto the chair, but his hip twinges, and he leaves it.

They’re not, he wants to say. But there's nothing left. 

“I don’t…” 

He wants to ask why. He wants to know why. But Harrington will probably keep saying the same thing, and Billy can’t argue. He can’t refute it. He’s too tired, too fucking exhausted to say anything else.

So he tries to play it safe. Pivot.

“You still work at the video store?”

Steve looks perplexed for a moment, but he quickly smooths it out. “Uh, yeah! With Robin. And Keith. But he’s a dick, and he doesn’t schedule me with him, because the ladies, uh, they don’t really come ‘round cause of me. So, yeah.” Harrington brings a hand to the back of his neck, huffs out a laugh.

Billy likes the sound of Harrington’s voice.

“Yeah, Keith’s a jackass.”

He wants him to keep talking.

Harrington huffs out another little laugh, nods.

“Uh, so, why aren’t you playing tonight?” He jerks his head to his right. “That one seemed pretty broken up about it.” He aims for faux remorse. Steve smiles, so he’s pretty sure he nailed it.

“Okay- honestly?” Billy nods. “I don’t know how the hell to play. Dustin’s been trying to explain it for, like, a week, and I still don’t get it.” Steve smiles, but it looks more like a grimace. 

“Well, is he, like, dogshit at explaining things?”

“No! Well, I don’t think so. I don’t usually get things he tries to explain, so.”

Billy shrugs. “Sounds like teacher error to me.”

Steve huffs. It sounds self-deprecating.

“Maybe I could explain it? I mean, if you even really want to play.”

“You're gonna explain Dungeons and Dragons to me? Have you played? Doesn’t seem very metal to me.”

“I’ve done things you’ve never even dreamt of, Harrington. And not very metal? Dungeons and Dragons is extremely metal. Satanism, hello?”

Steve seems to consider that for a moment. “I guess the only exposure I’ve had to it is through nerds in the eighth grade.”

“Yeah, not too metal,” he says as the kids groan in disappointment after Dustin roles his dice. “But I have played, a little. I could explain the basics to you. If you want,” he hurriedly tacks on.

Steve’s eyes kind of light up, and it makes something inside of Billy coil and unwind in the span of a breath. He feels his heart stutter a bit, in a good way, he thinks.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “That would actually be great, honestly. I think Dustin’s sick of me asking him.”

“Alright.” Billy says, wracking his brain for all the knowledge he might still have of D&D. He was also in eighth grade when he played, and he only got through one campagne before his dad found out, but he’s pretty sure he’s still got the basics down. “So what do you know?”

Steve looks up, like he’s searching his mind. “Uh, it’s a game. You… roll dice and they tell you what to do. Someone has to plan it.” He points over at the kids. “Lucas, this time.”

When Harrington doesn’t continue and instead looks at Billy expectantly, he says, “Yeah,” he shrugs, “That’s all correct, man. Kinda broad, but can’t fault you there. I'll just start at the beginning, then.”

And Billy does. 

He starts pretty basic, with the Dungeon Master, the supplies you’ll need to play, like the books and dice and shit, how to create a character (“So you just, like, roll the dice and it chooses the stats?” “Yeah, man, super easy.” “But you pick the traits?” “Mhm.”), and what you do when you play (“So, you roll the dice and it says if you fail or not. But it’s not like, the end all be all. You still have to make choices before you roll, the dice just decides on your choices, you know?” “Uh… yeah! For sure.” “...Explain it to me, Harrington.”).

“It’s pretty different every time you play. It’s a story, it’d be boring if it was the same” Billy says, offering a one shoulder shrug. “But that’s kinda the core of it. If it’s still confusing, maybe you could just watch them play at first? So you can get used to the mechanics of it?”

By the time he’s done and Harrington is nodding, saying, “Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. That sounds great, actually.” Billy’s throat hurts. He hasn’t spoken that much in a really fucking long time.

He swallows around the ache, and watches Harrington process. He seems to get it pretty well.

“Shit… that's really not that complicated,” Steve says, runs a hand through his hair.

“Nah, not really. Dustin must be shit at explaining.”

Steve smiles, and it’s like looking at the sun. “Yeah, he kind of is. Little shit.”

“Are you talking about me? Steve?” Dustin asks, leaning around Max to look at them.

“What? No,” Steve says in a tone that totally says he was.

Dustin narrows his eyes, holds Steve’s gaze for about five seconds before Mike and Will pull him back into the game with indignant shouts.

“Okay, okay!” Dustin says, hands up in surrender. “Roll the goddamn dice.”

Steve looks back at Billy, rolls his eyes magnificently and grins, like he’s sharing a secret. 

Billy can’t help but smile back. Why would he be able to? It’s been so long since he’s felt warm.

-

Billy has something he needs to do.

It’s been a long time since he felt any sort of drive to do anything. And he needs to do this.

He’s driving Max to Harrington’s after dinner, and he’s counting on her inviting him. He’ll say yes this time- he will- and he’ll do what he needs to do, because it’s stuck in his lungs and it feels like a fucking brick and he’s pretty sure it’s been there for, what? A year now? And he was used to it, but now he can feel it, just how much it truly is, and he’s gotta get rid of it.

Maybe it is selfish. Maybe he just wants to make himself feel better. He skips the ibuprofen today, to even it out.

He pulls up to Harrington’s, parks in his usual spot. Max looks over at him, expectant and apprehensive. She probably thinks Wheeler’s was a one-off, that he won’t want to come. He waits for her to say something.

But she doesn’t.

So he bites the goddamn bullet and asks, eyes trained on a fire hydrant barely peeking out of the snow up the road, “Can I come with?”

He can hear Max’s smile when she says, “Yeah. I already told mom you were.”

Then, she’s gone- out of the car and bounding up to the front door. She turns around halfway, looks at him. What are you waiting for?

Nothing.

So he follows her up the drive, closer to the stained glass, glowing yellow. Closer to the warmth that’s inside. 

He tells himself that he has to do what he’s doing, that he has to get close to do it. 

He has to. 

And, well, if he happens to have to go inside Steve Harrington’s house to do it, well. Collateral damage. Can’t do much about it.

Before Max even gets the chance to knock, the door swings open, revealing three of the twerps, all wearing matching bright grins.

She grabs Billy’s sleeve and pulls him inside, and immediately he’s hit with the smell. It smells good- fuck, it smells great. Sweet and spicy and alive, and it pulls on something so deep inside him that he can hardly tell it’s there. This intrinsic pain just below his ribs, in the center of his very being.

This place is warm- Billy can hear the clatter of cutlery in the kitchen as he bends down to take his shoes off. Max talks with Dustin and Lucas and Will, but their words wash over Billy, a buzz to his right as he listens for Harrington's voice at his left.

