Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

First time Steve makes a cake, it’s because they all forgot it was Max’s birthday and now the shop is shut. The whole gang, meaning Steve, Nancy, Jonathan, Will, Mike, Lucas, Robin and Dustin are gathered outside the video shop where Steve and Robin just finished a shift. Max, the soon to be birthday girl, has just wandered back inside to use the toilets, hence the last minute chat about what they’re going to do in the morning when it’s time to present her with a cake. Steve looks at Nancy first (to be fair, they all do), since she’s the most responsible one of the group, but then Nancy snaps at him:

“I don’t know why you’re looking at me, I can’t even cook an egg!”

“Really?” Steve frowns.

“Sexist,” Dustin mutters, as of the little shit hadn’t also been assuming that the most likely person to be able to bake a cake would be Nancy.

“I can give it a shot,” Jonathan offers, and he gets a syrupy smile from Nancy.

“Don’t,” Will says immediately.

“I’m a great cook, are you kidding me? You never complain,” Jonathan argues back, mellow as ever. Once more, Steve wonders what it would actually to make Jonathan Byers lose his temper, then, once more, he realises he already knows: going after his little brother Will, or going after Nancy.

“Not cakes, though,” Will smiles shyly.

“Fair enough,” Jonathan concedes.

“I could make one,” Dustin declares, “I mean, it can’t be that hard, right? What goes in a cake? Flour and sugar and… and oil, or something, right?”

“I’ll do it,” Steve says.

It’s not that Max won’t get a cake from her mum, and it’s not like there isn’t a shop somewhere that is probably open and could probably be driven to and bought a cake from, but somehow, at some point after all the shit that happened at the mall, the almost dying etc… somehow, they’ve begun this weird little tradition of doing their own little cake celebration whenever something happens. Birthdays, new job, good grade, whatever… everything’s a cake.

None of them are bakers, really, so they tend to just put their money together and buy one the day before, but it looks like this time, they messed up.
That evening, Steve digs out one of his mum’s decorative baking books and follows an easier recipe to the letter. His parents are away, so no one to comment on the mess he’s making in the kitchen, though, equally, no one to tidy it up for him. Steve makes something called a vanilla sponge which hasn’t ‘risen’ much but still definitely smells good. Once he’s washed up and put everything away, it’s pushing midnight, so Steve collapses into bed.

Convinces himself he’s exhausted and well ready to sleep.

It nearly works.

Steve wakes with a cold slap on his chest, ice cold and tight and painful, his mind still reeling from the nightmare, the torture, never over, always replaying in his head again and again, each blow and each glance, sometimes nothing happens, he’s just in his house or at the video shop and then one of them appears behind him and Steve can’t do anything. Not fight, not run, not shout.

Steve wakes gasping, dripping with sweat, a whimper of a scream still stuck in his throat.

This happens nearly every night.

It’s three in the morning the time that Steve made the first cake.

Steve lays there, still and petrified, until he works up the courage or shame to reach for the light and flick it on. He gets up, takes himself to the kitchen, pours himself some water. Downs it.

His eyes land on the vanilla sponge. It’s shit. Utter shit. Max deserves a heck of a lot more than that.

Steve flicks the baking book open to one of the later pages: there. A three-layered chocolate cake, with jam between the layers of sponge and icing all over, and with crushed up M&Ms littered over the top. Yes. That’s the one.
It takes just over two hours and a half to make that cake but the end result is well worth it. Turns out Steve Harrington can be good at baking.
He collapses back into bed after the cleanup, well after sunup, and sleeps for about two hours, until it’s time to go to the video shop.
Max loves the cake, and Nancy (along with everyone else) gives him a truly impressed look.

It becomes his role – each time there’s a celebration, they don’t buy a cake anymore. They all want Steve’s chocolate cake.

He doesn’t mind, not really. It’s nice to be needed, nice to be good at something. Nice to spend that two and a half hours alone without any thoughts other than the next step in the recipe.
A few months pass by, like that. Nightmares come a little further apart, every other night, then every couple of nights, sometimes Steve even goes a full week without waking up in a sweat.
Their little group of survivors recovers – slow and steady, bit by bit, brick by brick.

And then, it begins happening.

Fucking Billy starts to show up.

He’s there at movie night, like a great fucking beacon of darkness in the corner of the room. Steve doesn’t comment on it, not at first. He ignores the dude, totally ignores him, doesn’t even hand him a plate of cake like he does the rest of the gang. Zones out whenever Billy starts talking, refusing to even sacrifice an ounce of his attention for the asshole piece of shit.
It takes the third movie night, and Lucas’s birthday party, for Steve to confront Robin after Max and her step brother leave his house (it’s always at Steve’s house, as well, not that he minds, but maybe he does mind, now, because why the fuck are they inviting Billy fucking Hargrove to his house).

“Why the hell is Billy here, now?”

“Huh?”

“Billy,” Steve articulates. “Why is he here? Since when do we hang out with him? Guy’s a fucking dick.”

“Oh, uh…” Robin’s avoiding looking at him now, busying herself with the cleanup. “Well, I mean… he’s Max’s brother, right?”

“Stepbrother.”

“Right. Stepbrother. And, uh… I mean, he did help us, right? Like, he helped Eleven against that massive blobby monster, you know? Kind of turned the tides for us, really, if you think about it, like we were pretty much done for but then Billy kind of did manage to escape, like, the mind control thing, or whatever, and yeah I know he’s been awful like obviously you still have that scar near your eye and I know that’s from him totally kicking your ass last year – ”

“Robin, Robin! Who invited him?”

“Eleven suggested it.”

“…What?”

“I think she’s like, grateful you know, because of what happened at the mall… and it’s Max’s brother, right? That’s got to count for something.”

“Stepbrother. And he’s always been a total douche to her, not to mention poor Lucas. And yeah, Robin, he did also beat the shit out of me. I had a freaking concussion, Robin. Should we talk about what else he’s done? Like, be a total asshole freak, even before the mind control stuff? Come on, Rob, seriously. The guy’s a fucking violent, asshole douchebag with shits for brain – ”

“Hey.”

The floorboards creak to Steve’s right, and suddenly he’s right there: the violent asshole douchebag with shits for brain.

Flanked by little Max, no less.

“I, uh… forgot my jacket.”

Billy's gaze is steady and a little teasing, humour masking defensiveness. Steve blinks, a little stupidly. Ah, yes. Said jacket is right next to his hand, resting on the back of a chair. Steve makes no move to pass it to Billy, so, after an awkward three seconds or so, Robin does.

“Oops,” she says, tone shaky. “There you go.”

“Thanks. Uh…” Billy hangs there, stilted, hands bunched up around his stupid jacket. Steve’s not looking at him anymore, not really, and he’s certainly not going to let himself feel any sort of guilt or embarrassment at having been caught bad mouthing the dude. He does, unfortunately, feel the teeniest little bit of fear, the memory of Billy Hargrove’s fists still tingling on his face. “Thanks,” Billy repeats, before ducking out of the room.

Robin and Steve exchange a look above the kitchen counter, her, panicked and accusing, him, unapologetic and semi-exasperated.

“Hey, uh… Steve?” Steve’s attention snaps back to little Max, standing there in the doorway of his kitchen. “We, uh… we heard that, you know. Most of it.”

Ok, now Steve feels kind of bad. It’s not Max’s fault her brother’s a violent asshole douchebag with shits for brain.

“Sorry, Max.”

“Yeah.” Max nods, makes to move away, but then reappears in the kitchen, a stubborn and defiant little tilt to her chin. “You know, he’s really been trying. Billy, I mean. Like… it’s all true, what you said, but not anymore. Not all the time. What happened at the mall… it’s changed him. He’s really different. He’s being nice to me. Like a real brother. He got me a new skateboard, to replace the one he broke. The other day he even stood up to his dad to protect my mum.” Steve frowns – that must be that little bruise at the corner of Billy’s face. Steve had assumed the asshole had got into a fight, just hadn’t guessed the circumstances of it. “El, she… whatever she did in his mind, it’s like it’s clicked something in him. He’s really changing. Like, growing. And, uh… you should give him a chance.”

Steve glances at Robin, who raises both eyebrows at him. What the hell, honestly?

“Give him a chance? Give him a chance? I freaking… host the dude every couple weeks, isn’t that enough?”

“Steve.”

“What, Robin? I haven’t kicked him out, have I?”

“Steve.”

“Fine,” Steve raises a hand. “Fine. Fine. Sorry, Max. I’ll, uh… make an effort.”

“Max?” Billy’s voice calls from somewhere down the hall, not mad, just insistent.

“Make sure you do,” Max says to Steve, “give him a chance. Bye.”

This time, Steve waits till he definitely hears the front door open and close before he lets his emotions run.

“Big fucking deal, he bought her a skateboard to replace the one he broke. What, is he going to buy me a new face, next?”

“Steve!”

“I’m over this.”

Alas, no matter how over it Steve is, none of it is over. Two weeks later they’re celebrating Robin’s birthday, cue the huge chocolate cake, and then it’s Jonathan’s. A couple months down the line, during a shift, the little brats crash the video store and Max drops a bomb:

“Hey, uh, Steve? Robin? It’s Billy’s birthday next week, on Saturday.”

Silence.

“Oh, is it?” Robin says lightly.

Steve busies himself with stocking up the back shelf. A reptilian part of his brain can feel where this is going, and he’s not about to make this easy for them.

“Yeah,” Max sounds forcefully cheerful. “Our parents are away, too, so he won’t be getting any kind of like… yeah. I mean, not that they’d do anything anyway, but like…yeah.”

It’s not like Max to ramble like this, Steve knows it, and part of him does feel a little bad for making the kid so nervous about asking him something, but he cannot help it. This is all a damn joke.

“So anyway,” Max rambles on, “I was wondering if like we might be able to do our usual thing of like…”

“Can we use your house, Steve,” Dustin finishes decisively.

There it is.

“If you want to use my house, I guess I won't stop you,” Steve replies eventually, eyes fixed upon the tape he is now rewinding. It’s as reticent a response as he can possibly give without outright saying no, and Henderson, the little shit, totally runs with it.

“Great, so that’s sorted. Guys, let’s go. And, uh, Steve? Use the peanuts M&Ms this time, ok? The crunch is better. Did you hear that, Steve? Pea-nut. Thanks, bud.”

“Hang on, wha…?”

The brats leave, and Steve finds himself left behind with Robin, who’s smirking.

“I gotta make him a cake, now?!”

Robin shrugs.

“Robin, there is no way I am making that douchebag a cake. Do you hear me? No way in hell.”

Steve makes the damn cake.

He doesn’t pay close attention this time, and takes some shortcuts, so the buttercream is a little curdled and not as smooth as usual, but whatever. He also usually uses raspberry jam, because of how nicely the sharpness of the fruit cuts through the excessive sweetness of the chocolate icing, but this time he has none at home so he uses cherry. He’s not going shopping for Billy fucking Hargrove. Well, no more than he already has. Fucking peanut M&Ms, man.

The whole gang, minus Max and Billy, arrives early and begins setting up decorations around Steve’s living room. Then they try to get him to crouch behind the sofa, which he definitely does not do, and when Max and Billy enter they all jump out from their hiding places and yell “Happy birthday!”. There’s a brief second, right between the moment Billy enters the house and everyone jumps up when it’s as if it’s only Billy and Steve in the room, and, for the first time in months, they make eye contact.

It's a little thing – a little nothing. It’s eyes meeting across a room, when there’s not much else to look at. It’s nothing, yet it throws a shiver down Steve’s spine, it halts Billy’s steps, it fizzles and prickles and it’s uncomfortable and nothing and too much all at once.

“Happy birthday!!”

Billy jumps visibly when the kids appear, and Steve scoffs under his breath.

“Oh wow, what’s this?” Billy’s being accommodating, friendly, he’s indulging the kids. The same kids he terrorised the year prior – again, what a fucking joke. Now here he is, all deep voice and smiling eyes and emphatic exclamations of surprise and joy. Fucking douche. Max gifts him an air freshener for his car and you’d think he’d just be presented with a whole new Chevrolet.

“Steve, if you scowl any harder your face is going to get stuck that way,” Robin whispers to him on her way back from his kitchen, carrying plates and forks.

The ‘no eating away from the dining room table’ rule has long been bypassed, but today it particularly stings. If Billy fucking Hargrove drops chocolate crumbs all over his parents’ sofa, Steve is going to murder someone. Billy, probably, or maybe Dustin. Maybe even Robin.
Steve rolls his eyes as Robin snickers, and when he looks back up Steve catches Billy glancing away from them.
When it’s time for the cake (“Steve made it!” yells Dustin), placed in its towering chocolatey glory in front of Billy fucking Hargrove, the latter once more looks up at Steve, who is standing a little away, arms crossed.

“Thank you, Harrington,” Billy says, way too civilly, and everyone’s heads whip round as they turn to gauge Steve’s reaction.

Steve doesn’t give one.

Robin cuts the cake and Steve stabs at his slice, appetite well and truly gone. Still, he does not miss the way Dustin’s face scrunches up when the little shit scrapes at the curdled buttercream with his fork.

“The buttercream curdled,” Steve hears himself blurt out defensively, “and I ran out of raspberry jam, so, cherry it is.”

“Yeah, it’s a bit too sweet, isn’t it,” Dustin has the freaking nerve to point out. “Didn’t think that was possible, but hey.”

“I thought the icing looked a bit grainy,” Lucas cringes at his plate.

“Definitely not your best, but they can’t be perfect all the time,” Mike says semi-reasonably, as the table erupts in comments about everything from consistency to colour to sugar levels of the cake.

“It’s the best damn cake I’ve ever had,” Billy declares suddenly, and the table falls silent. “Cherry’s my favourite.”

Well, fuck.

Heads whip round again to avidly watch Steve’s reaction play on his face: surprise, growing into shock, melting into ‘well, fuck’ and a thick dose of embarrassment.

“I didn’t notice any graininess,” Billy adds, talking to his plate, before shovelling some more cake into his mouth.

“It’s just a bad fucking cake,” Steve snaps, glaring at the man sitting opposite him on his mum’s new sofa. “Also I’m pretty sure I told everyone not to eat away from the table,” he addresses the rest of the room, feeling himself growing uncharacteristically and irrationally enraged. “If there’s any mess on these cushions, you guys are cleaning it.”

The room is silent and still, so many pairs of eyes either staring openly at Steve or somewhere on the carpet. Billy’s fork scrapes the plate slightly when he finishes the last few crumbs of his birthday cake. Steve’s chair scrapes the floor as he stands abruptly, stalking off to the kitchen to begin washing up.

Thankfully, the party peters out after that, and soon people begin leaving. Steve remains (hides) in the kitchen until it’s sounding fairly silent out there, and then he comes back out to assess the damage no doubt made to the sofa.

And of course, Billy is there, dustpan in hand.

“Oh hey, man,” Billy says, sweeping some microscopic crumbs off the leather cushions.

“Hey, man,” Steve parrots under his breath, voice dripping in sarcasm. “I got it from here,” he adds, louder, a dismissal by any other name. “You go on home.”

“It’s ok,” Billy mumbles, getting up and heading to the kitchen to empty the already empty dustpan.

Steve follows him, more out of weird survival instinct than anything else: keep an eye on the predator, always.

Billy Hargrove is massive in Steve’s kitchen. Larger than life, moving slow but powerful, magnetic and terrifying as a blackhole in the universe. It’s… uncomfortable.

“I said I got it from here, man,” Steve repeats. “You can leave. Max’ll be tired.”

Billy places the dustpan back under the sink, then uses a dishcloth to wipe the worktop, facing away from Steve.

This fucking dude.

“Steve?” Robin bursts into the room, larger than life too, just in a much safer way. “Is it ok if I stay over? It’s like, super dark, and I don’t want to walk home, plus you’ve had like three beers so I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t drive – ”

“Yeah, of course,” Steve responds automatically. Robin stays regularly. The guest bedroom is practically hers. She’s scared of the dark, which Steve still does not know whether this is a new thing, like a ‘since we’ve been tortured by evil Russians’ thing, or if she’s always been this way. He hasn’t dared ask yet. “Take something from my drawers.”

“DibsonyourBacktotheFuturet-shirt,” Robin blurts out, no spaces. “Ok, great, love you, thanks!”

She bounces away.

Despite himself, Steve snorts affectionally.

“She might as well call it her t-shirt, at this point,” he mumbles.

“My toothbrush’s still upstairs, right?” Robin shouts from halfway up the stairs.

“Yeah,” Steve yells back. His eyes once again land on Billy. The dude has stopped wiping, thank fuck, and is now watching Steve with a weird look on his face. “What?”

“Nothing.” Steve raises an eyebrow. Billy looks away. “Nothing, uh… good for you.”

“Good for me?”

“Yeah, like… you and Robin Buckley. Good for you. You’ve finally… moved on from Nancy Wheeler. Good for you.”

Oh. Oh.

“It’s not like that,” Steve follows Billy out of the kitchen and into the hallway. Max and Lucas are chitchatting just outside, voices low and playful. Steve watches Billy like a hawk, waiting for a sudden escalation in his mood. “Robin and I. It’s not like that.”

Billy scoffs.

“No?”

“No,” Steve snaps. “She’s not… I’m not her type.”

“Bullshit.”

“Excuse me?”

Billy's laughter is humourless, his eyes glinting in the semi-darkness.

“You’re everyone’s type, King Steve.”

That fucking nickname. Steve’s mouth opens and closes a couple times, before he can find it in himself to formulate a response.

“Not everyone’s. Not Robin’s.”

“Oh, yeah? What is she into, then? Ugly dudes?”

The hell?

“Chicks, actually, Billy,” Steve claps back. “Robin’s into chicks.”

Billy stares back at him, stunned silent, stunned still, halfway through the motion of shrugging on his brown leather jacket. Outside, Max and Lucas are still chatting, a happy thrumming sound in the background. Steve realises too late what he’s done wrong.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he blurts out. “What I just told you. Don’t tell anyone. I shouldn’t have told you. You fucking… you pushed, and I… just don’t tell anyone.”

“Ok,” Billy’s still staring, slack jawed. At least there's no teasing light in his eyes now, no mirth at all. Just shock.

“I’m serious, Hargrove,” and Steve steps closer, into Billy’s space, into his face, to convey serious. “Don’t tell anyone.”

Up close, Billy’s got long eyelashes.

“I won’t.”

“I’m serious. If you talk, I’ll…”

What, Steve? Beat him up?

I’ve been dying to see the famous King Steve everyone’s been telling me about!

“Just… don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t.”

Billy’s eyes are darting all over Steve’s face, from his eyes to his lips to his hair to a spot near his eyebrow and then back to his eyes.

“And… you’re cool with that?” Billy asks in an oddly quiet voice.

“Yeah,” Steve nods, “I am.”

Billy nods, his eyes darting all over Steve’s face again and settling for good on his eyes. Intense. Uncomfortable.

“You don’t got a problem with it? Really? That she’s some kind of deviant?”

Steve’s jaw ticks.

“Why? Do you got a problem with it?” Steve growls. “With… with Robin?”

“No,” Billy finishes putting his jacket on, breaks eye contact, moves away from Steve. “Not at all.”

“Sure?” Steve acts like he’d take Billy on, which, to be fair, for Robin he would.

“Sure,” Billy’s hand is on the doorknob, he twists it. The voices of Lucas and Max come in louder, breaking the weird fog between them. “It’d be pretty hypocritical of me, wouldn’t it?” It comes out barely audible; a rushed whisper chucked into the space just before Steve.

What?

“What?”

Billy hangs on the threshold for a moment, kind of facing Steve’s way but not looking at him.

“You heard me,” Billy says finally, kind of aggressive, before walking off. “Ok,” his voice rings outside, “let’s get you kids home, shall we? Sinclair, you need a ride?”

Steve stands there a good few minutes, staring at the door, before returning to the kitchen and realising only then that, for the first time, there's no cake leftover at all.

Chapter Text

“Hello?”

“Buckley.”

“Harrington. It’s eight in the morning.”

“And good morning to you. What do you say we go bowling today? Get the kids and all, have teams.”

“Yeah, that sounds good. I mean, I don’t have the basic spatial awareness and hand eye coordination needed for something that requires that much quick mental math, thinking fast under pressure and then enacting that decision by coordinating your muscles and articulations in such a way that some ball heads right in the direction of – ”

“Is that a yes?”

“I’m not good at it, is what I mean.”

“Neither is Henderson, nor Sinclair, it’s fine. Wheeler will probably drop the ball on his foot, and El has superpowers, so I don’t even think we’ll be keeping scores. Just a bit of fun.”

Also, the mall has been rebuilt, and the bowling alley is in there. Steve has been waiting for some form of reason to return to the mall and build some new memories there, hopefully sans torture and giant monsters. He thinks it might help with the… whatever is going on with his brain that has him fucking baking in the middle of the night.

Couple more phonecalls later and it’s a plan, and Steve’s actively looking forward to his day off. He hangs the phone back on the wall and busies himself with getting dressed.

The phone rings exactly half an hour before he’s due to leave and pick up Henderson and Sinclair on his way.

“Ok, don’t freak out.”

Steve feels himself begin to freak out just a little; Robin certainly sounds well into freaking out territory already.

“What?”

“I’m just going to say it. Billy will be there.”

Oh, for fuck’ sake.

“What, like, dropping Max off? Working? What do you mean?” Steve knows he’s being obtuse, but hey, maybe if he pretends not to understand, then it won’t happen.

“He’s coming with Max, yeah, and, uh… well him and I were chatting earlier and…”

“You what?!”

“…and I couldn’t not say to him to come along, could I? Not when he’s driving Max and he was being really friendly…”

“You were chatting with Billy Hargrove?”

To her credit, there’s a slight manic hysteria to Robin’s voice when she replies:

“I know!”

“In what context?”

“Well I was lending him this movie, and…”

“What movie?”

“The Rocky Horror… never mind, you haven’t seen it. That’s not important. The important bit is: Billy will be there, and you shouldn’t freak out about it.” A silence. Steve can practically feel Robin’s nervous energy fizzing through the phone. “Ok?” Steve gulps. “You ok? Steve?”

“Yeah,” Steve’s mouth is really dry. “No, I’m not freaking out. But actually, I… I’ve just remembered. I was going to go to Brenda T’s party – you remember Brenda T from biology, right? – and I’d forgotten that was tonight.”

Steve knows it’s a crap excuse. He knows Robin knows it’s a crap excuse. He knows she knows he knows that she knows.

“You were not going to go to that party, Steve. You and I both laughed out loud when we heard about it. You said there’d be no way in hell you’d set foot there.”

“Well, I changed my mind.”

Silence.

“Well, even if that wasn’t complete bullshit, the party’s tonight. Bowling is this afternoon.”

“Takes a while to do my hair.”

“Steve.”

“Guess you’ll have to pick up Henderson and Sinclair for me. Gotta go.”

“Wait, Steve! I don’t have a licence – ”

Henderson, the cheeky brat, gives him a call from the actual bowling alley, probably by high jacking the front desk. He’s all ‘where are you, man?’ and Steve has to cut the conversation short and say that he’s washing his hair for Brenda T’s party, like that’s a normal thing to do, and then Dustin is saying ‘ok, princess’ (rude) and threatening to come round after bowling to call him on his bluff, so now Steve does actually have to go to that damn party. It stings all the more when Dustin interrupts Steve’s rambling about how much he does want to go to the party with an ear-piercing ‘WHOOOOOO!’ followed by ‘Billy just scored his, like, fifth strike in a row! Wish you could see this, dude!’

“Oh yeah?” Steve snaps into the receiver, voice positively boiling with sarcasm. “Sounds like he’s amazing.”

“Yeah, he is!”

Of course, Steve would love to be able to say that going to Brenda T’s reunion party had been a bad idea in retrospect, but the truth is that Steve had known from the start that it wouldn’t be a good idea. Brenda used to hang out with Tommy, Patrick, Jason, fucking Billy (pre his ‘born again in the light of the Mind Flayer’ act), and so those people are very likely to be there, plus a huge number of other assholes and douches that peaked in high school and can’t for the life of them let go of the bullshit concept of popularity.

So he has got himself dressed, and ready, and then the little to no sleep he’s had the night before catches up to him and Steve does fall asleep for a little while, until the nightmares flare up again.
Steve wakes with a strangled cry, a tingle under his fingernails and a shirt so drenched in sweat he’ll have to hang it up to dry before it could be put in the laundry basket. Another shower later, a glance at the clock (ten, turns out it was more than a little nap) and Steve is feeling somewhat self-destructive. Fuck it all, he will enjoy this shit party.

He walks to Brenda’s – fully intending on getting legless. Knowing it is a bad idea. Knowing Nancy would disapprove. Kind of hoping she would. Kind of hoping the kids will call on him, despite the late hour, and realise he has indeed gone to the party. Anything rather than hang out with Billy Hargrove and hear about how amazing he is with balls.

The party can be heard from two streets over. As he approaches, Steve sees people spilling out onto the streets, stumbling, laughing, arguing, tripping over their own feet. Inside the house, there is the sound of glass breaking. Loud music. A little distance away, curtains are twitching, someone probably already calling the cops.

It looks like hell – it is perfect.

Steve walks in like he’s been invited and no one challenges him.

Pretty quickly, he spots Billy Hargrove (of course) in the corner of the dining room, standing there all magnetic and intense, too much, too uncomfortable, his presence like a black hole, sucking the light and air out of any room. And of course, Billy Hargrove spots him too. Steve turns on his heels and leaves the room. Billy follows him into the kitchen, but when Steve immediately pivots into the living room he seems to get the message, finally, and doesn’t try to approach him again.

An hour later, Steve’s smoked two joints and drunk four cups of some disgusting punch. Cherry flavoured, as well, of course. Disgusting. The room is swaying around him, but at least there are no evil men with pliers anywhere. Just douches and assholes that peaked in high school.

Like him.

He still catches glimpses of Billy Hargrove, every once in a while, lurking at the corner of his field of vision, always surrounded by other people, with his eyes always on Steve. Not that he’s looking in Billy’s direction, not at all, au contraire, Steve is very much not looking in Billy’s direction, but it’s like he can feel it: Billy’s gaze on him. Heavy, creeping along the back of his neck. Uncomfortable. Another joint, another cup and Steve begins to forget about Billy, too.

Tommy H finds him leaning against a wall, a half-finished red cup in his hand, hair beginning to fall askew.

“Well, if this isn’t King Steve,” Tommy sneers, and what the fuck, man, how the fuck had Steve ever thought this dude was cool? He’s flanked by Carol, still, maybe there’s something romantic about the fact that these two are still together after all this time. United in their assholery, no doubt. And fuck, Steve’d be an asshole if it was with Nancy, he’d be anything at all to be with Nancy.

Tommy’s face is just a thick constellation of freckles, dancing right there in front of Steve’s hazy gaze, his wolfish grin pulling tight at his cheeks.

“Did you get lost, or something? No princess Wheeler, this time? Or, who’s the latest chick?”

“Ronnie Buckley,” Carol wears a matching sneer on her tiny little face, “from freaking band.”

“Oh yeah, her!”

“It’s Robin,” Steve slurs. “Her name’s Robin.”

“Right, right, my bad,” Tommy H is still grinning, like the Cheshire Cat, like a freaking devil in a polo shirt. “So, where is she? Or did she dump you for Byers too?”

Carol snickers.

Steve feels like the room is spinning that little bit faster. He feels his own anger rising in the distance, like a rumble of thunder somewhere over the hill. Nothing overwhelming, more like the lingering echoes of a learned behaviour.

Ah yes, this is the bit where I get angry.

“Bullshit,” he slurs, thickly, and the word and tone remind him of something, something bad and painful. “Fuck off.”

Not his best come back, and it drags drunkenly on the ‘f’, but Tommy H looks insulted nonetheless, so there’s that.

“You fuck off, Steve, what the fuck are you even doing showing your face – ”

“Is there a problem, here?”

Tommy H and Carol both look to the side, Steve’s eyes following belatedly. Billy Hargrove is here.

“Billy Hargrove is here,” Steve says out loud, voice flat. “Great.”

“Hey, Billy, nice to see you man – ”

“Why don’t you fuck off, Tommy?” Billy interrupts, tone harsh, eyes unblinking. “Hm? Like you’ve been asked to?”

Billy’s not particularly tall, but he’s built like a tank, and he’s a mean fighter (Steve would know). There’s also something about him, something intense and off-putting and uncomfortable and just too fucking much. Steve remembers Billy at parties like this one, from their senior year: how he’d move around the rooms, unstoppable, how crowds would part to let him through whilst stragglers and groupies would follow in his wake, though he never spared them much of a glance. It has always been known that Billy is not to be messed with. Tommy H knows it too – he beats a hasty retreat, and now Steve is looking at the empty space where Tommy and Carol had been. Did he dream that?

Steve slips a little against the wall as he tries to look down at his hands, wondering where the joint he was just smoking has disappeared to.

“Woah, hey,” Billy Hargrove’s fucking hand is on Steve’s arm, around his bicep, holding him up. “Careful, there. You ok?”

Plant your feet.

“Get your hand off me, man,” Steve says, minus most of the consonants, jerking his arm out of Billy’s grasp. “It’s fucking bullshit.” Why was that word important, again? His feet move and something crunches – ah yes, his cup. Oops. Billy’s so damn close, too. Steve can smell him. Cologne, or something. Steve can feel his warmth, even, the dude is radiating heat. Those fucking eyes are on him, too, the feeling all goosebumpy and unsettling. Steve stumbles forward, the beginning of sickness rising in his stomach. “I’m fucking leaving.”

He trips and bumps his way to the hallway, then the front door, past staring faces and many people he doesn’t recognise, and some he recognises a little too well. This was a bad idea.

At least he’s not driven here.

The ground hits hard under his feet but the cool fresh air feels good on his face as Steve sets off in what he hopes is the direction he came from. The air is really fucking cold, actually. Steve’s teeth begin to chatter, his shoulders shake uncontrollably.

“Where you going? Steve?”

Fucking Billy Hargrove is still there, following him.

“G-going h-home,” Steve grits out, his jaws snapping fast, as if he’s just emerged from an ice tank. He hears a series of rapid clacking sounds and realises it’s his own teeth.

“Do you want a ride?”

“F-fuck n-no.”

Steve powers on, still freezing, still swaying, but not giving up. Billy’s still following him.

“W-what are you d-doing? I s-said I don’t w-w-want a ride!”

“I’m walking you home.”

Steve barks out a laugh.

“W-walking me h-home.”

“Yeah,” Billy’s voice is too close. Uncomfortable. “You seem pretty drunk, man. Feels like I should make sure you get home.”

“Oh, wow,” Steve stops abruptly, swinging an arm around. “You’re s-such a g-good guy, aren’t you? The f-fucking hero of S-Starcourt m-mall!”

Steve swings another arm and suddenly he’s spinning a little, tripping, the sky turning and the ground going up, and oh shit he’s actually falling isn’t he, but then Billy Hargrove catches him and stands him back up like it’s nothing. How is he so freaking strong? His hands on Steve’s arms, fingers searing hot through the fabric of his shirt.

“Careful there,” Billy says, too close, so close Steve can smell him again and feel his hot breath against his frozen cheek. “Jesus, how much did you have?”

“Oh, fuck off, H-Hargrove,” Steve jerks out of his reach, again. “Go h-have some c-cake.”

Billy laughs at that, actually laughs. Like Steve’s funny. Is Steve funny? He’s not been funny since high school.

“Fuck, it’s cold,” Steve moans.

Billy doesn’t comment on that, just keeps walking behind him, leaving a bit more of a distance between them (how dare he be decent? Who does he think he is kidding? Not Steve. Steve isn’t kidded.). Steve makes his excruciating way home, bumping into poles, near slipping over the edge of pavements, occasionally pausing to catch his breath or watch it come out of his mouth like dragon breath (which it doesn’t, not really, because it’s objectively not that cold, but Steve is freezing). The entire time, Billy is walking behind him, at a safe distance, not commenting, and honestly it pisses Steve off: how dare Billy fucking Hargrove pretend to be a nice guy? When Steve trips and lands, hard, on his knees, so hard it probably ripped the denim and drew blood, Billy reappears at his side.

“Ok, that’s it, King Steve,” Billy’s gruff voice is right by his fucking ear. Something hot and heavy falls over Steve’s back, nearly throwing him to the ground, and for a terrifying second he is convinced that Billy has just tackled him. Fear grips him fast and hard, the way it probably grips animals when they realise the predator’s about to pounce.

He’s going to beat me up again.

“C’mere.”

Steve is being hauled back up to his feet, easily, and his arm is being thrown over Billy’s strong shoulders. One of Billy’s hands is holding onto Steve’s forearm, the other has slipped round his back and is holding him upright. The heavy thing on Steve’s back is Billy’s jacket, the warmth of it already slipping through to Steve’s frozen bones. He wants to protest, but the sudden rise in temperature half puts him to sleep right on the spot.

Walking is a lot faster and easier when Billy’s hauling his ass around, that’s for sure.

In no time at all they make it to Steve’s house, where Steve battles for a few seconds too long with his key and the keyhole before stumbling inside and collapsing onto the rug.

“Ok,” Steve mumbles over his shoulder, as he pushes himself up to his knees, then on his left foot, then the right, then up and standing again. “See ya, bud. Thanks for the ride.”

The hallway is spinning all around his head, his brain, and now his stomach wants to start spinning again. He should not have mixed weed and alcohol, but hey, on the bright side maybe he’ll get a scolding from Nance about it. Maybe she’ll get worried about him and start calling him more often.

Maybe she won’t give a shit.

Steve fights off his own sneakers for what feels like an eternity then makes to take off Billy’s jacket, realising it’s already gone. Billy, however, is still there, standing in the doorway and watching Steve embarrass himself.

“G’night,” Steve waves him off. He collapses against the banister and begins his slow ascent of the stairs. To his distant dismay, the front door shuts, with Billy still inside his house. “Whu-What are you d-doing?”

“You’re completely smashed, dude,” Billy says, taking his own shoes off and then appearing right behind Steve, hauling him up again, and now they’re climbing the stairs way too fast for Steve’s sense of balance. When they reach the top, Steve throws himself out of Billy’s hold and stumbles towards the bathroom, which he misses by a few feet.

Vomit bursts out of him like hot, acid lava, burning his throat and nose and tongue and spilling all over the floorboards and half over the bathroom door. Steve slips on it and near lands head first in the toilet, which he then fills up with more sick. Tears well up in his eyes as Steve continues to vomit, retching, powerless, only distantly registering Billy Hargrove disappearing then returning with supplies.

He’s cleaning, now. Picking up chunks of half digested burger meat, spraying stuff, scrubbing.

“Fuck,” Steve half sobs, as another tidal wave of sick bubbles out of him and repaints the toilet bowl.

He has never felt this awful. Never. Not even after the drugs he was given during the torture at the mall, not when Jonathan Byers beat him up, not even when Billy Hargrove beat him up. A deep sense of panic rises abruptly. Pure, unadulterated fear, hysteria forming, and all of a sudden Steve is certain that he is going to die tonight.

“Call an ambulance, man,” he begins to beg at Billy, who dumps something on his back (a towel, Steve clutches it around his shoulders like a blanket) and flushes the toilets before pouring a glass of water. “I’m serious, man, I’m dying, I feel, I feel like I’ve been poisoned man, please! It’s Tommy H, man, he poisoned me!”

“You’ll be fine,” Billy replies, calmly, a touch patronising, like Steve isn’t dying right there in front of him. “Let it all out, drink some water. You’ll be fine.”

“I’m dying, dude! Call an ambulance – ”

“Harrington,” Billy’s face is right here. Next to the toilet bowl. “You’re drunk, and high. You will be ok.”

He’s so sure. So calm. Steve tries to cling on to that, even as another wave of vomit rushes up his throat, burning the flesh raw inside of Steve. His hair falls all over his face and he pushes it back, swearing some more (“Fuck, I don’t want to die now, man”). Across from him, Billy Hargrove is stifling a laugh, thumb and index pressing into the bridge of his nose. Steve can’t find it in himself to be embarrassed or angry, it’s all just still fear swirling in his mind. He closes his eyes, to keep the room still a little bit, and takes shuddery breaths, letting his stomach settle. His eyes remain closed for about ten minutes, unless it’s been an hour already. Hard to tell.

He’s still drunk as a skunk, and high, but the overwhelming sense of doom is dimming a little and nothing is coming up his oesophagus anymore. Billy Hargrove stays there, sitting on the edge of the bathtub, arms crossed, watching Steve.

A few more minutes and Steve is standing again, unsteady, brushing his teeth a little too hard and too slow, blinking at his own red-eyed reflection in the mirror. Billy’s blue eyes are still watching, from under his long eyelashes. He’s still sitting there on the edge of Steve’s bathtub. Steve struggles with his own puke-stained shirt, dragging it over his head and dumping it on the floor.

“I got puke in my hair,” Steve realises abruptly, his tone almost as panicked as when he’d asked Billy to call an ambulance. Billy barks out a laugh. “Shit, Billy, I got puke in my hair!”

“Alright, alright,” Hargrove is there again, catching Steve mid panic attack. “It’s fine, c’mere.”

“The smell will sink in!”

“C’mere, pretty boy.”

And that is how Steve finds himself bent over his own bathtub, hot water running through his hair and neck, Billy Hargrove’s hands also running through his hair and over his neck. Too stunned to process anything beyond the next instant, Steve watches bubbles of shampoo running along the bottom of the tub and disappearing down the drain. It’s over that hill again, the emotion he should be feeling right now. Something like humiliation, probably, or rage. Unless it’s terror? Whatever it is it remains just out of reach, obliterated by the fact and feel of Billy Hargrove’s hands in his hair and on his neck. Hot water running along his throat.