And he hears it, a blithe laugh that mingles and cuts through the rest of the noise.

He follows Max and the others down the foyer and to the right, through a hall boasting a single picture of what has to be Steve’s parents, sitting straight on a grand sofa. 

Billy’s socked feet slip on the marble floor as they turn into the kitchen- a wide open space connected to the living room, light shining in from the moon glow out the tall windows. The scent of chocolate and spice is stronger at its focal point, and Billy watches Steve bat away Mike and Eleven as they try to crowd closer to him, peering into the pot he stirs.

“Back off, you vultures. It’ll be done when it’s done,” Harrington says, rolling his shoulders.

Mike scowls. “You sound like my mom,” he says as he walks off, instead moving to sit at the breakfast bar.

“Piss off, Wheeler,” Harrington says. “Ever hear of patience?” He turns around to scowl at Mike, but stops short when he catches sight of Billy, pausing with wide eyes and parted lips that tick up into a smile. 

Billy smiles back.

The other kids gather around Mike, sans Dustin, who takes up Steve’s right side.

“That doesn’t look right…” Dustin trails off. When Steve doesn’t respond aside from a pull in the line of his shoulder, Dustin says, “It’s too watery, Steve.”

“No, it’s not. It’s supposed to look like that. You gotta trust the process,” he says, but he doesn’t sound very convinced himself. 

“What’re you making?” Billy asks, without even his own abject consent. It just falls from his mouth, lingering in open space, cut only by the bubbling of the pot.

Steve opens his mouth to respond, but Will beats him to it. “Candy,” he says, without missing a beat as the other kids all glance at Billy or glance at each other. “Yeah,” Steve says. “It’s not done yet- we have to pour it into a pan next and let it harden. It’s watery now because it’s still hot, you shitheads.”

“Hey! Dustin said that!” Lucas says.

“I only said that because it is, idiot.”

“Have you ever even made candy like this before, moron?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Well, obviously not-”

“Shut it!” Steve says, whirling around and pointing a chocolate covered spoon at the pair.

They do, glaring daggers at each other, but they do shut it. 

Harrington’s got this apron on, white and blue and red and yellow, colors all swirling together, and he’s got a rag tucked into the back pocket of his jeans. His hair sticks up in tufts and, for someone making chocolate candy, he’s got this wild look in his eyes.

And he’s got this lightness, this contentment that mixes with his annoyance, and Billy doesn’t really get it, but he admires it. 

Dustin and Lucas silently bicker, making faces at each other, as Billy moves to sit at the small table in the corner of the room, stacked high with letters and papers. Eleven pokes at Steve’s shoulder and says, “Steve, the pot.” Steve exclaims, “Shit!” and whips back around to stir.

Steve flicks the stove off and all the kids clamor up to participate. Will shoves a pan onto the counter and lines it with foil Mike hands over. Dustin insists on pouring the chocolate configuration and Steve carries it to the fridge.

Billy watches as the kids huddle in the living room around the large sofa. They flick on the TV, but they don’t pay it much attention at all, instead talking amongst each other.

Harrington drops down into the chair next to Billy with a deep sigh and a dusting off of his hands. He looks over at Billy, and he resists the urge to avert his eyes. Harrington smiles at him, and it’s like looking at the sun.

Harrington opens his mouth, probably to say something charming or witty or endearing, and Billy knows that if he does, he won’t ever get what he needs to out. 

“Harrington,” he says, probably harsher than he should’ve, than he meant to. 

Steve's relaxed smile melts off his face, and his brow creases. 

“Yeah?”

“I… I have to tell you something.” His heart is hammering. He feels it trying to claw out his throat.

“Okay.” He’s got this demeanor that screams you can tell me anything and Billy wants so much to believe it but he knows it’s just what he wants to see.

“I’m sorry.” It’s like he has to tear the words out of his chest, throw them into the open air. 

But Harrington’s brows pinch in confusion, and he doesn’t say anything, so Billy keeps going.

“For November.” He thinks about clarifying. It wasn't your fault. You were just there. You were being shady as shit, and I needed something. 

But he doesn’t. In fact, he doesn’t even get the chance before Harrington says:

“You don’t need to apologize.”

Billy feels his stomach drop out, a tight knot winding up.

“But I-”

“Billy,” Steve puts his hand on his shoulder, and it burns. “You don’t have to apologize- or, I mean, you shouldn’t feel like you have to. Uh, like, I guess,” he casts his eyes to the ceiling, like the words he’s looking for are plastered to the drywall. “You don’t have to worry about getting forgiveness from us, after what happened. You kinda have more important problems,” he huffs out a dry laugh. “Besides, I uh. I kinda forgave you a while ago. But thank you- for apologizing. I know I kinda just told you you didn’t have to, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. Or that I don’t appreciate it. Which I do. So, thank you.”

Billy lets the words sit for a while.

“Why?” he asks. 

“Why… what?”

“Why do you forgive me.”

“Well- you apologized-”

“No. You said you forgave me a while ago. Why would you?”

Harrington kind of looks like he’s been caught. This time he casts his eyes down. He seems to choose his words carefully when he speaks. 

“We were both wrong.” He shrugs, like he doesn’t know exactly what he’s saying, but he’s saying it nonetheless. “I lied to you, and I… get how it was creepy. And that’s not to say it was- justified, or something. But it’s not like I was the good guy and you were the villain thwarting my plan or something, you know?” He rubs the back of his neck. There's a spot of chocolate on his forearm. 

“You were a dick, don’t get me wrong, but you weren’t- like, you weren’t a bad person. And it’s not like I was a saint, either.” He shrugs. “Everyone deserves a second chance. Why wouldn’t you?”

You weren’t a bad person.

Nobody had ever said that to him before.

You weren’t a bad person.

“Oh.”

“So, yeah,” Steve says. He runs a hand through his hair. Looks away. But Billy doesn’t. He takes in the slopes and arches of Steve’s face. Looks into the refraction of light in his eyes. 

He’s so pretty.

“Thanks,” is all he can think to say. There’s no way this feeling in him could be surmised in words. No way.

Steve glances back. “I mean it.” He says, with power. “And I do. Forgive you. If I didn’t say it.”

And I’m sorry, too.” 

Billy really doesn’t expect that. But he doesn’t ask what for, either. He knows.

“It’s okay,” he tells Steve. He doesn’t feel like any less of a shitty person, but that’s his own thing. A couple nice words from a pretty boy (and he’s so much more than that. So much more) aren’t going to fix that. The guilt. The lead weight still sits in his gut, but it’s almost like it's dissolving. Sure, it’s poisoning his blood as it does, but eventually it’ll circulate out. Maybe someday it won’t even be there.

And even that feels like enough. Even that feels better.

Sometime later, after talking with Steve about work and life and the people he has (or really, listening to Steve talk about those things), Max and Eleven break the candy sheet, scoop it into seven different tins, all with Christmas memorabilia plastered on the fronts. Snowmen and Santas and gingerbreads and reindeer and snowflakes. Max and Billy bring home one with a flurry of intricate snowflakes denting the top.

When he opens it, there’s a note written on a sheet of loose leaf.

Thanks for the forgiveness. I dig a clean slate. Wanna hang sometimes without seven children?

It’s so forward, so to the point. And Billy wants to know why, but it’s another thing he thinks he already does.

They're alive. So, why not?

-

It’s like time starts again. 

He watches TV with Max in the living room. Making fun of soap operas or pointing at the animals on the documentaries and saying that’s you. 

He buys some fucking conditioner, runs it through his hair that’s still guaranteed to piss his dad off. Joyce Byers smiles at him as he checks out, says, “Will tells me you’ve been hanging out at Steve’s sometimes. I’m glad they’ve got someone like you around.”

And he’s only a little terrified.

The days slow down. 

He listens to music. He does his stretches. He uses the salve. He doesn’t have to lie when Susan asks. He helps around the house, he changes the oil in Susan’s car. He plays games with Max and she tells him, late one night: 

“I’m so glad you're alive.”

The world starts spinning. 

-

The next time Billy sees Harrington, it’s cold, but not snowy. Dark, but not night. It’s at the diner on third across from the arcade, and there's only two children, both of whom are probably playing Galaga at the moment. 

It’s been a few weeks since that note, since the chocolate and the moon glow, and Billy’s kind of been waiting. Waiting for Max to ask the age old question.

But she didn’t. It’s a weird week, a busy one. All the kids have something to do. Family stuff, school stuff, don’t ask Billy, he doesn’t really know. Max told him all about it, but it was another of those things that sort of washed over him; that he indulged not because of the information she relayed, but because of the sound of her voice. 

But that doesn’t matter- point is, the kids are busy, save for Max and Dustin.

So, Billy sits in a red booth in a diner decked out in Christmas decor, eyes trained on the drops of condensation that run down the milkshake glass as he waits for Steve to come back from the bathroom. 

It’s torturous.

What if Steve left? What if he climbed through the window because he couldn’t tell Billy hey, sorry man, but you’re kind of a downer, what with the crippled thing and the almost killing me thing and the actually killing half the town thing and now Billy’s going to sit here like an idiot in public where people can see him and look at him and he’s so stupid, so fucking stupid-

“Hey, man, sorry for taking so long.”

He’s so stupid.

“You’re good. Thought you might’ve fallen in.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Ha, ha. Nice one, dad.”

Billy purses his lips around a smile. Takes a drink of his milkshake when the silence drags on.

“I can’t believe you got strawberry,” Steve says, taking a swig of his own vanilla shake.

Billy makes a noise of contention. “You got something against strawberry, Harrington?”

“Uh, yeah. For starters, it doesn’t even taste like strawberries. It’s like, fake-y shit, you know?”

“It’s not supposed to take like strawberries. You don’t get strawberry flavored things because you like strawberries. You get it because you like the flavor.” He shrugs, points at Steve. “Tripped out of the gate.”

Steve scoffs. “Of course you get strawberry flavor if you like strawberry, it’s called strawberry, dude.”

“Where are you from? This is America, land of the free, home of artificial fruit flavors. You get it if you like that fake-y shit. Besides, this one’s not too bad, almost tastes legit.”

“Really?” Harrington seems to drop the fight like that. “Can I try?”

Billy kind of freezes. He hopes it only takes him a second to recover. “Uh, yeah, for sure,” and he slides the glass across the table. Steve leans forward and wraps his lips around the straw (the same straw that Billy had his lips wrapped around, mind you).

He makes the pseudo-contemplative face, leans back in the booth and says: “I mean, I guess if you like that fake-y shit, sure…”

Billy huffs. “Alright, alright. Can we at least agree that you have a juvenile pallet? I mean, vanilla? C’mon, Harrington.”

Steve gasps, clutches the imaginary pearls around his neck. “Vanilla is a universal favorite. It’s like that one blood type- uh, O?” Steve shrugs, brushes his fumble away. “You can’t rag on vanilla, nobody hates vanilla. It’s a unifier.”

Billy leans back, raises his glass. “Can’t argue with that.”

Steve masks his surprise in a split second, clinks his own glass against Billy’s.

“So, that means I win?” He’s got this cautiously smug look on his face.

“Yeah, I think we can call this one good.”

The rest of the time passes similarly. They talk about stupid shit, shit that Billy probably wouldn’t remember talking about with any other person, but he does, he will, because tonight, when he lies down to sleep, he pushes away the shadows with pointless faux-arguments about milkshakes that only exist for the express purpose of entertainment. 

For now, he tosses a french fry into his mouth and gags when Steve dips his into the milkshake even though he doesn’t feel strongly about that either way.

He thinks he just likes the look in Steve’s eyes.

Max comes back with Dustin, and the kid only shoots Billy a few withering looks and whispers into Steve’s ear before Steve levels him with a Look and Max kicks him under the table. Dustin reluctantly asks Billy what his favorite issue of Wonder Woman is so far and the kid all but lights up at Billy’s answer.

When he steps out into the night, his breath ghosts into the air. The snow falls in a barely-there dusting, and the stars are bright. Radiant.

Steve comes to stand next to him, running his hands up and down the arms of his Member’s Only jacket, craning his neck up.

Billy thinks about the stars in California, how San Diego had all but none. He thinks about saying something like if this place has anything at all, it has stars but he can’t bring the words any further than his chest. They warm and tumble there and Harrington bounces on the balls of his feet against the chill.

For once, Billy doesn’t feel the cold. Not in any way that matters.

He watches Harrington’s Beamer pull out of the parking lot as the Volkswagen warms up, the exhaust swirling behind it in short whisps and a promise of I’ll see you next week for him and Max, respectively.

-

Billy drives Max to Harrington’s, and he stays. Over the threshold, wet chucks left in a pile of size sevens, give or take. He walks into that glowing house that he watched for months. 

He wonders if anyone’s watching now. 

Billy is mostly a third party. He watches. Steve and Max talk to him, sometimes Dustin and Will, but he’s not in, he can tell. Billy doesn’t really mind. It’s enough to stand on the fringes. Better than peering through the windows.

They watch films that Steve brings back from the video store, they bake things (not very well, but they do it anyway; Dustin’s mom’s recipe for cranberry walnut bread was actually pretty good), they play D&D every Thursday, and Billy helps Steve build his character for the next campagne.