Then, just as suddenly, the water stops running, Steve is being hauled back up, Billy’s hot hands straight onto skin now that Steve’s top is gone, and now Billy’s rubbing a towel over his hair.
It’s weird. Intense. The gentleness and force of it, the strong hands that rub caringly over Steve’s hair, like he’s a little kid. It’s that same sensation again, the one that pops up whenever Billy’s near, whenever Steve risks a glance at his golden skin and golden hair and his blue eyes. The same sensation that creeps all over him whenever he feels Billy’s gaze on him. Too much. Uncomfortable. Something you cannot relax into, something that keeps you on edge and watchful.

“Get the fuck off me,” Steve tries to move out of Billy’s grasp, to no avail.

“Stay still.”

Steve’s head is being rubbed so hard he cannot argue back. He just has to take it. Whatever Billy’s doing to him right now, whatever Billy will do next, Steve can’t fight him off. He just has to take it. Play dead.

“You fucking crying, Harrington?” Billy exclaims. And shit, yes, he is. Steve watches his own eyes welling up, a tear already rolling down his cheek. His damp hair is standing in all directions on his head, Billy’s hands gone. “The hell?”

Steve moves away from Billy, now, a little steadier on his feet, adrenaline cutting through the haze of drunkenness. He heads for the door and bumps into the wall, then stumbles into the corridor and grabs the first thing he can reach from the laundry basket, a t-shirt that doesn’t look too bad, in fact it’s the Back to the Future t-shirt Robin borrowed the other night. He eyes his bedroom, not too far away.

“All of this for fucking Wheeler? Really?” Billy’s walking him to his room, now. His breath is hot against Steve’s damp cheek. He sounds pissed off. “I can guarantee she’s not crying about you, man.”
No. It’s too much, actually. Steve can’t explain why, but it feels just too much, impossible. He cannot let Billy into his bedroom, it’s bad enough the dude has made it to the upstairs floor in the first place. Bad enough he’s been manhandling Steve for the last… however long.

Wrenching out of Billy’s reach, Steve pivots and takes himself downstairs surprisingly fall-free, making it to the living room and collapsing face first onto the leather sofa.

Billy’s still fucking there.

“You sure you want to sleep on the couch?”

“Fuck off.”

“Your hair’s wet.”

“Fuck off.”

“What if you puke again? Hm? Won’t you get in trouble?”

“Fuck off. Bullshit.”

“Fine, it’s your fucking problem.”

Steve buries his face a little deeper into the couch. Has Billy finally gone?

“On your side, Harrington,” strong hands manipulate Steve into place, tucking his own hand under his face and his own knee sideways. Steve realises he’s being put in the recovery position.

“Fuck off,” he says again, not sure why, maybe because Billy’s seen him cry. He tries to turn onto his back.

“On your side,” Billy repeats, and the hands move Steve again then fucking hold him down until he stops fighting. How the hell is Billy this strong?

“Whatever, man. This is bull - ”

“Bullshit, yeah, you mentioned. Your bucket’s here,” Steve hears the hollow thumb of something being placed right next to the couch.

“You’re full of bullshit.”

Billy is taking a seat in the armchair opposite Steve, like he owns the place.

“Water’s on the coffee table.”

Steve’s eyes well up again and he scrunches them shut.

“Stop crying, dude.” Exasperation, now.

“Fuck off. M’not crying. Why are you even here? Fuck off already.”

“Wheeler’s not sparing you a thought,” Billy insists, meanly. “Is that what this whole thing was about? Getting shit-faced? You miss her that much?”

“Stop talking about her.”

“She’s probably getting railed by the Byers boy as we speak – ”

“Stop fucking talking about her!!” The words explode out of Steve, raw and painful along his throat.

“You fucking stop talking about her!” Billy yells back, startling Steve. “Stop fucking crying over her, man! Move the fuck on!”

Steve frowns. Billy looks weirdly enraged, what’s his problem, honestly? No one asked him to be here, seeing Steve like this.

“I’m sick of it!” Billy ploughs on. “Stop fucking crying!” Exasperation laced with something else, now. A plea, maybe?

“Or what?” Steve taunts. “You gonna beat my face in again?”

Billy flinches back visibly, his mouth snapping shut then dropping open, shoulders deflating. Finally, he’s got nothing to say. Steve feels vindicated, triumphant, in a sick and sour sort of way. He’s won. They fall into silence, Steve’s eyes glazing over then shutting. He could almost pretend Billy’s gone.

Until the asshole talks again, that is. Why can’t Billy just go already?

“Just to be clear, Harrington,” Billy’s voice is coming from behind his clenched teeth, “I will never, ever hit you again. Ok?”

Steve scoffs.

“Whatever you say, dude.”

Billy says nothing to that, so Steve risks a little peek and sees, to his great astonishment, that Billy is looking away from him with something akin to heartbreak on his face. It makes his face look way younger, way more vulnerable. Blue eyes soft under long eyelashes. Billy must have been a very cute baby – what a weird thought to have.

“Hey, how come you’re hanging out with Robin, now?” Steve hears himself ask.

It has bothered him. A lot. These last few weeks, since Billy’s birthday, Robin and him seem to have been spending some time with each other. They must have done, to get to the point where Robin is lending him one of her precious movies. She doesn’t even lend them to Steve. Steve’s… not sure why that is, but he knows it can’t be good.

“Does that bother you?” Billy smirks. The douche.

“She’s not into you,” Steve sits himself up, head resting back against the couch. “She’s really into chicks, ok? Don’t try and… don’t get any ideas.”

“Any ideas?”

“About… turning her, or whatever sick fucks like you believe in. Fucking watch yourself, I will kill you.”

“Ah, Harrington…" Billy laughs, "did you not hear what I said? I don’t have a problem with Robin being like that.”

“Don’t tell anyone about her.”

“Steve, I won’t.” Not laughing now.

“She’s not going to give you a threesome or whatever – ”

Billy’s eyebrows rise all the way up and he scoffs:

“Shit, is that something you’ve thought about?”

“What? No!” Steve splutters. “Look, my point is… just stay the fuck away from Robin. She’s not going to be another of your girls, alright? She’s my friend. My best friend. She’s a good person. Don’t come after her.”

Billy smiles and it doesn’t reach his eyes. When he speaks, his voice is a little venomous, and a lot tired. If he’d looked really young just moments prior, now he looks kind of aged.

“That’s what you think I’m doing, then?”

“I don’t know what you’re doing,” Steve quips back, “I don’t care what you’re doing. Just don’t do it anywhere near Robin.”

“She’s safe, Steve, fucking relax already.”

“Relax? What happened to ‘plenty of bitches in the sea, I’ll be sure to leave you some’?” Steve knows he sounds petty, with his jazz hands and wide eyes and dodgy impersonating of Billy’s manly gruff, still coming out half slurred despite the fact that there’s nothing illicit left in his stomach after the Exorcist levels of puke he ejected upstairs, but honestly, the asshole deserves it.

Billy’s gaze is avoidant and his smile is stilted as he shifts in his seat.

“Yeah, well, turns out you can have all the bitches, Harrington.”

Steve feels incredible sadness at that, like a cold wave washing off all the righteous anger. All the emotions have risen and fallen over that hill, blasting through Steve and leaving nothing but despair.

“I don’t want all the bitches,” he lays down on his side again, closes his eyes. “I just want…”

Sleep gets him before he finishes that sentence.

It gets him before he finishes the thought.

Chapter Text

“So… let me get this story straight,” Robin straightens up the life size carboard cutout of Marty McFly Keith has just had delivered for the store. “You blew us off to go to that party, had a terrible time, big surprise, got totally wasted and then went home with Billy Hargrove of all people…”

“Not – Robin, not like that!”

“Like what?”

“Don’t say it like that!”

“Sorry. Billy Hargrove took you home,” Steve rolls his eyes, “cleaned up your puke, washed your hair, put you to bed…”

“On the couch.”

“Put you on the couch… and that makes him evil, how?”

“He was loving it, I’m telling you.”

Robin’s hands pause halfway to McFly’s cardboard face.

“Loving… washing your hair?”

“No, not like – stop making it weird!”

“Oh, it is weird, dingus, it is all very weird. You’re being very weird.”

“Look,” Steve follows Robin as she abandons her battle with McFly and moves on to the trolley of returned VHS. “The guy’s an asshole, alright? He’s had it in for me since they moved here. Always trying to tick me off. This is yet another thing.”

“Tick you off by cleaning your puke and washing your hair?”

“Stop making it weird! He’s obviously… he’s obviously pretending to be some sort of saint, all of a sudden, and I can’t figure out what his long game is… also, stop hanging out with him!”

To her credit, and Steve’s relief, Robin looks righteously affronted.

“I am not hanging out with him,” she argues, “what could I possibly have in common with him? You think we go on joyrides and do weightlifting together?”

“You brought him a movie.”

“I brought him a movie for Max,” Robin declares, like it should have been obvious all along. “He said Max and El wanted to watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Max’s parents are away so they’re going to watch it there. Ms Byers would not let them watch that movie at her house, she thinks they’re too young.”

“Why?” Steve gets sidetracked. “Is it shocking?”

“No, not really, it’s just…”

“Is it nudity?”

“Steve.”

“Right, sorry. Continue.”

“There’s nothing to continue. I dropped the movie off at Max’s and Billy was there. He was being friendly and then Max talked about the bowling plans and she asked me in front of Billy if he could come, and I just… I couldn’t not say ‘yeah, of course’, could I?”

“You absolutely could,” Steve argues vehemently, as Robin puts two tapes away and shoves another three in his arms. “There was no need to ask him to come. No need at all.”

“I felt bad! He asked if you would be there and I said yeah but that you wouldn’t mind – ”

Steve’s eyes go wide as saucers, Robin wincing at the look on his face.

“Of course, I would mind!! This is it, though!” Steve points a finger at her from around the tapes in his arms. “He’s trying to tick me off! First with the cake, now bowling, and then by freaking – freaking – ”

“Cleaning up your puke and washing your hair?”

“He’s belittling me,” Steve pushes out triumphantly. “He’s undermining my place within the group. He’s making himself out to be this super dude who’s really cool and really nice and really good at bowling, doesn’t mind curdled buttercream…”

“You’re being weird,” Robin reiterates. When Steve doesn’t respond, shaking his head defeatedly, she adds with more kindness: “Look, I know he used to be a dick. I heard the stories, and I saw your face after that fight. But… maybe what happened at the mall did change him, you know? Maybe it put things into perspective for him. You used to be a bit of a dick yourself, I don’t know if you remember.”

“No one will let me forget.”

“My point is, people do change. Enough that I can go bowling with the guy in a group setting, you know? Now, I’m not saying he’s not still scary and that I would trust him with my most secret secrets, but...”

Shit.

“Yeah… about that.”

As he relays the conversation between himself and Billy a couple weeks prior, after the latter’s birthday cake incident, Steve watches Robin’s expression fade from shock to panic to anger, back to panic, then confusion.

“He said what?”

“He said something about how it would be hypocritical of him to have a problem with you liking girls,” Steve repeats.

“Hypocritical?”

“Yeah. You know, when – ”

“I know what it means, Steve. Do you?” Steve frowns: Robin’s eyes are wide and blue and the look on her face is not dissimilar to the one she had that time she cracked the Russian code. “Oh my God, think, dingus. Don’t tell me you missed that. Why would it be hypocritical of him to have a problem with me being… you know?”

“Because you like girls, and so does he?” Steve says. “It’d be hypocritical to blame you for that?”

“Are you serious?”

“What? That’s how I felt about it when you told me!”

But Robin is no longer listening to him, instead her eyes are staring beyond him, her brain wiring incessantly and just brimming with epiphany.

“That actually makes so much sense – no, not your thing, my thing – like, it explains so much… the total overcompensation, the weird hostility, and you…! You said he had it in for you from the start? Oh my God…”

“Robin, come on, you’re doing that thing again where you’re not making any sense.”

“You are so dense, Harrington. Like, really. So dense. Not just at school, too. You’re totally helpless and oblivious.”

“What?”

Robin levels him with a ‘are you actually kidding me’ sort of look, but when all she gets in return is baffled outrage, she gives up.

“Anyway, so that happened, the puke and the hair and the whatever… and then, the morning after? What happened?”

“Nothing, like… I woke up, told him to leave, he finally left, thank God…”

“He was still there?”

“Yeah!” Steve is glad Robin is finally showing a little bit of indignation at the whole situation. “He was reading my newspaper and drinking my coffee, like an asshole!”

“So the guy did all that stuff for you and kept watch over you all night, brought in your newspaper and made you coffee, and you kicked him out?”

“I’ve been kicking him out since last year, Robin. I do nothing but kick the dude out.”

“Alright, look, Steve, I think you’re reading this all wrong – ”

“Oh, is he reading it all wrong?” Steve and Robin both near jump out of their skins when Keith, their manager, appears round the isle. “What are we reading wrong, exactly, shit-kickers? Oh, I know! Is it our employment contracts?”

“Keith, we’re stocking up – ”

“It doesn’t take two of you gossiping like a couple of drunk aunts to put away the tapes, Harrington,” Keith enunciates, his jowls shaking with outrage, “meanwhile, no one is at the front desk where someone has been standing for about ten minutes – ”

“Oh, shit!”

Steve rushes back to the front of the store with an apology ready on his lips – said apology dies before it can rise at the sight that awaits him at the front desk.

“It’s Billy!” Robin says, way too loudly.

Billy Hargrove, who had been eyeing up the plate of apricot biscuits right there by the call-for-attention bell, looks up at her voice.

Steve’s feet do a bit of an awkward little misstep which he thankfully manages to more or less absorb into his gait.

“Hargrove,” Steve greets, overloud, with zero enthusiasm. “What can we do for you?”

“Yeah, uh…” Billy briefly looks at Steve then decidedly away, gaze bouncing from Steve’s name badge, to Steve’s eyebrow, to the plate of biscuits to the nearest shelves and back again. “I’m looking for a movie.”

And then, nothing.

“Yeah,” Steve says slowly, “this is the right place.”

“What movie are you looking for?” Robin pipes up.

“I don’t know, just…” Billy glances down at the biscuits again, “something, like… something fun.”

“Fun,” Robin says joyfully, as Steve mouths the exact same word with complete and utter contempt. “Sure! We got fun movies, here at Family Video, um… are you looking for fun action, fun dialogues, fun travel,” a hesitation, “fun romance…?”

“Uh,” Billy looks kind of put off by the suggestions, eyes darting everywhere, fingers tapping on the worktop. He’s wearing blue jeans and a denim jacket over a white shirt, smells of his usual cologne. The last time he saw him, Steve was ushering Billy out of his house, coffee abandoned half finished in the kitchen. “Something Max would like?”

As soon as he says it, Steve somehow instantly knows this is an excuse. Billy doesn't care about a movie for Max, he's obviously here to torment Steve about the other night. Robin probably knows it too but she has better customer service than Steve and so she acts like nothing’s weird:

“Of course, let me have a look for you, sorry again for the wait… Have a cookie! Steve made them.”

“Not for him,” Steve blurts out.

“Steve made them for customers,” Robin steamrolls on, “and Billy’s a customer today. They’re apricot. Enjoy, and I’ll be back real soon.”

Her absence is like a cold breeze settling over the tense space between Steve and Billy. After an awkward, silent few seconds, Billy reaches out and takes one of the apricot cookies.

“They’re not for you.”

“Thought they were for customers,” Billy bites into his cookie, giving defiant eye-contact. Clearly gaining confidence now they’re about to fight. Steve clenches his jaw. “Apricot?” Billy asks in disbelief.

“Yeah, apricot.”

“Why?”

Steve cannot help the little snort that escapes him at that – indeed, why apricot? Fair question. Billy looks caught off-guard by Steve’s laughter, though genuinely pleased, his whole composure relaxing visibly.

“It’s stupid,” Steve shrugs. “I just… yeah. It’s… you wouldn’t get it.”

“Try me,” Billy’s looking at Steve, his jaw working around the bite of apricot cookie.

Steve takes a deep breath, debating whether or not to resist telling Billy Hargrove about the latest thing his sleep deprived, nightmares ridden brain has had him cooking up in the middle of the night.

“I couldn’t sleep, and uh… when I can’t sleep, I bake. Don’t know why, but it works, and the kids like it, so…” a click of the tongue, “anyway. I couldn’t sleep, and I thought about cookies, and then there’s this kid that comes in at least once a day and he’s always slurping on these massive slushies, like, I’m not kidding, literally the size of my arm… and he likes apricot, of all flavours. Don’t even know where he finds them. So, apricot.”

Billy nods, then grins, a cocky little tug of his cheeks, pulling his lips into a lopsided smile, eyes on Steve. Kind of leans onto the counter.

“And that’s stupid, how?” Billy’s voice is raspy and low. “King Steve, cooking little kids’ favourite snacks…”

Steve feels like he’s being teased. Made out to be this big softie, like someone’s doting gran-gran.

“Ah, see, you would be tempted to believe that, but the real reason is… that kid, he can’t speak right yet. And he can’t pronounce ‘apricot’. See, he says…” Steve begins chuckling before he’s even finished his sentence, forgetting he’s not supposed to be smiling in front of Billy fucking Hargrove, but he can’t help himself. “He says… ‘a-cock’.” Steve bursts out laughing. “He literally comes in with his big ass drink and says ‘I’m having a-cock’ and it’s just so funny, I thought I’d make him little apricot cookies and see what he says… yeah.”

Billy’s full on smiling, teeth and all, eyebrows risen a little, eyes sparkling. He’s not speaking, just watching Steve with this weird smile and shining eyes. The feeling of being teased doubles.

“Yeah,” Steve clears his throat, “so anyway, it is stupid, like I said.”

“Sounds funny.”

“Yeah,” Steve taps his fingers on the counter, then scratches at a stain there, mainly for an excuse to stop looking at Billy. “Where’s Robin?”

Steve turns as if to go and find her but halts when Billy suddenly delivers a metaphorical blow:

“You feeling any better, Harrington?”

“Huh?”

“You know, since the party? You were pretty out of it.” Billy’s doing something with his voice, Steve notices. Pitching it low and steady. Maybe the raspiness is intentional. Teasing.

“Yeah,” Steve plays it cool, “I’m totally fine. I was totally fine then, which is why I repeatedly told you to leave me alone, I just needed to sleep it off.”

“Right, right…” Billy’s looking at him far too intensely. Is he wanting a thank you? It’s not going to happen. Steve doesn’t remember everything from that night, but he does remember telling Billy to leave him alone from the start. He never asked for any help. Especially performative help from some douche. “If you say so, King Steve.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Steve snaps.

“Ok,” Robin bursts back into the scene, right on cue, as if summoned by the hostility in Steve’s tone. “I got you Some Like it Hot. I doubt she’d have picked it herself, but I can guarantee it’s hilarious and way ahead of its time.”

“Oh yeah,” Steve gets sidetracked again, “it’s that movie where the two dudes dress up as women and then try to bang the hot singer!”

“Sounds rad,” Billy takes it somewhat reluctantly, not grinning anymore.

“It’s a masterpiece.”

“Ok. If you say so.” King Steve.

Billy pays for his video but then hangs around by the desk. Not leaving. Again.