“You should make one,” Harrington says offhandedly while he pencils in his charisma score.

“Yeah, maybe,” Billy says, with no intent to ever do so.

Billy is a third party. An addition that nobody really knows what to do with. That is, until Harrington insists that it’s time to get a tree.

“Little late, isn’t it?” Billy tells him. Its the twentith, for fuck’s sake.

“It’s never too late, Hargrove,” Steve says, far too seriously. Billy laughs in his face.

It doesn’t matter if Billy thinks it’s kind of pointless to get a tree five days before Christmas, the dweebs are insistent. The second Harrington mentions the idea, the kids latch onto it, talking about where they can go to cut one down, what they can decorate it with, where it’ll go in Steve’s house.

At that point, it’s a done deal. Steve is such a sucker.

Billy does his stretches before bed and after he wakes up in preparation. It’s not as hard as it used to be, even if there’s still nobody to tell him to do them. They drive the BMW out to the edge of town, and Billy knows the wreckage of the mall is hidden behind a green veil of maybe twenty miles. 

But twenty miles is enough. For once, twenty miles is enough. 

They pick a tree that’s maybe six feet tall. Steve uses the hand saw before Lucas asks if he can and finishes the job. 

They all help carry it to the car (even though they definitely don't need to), throwing it on the top as Steve shouts about his paint job. They strap it on with bungee cables and pile in. 

“Can you drive?” Steve asks, holding the keys out to Billy.

And. Well. “Yeah,” he says, stunned. He can. Definitely. He blinks, and sees Steve in the driver’s seat of this car. Hands wrapped around the wheel, arm draped over the passenger seat, neck craned. All the time he watches, admired from afar, where nobody could see him. 

Now, he’s in it.

They don’t all fit, and it’s definitely illegal; Steve and Dustin squished together in the front, Max, Lucas, Mike, Will, and Eleven in the back. Billy can’t really see out the rearview, so the side mirrors will have to do. 

They get the thing back to Steve’s- after a drive Billy tried to take slowly, but this car is the closest thing he’s gotten to his camaro since That Night, so he definitely floors it on some of the more rural roads- shaking pine needles onto the grimey marble floors. They tighten it into a stand and Steve brings out a small box full of unassuming glass baubles.

Billy thinks of all the ornaments they have. There used to be photos of him and his mom, ornaments they made together, but his dad chucked them. He only made away with a few, stashed in a box he kept in his car, now under his bed, waiting to be found. Now, it’s just a mix of things made by grandmothers of the past that Neil didn’t have the balls to throw out, and the shit Susan and Max had. The tree that stands in their living room is loveless. Bought from a yard and decorated with ornaments that should mean something but don’t, not to him.

Harrington’s ornaments are catalog perfect. Boasting a pseudo-sentimentality. But, once every one of them is placed on the tree (the front, there’s not enough to cover the whole thing) in a shimmer of silvers and golds and blues and greens and reds; once the boughs glitter with gold lights, it fucking seals it.

It feels stupid to say, to even think something so trite, but this tree, it’s perfect. Billy wonders if the watchers can see it in the window. A Christmas tree for a Christmas house.

Sometime later, the kids huddled around the coffee table and playing crazy eights as they’re periodically picked up by their parents and siblings, Billy stands by the tree and says:

“I didn’t see this one before.”

Steve looks over from where he’s sweeping the needles up. He cocks his head to the right and furrows his brow. “Which one?”

Billy takes it out of the tree, holds up the string that dangles with a painted ‘S’ on a wooden disk. It twirls around as he holds it.

“Oh, uh, that- I made that in, like, third grade. It was a school thing. Like, make an ornament to give to your family.” Steve flicks the spinning disk, turning the blue ‘S’ into a blur. “Real original, I know.”

“Fuck off, man. ‘S cute,” Billy mutters, clutching the ornament in his hands. It is cute. Billy sees a small Steve, carefully painting his first initial so it’s perfect for his parents. 

He sees the ornament, sitting in this box amongst these impersonal baubles. 

It’s another thing he feels so deeply he doubts it’s even there.

-

Billy shifts the Volkswagen into park, probably too close to the edge of the quarry than is wise, but whatever. Who cares? He doesn’t.

He’s supposed to be at the store. Eggs and milk? Would you be willing? He didn’t so much as decide a detour was necessary but rather felt it pull.

Similarly, there isn’t much reason for today to be a Bad Day. How a day where he feels nothing at all could be bad, he doesn’t know. Something just tells him that it is. He feels nothing. He feels like shit.

He slides out of the driver's seat and lets the brisk air knock him back as he moves to stand by the front of the car, gazing over the edge of the quarry. No snow drifts down tonight, but it crunches below his shoes. He tosses his hood over his head.

“What’s a guy like you doin’ in a place like this?”

Billy gasps out an undignified yelp and whips around so fast his neck aches. “Fuck off, Harrington! What kind of accent even is that?”

Harrington’s stance- leg propped on the bumper of his car, head poised down like he should have a hat to tilt- crumbles as he doubles over with laughter. Billy bunches up some snow in his hands and throws it at him.

“Hey!” Harrington says as he stands straight, shaking snow from his head. “It’s like the ones the guys in old movies have. Obviously.”

“Transatlantic? No way. More like a shitty New Yorker.”

Harrington shrugs, content to drop it, and takes a drag of his cigarette. Billy feels the you got any more of those? like it’s second nature. It is. But he doesn’t ask, just moves to lean against the car beside him.

Harrington leans down and pulls a beer from where he’s nestled it in the snow. “Want one?” 

Billy shrugs. “Sure.”

Harrington drains one can and pulls out another, tosses the empty into the window of his car. 

Billy watches as he pops the tab on the new one and takes a swig. “What a guy like you doing drinking and chain smoking on a night like this?”

Harrington huffs a laugh through his nose, smiles at Billy from the corner of his eye. He shrugs. “Killing time.”

“Til what?”

He takes a deep breath. Sighs. “I don’t know.”

A few beats pass in silence. Billy swears he sees a shooting star. Thinks of announcing it. Doesn’t say a word.

“It’s almost Christmas,” Harrington says.

Billy glances his way. “Fuck. It is.”

More silence. Billy draws a circle in the snow with the toe of his boot.

“You never answered my question.”

“And what would that be?”

“What’s a guy like you doing in a place like this.”

Billy smiles, shakes his head. “Getting milk and eggs for Susan. Took a detour.”

Harrington shifts as he takes another drink. He’s pressed against Billy, their arms flush. His heart kicks up, and he resists the urge to move away, if only because he knows how cold it’ll be when Harrington does. 

“I didn’t want to go home,” Billy finishes. It’s suffocating there. Full of bad memories. Tainted. 

“I didn’t want to go home, either,” Harrinton says, under his breath. He sticks his cigarette in the snow. 

“I haven't decorated a tree since I was twelve,” Harrington says absentmindedly, after another swig. It’s almost like he’s talking to himself. “Before that, I hadn’t since I was eight.” He glances at Billy, looking nervous. “Uh, I wanted to thank you, for the other day. I enjoy… decorating trees.”

Billy smiles. He doesn’t have much experience decorating trees. He and his mom did it, and he remembers that fondly, but it was a long time ago, and Neil never had one until he and Susan got married, and Billy wasn’t really included. Not that he wanted to be. “Yeah, thanks.”

“It’s nothing,” Steve says, in that tone he uses all the time. Laced with self-deprecation. 

Billy knocks his shoulder against his. “It’s something.”

More silence passes. The clouds shift, the moon appears. Steve takes a deep breath, pulls his jacket tighter around himself. Billy sees the hem of his green Family Video vest underneath it.

“Just get off work?”

Steve looks over, bemused. Billy gestures at his collar. “Oh, ha,” Steve doesn’t seem particularly amused at all. “Yeah. I worked a double because Robin’s sick. Couldn’t find the fucking calculator, either.”

“Calculator?” 

“Yeah, for money. Counting it and shit.”

“You can’t count back change?” Billy asks with barely disguised mirth. 

“I can!” Steve says, indignant. “I just wanna get it right.” He finishes quietly, wraps his hand over his shoulder, arm across his chest.

Billy senses the delicate air. “Yeah, that’s valid.” He takes another drink, projects an air of aloofness.

“Would you believe me if I told you you were the first person I’ve told that to?”

“What, that you use a calculator to count money?”

“Yeah.”

Billy snorts. “No.”

“Well, you should.”

“Why?”

“Uh, because it’s embarrassing, duh. I hang out with a bunch of middle-school geniuses.”

“They’re freshmen.”

“Semantics.” Steve waves a hand in the air, waves away Billy’s undeniable fact.

“Whatever,” Billy says. “Why did you tell me?”

Steve takes a drink. Takes his time swallowing it. “You know, at one point I thought you’d’ve been the first to laugh at me. Now, it kind of feels like you’d at least try not to,” Steve smirks at him, knowing. Billy casts his eyes to the quarry. 

He wants to tell Steve that he wouldn’t have laughed at him. But he won’t lie. At least Steve’s right, now. At least Steve has his arm flush with Billy’s.

“Indiana Dunes?” Steve says.

“Huh?”

“Your jacket. Indiana Dunes State Park. You been?”

Billy huffs. “No. Max stole this out the lost and found for me. Have you?”

Steve smiles. “Yeah. It’s pretty cool there. You might like it.”

The minutes seem to pass in a breeze. Their conversation peters out, ebbs back in. Like a radio station with a poor connection. For some reason, it’s the best time Billy’s had in a while. He feels light, energized. Alive. It’s just them, out here still for no reason other than to be.

He thinks back on the last time he was here, peering over the edge, watching the snowflakes drift down. Knows he wouldn’t, but wanting to. He feels simultaneously more and less like himself.

Steve leans over, grabs another beer and offers it to Billy. He shakes his head. He already feels mildly buzzed. He tells Steve so.

“I’m kind of a lightweight these days, Harrington. Been a few months. I should probably get back soon.” At least the milk won’t spoil in twenty degree weather. 

Steve sighs. “You're probably right,” he says, pushes away from the car. He walks a few steps, hesitates, spins around and says: “I’m gonna hug you, okay?”

“Wh-” is all Billy gets out before Steve Harrington has his arms wrapped around him.

He pulls away maybe five seconds later, a worried furrow and a small smile war on his face.

The smile wins when he sees whatever revealing look is on Billy’s face.

“Have a good night, Billy,” he says in that awful, just god-awful transatlantic-shitty-New-York accent.

Billy barks out a jittery laugh.

“You, too. Thanks for the beer. Try not to wrap your car around a tree.”

Harrington salutes to that before he slides into his car and starts the engine. Exhaust plumes out before he drives away.

It wisps in the air even after his car is out of sight. 

-

It’s two days before Christmas. Susan is out of town with Max and his dad, visiting her sister in Wisconsin. They won’t be back for Christmas, and Max all but begged to stay. Billy appreciates the sentiment, but he’s cool. She pulls him into her room before they go.

“It’s a feather,” Max tells him as he opens the small box she thrusts into his hand. It’s an earring. A dangling gold feather, apparently. He breathes slowly and steadily. Blinks rapidly. Thinks of the dagger he pilfered from a street market in California. 

He holds it up to the yellow light of Max’s room, watches it glint as it twirls.

“Thanks,” he chokes out. “I, uh. I didn’t get you anything. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say that,” Max says immediately. She backpedals a second later. “I mean, you don’t have to be. That’s not why I gave it to you.”

Billy isn’t entirely sure how to express gratitude. He’ll try, though.

“Really, Max, thank you.” He slips the earring into his lobe. “It’s rad as hell.”

“Totally tubular?” she says.

He rolls his eyes, can’t keep the smile off his face. “Totally.”

She pulls him into a hug before they leave. Tells him she’s sorry that she can’t stay. That he can’t come. His dad leers in close, hisses: “No funny business, you hear me, Billy?”

Billy clenches his jaw, happy to feel a smoldering ember of rage in his gut. “Yes, sir.”

Neil claps him hard on the back. Grimaces in what he probably hopes is a threatening smile. “Don’t forget to shovel the driveway.”

Billy smiles in a way that probably rivals his dads.

He left pretty much as soon as they did.

He drives Susan’s car over to Steve’s. It’s fucking snowing- has been all day; huge, wet flakes that stick like glue to the dead Hawkins ground.

It takes him, like, ten minutes longer to get there than it should.

It’s the first time that just Billy is coming over. He lingers by the doorway, fist poised to knock. He pulls it back twice before he all but throws it at the oak door.

It opens probably ten seconds later.

Steve stands on the other side, grin splitting his face, hair perfect, the same apron tied around his waist.

Billy cocks an eyebrow. “What are you wearing?”

“An apron,” Steve says, far too joyously.

“Why are you wearing an apron?”

“Because I’m making hot cocoa and this is cashmere,” he says as he gestures at his sweater. He turns away, door left open, and Billy follows. 

The house smells like it usually does: a mix of chocolate and cologne and warmth, in essence. It’s so distinct, so noteworthy. It’s gorgeous.

There’s music playing; and Billy would recognize the sound of Tears for Fears anywhere, especially from Steve Harrington. Mainstream-cashmere-wearing yuppie.