“Anything else we can help you with?” Steve asks. On impulse, he grabs the plate of apricot cookies and thrusts it towards Billy. “Cock cookie?”

Now the thing is, Steve kind of expected a bit of reaction at this. Hostility, to be exact. What he gets instead completely catches him off guard: Billy Hargrove’s eyes widen, then a laugh chokes up his throat and has him bark out an aborted guffaw that dissolves into a coughing fit. He’s still coughing by the time he beats a hasty retreat out of the shop, Some Like it Hot tucked under his arm. Robin and Steve watch him reverse out of his parking place at excessive speed, smoke tearing out of the exhaust on the way out.

Steve turns to Robin to try and exchange a ‘get a load of this guy’ kind of look, but Robin’s not looking at him. She’s looking in the direction Billy’s car just disappeared off to, and her expression is that of gleeful achievement, like she’s cracked the Russian code all over again.

Bingo.

“I just don’t buy it,” Steve’s actually lowered the volume of the radio during the drive home later that day to make sure Robin can hear him perfectly, “no one can change like that. There is no way that Billy Hargrove is now not a douchebag.”

“Oh my God, Steve.”

“No way. There’s no way. And I’m not even just saying this because the dude whopped my ass, ok? Billy’s basically slept with half of the girls in Hawkins, he was always the biggest douche at parties, and trust me, I know a party douche when I see one, and he was awful to Max. Like, awful. Used to be all ‘don’t lie to me or I’ll break shit’ to her, and I’m sure he hates Lucas because Lucas is black.”

Steve pauses at this, glancing away from the road to level Robin with a ‘try and counter that’ sort of look.

“Ok, you done? First of all,” Steve sighs heavily as Robin lifts a hand up and starts listing: “he does not hate Lucas because Lucas is black, it is his dad who is a massive racist and has always forbidden both of them, and Max’s mum from interacting with black people. It is his dad who is always on his back about protecting Max, and it’s his dad who loses his shit whenever someone doesn’t do as they’re told. He doesn’t hit Max, but that’s because he hits Billy whenever Max does something he doesn’t approve of. Billy himself doesn’t care that Lucas is black, he cares that his dad will lose his mind if he lets Max have any boyfriend at all, but especially one he would never in a million years approve of. You following me?”

“How the hell… how do you know all this? Did Billy tell you?” Steve snarks.

“Max did,” Robin claps back. “Max told me all this, Steve. She told me because I asked her. I, too, had my doubts at first. You’re not the only one who cares about the little gremlins, ok?”

Steve ponders this in silence for a mile or so.

“Well anyway,” he starts again, ignoring Robin’s exasperated exhale, “racist or not, the guy is still a total dick. I don’t believe for one second that he’s cool with you being gay, and I don’t believe for one second he helped me out of the kindness of his heart the other night. No way. I’m telling you – the guy has been after me since they moved here. He’s been doing everything to get under my skin, taking over my basketball team, my friends, my job at the freaking pool, now taking over the kids and even, apparently, you! I’m serious, Rob, next he’ll be helping himself to shit in my kitchen… oh wait, he already did that.”

“He made you coffee,” Robin corrects automatically.

“He drank my coffee.”

“Let’s not get sidetracked, nevermind the coffee,” Robin shakes her head and shifts in her seat, now half facing Steve’s way. “Let’s rewind back to what he said to you, about me. That’d it’d be hypocritical of him to disapprove of me.” She pauses, watching him closely, unblinking. “What do you think about that? Don’t give me the crap you said this morning, no, think about it. Really think. Why would it be hypocritical?”

“I literally have no idea what you’re getting at.”

“Oh my God,” Robin releases a long suffering sigh. “Oh my God, do I tell you? Do I spell it out? Do I freaking… mime it for you?”

“What?”

“Why would it be hypocritical of him, Steve?”

“I don’t know! The guy doesn’t make sense, ok? But I told him, alright, I told him he’s not to try anything with you, like reconversion or whatever the hell… I told him I know he’s a player and I’ll be watching him.”

“You told him that?”

“Yeah!”

“And what did he say?”

“He said – he said – ” Turns out you can have all the bitches, Harrington. “I can’t remember what he said. But if he’d have said ‘don’t worry, I believe in gay rights’, I think I would have remembered that.”

Robin deflates, rubs her hands over her face then grabs at her own hair. Which, you know, rude.

“I don’t understand what you all see in him,” Steve feels himself slipping into the same old rant, “the dude is obviously pretending to be something he’s not…”

“Yes! Exactly!”

“… presenting himself as this super helpful, super open minded nice guy when in fact…!”

“OH MY GOD!” Robin explodes suddenly. “I CANNOT TAKE THIS ANYMORE! STEVE! THE DUDE IS GAY! He is GAY! HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN GAY, AND HE IS IN LOVE WITH YOU!”

Steve’s heart skips a beat then rushes to catch up, his cheeks burning and his brain fizzinging. A laugh bubbles out of him, nervous and unsure.

“Yeah, right.”

“YES, Steve. Billy Hargrove is secretly a homosexual, who has been masking as this hyper-macho parody of a straight dude, which is why he is ok with me liking women, and is why he’s been trying to provoke you from the start, and is why he lovingly washed your hair on Saturday night.” She opens her palms, rises her eyebrows like ‘duh’. “DUH!”

C’mere, pretty boy.

“It… it wasn’t loving,” Steve babbles, “I never said… I never used that word.”

“Didn’t have to.” Robin shifts in her seat again, doesn’t comment when Steve misses their turning. “Look, I’m like, 98% sure. It makes total sense. I went through a phase where I was like… trying to make myself fancy these buff actors and… I don’t know what the Mind Flayer did to Billy, exactly, like obviously I know it controlled him and made him do these awful things… I just, I guess maybe he suddenly realised he’d had enough of being controlled, be that by his dad, or by an interdimensional monster, or by the overwhelming expectations our patriarchal and heteronormative society places on us... You know? Something like that.”

Steve has nothing to say, so he says nothing, driving on, until he realises he’s been going in the wrong direction for a while and turns around, then drive in silence in that direction.
Robin suddenly lets out a cackle.

“I lent him The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” she says, “even before I knew. I’m such a genius. Part of me did it to see how he’d react because I wanted to know if he’d potentially be ok one day to find out about me, but turns out I was probably helping the dude on his self-discovery. Unwittingly so, but hey. Still a genius.” A pause. “Oh my God. Max must have guessed, too! She totally was giving him a side-eye when I brought Rocky Horror. Shit, maybe he asked her to ask me for that movie! Shit, maybe she’s always known! SHIT, Steve, maybe that’s why they moved here!!”

Steve listens, in silence, staring ahead at the road. His brain has shut down a little, caught between wanting to rebel and disagree and finding himself half understanding the basis of Robin’s arguments. Maybe he really needs to find out what it is about that Rocky Horror movie that has Robin so damn giddy.

“He even hates Nancy,” Robin adds, “like, he’s usually really charming and flirty with women, but with Nancy, he’s been rude and standoffish from the start. Get it? He’s jealous. I bet that the day you move on from Nancy Wheeler, Billy will miraculously warm up to her.”

“He doesn’t hate Nancy,” Steve says weakly.

Stop fucking crying! Move the fuck on!

All of this for fucking Wheeler? Really?

“He cannot stand her,” Robin replies easily. “Literally can hardly stand to be in the same room. Never looks at her. Unless she’s talking to you, in which case he totally glares…”

Steve shakes his head, turning onto Robin’s street. It doesn’t make sense.

Don’t sweat it, Harrington. Pretty boy like you’s got nothing to worry about.

Always crowding him from day one, even in the showers, even though everyone knows you leave one free between you and the next dude.

Plant your feet.

That had felt like advice, weirdly.

It’s the best damn cake I’ve ever had.

It probably wasn’t. But maybe it was.

Would be pretty hypocritical of me.

Steve gets it, now.

C’mere, pretty boy.

Gentle. Caring. Hands running through his hair, then drying it.

On your side, Harrington.

Making sure he’d be ok. Making painfully sure Steve would be ok. Steve called it bullshit.

Just to be clear, I will never, ever, hit you again. Ok?

Heartbreak in his eyes. Heartbreak in his eyes whenever he watches Steve – and damn, he does watch Steve a lot. It’s been unnerving, how much Billy watches Steve. Steve had always thought the look was hostile, but maybe it wasn’t that after all.

Turns out you can have all the bitches, Harrington.

But Steve doesn’t want all the bitches. Steve wants –

“You’ve just passed my house, dingus.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Steve hits the brakes then reverses on autopilot.

“Well, thank you,” Robin opens her door and steps out, before leaning back in through the open window. “Look, don’t go round telling other people what I just said, alright? I know I never said, but you did really mess up big time when you told Billy about me. You cannot tell anyone about this. Ok?”

“Yes, of course, sorry, I – ”

He always just gets under my skin, Steve thinks, a little feverishly.

“Like, this is serious, Steve. People get killed over shit like this. This town is like, one rousing speech away from a witch hunt. Don’t tell anyone about Billy, even if you hate the dude. And don’t ever tell anyone about me again. Got it?” Steve nods. “Do you believe me, now? About him?”

Yes.

“I don’t know. I… inconclusive. It needs further, uh… investigation.”

“Further investigation, huh? Hey, here’s an idea: why don’t you get him to wash your hair again at movie night on Friday?”

“Haha.” Nothing’s funny, though.

And then Robin leaves and Steve drives home. On autopilot. Mind strangely blank. Nothing fizzing anymore, just static humming in the background.

He gets home and his parents are still away so he still has the house to himself. He needs to stock up on food and baking supplies for movie night. Movie night will still happen. Nothing has changed.

Everything has.

Chapter Text

Steve mulls it over all week, Robin thankfully giving the topic a wide berth after that fateful drive home.

Each time the bell rings at the door to Family Video, Steve feels his heart gripping in on itself and he looks up anxiously, half expecting to see Billy again, coming to lean against the counter, give uncomfortable eye contact and talk around a mouthful of Steve’s bakes with that deep voice of his.

On Thursday night Steve cannot sleep, so he pulls out the baking book, and spends a good hour or so staring at recipes and having a mind block. Eventually he gives up and goes to not-sleep in his bed, staring at the ceiling. He looks tired the next day, and Robin notices, but neither of them mention it.

After work, him and Robin drive round to Hawkins High and pick up Dustin, Mike and Eleven (whom Steve really has to start calling Jane, as he’s been told repeatedly). They see Billy picking up Max, Lucas and Will, and on the way back to Steve’s they end up following Jonathan and Nancy.

Ah, yes. These two are also coming. Steve forgot about that.

In the back of the car, Dustin and Mike are passionately discussing which movie they’re all going to watch tonight, all options being fantasy and sci-fi nerd stuff Steve has never heard about. Except, hang on…

“Back to the Future?” Steve interrupts. “That’s out on VHS already?”

“Uh, yeah,” Dustin blinks at him, “it’s been a whole year, Steve.”
A whole year since Robin and him spent hours strapped to chairs in that basement, being interrogated, beaten and drugged, Steve hearing himself laughing drunkenly whilst wondering feverishly what the hell he would do, could do, should their captors suddenly decide to hurt Robin. A whole year since they’d stumbled into that movie theatre, high as skunks, and ended up watching Back to the Future.

“We’ve been doing promo all week,” Robin points out. “Steve, Lucas literally came by the other day to rent it. Pretty sure he even said it was his suggestion for movie night.”

A whole year since he and Robin had been sitting in an empty restroom, recovering, he half confessing to Robin and her confiding in him that she likes girls.

“Oh.”

A whole year. A whole year since that spider monster tried to kill them all, a whole year since Billy nearly got ripped apart –

“Handbrake, dude, come on!” Steve hurriedly pulls the handbrake after parking the car, effectively halting its backwards roll down the drive. “What’s with you, today?” Henderson sounds rightfully concerned.

“Just tired,” Steve avoids looking at Robin, whose eyes he can feel on his face.

Everyone exits the vehicle and begins walking towards Steve’s house, like they all own it, which is actually something Steve finds he quite likes. That house is just too fucking big to be this fucking empty. It’s just too fucking tidy. It needs people in it, needs kids. Needs the smell of baking.

On the way in, Nance gives him a little smile, her hand on Jonathan’s arm. Steve opens his arm and gestures for them to go in first. Billy follows, slow, kind of hesitant. Steve watches him for a moment as the other boy hangs around, taking stilted steps forwards.

He’s asking for permission, Steve realises. Like, for once. Billy is giving him the chance to turn him away.

“Take your time, dude,” Steve says, a little snappy, but still a clear invitation.

Billy’s eyes snap up to his, scowling, and he walks in.

Inside the house, Henderson is walking around with his nose up in the air, inhaling deeply.

“What are we having, Steve? What did you make? I can’t smell anything.”

“That’s because I haven’t cooked yet, Dustin,” Steve replies. “So why don’t you gremlins order some pizza, choose a movie, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Cookies,” Dustin says instantly, “chocolate chip. Bit of peanut butter. Don’t overcook them. I’m serious, Harrington. Do not overcook the cookies.”

“The Gremlins!” yells Mike, “that would have been a good choice! Why didn’t I think of that?”

“I vote Back to the Future,” Will Byers says in that quiet voice of his.

“Thank you,” Lucas says emphatically. The kids all head out to the living room and continue debating and voting on the movie to pick, whilst Jonathan goes over to the phone with Nancy and the two of them order some pizzas for everyone.

Steve heads to the kitchen and begins gathering the ingredients for cookies, not overcooked, and is only half surprised when Billy follows him into the kitchen.

“I brought beers,” Billy says to Steve’s kitchen worktop, “and coke for the kids.”

How damn sensible.

“Fridge’s there.”

Steve hears the fridge open and close, then nothing.

He busies himself with measuring out the flour and butter. Down the corridor, the doorbell rings, and a thunder of footsteps follow.

“Steve,” Nancy bursts into the room, pausing briefly when she sees Billy there. “You got any cash? We’re short by fifteen bucks.”

Steve begins digging into his pockets when Billy thrusts a twenty-dollar bill at Nancy.

“Here. They can keep the change.”

“Thanks, uh… Billy,” Nancy says, not bothering to hide her bewilderment.

And yeah, exactly. Thanks, Billy. This is damn bewildering, Billy.

Hargrove grunts in response.

Another thunder of footsteps and the rumble of voices arguing over pizza boxes pass by, and Steve hears Billy leave the room.

Finally, a bit of peace.

Jonathan runs in at some point to grab the drinks, performatively asking Steve if he wants any help, which no, thank you, he’s ok. And then, Steve’s alone again.
Steve breaks the eggs into a bowl and chops some dark chocolate, begins to form the cookie balls. The familiar sensation of mindfulness comes to him, as always when he’s baking, a reprieve from the memories and self-doubt. He wonders what his mom’s reaction will be when she returns to see her son baking. If she ever comes home.

He smells the pizza before he hears Billy approach.

“What’s this?” Steve eyes the plateful of pizza that has appeared next to him on the counter.

“Saved you some,” Billy says to his own shoes, far too casually, leaning back against the counter with his plateful of pizza. “That Dustin kid is feral.”

Well, isn’t he Mr Thoughtful.

A noise must escape Steve, because suddenly Billy is defensive:

“What?”

“Nothing,” Steve immediately diffuses, because no matter what anyone says, he is still a bit scared of Billy. “Dustin is feral. Did you pry these out of his clawing paws?”

Billy’s clearly a little caught off guard by the sudden camaraderie but he recovers quickly.

“Had to borrow your nail bat,” he jokes with a straight face.

Steve guffaws, hating himself for it.

“How do you know about the nail bat?” he asks, hoping to distract.

“Had a close encounter with it myself,” Billy replies, before changing topic rather abruptly: “cookies, then?”

“Yeah,” Steve washes his hands, places the baking tray in the oven. Walks over to the pizza plate and takes a slice. “Hey, it’s ok, man. Go back to the movie if you want. I’m going to stay here.”

“Why?”

“Don’t want to overcook them.”

“I can watch them.”

“It’s fine.” Billy just stays there. “Honestly, dude, just go, take a beer with you…”

“My mom used to bake,” Billy blurts out.

Steve’s eyebrows rise up high and he forgets not to look at Billy.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

What does Steve say to that?

“Cool. Uh… is your mom in California?”

“Don’t know.”

Ok.

“Ok.”

“She left a while back,” Billy adds defensively. “Could be in California, could be anywhere.”

They fall into an awkward, tense silence, Billy scowling at the floor and Steve at a total loss of what to say. He lets his gaze wander over Billy, from the tanned skin to the honey coloured hair and the blue eyes. Billy catches him staring.

“What?” he barks.

“Guess you must look like your mom,” Steve babbles. “I mean, no offence to your dad, but he’s not exactly a looker. Like, not what you’d picture from someone from California… you’re more like it. Guess your mom must be, too.”

What the hell are you evensaying, Steve thinks wildly. Billy will surely beat the living daylights out of him for this.

There’s a little in between moment where Billy stares back at Steve, unsmiling, and Steve stares right back, unblinking, then Billy’s face splits into a wide grin and he says, voice all raspy and teasing again:

“Are you calling me pretty, Harrington?”

Flirty. Flirting. Actively.

C’mere, pretty boy.

Steve, the dude is gay and he is in love with you.

And, holy shit. Billy must be bluffing. Has to be. This has to be some sort of fucked up game to him. Just another way to get under Steve’s skin and push him out of it. Steve will call him out on his bluff.

“Handsome, is the word. Uh, for men. And… no, dude. I just said you look like you’re from California,” Steve gives a pointed look down at Billy’s chest, visible thanks to his only half buttoned up shirt. “We tend to wear our shirts the whole way, over here.”

Billy keeps smiling at him, a little too discerningly for comfort.

“Ok, pretty boy,” he says eventually, “whatever you say.”

And shit, Steve totally hears it now. Billy’s voice is pitched low, raspy, teasing but with no bite in it, just soft caress. A bit like you talk to a girl you’re trying to ask out, and Robin really was right. It is flirting - and this is how Billy always talks to Steve, or nearly.

“Cookies!” Steve dips and makes a whole thing of checking on the cookies and pulling them out of the oven before transferring them to a serving plate.

Billy watches the whole process (or maybe he’s watching Steve, shit) then follows him into the living room.

The cookies are welcomed with huge enthusiasm, and Steve finds himself seated between Will and Robin, away from Billy. He tries to focus on the movie, which he finds he might actually enjoy now that he is no longer high on interrogation drugs.

“What did you two talk about, all on your own in the kitchen for an hour?” Robin whispers into his ear.

“Nothing,” Steve whispers back, eyes decidedly trained on Marty McFly’s mom. "Wasn't an hour."

“Saw he brought you some pizza,” Robin pushes, because of course she does, “that’s thoughtful.”

“He said his mom used to bake,” Steve caves in, “see? I knew you were wrong.”

“What, his mom bakes, therefore he can’t be gay?” Robin whispers even lower. Steve risks a little glance at Will, trying to gauge whether he can hear them.

“I remind him of his mom,” Steve whispers back, “therefore he can’t be into me. You were wrong.”

Robin chuckles.