Billy discards his shoes and follows Steve into the kitchen. He stands before the stove, stirring a steaming pot. He flicks off the burner, spins around. “It’s done!” he says, grinning.

His smile is infectious. “What the hell are you so happy about?”

Steve shrugs, grin in place. “I don’t know! I’m not.”

“Alright.”

Steve pours out two mugs of cocoa and shows Billy his collection of films.

“I brought these from the store, but I had these already- what are you feeling?”

“I… have no preference.”

“That’s helpful, thanks,” Steve says sarcastically, and grabs Rocky IV. Billy gives him a Look. “It’s technically a Christmas movie.” Steve justifies.

“Technically.”  

Steve sets everything up in the living room, the one he could never see into. He pops the tape in the VCR and pulls the afghan from the edge of the couch and throws it at Billy.

He sits down beside him, curls his legs under him and pushes his socked feet below Billy’s thighs.

The movie plays. The snow falls outside as the sun turns. The world stays bright, even as the night takes over. Billy would bet it’s dead silent out there. It never got that silent in California. Steve shifts as the movie plays, pressing close.

Billy wants to tell Steve that he’s dirty. He feels dirty. All the time. It’s like it’s a part of him, this grime. He’s dirty, so Steve should take his hand back, brush himself clean. Billy has nothing to offer, nothing to give. He’s parasitic. 

It crawls up his throat, tries to choke him. Tries to get him to run before Steve can do it first. But he hears you weren’t a bad person and you know, we want you there and he feels the leather of Steve’s BMW under his hands and he feels the gold feather shift in his ear as he turns to look at Steve. His soft brown eyes with hints of green and his cheekbones and his lips and his jawline and the smattering of moles that trail down his neck and his adam’s apple and his hands and Billy feels something so strong and nameless. Unidentifiable and full of power. He wants to crumble around it. 

Billy thinks, that maybe if he wasn’t torn away from California- if he wasn’t ripped and broken away from his home, thrust into a landlocked prison, his punishment. Maybe if it didn’t mean this is hell. Welcome. Deal- maybe he would like this place. The snow. The trees and the sky and the air. The boy who makes a surprisingly good cup of cocoa and wears Farrah Fawcett hairspray.

Maybe he's not having such a hard time liking some of those things. One of those things. 

The snow is beautiful- white and crisp and clean, and he knows it won’t be for long, but it is for now. And that's enough. 

It’s beautiful for now. It has to be enough. 

“The year I was born, it snowed in San Diego. Like it was divine intervention.” like he truly was born broken. “Ever since I’ve been here, it’s been cold and snowy and fucking awful for six out of twelve months. I hate it. I hate it.”

The but goes unsaid. He’ll ruin it if he says it, because then he admits it. Admits that there's something he likes about the snow. And then it can crumble and fall like wet sand in the sun. He thinks Steve gets it. He’s gazing out the window, watching the snow stick to everything it touches. He looks over to Billy.

“Maybe you should stay the night.” Steve mutters sometime later, another thing he says to himself.

Billy can’t even see the road. Susan’s car probably won’t go over the snow. Steve’s BMW doesn’t seem like it would fare any better.

“Hey! Yes, it would. There’s no room for doubt here. Speak no evil, Bill.”

Billy scoffs. “What am I, your grandfather?”

Steve tilts his head forward. “Not at all, William.”

He shoots Steve a withering glare. “Shut it. Steven.”

Steve grins, far too pleased with himself. He yanks the blanket farther onto himself. Billy yanks it back.

It’s warm, and it’s quiet for a while. The crisp surround sound the only thing that cuts the contentment. Steve reaches a hand out, pushes Billy’s hood away, and pulls gently on a blond curl. It springs back, and Steve does it again.

“What’re you doing?” Billy asks, and he means for it to come out playful, teasing, withering, if he’s lucky, but it’s just… curious. 

“I like your hair like this, by the way.” He winds a curl around his finger. Billy tries to stay still against the onslaught of chills down his spine. 

It’s his turn to shift minutely closer. Who's here to see, what with the snow keeping them safe?

He casts his gaze out the window. To the twinkling lights of the neighbors house. To the blue 1979 Z-28 Camaro parked across the street.

And if he tilts his head to rest on Steve’s shoulder, well, he knows the boy in the car won't say a word.

-

Billy wakes up the next morning in a bed that’s not his, in a room full of far too much plaid, next to a guy he once thought would never look at him with anything other than disgust.

Boy, how wrong he was.

It wasn’t even a question, there was no hesitation, at least not on Steve's part. He led Billy to his (very plaid) room like they’d been buddies since day one. He gives Billy a pair of sweats to sleep in, and strips down to his boxers (also plaid, the fuck?) before he flops into the bed.

They don’t, like, cuddle, or anything, but they lay close, Steve’s arm pressed against his, and it felt deep. Ephemeral. Not even there. Hot and burning. The good kind of burning.

And it was also there; it was real and solid and warm, and it was Steve Harrington, for fuck’s sake.

And it was bad because it was there. It was real, solid, and warm. It was Steve Harrington, for fuck’s sake.

And it could be taken away. And there would be a void, because now he knew how good it was to have.

He hates him. Fuck Steve.

It winds a knot in his chest, threatening to pour out his eyes. Steve nudges him, just this slight shrug of his shoulder. It shifts the cotton of their shirts so more of their skin presses now. He says, “Do you wanna hear my Chewbacca impression?”

It catches him so off guard that he barks out an unbelieving laugh. “Shit. Yeah, Harrington. Please, actually.”

Steve does it, and it’s awful. Just terrible- it’s got him sitting up, doubling over and wincing because it pulls on his scars and broken bones but Billy doesn’t care.

He fucking doesn’t, because this is the hardest he’s laughed in a long time. Since crashing waves below a bustling boardwalk.

And it’s because of a Chewbacca impression. From King Steve himself.

It’s like it’s so unbelievable that it folds over on itself and becomes real. There’s no way he can make it real- no way he could cope with the fact that he’s finally cracked- so it just is.

He sleeps good that night.

He wakes up to Harrington looking at him, with a soft smile and sleepy eyes, head pillowed on his arm.

“Morning, sleepyhead.”

Billy huffs. “Morning, yourself.”

Steve flops over onto his back, nuzzles down into the pillow. It’s Billy’s turn to look upon softly.

Steve’s hair sticks up wildly, the hairs of his right eyebrow are skewed in the wrong direction, and when he raises his arms to stretch Billy can see a strip of pale olive flesh, dusted with hair.

He hurts to look at. He’s the sun. 

“So,” Steve says. “What do you wanna do?”

Billy doesn’t really know. He’s had a pretty rigid schedule these past months. He shrugs, hums out I don’t know and Steve nods, makes a point well taken face that looks an awful lot like something Dustin might do.

They just kinda… talk, for a while. About a lot of things. There isn’t really a line to follow. It’s like the conversations Billy would have with his friends in California; beneath the boardwalk or at their houses or at the diner, staying far too long but not really giving a fuck, even when the waiter glowers at them from behind the counter. 

They talk about the kids, about Dungeons and Dragons and how Steve can say he’s not a huge fan because he actually gets it now. They talk about Christmas, the best gifts they’ve gotten (A He-Man action figure and a portable cassette player equipt with the Beach Boys, jeez, mom) and they talk about the continuity of Dynasty, for some reason.

“I don’t get how you don’t hate me,” he murmurs after their laughter peters out. 

He sees Steve glance over at him in his peripheral. “I don’t really hate anyone.. I don’t like some people, and I guess I hate things. Like, ideas or objects. But not people. And definitely not you.”

Billy shakes his head. He doesn’t get it. “I hate things. A lot of things. I hate people. I hate ideas and I hate places and certain types of music and leaving things uncapped, or, like, partially unscrewed. Like soap and toothpaste and milk.” Steve bits down on a smile. Billy flicks his tongue out, licks his lips.

And there's more, more that he thinks about pushing away because it’s embarrassing and stupid and obvious. But he’s got this feeling that Steve doesn’t care, that he won’t. That he’ll understand. 

“I hate myself,” he all but whispers. Feels it fill and pool and spill over inside of him. He really does. He hates himself.

Steve is quiet for just a moment. Just a moment, where Billy can think on all the ways he was wrong, on all the ways it is embarrassing and how Steve is gonna laugh, because he doesn’t understand.

Instead, Steve says, “I hate myself, too,” and it’s like a punch to the gut. “But I don’t hate you.”

Billy turns his head, meets Steve’s eyes across the pillows and blankets.

“I don’t hate you, either.”

Steve smiles, almost sadly. It falls quickly, but the grin doesn’t leave his eyes.

He doesn’t say anything. Neither does Billy. They don’t need to.

“You wanna make cookies and play in the snow?” Steve asks, like he kind of expects Billy to say no. He wants to know why. Thinks he might have a hunch.

He’ll just have to stay and find out.

“Yeah. Sure.”

-

Billy stays at Steve’s again. He’s got nothing to go home to, after all. He asks Steve what his plans are, if he should go home. It’s Christmas, after all. Steve says it’s cool man, I don’t have plans, really. You can stay if you want. I think the kids are coming later, for presents, you know?

Billy asks about his parents, why they aren’t here- because he hadn’t asked yet and it seems like a pretty damn obvious thing to wonder about- but Steve sort of deflates, shrugs a shoulder and plasters on a smile, says, “They’re outta town.” like that’s a good explanation.

Well. He guesses it is his, so he drops it. Doesn’t think about the fact that he’s never seen Steve’s parents once in all the times he’s been here (and been out there) besides one occasion where a navy Rolls Royce sat parked beside Steve’s.

Only once. And then never again.

Steve obviously doesn’t want to talk about it, so they won’t. There's a lot of things Billy doesn’t want to talk about, and Steve doesn’t pry.

They kind of just… chill, for the morning. It doesn’t look or feel like any Christmas Billy’s ever experienced, but it still feels like one. Like Christmas.

Steve pops some frozen cinnamon rolls in the oven and tells Billy about how, when he was a kid, his mom would make cinnamon rolls every Christmas morning.

“From scratch, too. Which was weird, because she never baked. Only then, and like, a few other special occasions. It wasn’t a frequent thing, I mean.”

Steve rubs the back of his neck, looks down at the counter from where he sits beside Billy. He squishes around one of the frosting packets with his other hand.

“My mom baked all the time,” Steve looks at him, this quiet curiosity in his eyes. Billy’s never talked about his mom before. He tries to pretend like it doesn’t scare the shit out of him. “She was pretty good at it. Not great- sometimes she burnt the cookies or forgot eggs or salt, but she was still good.” Billy would give nearly anything for her to bake for him again. To smell the sweet charcoal scent of burning cookies and watch as her flowy dress swished in the air as she beat around a dish towel.

“She’d always put oatmeal raisin cookies in my lunch, even though I fucking hated raisins. But she didn’t put that many in. They were mostly oatmeal cookies.”

“Sounds like a sweet deal,” Steve says.

Steve doesn’t burn the cinnamon rolls, but it’s a near thing. He watches Billy slater his in extra icing, and a well of self-consciousness rises in his chest. He tries to shrug it off, shut the voice in his head that sounds an awful lot like his dad off. It’s easier when Steve does the same, squeezing the packet for all it’s worth.

They eat in comfortable silence, Steve squishing the extra packet they have around. It slides across the marble counter, and Billy pokes it, recoiling with an exclamation of, “Ugh, dude! It’s so warm.”

Steve scoffs, says through a mouthful, “Uh, so? You're welcome.”

Billy squints at him. “Why would I thank you for that?”

Steve takes a minute to think about it. He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

Billy looks away from him with a shake of his head. He licks his lips around his smile.

-

The kids come as the sun makes its steady descent across the sky.

Mike, Will, Lucas, Dustin, and El, who seems particularly intrigued by Billy tonight. 

She seems always to keep a silent register of him. Noting his actions and posture. Asking if he’s okay, where it hurts.

Everywhere, everywhere, sometimes, he screams. 

“Okay?” she asks him, looking into his eyes. His very being. 

Yeah, yeah. He really, really is. Overcome with contentment. He wants to say he doesn’t know why, but he does, and so does she. He’s standing besides the others, who arrange their gifts below the tree.

“You know you guys don’t need to do that. We’re opening them now, right?”

“Not right this second, Steve,” Mike says. “What’s the point of having a tree if all that’s under it is some wimpy box?”

“It’s not wimpy,” Steve is quick to counter with. He looks over to Billy, and then away just as fast, a red flush creeping up his face, his ears. “And that’s not the only thing under there,” he mutters. 

He looks back to El, brows drawn, but she’s just got this little knowing smile on her face before she walks away to help.

They don’t open presents right this second but a few seconds later. Steve scoffs, rolls his eyes, crosses his arms, and sits down in the corner of the couch. Billy settles next to him as the kids pass out their gifts. 

It’s mostly toys and games, action figures and updated D&D guides. A box set of the Star Wars movies on tape (Dustin gasps dramatically and beams at Steve with wet eyes). A puzzle. A group drawing from Will.

Steve gets a picture from Will; a drawing of him wielding that dreaded nail bat. He looks badass.

“Thanks, Will,” Steve says. He looks like he’s having trouble breathing.