“You’re grasping at straws, Harrington,” she points at the TV. “Marty McFly begs to differ. Mommy issues are a thing.”

“Ok, see, Rob, if you pay attention I think you’ll find it’s actually Marty’s mom who’s into him, not the other way around,” Steve argues back, no longer whispering.

“Mmmhh,” Steve’s mouth snaps shut at the sound, his entire body on high alert. In fact, the whole room kind of freezes, all eyes turning to the source of the ungodly moan they just heard.
Nancy.

“Oh my God, Steve!” Nancy blinks sleepily at him, a half-eaten cookie in her hand. “These are so good!” Nancy moans again. There are a few empties on the table in front of her. “Jonathan,” Nancy moans his name, now, “try one!”

Steve and Jonathan both know this is how Nancy sounds during sex. Everyone else can guess it. Byers is blushing. Steve is blushing. Robin’s mouth is hanging open, and she is blushing. The kids are staring wide-eyed and a little scared. Mike looks horrified. And Billy…

“Jesus, Wheeler, don’t cream your pants.”

Two seconds pass before the reactions begin coming in:

“Hey!” Jonathan and Mike both yell.

“Don’t talk to her like that, dick,” Max scolds.

Billy just sits there, knees wide, arms crossed, glaring at Nancy, jaw ticking.

Robin bursts out laughing. Startled, Steve turns to her, and so does everyone else.

“Sorry,” Robin snorts, “sorry,” she says again. Tears begin welling up in her eyes as she giggles uncontrollably. “You did sound like you were creaming your pants, Nancy!”

And just like that, the situation shifts. Dustin begins giggling too, and so does Lucas, which makes Max slap him on the arm, which makes Eleven laugh, so Mike laughs, and now Steve is trying not to laugh and Nancy is blushing and apologising and Jonathan is helping her up and saying it’s probably time for them to go to bed.

Steve walks them back to the front door, like a good host, and finds himself awkwardly standing in the threshold with Nancy as Jonathan tries to convince Mike, Will and Eleven to go with them.

“The movie’s not even finished!” Mike can be heard yelling from the living room. “It’s not our fault she’s drunk!”

Steve balances on the ball of his feet, not quite looking at Nance. She’s resting her shoulder against the wall, rubbing a hand over her face. Steve feels fondness creeping inside him – Nancy was always such a light weight when it came to alcohol.

“Hey, Steve,” and oh shit, she’s speaking to him. “I’m sorry, ok?”

“It’s ok, Nance, don’t worry about it. Nothing happened.” Steve knows he’s cooing. He just can’t help it, never could help it with Nance. All he’s ever wanted is to scoop her up and cherish her forever.

“No, I really am sorry. I think I had too much to drink.”

“You think?” Steve hears himself doing to Nancy the same no-bite teasing Billy did to him earlier.

“Yeah,” Nancy giggles. “It’s been a long week. Uh… but also,” Nancy leans forward a little. Steps up to him. Steve goes rigid.

Holy shit.

“I’m sorry about… sorry about it, Steve. Really sorry.”

Steve’s heart goes ba-bump. Is this it? Is this the moment he’s been craving for for two, or is it three years? Is this the moment?

Nancy is watching him, looking up at him with those doe eyes of hers, blue and pure, full of promises of children, white picket fence, a house that is never empty, and holidays spent traveling around in an RV. A dog, even, maybe.

Steve feels himself leaning in too, dipping headfirst into that dream.

A palm slams against the wall right next to Steve’s head.

Nancy and him both jump back.

Steve smells Billy before the guy even speaks.

“Need help getting to your car, Wheeler?”

He’s close. Way too close. Palm flat against the wall right by Steve’s head. Standing behind him, way too close, so close Steve can feel the warmth of Billy’s body along his back, through their shirts, feel the hot puff of his breath against his ear. Smell the cologne along Billy’s throat.

“Alright, they’re coming,” Jonathan reappears and slips his arm under Nancy’s, guiding her out.

Shit, Jonathan. Nancy’s boyfriend. Steve blinks himself back to reality. There was never a moment, just a girl who’s had too much to drink and a boy who’s letting his dreams get the better of his sense again. She’s probably saying sorry for hurting his feelings, not sorry for breaking up. Steve’s face must be looking weird because Jonathan throws him a curious look, but perhaps Steve is dreaming that, too. Because if Jonathan had seen through him, he’d have punched Steve again.

Mike, Will and Eleven walk past in a blur of muffled complaints, and soon the moment is entirely gone, like it never existed, which it didn’t, not really. Steve watches the car go, and when he turns Billy is still there, too close, watching him.

“Oh hey,” Steve blurts out. “Let’s… let’s go back to the movie.”

His shoulder brushes Billy’s chest when he walks past – Steve pretends not to notice.

“Here he is,” Dustin calls loudly when they return to the living room, “the baking God.”

“Oh my God, Steve,” Lucas whines in a high pitch voice, receiving another smack from Max.

Steve sits himself down and ribs his hands over his jeans, realising belatedly that they’re all watching him, waiting for a reaction.

“I mean,” he forces a laugh, “that’s what they all say.”

“EW!!”

“DUDE!”

“TOO FAR!”

“GROSS!”

“I’m a giver,” Steve fake argues back, shrugging, “what do you want me to say?”

“GROOOSS!!”

Steve risks a glance up at Billy, who still seems a bit tense, but gives a tight little half smile when he sees Steve looking at him. Steve returns it then looks away, his eyes now falling on Robin, who raises both eyebrows at him. Steve gives an eyeroll.

No comment, Buckley.

After the movie finally finishes (even sober, it’s trippy stuff), Billy offers a ride to Dustin, Lucas and Robin, on the condition that Max sits at the front and not next to Lucas, despite the latter’s timid suggestion.

Steve is grateful, though he certainly would not say it in as many words.

“Try not to drive like a maniac,” he tells Billy. The kids and Robin have gone to take all the dishes to the kitchen and Billy is kneeling on the floor, cleaning again. “You don’t need to do that, man, just leave it.”

“That rug looks expensive,” Billy says, “won’t your old man get mad if it gets dirty?”

“Yeah, I mean, he might, but he’ll live. Doesn’t look like they’re going to be back anytime soon, anyway.”

A beat.

“Where are they? Your folk, I mean.”

Billy did tell Steve about his mom, so he guesses this is fair enough.

“Dad’s in Chicago,” Steve shrugs, “I think. Mom’s… think she’s visiting her mom? Not sure. They’ve probably forgotten what the rug looks like, anyway.”

Billy nods, standing back up and watching Steve. It suddenly occurs to Steve that the two of them actually have a lot more in common than you might think, even though they’re also incredibly different.

“But I mean, come on, man,” Steve tries to lighten up the mood, “you’ve done enough cleaning in this house.”

And yes, he is referring to the puke. Steve distinctively remembers Billy using a knife to scrape out the sick that had seeped in-between the floorboards.

Billy scoffs, his shoulders shaking. Pinches the bridge of his nose between his index and thumb.

“What?”

“‘Call an ambulance, man,’” Billy quotes in a mock panicked voice.

“Hey.”

“‘Shit, Billy, I got puke in my hair!’”

“Hey,” Steve hears himself laughing. He points a finger at Billy. “Watch yourself, Hargrove.”

“‘I don’t want to die, man’,” Billy continues, his face a mask of Greek tragedy. “’Tommy H poisoned me!’”This fucking guy.

“Alright, alright, you made your point,” Steve bites his lip. “Hilarious. Ok, fine. I remember you doing an awful lot of cleaning, and I remember you washing the puke out of my hair, or whatever. Thanks, I guess.”

Billy’s laughter dies down, decanting down to a soft smile. When he replies, his voice is charged, a little broken, a lot gentle, a pledge barely disguised.

“Anytime.”

And this time, there is a moment. This is the moment. The air changes and shifts all around them. An understanding passes. All of a sudden, Steve knows, without an ounce of doubt, that Robin is right.

Billy is in love with him.

Billy is in love with him and this is Billy letting him know, and now Billy knows that Steve knows.

It sits right there in-between them, fragile and huge, silent and cacophonous all at once.

Steve wants to speak, but there is nothing to say. They both know that Billy is in love with him. They both know that nothing can come of it, not unless Steve loves Billy back.

And Steve is straight.

It’s always been that way. Billy fell for Steve, and Billy tried to beat that attraction out of himself; out of Steve, even. Now, Billy’s done fighting himself. He’s done fighting Steve.

But nothing can come of it, because Steve is straight.

Everything has changed, nothing has.

Billy’s eyes are soft and blue, looking at Steve. His face is relaxed, open and secretive all at once. Now you know, those eyes are saying.

Anytime, Billy said. Meaning Billy is fine with loving Steve from afar. He’s fine with looking after Steve without getting anything in return, or, at least, anything other than reluctant friendship. Damn, they do have a lot more in common than Steve had thought.

“Billy?” Max returns, her eyes darting between the two of them. And just like that, the moment is broken. “You ready?”

“Yeah,” Billy clears his throat, walking past Steve, eye contact broken. “‘Night, Steve.”

“Yeah, see you, dude.” Dude.

Steve stands there well after they’ve all gone, well after the sound of the car engine has faded into the night.

He stands there, still in the remnants of that moment.

Perhaps even holding on to the remnants of the moment.

Scared to let it fade away... because, really: what can possibly come after this?

Chapter Text

After that, Steve notices for real. The way Billy talks to him, the way he looks at him. Nothing continues to come of it since Steve is still straight, and Billy doesn’t seem to be expecting anything else. Steve does try to be a little more careful, though: tries not to ogle Nancy in Billy’s presence, for example, even if just for Nancy’s wellbeing (Billy’s glares really are quite powerful). Mostly, though, Steve tries to just go on. Nothing is changing – Billy’s feelings are his alone. They both know Steve can have nothing to do with them.

In the blink of an eye it is the height of summer. Nancy and Jonathan both begin to work for a local paper, Steve and Robin continue to work at Family Video. Billy, Steve learns, has begun working at the local garage as a mechanic. One movie night, Steve overhears the tail end of an argument between Max and Billy. He hangs back, not quite eavesdropping but also very much so.

“…if you got in that’s your chance, Billy, why are you being so stupid?”

“I said I’m not going, fucking drop it already. I got my job and all – ”

“What, so you just want to work long hours for low pay? Really? We’ll be fine, you just go!”

“I’m not leaving you, Max, and I’m not leaving Susan and I’m not leaving – ”

The floor creaks under Steve’s weight and he has no choice but to come out, pretending not to have heard anything. It’s not his place.

At the weekend they have day trips – they go to the pool, they go to the skate park, they even go wild swimming at a local creek. Friendships and relationships blossom, Lucas and Max now well into the ‘grown-up dating’ territory, though Billy watches them like a hawk. Dustin spends close to an hour a day conversing with his long distance girlfriend Suzie, whilst Mike and Eleven spend far too much time in and on each other’s faces.

Will looks perhaps a little sadder than usual, until Robin takes pity on him and approaches him. The two of them bond over their shared love of art, and something else that they whisper about away from ears and eyes. Again, Steve doesn’t pry. Not his place. He has enough on his own mind as it is.

Steve happily ferries the kids around, and so does Billy, which means that the two of them often find themselves waiting around watching the kids.

Like today, as they both sit on hot grass, watching the kids jumping in and out of the cool creek water on a bright and hot Sunday. They both watch as Lucas is pushed in, pulling Dustin along with him, Mike tripping on his feet trying to help, and now the three of them are yelling and spluttering whilst the girls laugh. A little distance away, Robin and Will are sitting in the shade, having one of their little chats, completely absorbed.

“It’s a good job we’re both lifeguards, huh?” Steve deadpans.

Billy scoffs.

“HEY!” Dustin’s voice ricochés off the rocks surrounding their swimming spot. “HARRINGTON! YOU COMING IN?”

Steve waves Dustin off.

“OH NO, WHAT’S THAT?” Dustin exclaims. “IS IT… IS IT…!”

Folding his arms then flapping them at his sides, Dustin begins imitating the clucks of a chicken.

“Son of a bitch,” Steve swears. “Ok. FINE, HENDERSON! YOU BETTER START SWIMMING NOW!”

Steve gets up and puts his sunglasses down, kicks off his sneakers and takes his t-shirt off. Cackling maniacally, Dustin continues to taunt him. Mike Wheeler, the gangly shit, joins in.

“YOU NEED TO TAME THAT JUNGLE, CHICKEN!” Dustin yells at the sight of Steve’s chest hair. “HAIRY CHICKEN!”

“Chicks dig it!” Steve yells back, making his way over to the edge of the water. He sees Max and Eleven exchange a little giggle and he sends them a finger salute as Dustin, Mike and Lucas pretend to retch.

Steve picks up his pace, now full on sprinting towards the water. The boys all start splashing about in a frenzy, trying belatedly to escape.

Another body enters the water at the exact same time Steve does.

Billy.

They both go under and swim a little distance, Steve grabbing at the kids’ legs and pulling them under for a second before resurfacing. Steve laughs at the kids’ over the top screaming, making eye contact with Billy, who has resurfaced a few feet away. Water drips down his face, catching on his eyelashes, curly hair flattened and darkened from the swim. Smile wide and eyes bluer than ever.

“See that rock with the tree, over there, Harrington?” Billy calls out to him.

“Yeah?”

“Bet I can reach it before you do.”

This dude.

“I’m sure you can, buddy.” Patronising will do it.

“Oh no,” Dustin exclaims dramatically, and the others laugh before he’s even finished his joke. “What is that? Is it another…?” The obnoxious clucking returns full swing.

Steve rolls his eyes.

“Fine. Lucas, you do the countdown!”

“Battle of the lifeguards!” Dustin yells. “Start from the shore!”

“On your marks,” Lucas begins.

Steve and Billy get a little closer, making sure to be at the same starting distance. Steve rolls his shoulders, warming up. Out the corner of his eye, he can see Billy grinning. All cocky and shit.

“Get set…”

Steve takes a sharp breath.

“GO!”

Water immediately drowns the cheers and yells of their little crowd, Steve powering on as fast and as precise as his limbs will let him. He hasn’t swum in a long time, and he certainly doesn’t body build like Billy, but Steve is all lean muscle and raw tenacity. He doesn’t check to see where Billy is, just keeps swimming, and each time an ear comes up he hears muffled cheering from way behind. To his surprise and his joy, he hears Max cheering for Billy.

Soon, though, they are too far to hear anything but the water lapping at their bodies and the occasional sharp intake or release of breath. Billy must be close – Steve can hear him, breaths controlled and efficient. The euphoria of just going, of powering on and exerting himself and chasing the high of victory is something to get drunk on. Somehow it’s even better with Billy there at his side.
Steve’s hand slaps onto the warm rock and he scrambles on, collapsing on solid ground and catching his breath. A glance sideways confirms Billy is also there.

“Who came first?” Steve pushes out.

“Don’t know.”

They both laugh, breathless, high on endorphins, limbs aching and chests heaving.

A look back at the beach – the kids look tiny from here.

“It’s pretty far, actually,” Steve notes. “God, I’m exhausted.”

“Round 2 in 5, King Steve,” Billy declares, sitting with his elbows on his knees. “Gotta swim back yet.”

“Let’s make it 15,” Steve lays down. “Let me catch my breath.”

Billy chuckles. Steve risks a little peek over to the other boy.

Damn, does Billy work out. His shoulders and arms are just muscle under golden skin, his chest hard. A dusting of hairs, way less than what Steve has, between his pecs and trailing down to disappear under his swimming shorts. His body is heaving with the breath he is also recovering, pearls of water glistening all over him, dripping down his hair.

Is it ok for them to be alone like this?

Steve has been doing a lot of pondering, these past few weeks.

What it means to live with Billy’s feelings for him. What it means for Billy, that Steve knows. Steve would like to say that it hasn’t changed a thing, but it has. Everyone, by now, has commented at least once on how much nicer Steve is being to Billy. And he is being kinder, he supposes. Had he known sooner about Billy’s feelings, would he have been kinder sooner?

Why, exactly, is he being nicer to Billy? Out of pity? Out of shared misery, because Steve knows exactly what it’s like to love someone who will never love you back?

Nothing has changed on the outside, but, internally, Steve has had a lot of time to think more deeply about it all, too.

Homosexuality.

He’s paid more attention to the stories, more attention to the slurs, more attention to the songs that can be heard two ways. Like Patti Smith’s Gloria. Man, what a song. That song is one big build up to a glorious climax – that song is like an ode to sex. Gay sex. Steve had thought it was about a girl called Gloria, but it’s so much more than that, if you know how to listen. The final part, where Patti spells out G-L-O-R-I-A in that broken, barely articulate way, now feels almost too daring for the radio. Steve has always liked music, but when he listened to Gloria, properly listened, he felt something close to enlightenment in his chest.

It's real, is gay love. It is true. People feel it and live it and sing about it, just like others sing about straight love, and perhaps the truth of it is that it’s all just love. No lesser, no greater – love.

It’s just that the rest of the world hasn’t caught on yet.

There’s also that whole thing, though, that scary thing, that disease that the gays seem to be catching, and dying from. Steve wonders what it must be like for Billy to live with that weighing on his existence.

And it’s not just that – it’s the other implications.

Steve’s dream is to have a family: wife, lots of kids, house, white picket fence, dog, an RV for going on trips. Billy can’t have that. He can’t have kids, he will probably never be able to live freely with the person of his choice. Just the thought of confessing is horrific – because what if you misjudged? What if the other person rejects you? What if they’re loud about it? Should he find the right person, Billy might never be able to love them in broad daylight, never be able to introduce them as his. He’ll never be able to marry them. Always will have to pretend. Billy will only ever get to taste a fraction of what someone like Steve might get.

It's an incredibly sad thought and maybe it’s part of why Steve is so much kinder to Billy.

Steve’s eyes burn a little so he blinks the tears before they can fully form. Gulps, covers his face with his arm. Prays Billy doesn’t notice. Somehow, Steve just knows Billy would not take kindly to pity.

There’s also how people closest to you would react to finding out: would you lose friends? Would you lose your parents? Steve’s parents certainly would never want to hear from Steve again if he announced something like this. Not that he would particularly miss them, but losing them would mean losing their financial support, for example. It would also break his mother’s heart, like really break it, and maybe it would precipitate the looming divorce between his parents.

Billy’s dad certainly would never approve – in fact, Billy’s dad would probably murder Billy. Not to mention the other dude.

Steve takes quiet deep breaths.

It’s more than the risk to yourself, too. It’s more than being outed. What if the person you loved was the one to get outed? What if they weren’t as good at pretending as you were? What if they were the one to get beaten to death, like that story from a couple years ago; the one Steve raised an eyebrow at and then forgot instantly? What if you fell in love, truly in love, saw the future in someone else’s eyes, and then they were taken away in the most brutal way… what, then? The police wouldn’t help, revenge wouldn’t help, so you’d just to have to carry on, your heart ripped out of your chest, unable to wear your grief, forever mourning someone you were never truly allowed to have. The world would carry on, the world would condone, and you would still be there, alone, a hole in your chest.
Steve had never thought about it quite so in depth. Until now. Because now, Steve knows Robin. He knows Billy. He knows – he knows –

What’s the alternative? Live in secrecy? Trap yourself in a life that isn’t yours, a life that will never satisfy you? A life that means you have to deceive those closest to you, all the time, betray them in the most intimate way? Or a different flavour of secrecy: going from secret hook up to secret hook up, with the threat of that disease hanging over your head, right there next to the threat of a beating? How miserable is that? Steve could never handle it. He could not do this. Steve’s a family man, he needs stability and he needs safety and he needs to keep his loved ones close to him. This might never be possible, for Billy. Maybe that was also why Billy was so goddamn raging, back then. Why he was so aggressive in everything: how he spoke to boys, how he pursued girls. Billy knew what Steve knows now, and he had tried to fight against it. Steve can hardly blame him for that, not when the threats against homosexuals are so varied and deadly. Not when the threats sometimes come from inside their own homes.

How do they even cope?

Then again… on days like today, when they’re surrounded by friends, and they’re away from people, and it’s just the two of them catching their breath under the summer sun… that’s the stuff that keeps you going. That’s the stuff that is worth everything else.

And, maybe it is possible. A found family, an RV. A dog. Living together with the person of your choice, maybe a bit out of town, away from prying eyes. And there are things happening, there are talks of unions, and activism, and research… Maybe there is hope. Maybe Billy’s family life won’t look like what Steve has always envisioned, but maybe that’s also not the worst thing. Maybe Billy will be happy regardless. Maybe there are different blueprints for happy.

If anyone can defy expectations and stare down an impossible foe, it’s Billy.

Steve’s chest heaves visibly.

“You ok?”

Shit.

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve gulps, then clears his throat. Keeps his arm firmly clamped over his eyes. “The sun’s getting to me, man.”

Billy, of course, is not duped.

“Hey, what’s up, come on,” here he goes with the raspy voice again, a hand now on Steve’s arm, gently trying to pull it away from his face. It’s ‘c’mere, pretty boy’ all over again.

Steve moves away, sitting himself up and clearing his throat some more, looking over the water to where the kids must be wondering what they’re doing that’s taking so long.

“We better head back,” Steve says. “The kids will be getting hungry.”

And fuck, how domestic is that?

When Billy says nothing, Steve looks over to him and sees Billy’s eyes dancing all over his face, pausing briefly on the spot near his eyebrow, the spot where, Steve realises, he still sports a little scar from that time Billy beat him up in the Byers’ living room.

This is what he does, Steve thinks. He always looks for that scar, like he can’t help himself, and then he…

Billy blinks and looks away, his face suddenly a lot sadder. Tired.

Billy deserves kindness. That’s why Steve is kinder. Because there is a lot more to Billy than meets the eye, and Billy deserves kindness. It's not pity. Whatever Steve's feeling for Billy these days, it's not pity.

“You think you can manage to swim back, Hargrove?” Steve teases, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t need to climb onto my back?”

Billy grins, blue eyes glinting on his handsome face.

“You wish.”

Steve laughs, a little strangled. He feels a blush rising up to his cheeks and sees Billy notice the blush, blue eyes widening ever so slightly.

Without further ado, Steve jumps in, letting water wash away the embarassment.

“You holding on ok?” Robin asks him one morning in September.

“Yeah, fine, why?”

“I don’t know, you seem… a little quiet.”

The shop’s quiet, today.

“Do I?”

“Yeah… I just wondered if maybe you were feeling a bit sad. You know, with Nancy having gone to Chicago with Jonathan…”

“What? Oh.”

Actually, Steve has found himself surprisingly ok with that. When Nancy had announced their upcoming departure, during a star gazing evening in Steve’s backyard sometime in August, his initial gut reaction had been panic and despair. He’d done his best, of course, to portray happy and proud to Nance and Jonathan, and then he’d tried to remain outside on his own with this new wound when everyone else had retreated to the house on account of the sky being too cloudy, but Robin and Billy had stayed behind, with two beers, which turned into four, and the three of them had chatted and joked about God knows what until Steve kind of forgot what had upset him in the first place.

“No, I’m fine, actually. This was the right move for her. For them.”

Robin blinks at him.

“Yes. It was the right move, you’re totally right.”

Steve finishes wiping the counter then half considers cleaning the glass doors again.

“So, did you hear about Thanksgiving?”

“It’s September, Rob.”

“I know,” Robin sighs, “Mrs Byers has already been in touch. She wants to organise something for ‘the whole party’.”

“The whole party? What does that mean?”

“Like, Will and his friends, but also you and me, and Nancy, and Billy…”

“There’s no way Mrs Wheeler would let Nance go anywhere other than home for Thanksgiving,” Steve scoffs. “Not to mention Dustin, his mom is, like, obsessed with him. In a Marty McFly kind of way, even.”

“Yeah, indeed, so Mrs Byers is doing another Thanksgiving, like, after the real one.” She clicks her tongue. “Mrs Wheeler said she’d do a Christmas thing for the whole party, so it’s all good. You need to RSVP, ASAP. She also said everyone is to bring something, and she was hoping you’d bring a dessert.”

“Yeah, that’s fine, of course. How come you’re in on the Byers Thanksgiving plans?”

“What? Will and I hang out.”

“Yeah, what is up with that?”

“Never you mind,” Robin replies enigmatically, like the annoying shit that she can be.

September falls into October, during which Steve finds himself wandering the streets on Halloween night with Billy, trailing after the kids. The so-called kids, who are all too old for babysitters, and probably too old for trick or treating, but no one mentions it, especially not the kids. Steve notices then for the first time that Billy does not in fact own a winter coat, so the next time they meet he brings him one of his, which Billy reluctantly accepts but then wears every single day.

On the day of the Thanksgiving gathering, Billy and Max are very late.

They eventually turn up as everyone else is sitting down to eat, bursting into the room looking dishevelled and a little manic. Max’s mother, Susan, is also there.

“Susan! Max,” Mrs Byers cries, from the head of the table. “Billy.” She frowns. “Are you guys ok?”

“We’re fine,” Max’s voice sounds shaky, bordering on hysterics. “We are so, so fine. Is it ok if my mom joins us?”

“O-of course,” Mrs Byers jumps to her feet and somehow manages to create another place at the already crowded table. “Here, Susan, you have the chair, I’ll take the bedside table slash stool.”

Steve’s eyes find Billy, who gives him a rather big smile then sits himself down where Mrs Byers tells him to. Close to Steve. There’s a really weird energy about Billy, something buzzing and feverish.

“Shit, your knuckles, man,” Steve notices. “Your face!”

“It’s all good,” Billy whispers back, smiling around the little shiny red cut on his lip. “I finally did it.”

“Finally did what?”

“Neil is gone,” Max tells Steve from across the table, and everyone falls silent, not bothering to pretend they haven’t heard. “He left. Mom kicked him out.”

Silence. Everyone turns to look at Max’s mom.

“Well, I tried,” Susan says, “but he wouldn’t go without a fuss, until…” she nods towards Billy, his bruised knuckles visible for all to see.

“Billy kicked his ass,” Max clarifies, loud, proud, excited. Her cheeks are rosy and her eyes are shining. “Billy totally whopped his ass, it was amazing! And then he literally picked him up and threw him out,” she giggles, and Susan does too, and then Billy chuckles as well, and so the table erupts in cheers and congratulations.

“Cheers to that!” Mrs Byers stands up and raises her glass. “To… family and new beginnings?”

“To family and new beginnings!”

Drops of wine, beer and coke rain all over the table as people cheer. Billy’s smiling so wide his cheeks are all bunched up. He has an arm around the back of Steve’s chair. He looks about ten years younger.

“Mom said Billy could stay,” Steve can hear Max telling Lucas and Dustin, “she said she doesn’t want him to go, and he’s welcome to stay as long as he wants and live with us.”

“That’s amazing, man,” Steve tells Billy.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Billy grins wide, unguarded.

There’s something really weird about seeing Billy so happy. Steve cannot look away, locked in Billy’s blue eyes, his smiling face, so handsome in its joy. Billy’s looking at him too, into his eyes.

And then, they flick.

Down.

Billy glances at Steve’s lips, back to his eyes. That just happened.

They both know Billy is in love with Steve. Steve’s only just now realised that this also means Billy probably wants to kiss him.

Steve has never thought about kissing Billy, or any boy, for that matter, but the thought cannot be repressed now, not when Billy’s so close and so happy and, and holy shit, Billy just looked at Steve’s lips again.

Then the moment breaks, dizzyingly sudden. Billy breaks eye contact, removes his arm, and the noises and voices all around them return full blast.

“I mean God, Billy!” Dustin calls out. “First you defied the mind flayer, then you kick your old man’s ass, what’s next? Goliath??”

Steve doesn’t hear Billy’s response, he just focuses on finding his bearings. Turns a little in his seat so it’s no longer so easy to look at Billy. Leans back so it’s not so easy for Billy to put his arm on Steve’s chair. Looks away from Billy, at everyone’s smiling faces, wondering belatedly whether anyone else has noticed the monumental epiphany Steve has just had.

Billy wants to kiss him. If Steve was up for it, Billy would kiss Steve. Maybe they’d be kissing right now. Steve looks around, wide eyed. Would everyone here be ok with that?

Over there at the other end of the table, Robin is intently looking at him. Steve stands up and starts serving potatoes, keeping himself busy. He doesn’t look at Billy when he serves him.

“Good job, son,” Hopper passes behind Steve to clap Billy on the back and hand him another beer. “If that lowlife gives you guys any more trouble, you tell me, alright?”

“Thank you, Chief.”

“Call me Jim.”

All night, it’s the Billy show. Everyone keeps wanting to talk to him, to congratulate him, everyone fusses over his knuckles and lip. Mrs Byers gets her camera out and takes a group picture with everyone, then one of just the kids, then one of the older kids, then one of just Susan, Max and Billy. Like a family.

They play some games, and when Billy wins Max actually jumps up to wrap her arms around his neck and hug him, briefly, before dropping her arms and hiding behind her hair, but it’s a hug none the less and Billy looks like he’s about to cry, in a good way. So does Max. Steve’s heart aches with how much he wants for them, for Billy, to keep being happy.

Desserts arrive and Billy declares that it’s the best damn pecan pie he’s ever had, and this time, Steve believes him.

The staggering dizziness at the revelation that Steve had earlier in the night fades a little, overtaken by the delirious glory of the moment. Robin wins at trivia, then Steve’s paired up with Billy for charades and it’s like Billy can freaking read Steve’s mind, guessing at the speed of light before Steve even needs to do much. Dustin accidentally calls Steve ‘dad’ which has everyone in stitches, then later they all start another game of trivia, kids versus adults, and the kids are losing and so Steve decides to play both teams.

“Don’t worry, kiddos,” Steve bellows, winking at Dustin, “Daddy’s here.”

The subsequent roar of laughter and protests is so loud Steve’s ears ring.

At the end of the night, Hopper drives Susan, Max and Billy home, and replaces their locks for them. Then he returns and between him and Steve they make sure everyone else gets home safe. Joyce, because Steve can call Mrs Byers that, now, gives him a huge amount of leftovers along with a big hug, and then Robin slips on the way to Steve’s car whilst doing her best impersonation of the scientist dude from Back to the Future and Steve near pisses himself laughing.

And the best part is: Steve hasn’t looked once at Nancy.

Chapter Text

The very next day the party assembles again, this time without the adults, to enjoy the leftovers at Steve’s house.

Billy and Max are still very much on a high, their bond obvious and heartwarming, most of all to themselves: it’s like those two have spent years wanting a bond they kept denying themselves, and now they’ve finally been allowed it.

Perhaps it’s the season, but Steve just cannot seem to stop thinking about how the kids are in high school, now, so really they aren’t kids anymore and soon they won’t even be needing rides and then they’ll all be equals and then the kids might leave and there is an underlying current of oh shit then what cursing through Steve at the thought, but not now, he can’t let himself panic now, right now it’s Thanksgiving 2.0, as Dustin says, and everyone is coming to his house and they’re all going to have fun.

Dustin, Mike and Will want to invite people from their D&D club (nerds), which is a reluctant yes, and Lucas wants to invite people from the basketball team, which is a categorical no. His sister Erika is somehow now old enough to attend the party, along with a gaggle of fans. Robin then argues passionately that if the kids can bring people, then so should she, so now some girl from band and her boyfriend are coming too.

Within ten minutes of the girl’s arrival, it becomes painfully obvious to Steve that Robin is hopelessly in love with this Vickie.

Hopelessly – because Vickie is hanging onto her boyfriend’s arm like he hung the moon and stars. It’s a quiet, micro tragedy, playing behind Robin’s eyes as she forces a smile at whatever bullshit the boyfriend is talking, and Steve really aches for her.

His eyes find Billy’s, across the room. They exchange a look, and smile. Billy’s eyes drift briefly over to Robin and Vickie, then back to Steve, soft and sorry. Steve shrugs. What can they do? Steve wonders distantly if Billy has ever fallen in love with a straight dude, then realises equally as distantly that yes, he has, because that straight dude is Steve.

He mingles, finding a bit of the shadow of the old Steve but a lot more controlled, a lot kinder. There’s no one to impress here, no one to dominate, nothing to prove. He’s hosting a party for his friends and their friends, all nice people. Different, but nice.

The party’s pretty good. The food is great, thanks to Joyce, and people have brought in drinks of varying alcoholic content. Music is playing on Steve’s brand new boombox. People are having fun.
The D&D crew are definitely rather intense, and certainly not the type of crowd Steve would have ever hung out with in high school, but that’s the beauty of it: high school is over. None of that matters anymore.
He recognises Eddie Munson, still widely known Eddie the Freak, still in high school. Steve’s clearest memories of Eddie in school are the time Tommy H beat him up for being a freak, and the time Eddie squared up to a teacher who called him an idiot. Eddie’s got a right little circle of people, not just the D&D guys, sitting and standing around him and listening to him speak. Clearly, the guy is charismatic. Henderson, in particular, is watching Eddie with something akin to giddy reverence, which comes as a little bit of a shock to Steve who had never thought that look could be directed at anyone other than himself. Frowning, he feels himself walking over, intending on re-establishing world order, when his eyes fall onto Robin.
She’s standing in the corner of the room, clutching a cup and biting her lips, unblinking. Steve bifurcates in her direction.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Robin cuts straight to the point: “God, I’m so stupid, aren’t I?”

“Robin…”

“You’d think I’d have learned a thing or two by now, right? She’s not interested. They never are. Not when they got freaking Chad, or whatever his name is, being a total god at beer pong or whatever the hell straight boys think is so damn impressive – ”

“Robin…”

“No offence to you, but seriously, what do straight dudes have to offer, exactly? Chest hair? Smelly armpits? Zero emotional availability? I don’t see the appeal.”

“Ok,” Steve scoffs, amused.

“She’s way too good for him, way too good. Honestly, Steve, you should hear her play, she’s a genius, she’s got such a good ear! And she’s really funny, and her laugh is like, like, magic little silver bells or something, and ok maybe she hasn’t got the greatest taste in movies but nobody’s perf – ”

“Fast Times!” Steve exclaims suddenly, snapping his fingers. “Shit, Robin, I know this girl! She’s borrowed Fast Times like a dozen times, and each time she’s returned it, do you know where it was paused?” Robin just frowns at him. “It was paused at 53 minutes and 5 seconds. 53 minutes and 5 seconds, Robin, do you know what that means?” Robin rolls her eyes. “It means Vickie likes boobies!”

Robin cringes with her entire body.

“Ew! Don’t say boobies! Oh my God!”

“What? We both like boobies, and guess what, so does Vickie!”

“I don’t know,” Robin groans, rubbing a hand over her face. “I don’t know, I can’t take that risk. She’s with a guy, surely that means more than anything else…”

“Not according to yourself,” Steve argues in triumph, “I don’t know if you recall, but we were having this same discussion about Billy not so long ago and you were calling me a dingus because I found it hard to believe that the dude who has been sleeping with half of the Hawkins female population might actually be gay. Ring a bell?”

Robin does seem to have trouble finding a comeback to this and Steve watches, vindicated, as her mouth opens and closes a few times, eyebrows furrowed, eyes drifting over to where Vickie and her boyfriend are standing. Considering it.

But then Vickie’s boyfriend makes her laugh and now he’s picking her up and swinging her around and now they’re kissing, and Robin looks crestfallen again.

“Come on, Rob,” Steve nudges her, “let’s get a beer.”

The two of them are about halfway down their second bottle, Steve entering tipsy territory, when the telltale first few notes of Steve’s new favourite song begin chiming.

“Oh, I love this one!” Steve exclaims.

“You know Patti Smith? You listen to Patti Smith? You?” Robin looks more astonished than ever, which, to be honest, is kind of hurtful.

“I don’t know about Patti’s other stuff, but I know this Gloria song and it is G-L-O-R-I-U-S.”

“It’s G-L-O-R-I-O-U-S, dingus,” Robin laughs.

“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” Steve begins crooning along to Patti.

“Oh my God, please stop.”

Steve is not stopping. Steve is near two beers in and he’s feeling pretty good.

“People say Beware, but I don’t care!”

“What’s wrong with Steve?” Dustin appears at Robin’s side, eyeing Steve up and down. Steve downs what yet remains in his beer bottle, walks backwards until he feels the edge of the coffee table, the one his dad said was never to be tampered with, which he then stands on.

“I walk in a room, you know I look so proud”

Ok, so, maybe he’s a little drunker than he thought.

“Steve! Oh my God, come down!”

But the bottle is now a microphone and Steve sings along to Patti, sings it for Robin, because God knows she needs this song right now. A few others are watching, now, but Steve doesn’t care – Robin needs to hear this song. She needs to feel it.

“Oh, I’ll put my spell on her, here she comes”

Right when he’s about to launch into the final build up, the bit that goes ’and oh, she was so good’, someone, probably Henderson, the treacherous little shit, nearly kills the volume on the boombox and it’s pretty much all Steve’s voice now.

That’s fine.

Steve’s got voice, he’s got pitch, he’s got rhythm and he’s got lung power.

Nearly no one knows that Steve Harrington can sing, but tonight they’re going to find out.

“And her name is, and her name is! G-L-O-R-I…”

Steve senses the moment the crowd shifts from making fun of him to having fun with him, swaying to the song and raising their hands.

Now there’s voices joining his for the ‘Gloria’ part; that song is just this powerful. You cannot not join in. So Steve does the spelling bit, and the room does the ‘Gloria’ bit, and then he pretends to turn his bottle-mic to them and that makes Nancy laugh from across the room and Steve’s on cloud nine. He passionately sings the next verse as the volume returns, melting seamlessly into his version since Steve has listened to this song enough times to get it exactly right.

Robin’s laughing now, really laughing, pulling on his arm. Steve gives in, ending his impromptu concert under a round of applause. Dustin is watching him like he’s a god.

King Steve.

It kind of feels like he’s King Steve again. The good parts of it. The not-bullshit parts of it. Like King Steve can be a good dude, too. Life of the party and all that. Not a bullshit asshole who gets dumped in a bathroom.