There’s only one thing left, one thing nobody’s claimed. The kids dissipate, get to work on El’s puzzle, dumped on the coffee table. Steve grabs the little box, hands it over to Billy, and if he’s not mistaken, he’d say he looks… bashful.

Billy doesn’t know what to say. This is for me? sounds stupid, because it is, obviously. But Billy didn’t get him anything. He didn’t get anyone anything, he realizes, a painful, tight knot winding in his chest. He’s never really gotten people gifts in the past; nobody got him things, either.

“I can’t… I-I didn’t get you anything,” he says, but he makes no move to give the gift back.

Steve looks up then. “You didn’t have to. I just… wanted to get this for you. I’ve had it in my head for a while. I’ve actually had it for a while, too.”

Just open it, will ya?” Steve says, toeing the ground.

Billy does, tears away the haphazardly taped wrapping paper. Underneath, there's a Hot Wheels car. A blue sports car, a Camaro.

He takes it out of the package, gently, carefully. He spins its wheel around and flips the car in his hands. It looks a bit like his car, but not much,  and Steve must know, because he starts talking almost as soon as Billy opens it.

“I know it’s not the same as the one you had, I looked, believe me, and that was pretty much the closest I could find-”

“Steve.”

“Yours was honestly was cooler than that, and I kind of tried to find out what, uh, happened to yours-”

“Steve.”

“After I, you know, so I could, maybe like, turn a piece of it into something, but I-”

“Steve.”

“I never did find out-”

“Harrington!”

“Huh?”

“It’s perfect. Fuck.” He scrubs a hand over his eyes. 

“Really?”

“Yeah, it is, it fucking is. It’s great, you dick.”

“Oh! Well, I’m glad you like it. I thought you might, you know. Miss it.”

Like a piece of myself, he doesn’t say.

They kind of just, look at each other, for a moment. Charged, like there's more to say, but that never could be said.

Instead, Billy grabs Steve’s shoulders and pulls him in close, so close. Grips him in a tight embrace, buries his head in his neck. Steve hugs him back.

“Is this weird?” Billy asks, voice muffled. Steve shifts, moves to pull back, but Billy doesn’t yield, doesn’t let go. “I mean, me staying here. Like, having Christmas together.”

“I don’t know if it’s weird or not. I’m kind of tired being concerned about what's weird or not. I… I liked it, if that means anything. You’re my friend.”

Billy lets Steve’s words drift in the air for a moment. “You’re my friend, too.” He flips the tiny blue Camaro over in his hands, drives it up Steve’s back.

He does pull away, a moment later. When the noise from the dweebs grows to a volume that is, frankly, too fucking loud.

“Hey!” Billy says, no real heat, but powerful nonetheless. “The fuck’s wrong with you?”

“We can’t find the last edge piece,” Lucas says. “Someone lost it.”

“I did not!” Dustin says. “It’s somewhere, we just opened it, for christ’s sake.”

“You’re the one who insisted on making an edge pile. You probably dropped it,” Mike says.

“No way!”

El looks back and forth between the three of them as they continue arguing. Will’s been chiming in with a guys! for a few seconds now, and eventually he gives up, placing the ‘missing’ piece where it belongs. Billy can see the outline of a starry, woodland night on the coffee table.

“Hey!” Steve says, clapping his hands. They all look over to him, and he motions to the puzzle with a gesture that says stop being stupid and look. 

“Oh, hey thanks, Will,” Mike says, pleased. 

“Yeah, sure,” says Will, eyes cast down, small smile on his face.

El looks over to Billy, then Steve. “Do you want to help?” 

A puzzle with these losers sounds mildly miserable and also like the best thing ever. Of course, he wants to help.

“You guys obviously need it,” Steve says, settling on the floor.

-

Billy goes home that night, with a Hot Wheel car blazing in his pocket and the warmth of a hug that probably went on too long still simmering on his skin. 

He’s got until tomorrow afternoon until Max comes back home. He spends the night blasting music from his stereo and strutting around the house with his shirt thrown to the ground.

He screams along to the lyrics and he definitely sounds like shit, his voice breaking and faltering, scars on full display, but it doesn’t matter. Who cares?

This who cares is better than the who cares’ of the past six months. It’s not a who cares of resignation; it doesn’t mean what’s it matter or what’s the point? It means there’s nobody here right now, but there will be. There will be people who- for some reason- care about you. But you don’t get to tell people who to care about, even though they probably shouldn’t care about you, and- well, fuck off. They do. So, shut up and dance, you loser. Who cares?

Yeah. That kind. The good kind.

Max greets him with a hug so tight it hurts. She pulls back with a profuse apology. His dad glowers, doesn’t comment on the freshly shoveled driveway (really, plowed, courtesy of Hopper via Joyce via a phone call from Steve), and lugs the suitcases to the rooms. Susan casts a small smile between Max and Billy, and asks him how the Volkswagen was in the snow. Not bad, he tells her, even though it was kind of shit. He doesn’t really think she’s asking about the car, anyway.

“So,” Max begins. “Did you have a good Christmas?”

Billy huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, yeah, I did.”

-

The New Year comes swiftly. There's a dinner at the Byers’ house tonight, but before, they go to Steve’s.

Of course they do.

They omit the fireworks, but Lucas brings three packs of sparklers. Lucas lights his first, holds it to Max’s. She holds hers to Eleven’s, who holds hers to Will’s, who holds his to Mike’s. Dustin holds his up to Steve’s, but Steve pulls back, shouting a dramatic, “Wait!” and grabbing Billy’s hand, pulling him inside the house. 

The indignant shouts of the kids fade as Steve leads him up the stairs. He stops at the landing, turning to face Billy. 

“I’m gonna kiss you, okay?”

Billy feels his eyes widen. He says the only thing he can think to. The only thing he ever could.

“Fucking do it, then.”

He does. A chaste press of lips. More than enough.

He pulls back, looks into Steve’s eyes that definitely have a hint of green in them, feels Steve’s hand card through his hair. He brushes his thumb over Steve’s eyebrow.

Billy looks out the window, at the starry sky, speckled with fast moving clouds that move across the sky like the sea moves across the sand.

He kisses Steve, just one more time, before he pulls him back down the stairs, out the sliding glass doors where the sparklers wave in the wind like magic wands, names and symbols drawn to drift up in the air.

“Are you ready?” Dustin demands, like the whole sparkler business is such an inconvenience to him.

“Jeez, yes. Light it up,” Steve says, holding out his sparkler.

Dustin touches his to Steve’s, and the thing goes up in a glimmer of silver sparks. Steve recoils from the flames, and his face glows gold. 

Steve smiles, holding his up to Billy.

“Your turn,” he says, bumping his shoulder into his. He wraps his small finger around Billy’s.

Billy grins, wraps his hand around Steve’s, and holds his sparkler against his.