“V-I-C-K-” Steve sings under his breath to Robin, in case she somehow still hadn’t got the message.

“OK, ok, I got it! Jesus, Harrington, I didn’t know you could sing!”

“It’s the world’s best kept secret,” Steve shrugs.

“Yeah, except you just revealed it to a room full of people,” Robin gestures towards the living room.

“These are cool people,” Steve replies, “right? It’s a safe space.”

“Not really,” Robin’s face falls a little. “Not really. Never totally.”

“Robin…”

“Don’t worry about it. Honestly, that was amazing. Very King Steve of you. Like, in a good way. Billy looked like he’d been hypnotised.” She cackles at Steve’s wide eyes. “Hey, um, not to panic you, but, speaking of Billy… I haven’t seen Max anywhere in a while, and Lucas is also… gone.”

Shit.

Steve hopes they haven’t gone upstairs. Surely, they wouldn’t dare?

He’s making his way over to the stairs to go check when someone corners him in the hallway.

A tall dude, with massive hair, and a red devil on his top. Ah, yes. Eddie.

“Hey, man.”

“Hey.”

“Eddie,” Eddie reminds him.

“Yeah, I remember. You do D&D with Henderson and the guys, right? I’m Steve.”

“Oh I know who you are,” Eddie scoffs. He’s got large brown eyes, which are trained onto Steve, and an easy smile which borders on the sardonic. There’s this energy about him – something both intimidating and magnetic. Fun, too. This guy looks a lot of fun. “Henderson never shuts up about you, man. Quite the show you put on out there.”

“Thanks.”

“Interesting song choice.”

Steve shrugs.

“It’s a great song.”

“Yeah. Not my usual kind of music,” Eddie points at a Black Sabbath badge on his jacket, “but I have been known to make exceptions.” Eddie’s looking maybe a little too intensely at Steve, almost like he’s trying to figure something out. “Pretty metal of you, singing it like that in front of a crowd. You got a great voice, too.”

“Thanks,” Steve says again, a bit lost. He’s getting the feeling that there is a second, charged layer to this conversation that he’s not tuning in. The amount of praise is flustering him, though, kind of shutting down his already limited ability to read between the lines.

“It’s annoying, really,” Eddie begins counting on his fingers, “you’re good looking, popular, the ladies love you, and now you can sing? Not fair, man,” Eddie mock-scowls at Steve with playful disapproval, and Steve finds himself scoffing, flattered. “I wish I could sing,” Eddie laughs, leaning against the wall, still blocking Steve’s path. “I just play the guitar. With my band.”

“You’re in a band? Oh, that’s cool, dude,” and Steve genuinely means it.

“Yeah, Corroded Coffin, uh… we play on a Tuesday, I don’t know what King Steve’s schedule is like but maybe, if you’re free, you should come see us – ”

“Hey.”

And suddenly, Steve is drowning.

Billy’s voice, right there by his ear. His breath on his cheek. His cologne up his nose, down his lungs. Something warm on and almost around the back of Steve’s neck, not really tight but definitely holding.

Billy’s hand.

Holy shit, Billy’s hand is on Steve’s neck. Palm flat against the back of it, phalanges and fingertips pressing into the sides.

Before Steve’s fully had the chance to process the above, or jerk away, or something, Billy’s hand flexes.

Makes a rubbing motion, a squeezing motion, a massaging motion, and his fingers curl and now he’s almost scratching the back of Steve’s neck, and a bit upwards into the hair, tightening, almost pulling at the roots a little –

Steve’s brain totally short circuits.

He cannot move, or think, let alone talk.

Blood rushes to his face and then very much south, right to his dick.

Alarms go off in the distance, warnings of ‘what is he doing’ and ‘Eddie is right there’ and ‘what does this look like’ and ‘shit I’m hard’. These thoughts do not stick, Steve cannot grab hold of them. Nothing exists but Billy, way too close, and his hand doing that thing and Steve’s urge to lean back into the touch, and the little breath or noise or something that wants to crawl its way out of Steve’s mouth, except he can’t, he can’tshit shit shit -

“You haven’t seen my sister, by any chance?” Billy asks Eddie, except his tone is saying something else. Steve’s brain is too fried to pick up what that might be. “Small, red haired?”

“Sorry, man,” Eddie’s eyes flick to Steve’s, back to the hand, then to Billy’s eyes. “Can’t say that I have. Well, I’ll let you look for her. Nice talking to you, Steve.”

“Y-yeah,” Steve gulps as Eddie passes him, clearly having seen the hand, clearly not commenting on it. “You too.”

Billy removes his hand, steps around to face Steve, like that wasn’t fucking weird. Like he didn’t just fucking pet him in front of some other guy.

“You haven’t seen Max, have you?” Billy asks him, again, so fucking normally. Are they not going to address this? “I can’t see Lucas anywhere either.”

“No,” Steve is hard in his trousers, he is hard as fuck in his trousers. He can still feel Billy’s hand on him, sparks erupting where Billy was scratching, scalp tingling where Billy was pulling, except Billy’s hand is gone and now Steve’s hard. Billy’s acting like nothing happened. Billy’s eyes are blue, so blue, under those long eyelashes and shapely eyebrows, his jawline is sharp and strong, peppered with honey stubble and his lips are full -

Billy’s talking to him.

“What?”

“I said, do you mind if I check upstairs?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, you mind, or yeah, I can check?”

That fucking grin, oh God, how can anyone look this fucking good.

“Yeah. No.” Steve shuts his eyes. “Yes, you can check upstairs. I was – I was on my way to check upstairs, and then I ran into…” he gestures haphazardly over his shoulder. “Yeah, let’s check upstairs.”

Steve opens his eyes again and for the briefest moment it looks as if Billy’s eyes are just flicking back up to his, maybe, maybe because they were looking down, down at –

“After you,” Billy gestures towards the stairs.

“Yeah. No!” Steve does a weird curtsey thing. “Guests first.”

Billy nods, begins his ascent up the staircase. Running that hand along the handrail, forearm muscles working. Steve tries to discreetly rearrange himself on the way up, following behind Billy, not looking at Billy’s hand moving up the rail, not looking at Billy in those jeans.

He feels too hot, a little clammy, a little out of his mind. He can still feel that hand on him. Kind of wants to get that hand back on him.

“Max?” Billy calls once he reaches the top of the stairs. “Lucas?”

Nothing.

“We’re gonna open the doors, alright, so if you’re in there…” Steve tries to make himself sound normal, sound unaffected, sound like he’s not just had Billy fucking Hargrove’s hand doing whatever the fuck that was to his neck and hair. He is beginning to soften again in his pants, which is good, it’s good, soon it will be like it never fucking happened. Steve tries not to think about the fact that he is now alone upstairs in the dark with Billy.

They check all the rooms, find no one, and the whole time Steve has to focus extra hard to avoid brushing against Billy without looking like he’s trying not to brush against Billy. He practically falls over his own feet doing so, at some point, but Billy thankfully doesn’t comment. When they return downstairs they see Max and Lucas arriving from the front door. They went out for some fresh air, apparently. In the middle of the night, in late November, without their jackets. As you do.

Billy stares hard at Lucas until the boy has the decency to look a bit sheepish and a lot worried, then the four of them return to the living room.

Steve parts ways with Billy, or rather, sets off quickly in any direction, just away, without a look behind.

What the hell just happened?

Steve picks up a coke, for something to do, then walks over to where Robin is chatting with someone Steve hasn’t see before and stands there, nodding along, not listening to a single word. The hand that isn’t holding the coke creeps up of its own accord, rubbing the back of his neck, scratching softly.

What the hell just happened?

Steve’s eyes glaze over a little, looking away from what’s-his-name and drifting across the room, past bodies and faces and hair and landing, shit, on Billy, at the other end of the room.

Their eyes meet, so Steve blinks and looks away quickly, dropping his hand and shoving it in his pocket. The skin of his neck and scalp still tingles obnoxiously, as if asking to be scratched and stroked some more.

Steve is so fucking lost.

What the hell is happening to me?

Steve is so fucking confused.

Come on, now, dude, you know exactly what’s going on.

Steve needs to stop thinking about Billy’s hand in his hair.

Good luck with that.

Steve is so fucked.

Chapter Text

Something like an hour or a minute passes like that, Steve drifting, following Robin around meekly, not registering anything, lost as he is in the weird little sensory overload he just experienced at the hands of Billy fucking Hargrove. Robin might be throwing him curious and worried glances, she probably is, because Steve is acting very weird indeed, but he cannot for the life of him snap out of it.

So what, he thinks wildly sometime around midnight, maybe he’s got a kink for getting his hair pulled. Girls tend to run their hands through it but no one has ever given it a proper tug, not like Billy just has, and so maybe Steve is only just now discovering that this is something that turns him on. Also, he hasn’t got laid in literal months, so maybe that’s playing on his mind too. And Billy’s an attractive guy – it’s not as if he was some old dude with a lazy eye. It’d be pretty understandable for anyone to have a reaction to someone who looks like Billy, especially when you’ve been single for ages, you’ve had two or four beers, and the guy just happens to do the exact thing that sets you off. Maybe Steve’s a bit confused, too, because he knows Billy’s in love with him, he knows Billy wants to kiss him, and that’s been playing on his mind too. Not to mention Billy has been so kind and attentive and gentle with Steve, like it’s hard not to feel grateful and touched when people treat you that well, right?

And shit, Billy probably wants to do more than kiss him.

…

So yeah, those are pretty intense thoughts. It’s no wonder Steve is affected. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

But why did Billy suddenly do that? It feel like crossing a line, somehow, but what prompted it here and now?

“Steve!”

Steve blinks out of his spiralling daze, noticing that Robin has gone, and is now a little distance away, waving him over, smiling wide. Steve moves.

There’s a gathering of people all leaning over his dining table, all absorbed, and so Steve peers over someone’s shoulder (shit, Billy’s, too late to move now) and watches. They’re all playing some sort of game with the ping pong balls, trying to bounce them into cups.

It’s beer pong, idiot.

Billy’s the one playing. Steve looks up and sees that his opposition is no other than Vickie’s boyfriend, and suddenly it makes sense as to why Robin is so invested.

Vickie’s boyfriend misses, the public goes ‘BOO’.

Billy picks up the ball, aims, everyone watches in silence. He throws, a flick of the wrist.

It lands.

Robin’s is the loudest cheer, a proper ‘bro’ sort of guttural war cry, but Steve doesn’t really hear it, because in his celebration Billy has thrown his arms up in the air and he’s just elbowed Steve in the nose.

Steve stumbles back, face immediately erupting in pins and needles. He presses his fingers to his nose – not broken, not bleeding, thank fuck.

“Oh shit!” Robin yells.

“It’s fine,” Steve waves her off, sniffing, “nothing’s broken!”

He tries to smile through the embarrassment when his eyes meet Billy’s, who has turned to see who he just elbowed in the face.

Billy looks – Billy looks stricken.

Just to be clear, I will never, ever, hit you again.

“It’s fine, Billy, don’t sweat it,” Steve hears himself say. “I’m fine.”

It’s no use – Billy looks like his car just burned down. Nancy appears out of nowhere and fusses over Steve’s nose, and then Billy stalks away, eyes down.

Now Steve’s in the kitchen, maybe twenty minutes later, and Billy still hasn’t reappeared.

“Honestly, Nance, I’m fine,” Steve repeats, yet again, turning down offers of ice packs and whatever else. “It’s not even bleeding, relax.”

“If you’re sure,” Nancy’s still frowning worriedly up at him. Once upon a time, Steve would have combusted over so much of her attention. Right now, though, he’s just thinking of how crestfallen Billy had looked when he’d realised he’d hurt Steve.

“Yeah, honestly, Nance, I’m totally fine. Hey, uh, sorry, I’m just gonna – ”

He’s not even sure what excuse he gives, but here is now, walking away from Nancy, his eyes searching through the thick jungle of people crowding his ground floor.

“Steve!” Robin reappears at his side. “Where are you going?”

“I’m looking for Billy.”

“For Billy?”

“Yeah, you seen him?”

“Why are you looking for him?”

OK, first of all, weird.

“What do you mean why? He looked pretty upset, I’m just checking he’s ok.”

“Wow. Unprompted, too.” Robin raises her eyebrows all the way to her hairline. “Well done. I think I saw him head outside. Backyard.”

Steve heads there, bumping into people, dodging conversations, even dodging some other girl from band who’s very attractive, but unfortunately there’s no time for that.

He grabs his coat from the closet, then, on impulse, grabs one for Billy, too. He’s pretty sure Billy didn’t come with a coat today.

The icy cold air hits him like a sobering slap, the music muffled behind the closed door. Sure enough, Billy is there, on his back porch, a cigarette in hand, breath coming out in thick silvery mist in the November night. He’s leaning against one of the posts, staring out into the pitch black.

“Hey.”

Billy jumps a little when he hears Steve approach.

“Hey,” he takes a drag out of his cigarette.

“You alright?”

“Yeah. Just having a smoke. You?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“No, I know, I mean…” Billy waves his hand at his own face, the glowing ember of the cigarette dancing like a firefly.

“Totally fine,” Steve gestures at his own nose. “Honestly. Hardly felt it. Maybe you should start working out.”

Billy scoffs, amused.

“That for me?” he nods towards the extra jacket in Steve’s hands.

“Yeah,” Steve hands it over, “figured you’d be cold.”

“You’re too good to me, Harrington,” Billy sasses, without any bite, and maybe with a hint of sadness. He shrugs the coat on, leaves it open.

They stay silent for a few moments, standing there in the semi darkness, side by side. Arm’s length. You Spin me Right Round by Dead or Alive starts playing from inside the house. Steve begins humming along under his breath, for want of something to say.

“So, King Steve can hold a tune, huh?” Billy drops his cigarette bud and steps on it. “Not fair, man.”

It’s such an echo of what Eddie said earlier that evening.

“Well, I ain’t the King for nothin’,” Steve jokes, which makes Billy give a genuine chuckle.

“You sure I didn’t hurt you, back there? You’re sounding a bit concussed,” Billy asks, teasing, but with an underlying current of desperation. Please be ok, that tone begs.

“Oh yeah, my nose’s fine,” Steve scoffs. Then, on pure, uncontrolled impulse, he adds: “so’s my neck, by the way.”

“Huh?” Billy’s eyes snap to his, wide, all traces of humour gone. He looks caught off guard, which is not a look you often see on his face.

“My neck,” Steve repeats, because he’s not sure why, “it’s fine. You seemed awful concerned about it earlier.”

What. The. Fuck.

Steve’s not even sure why he said that, why he addressed this in the first place. It wasn’t his intention at all. It’s like his mouth is running away without him, wild and on a rampage. He was trying to sound playful, maybe a bit teasing (flirty?), but he’s pretty sure it has come out sounding somewhat confrontational.

Billy tenses. His shoulders go stiff, breath tight. He stops leaning, standing straight, one hand goes to rest against the post, fingers flexing. For a little while, he says nothing, then, just as Steve is about to try and backtrack or sing or say anything to move the moment on, Billy pushes out:

“Sorry. About… your nose, uh… and your neck. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Ok, so, looks like they’re doing this. What did Billy do, exactly? Steve’s still trying to work it out.

“Why did you? My neck, I mean. It wasn’t… didn’t feel like an accident.”

It didn’t feel like a bro thing, is that Steve is really trying to say.

Billy scoffs, then gives a pained little chuckle, looking up at the starless sky.

“I don’t know… actually I do know,” his tone hardens suddenly, smile devoid of humour, “and so do you.” Billy’s looking at Steve right in the eyes, now. Confrontational. “Let’s not play fucking dumb, hm?”

Damn, Steve had not expected to be put on the spot. He’s not the one who grabbed Billy by the scruff of the neck and gave him a hard on in front of a stranger, either. He gapes a little, at a loss for words.

“That came out wrong – ” Billy starts, apologetic, so Steve blurts out:

“No, I… I mean,” Steve won’t pretend he doesn’t know about Billy’s homosexuality, or his feelings for him. He’s not a coward. “I know some of why, but… I mean, Eddie was right there, man.”

Billy nods, scoffs again, this time at the ground.

“He won’t talk.”

“How do you know?”

“Did you not see his bandana? In his back pocket?”

“His what?”

“His hanky, Harrington. In the back pocket of his jeans.”

What?

“What?”

Billy shakes his head, laughing silently.

“Guess not,” he mutters.

“What does that mean? What… a hanky? What does the hanky mean?”

Billy shrugs.

“Might mean nothing. Or it might mean something. Why don’t you ask Buckley? She might enlighten you.”

“Why not you?”

Billy looks straight at Steve, then, straight into his eyes. Steve’s heart does a panicked, no, a thrilled little jump in his chest. It’s not panic that Steve has been feeling around Billy, it’s thrill. What a discovery. When he responds, Billy’s voice is low, controlled, warm, raspy.

“Oh, you’ve no idea how much I want to enlighten you, King Steve.”

Holy shit.

Is Billy hitting on him? Like, properly? For real and all?

What the fuck does Steve do now?

“Jesus, Hargrove,” Steve breaks eye contact, shifting on his feet. His eyes wander over his pitch-black yard, sparkles of frost fading into deep night. “You’re gonna make me blush, here, dude.”

Billy laughs and stops staring, thank God.

“Yeah, that’s the idea. Looks good on you.”

Steve’s even more flustered, now. How the hell did this happen? What has got into Billy, tonight? He has never been this forward, this open with his feelings.

“Sounds like you need to go talk to this Eddie guy,” Steve babbles, “exchange bandanas or whatever.”

“Ah, but my heart’s already taken. And looks like he and I are both into the same type of hanky, anyway, so not much to exchange.”

Holy shit. Again.

The hand thing - it had been possessive. Like, a 'mark your territory' thing. Billy had thought Eddie was interested in Steve, and so Billy had stepped in.

“What’s got into you, dude?” Steve laughs nervously, feeling light-headed.

“I don’t know,” Billy rubs a hand over his face. “I guess I’m a bit drunk. Just ignore me.”

“You don’t seem drunk.” Let’s not play fucking dumb, you said.

“No, I’m not drunk.” A beat. “I guess maybe I’m tired.”

“Tired?”

“Of fighting.”

“We’re not fighting.”I can’t remember the last time it felt like we were fighting.

“Of fighting myself. Feels like I’ve done an awful lot of fighting myself this last year… years. I’m tired of it, man.”

Steve nods, even though Billy isn’t looking at him.

“What’s changed?” he asks, whispers in Billy’s direction, half hoping Billy won’t hear it, half hoping that if he does hear it he won’t answer it.

But Billy does, and he does.

“I’ve been fighting it forever,” Billy’s voice is quiet, and young, so young. “I thought if I kept pushing it down, kept conforming, it would eventually work. I wouldn’t be the way that I am anymore. I wouldn’t be deviant. Defective.”

“You’re not – ”

“I am. I know I am. And I used to think it was the worst thing, but… that thing, what Max calls the Mind Flayer, it… it took control of me, and it was devious… it made me do these awful things, these terrible things. I was hurting people, and I couldn’t stop. Until I could. When it all stopped, when I took back control, I guess I realised… hey, it might be wrong, but at least I’m not hurting anyone. In fact, I was hurting more people back when I was trying not to be the way that I am. And I can’t fight it, Harrington, trust me. I tried for so long and I just can’t. That’s why we came here, you know? Max saw me… she was really young, but I guess she saw me flirting with some dude, or something, and she told her dad, who told Susan, who told my dad…” Steve feels his blood go cold at the implications, the remnants of pain and humiliation in Billy’s voice. “I guess people at school found out, too. So, we moved, for a fresh start. I decided to fight it twice as hard. Thought for sure, this time it was gonna work, but then I got completely blind-sided by some mopey douchebag with great hair,” Billy laughs without humour. “Get this, Harrington: I could take on the Mind Flayer, but I can’t take this on. So, I’m tired. Maybe it’s time to let it be. Even if it’s wrong.”

“It’s not wrong,” Steve insists, because this feels like an important thing to get through to Billy. “It’s not. It really is not. There’s nothing wrong with Robin and there’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Many people would disagree with you there, Harrington.”

“Fuck people,” Steve surprises them both, “seriously. Fuck people, fuck your dad, fuck this heteronormal, patriarchal whatever, fuck all of this bullshit. Fuck it all. There’s nothing wrong with you.” Steve reaches over and places a hand on Billy’s shoulder. “You’re a great dude. There’s nothing wrong with you. Got it?”

What has Steve gone and done now, putting himself in this situation?

He’s locked in Billy’s eyes, silver puffs of breath between them, his hand on Billy’s shoulder. He should look away, he’s made his point. He should move away.

He can’t.

“Steve?”

Shit, even Billy’s wondering what the matter is with him. Why his hand is still there. Why he’s so passionate about this. Why his hand is still there. Why is his hand still there?

Steve’s hand shifts. Up.

It travels up Billy’s shoulder, curls around the back of Billy’s neck, like Billy did to him earlier. It tangles in Billy’s hair. In slow motion.

Steve’s mind registers things one at a time, on a primal level.

Warm skin. Smoother than he’d have expected. Soft, soft hair, the curls almost tickling his hand. Warm, so warm. Steve’s fingers flex, testing the firmness of the flesh, the give of the curls.

Billy is hypnotised – frozen still. Except his chest, which is rising and falling a little fast. Huh.

Billy’s strong, there is no doubt about that. Steve can feel the tight muscles of his neck and shoulder under his palm. And yet, Steve knows this: Billy is also completely malleable, right now. Steve could give the tiniest little push or pull and Billy would obey, he would let himself be placed and moved any which way. Clear as day, Steve understands now the incredible power he holds over Billy. It is practically thrumming under his fingertips. It feels… exhilarating. Humbling, too. Like he’s been granted this great power, as much a responsibility as it is a blessing. A higher power somewhere has deemed Steve worthy of this, worthy of Billy’s affection, and now Steve can feel it under his fingertips, how loved he is, how trusted he is, how this great force of nature that is Billy Hargrove is now totally devoted to him, Steve Harrington. Thank you, Steve thinks, blindly. Thank you for this. Billy is watching Steve with something akin to awed fear, and Steve could do anything. He could quite easily end Billy, right now, get his revenge and pulverize the guy from the heart out, or – or he could –

Silver puffs of breath, more of them now. Steve cannot think. Billy’s still as a statue, eyes wide, watching Steve. Steve’s eyes dip down. Billy’s lips are parted, plush. They look so good. They look like they’d be soft and warm, too. Silver breath – caressing Billy’s lips. Steve wants to be that breath.

Billy wants to kiss Steve, and Steve wants to kiss Billy too.

It’s a few inches. It’s a plunge. It’s just a few inches.

Steve tightens his hold on Billy’s neck, shifts forward. Floorboards creaking under his feet.

This is what I want. Fuck, this is what I want!

Close, now. Silvery breaths mingling. Just a little closer –

BANG

The door whips open, hitting the wall.

“THERE YOU ARE!” Henderson bursts into the space, followed by Max and Lucas. Steve jerks back, his hand burning. “MIKE’S JUST PUKED EVERYWHERE, DUDE!”

“Huh” Steve grunts, stupidly, hand over his own mouth, running a hand through his hair. Standing so far from Billy it’s ridiculous. “Hang on, he what?!”

“Puked everywhere,” Dustin repeats, slower, “like, all over the couch you said not to touch. Robin’s trying to clean it right now, and Will’s trying to get Mike to drink some water, but Mike’s literally crying, and dude we need you to come. It’s carnage, Steve.”

“Right, right, yes, uh…” Steve places his hands on his hips, risks a glance up towards Billy. He’s also jerked back, facing the invisible backyard once more, eyes still wide. Hand shaking around a cigarette he’s just pulled out of its packet.

“Carnage, Steve!” Henderson repeats louder, clapping his hands.

“Alright, alright, I’m coming! Jeez…”

Steve gestures for the kids to lead the way, and Dustin and Lucas immediately turn on their heels, but not Max.

Max is standing there, on the threshold. Her mouth hung open. Watching Steve. Then her eyes bounce over to Billy, then back to Steve.

She saw us.

“Ok, kid?” Steve forces a smile, even though he knows his voice sounds timid. OK, kid. Don’t tell on me, kid. Please be ok with this, kid. You’re got a lot of power here, kid.

Max blinks, closes her mouth.

“Yeah, yeah, I mean… like Dustin said. It’s carnage in there, you should come. Uh… sorry to interrupt.”

Max leaves.

Steve… Steve needs to – yeah.

“I better, uh… I better go and check…yeah.”

Billy nods, still facing away, waves a shaky hand in Steve’s general direction.

Steve’s foot slips on the step, he catches himself on the door. Trips back into reality, away from magnetic eyes and thrumming fingertips and silvery breaths.

Goes back to the house. The hot air inside is suffocating, at first, before it is upstaged by the undeniable smell of human vomit, rancid and bitter.

‘Carnage’, it turns out, is an understatement.

Chapter Text

So the couch’s fucked, but Steve cannot quite muster the energy to care.

Robin, Nancy and Vickie are already trying to clean it up by the time Steve gets to see the damage, and they raise fearful eyes at him when he arrives.

“Oh, well,” Steve hears himself say flatly, “don’t worry. It’s not that bad.”

It’s bad. It’s real fucking bad.

“I think it’s seeped through,” Robin says carefully, “I’m so sorry, Steve, I saw he was about to be sick and I tried getting this,” she waves an empty bowl in the air, “to him but I didn’t get there in time and now…!”

“It’s fine, honestly,” Steve repeats, looking at the fucked-up couch, “I’ll just wipe it and air it and…”

And, what? You can’t wash leather. Should he try to get the whole thing to the dry cleaners?

But then again, if his parents were going to come home for Thanksgiving, Steve would have heard from them by now, at the very least. If they’re gone for another half a year, that’s long enough for the smell and stain to fade, right? Or maybe he just gets a blanket and hopes no one ever lifts it? Keeps spraying the room with perfume?

Something in his expression must get interpreted a certain way, because Vickie is now offering to tell everyone that the party is over. Nancy accepts on Steve’s behalf, and now Steve’s living room is being emptied, people streaming out, clapping him on the back as thanks whilst he kneels there and tries to salvage a couch he doesn’t care about.

Some time later Steve has done what he could with it, and he reemerges from the cleaning tunnel to look around and notice the ‘party’ cleaning up the rest of his house for him.

“Oh, guys, don’t…!”

“Of course we do,” Robin says, “it’s the least we can do. Uh… you might want to talk to Mike, though. He’s really upset.”

“Is he?”

“Yeah, he…” Nancy winces. “He thinks you hate him. I told him you’re not like that, but…”

“Where is he?”

“Kitchen.”

And so, Steve spends the next twenty minutes trying to reassure a drunk Mike Wheeler that no, he doesn’t hate him, and yes, the couch will be totally like new in the morning. Totally.

Once Mike has calmed a little, though he is still drunk enough to cling on to Will Byers like – like something, Steve assesses the party and realises that no one is sober enough to drive.

“Stay over,” he calls out. “It’s too late to go home anyway.”

Upstairs, Steve climbs onto the edge of his bed to reach the spare sheets cupboard. He grabs blankets, pillows, bedsheets, piling them onto his shoulder then gratefully relishing them to the hands reaching out from below.

“Here, that should do,” Steve says, turning to look down at Robin – except it’s not Robin.

Billy’s right there. Sheets in his arms. Staring up at Steve with his blue eyes, wide and serious.

Shit, Steve forgot Billy was there, what with the puke and the upset teen and all. Steve literally forgot about Billy, and the fact that he almost kissed Billy.
That memory hits him full force now and he nearly loses his footing, suspended in the air, one foot on his bed and the other on the wall inside the closet where the sheets were. His crotch roughly at eye level with Billy. What a weird thing to notice.

Steve somehow doesn’t fall over, stepping down and running a hand through his hair. His hair, that Billy kind of pulled a few hours ago. Not long before Steve very nearly shoved his tongue down Billy’s throat.

Fuck, so much happened tonight.

“Thanks, man, uh…” Steve leads the way out of his bedroom and into the corridor, gesturing vaguely at rooms as he goes. “Should – should we put Jonathan and Nance in my parents’ room, uh… Jane and Max with them on the floor, maybe? Could put the four boys in the guest room, two on the bed two on the floor… uh, so, that leaves Robin, you and me… in my room?” Steve freezes on the spot, just for a second, before he remembers that it’s weird to be weird about this, so he barrels on: “Yeah, let’s do that. That way Nance can keep an eye on Max and if Sinclair leaves that room we’ll hear him walk past. Uh… Robin can have my bed. I’ll… I’ll find us something to sleep on.”

He realises as he is rambling that Billy is following him around, arms charged with spare sheets and pillows, and the scene is very reminiscent of the times when Steve’s parents hosted family over and Steve’s mom would be dictating sleeping arrangements to Steve’s dad. It doesn’t help that Billy’s being weirdly silent and subdued the whole time, just doing as he’s told, making makeshifts beds and then watching as Steve pulls out spare clothes from his drawers. Again, it feels weirdly domestic. Here they are, making beds for their kids.

“That’ll fit the girls,” Steve mutters, nervously, avoiding looking at Billy fucking Hargrove who is standing next to him in his room at night, “that’ll have to do for Mike, damn, the kid is so freaking tall… uh, you… you can have this. Should be ok.”

Steve hands Billy one of his looser t-shirts, along with a pair of boxers and some sweatpants.

Steve has a lot of clothes, but by the time he’s dressed everyone his drawers are fairly empty. It’s not actually a bad feeling – Steve doesn’t wear half the shit he’s got. Some of it still has tags on, years after he was gifted it.

“Damn, there’s fucking Jonathan as well,” Steve moves to dig around his wardrobe, now. “His shoulders are wide, aren’t they? Shit… should I give him one of my dad’s old tops?”

Steve forgets not to look at Billy, then, turning to the guy to look for confirmation, as if it’s Billy who’s going to help him decide what to dress Jonathan in. Steve half expects a scathing or at least teasing remark in return. Billy’s not with it, though, because instead he blinks at Steve and says, uncharacteristically lacking eloquence:

“Huh?”

“Nevermind,” Steve half giggles, before moving quickly on to the next phase of the impromptu sleepover: getting everyone either a spare toothbrush or a dollop of toothpaste on their cleanest finger.

It’s roughly three in the morning by the time everyone is more or less safely in bed, and Steve finds himself once again in his bedroom with the boy he nearly kissed this same night.

“You sure you don’t mind sleeping in here?” Steve focuses on Robin as a means to avoid focusing on Billy. “I did think about giving you and Nancy a room with Max and El, but I thought she’d want to be with Jonathan…”

“This is great,” Robin replies, pulling Steve’s covers aside and sitting on his bed. “I’ve always dreamt of getting in Steve Harrington’s bed.”

Steve bursts out laughing, and even Billy seems to come out of his weird trance. He scoffs, from his duvet slash mattress on the floor, and mumbles under his breath: “haven’t we all?”

Steve’s eyes lock with Robin’s at the comment, the two of them exchanging a whole silent conversation whilst Billy just stares at the wall, his back to them.

“Well,” Steve clears his throat, going to lie on his own makeshift mattress, “good night, all. Pancakes in the morning.”

“Yay!” Robin chants sleepily, turning over and settling under the blankets, “King Steve, King Steve, King Steve…!”

Sleep does not come instantly. Robin must be asleep, her breaths sound calm, and she hasn’t spoken in a while.

The floor is hard, and it’s actually rather quite weird seeing one’s own bedroom from the floor. Steve can see under his bed, from where he is, and he can just about make out the shape of Billy’s prone form, lying between him and the door. He must be asleep too.

Shit. So, so much happened, tonight.

Steve knows he will need to think about it all – like, really think.

Because whatever happened, and whatever the reasons were, he now likes Billy, now considers him a good friend, and he can’t be messing the guy around.

Steve has to sort himself out. Figure out what he wants.

Silver breath a caress on Billy’s lips. Steve wants to be that breath.

Steve squeezes his eyes shut, winces.

Correction: he has to figure out how he feels about what he now knows he wants. He really likes the guy.

But what does that mean? Is that a done deal? Is that something he can’t just repress and move on from?

And, very importantly: how would Billy feel about it, if Steve told gim? Just because Billy feels a certain way about Steve doesn’t mean Billy is ok with it himself – their conversation on the porch kind of left Steve feeling like Billy may not in fact want to pursue a relationship.

My God.

What is Steve even thinking? Steve doesn’t want a relationship – well, he does, but not with a man! Not with Billy. Not because it’s Billy specifically, in fact, these days, as in even before tonight, Steve has been thinking that if a man wanted a relationship with another man then Billy would actually be a pretty good option, but Steve has always known what he wants: wife, kids, RV, dog, the whole deal. Not a hidden relationship, not a childless relationship, not a relationship where both parties kind of are risking their own lives each time they introduce their significant other to new people.
Steve clears his throat.

A relationship. What the hell. A relationship with Billy. Steve knows he needs to unpack the fact that he had just come very, very close to kissing Billy, but there’s at least one thing he can decide for certain: he’s not about to throw himself into a same-sex relationship. Christ. Even though Billy is… Billy’s… and Steve actually really…

Steve winces again, in the pitch black, rolls over and rubs his eyes, sighing sharply.

He needs to sleep.

He needs to stop panicking, and he needs to sleep.

Steve forces himself to relax – someone is snoring down the corridor, and he focuses on that. Someone in his house is so relaxed they are snoring – that is a good thing. A happy thing. A nice thing to focus on. Steve closes his eyes.

The creak comes from the back door.

Steve’s eyes snap open. He holds his breath, senses on high alert. Nothing, now.

It’s fine. This happens often. Steve thinks he hears a noise, but actually there’s nothing. Steve will follow his usual routine: listen a bit longer just to make sure, then wait till the cold sweat dries, then get up and check all the doors before going back to bed. If he still can’t sleep, he’ll bake.

Except there’s another creaking sound. Closer to the stairs, now.

Adrenaline floods Steve’s ears, throat, lungs, heart, muscles.

He reaches under his bed for the nail bat.

Robin’s asleep, so’s Billy. The snoring is still ongoing down the corridor.

Shit, the kids. They’re closest to the stairs. Why the hell did Steve put them close to the stairs? What was he thinking? He should have put the kids in his room, the one at the end, with a porch roof to jump on. He should have put them in his room and told them how to escape quickly should the situation arise. Steve has grown complacent. And now the kids might pay the price.

And fuck, the next room is Nancy’s. Max is in there. Max, who has just finally reconciliated with her big brother.

The bottom step, the one that does a high pitch creak, gives a little under something heavy. Steve sits up, bat in hand.

He has to get to the kids.

Steve steps over Billy, creeps towards the doorway. Peers down the corridor, towards the stairs.

Moonlight is filtering through the bathroom window and into the corridor, a soft white glow over the walls, the floor, the viscous back of the demodog.

The demodog.

Steve freezes. Eyes wide. Bat half raised.

The creature is taking its sweet lazy time, flower head hung low, as if sniffing the ground. It is at the top of the stairs, close to the open door to the kids’ room.

Steve has to do something, and now.

Slow, steady, he reaches down, down, teasing his right sock off of his foot and rolling it one handed into a little ball. The demodog is still sniffing the ground, maybe a bit closer to the kids’ room. A sharp snore comes from the room, and the creature’s shoulders flex in that direction. Steve throws the sock towards the open bathroom. The ball of cotton bounces against the door and falls to the floor silently.

Not silently enough for a demodog.

The monster turns, then rushes inside the bathroom after the sound.

Steve rushes too, forward, reaching the bathroom in three strides and pulling the door shut. It clicks.

Steve can still hear movement coming from inside, but, fingers crossed, demodogs can’t open doors… it could start throwing its weight against the wood, though, so Steve better hurry and get Eleven –

He turns.

Right there.

At the other end of the corridor, as if coming out of Steve’s own bedroom where, shit, Steve just abandoned the sleeping Robin and Billy to their fates, there’s a guy.

Tall, massive. Cold blue eyes. Crisp green uniform.

The man walks.

Steve stumbles, catches himself on the staircase.

The man walks.

Steve feels the bat fall from his hand.

The man walks.

Steve needs to shout.

The man is close, now, within reach. Icy blue eyes the only visible things in the dark.

Steve tries to shout for help – he can’t shout.

He can’t shout – he can’t shout – he tries so hard and he can’t shout!

The man’s hands shoot out of the dark and reach for his neck and Steve feels a pained moan tearing out of his throat –

“Steve, Steve,” hands on his chest, searing hot, shaking him. “Wake up.”

Steve gasps, blinking hard into the dark, laid as he is on the floor of his bedroom. A hand on his chest, the other pushing his sweaty hair out of his face.

“Wh-wha-”

“You were having a nightmare.”

Billy. Billy is speaking. Billy is alive.

Robin – Steve bolts upright, looks to his bed. Robin is there, asleep, breathing evenly. Steve feels his t-shirt sticking to his chest and back, drenched. His heart is beating a wild rhythm in his ribcage, like a bird trapped in a net. Steve stands and jumps over Billy on his rush to get out – down the corridor, to the left, to the kids’ room… there they are.

All asleep.

Steve stands in the doorway, breathing, staring, like a weirdo, for way too long.

“Everyone’s fine, Steve,” Billy again. Behind him. “You just had a bad dream”

Steve checks the bathroom – empty - then walks down the stairs. He’s going for the full check. Locks, windows. Again. Outdoor light, checking the yard. And again.

“It’s all fine, dude,” Billy is still there, he’s followed Steve round the house as Steve was… indulging his mental breakdown, or whatever. “Hey,” Billy touches him again. His arm. Four fingertips. Turns into a palm on Steve’s shoulder, searing hot. “It’s all fine.” Steve can’t talk, can’t look away from the empty hallway. “Talk to me, pretty boy. What was it?”

The hand on Steve’s shoulder squeezes, shakes him a little. That seems to do it. Steve’s breath escapes him in one sharp push, his eyes blinking again, he looks towards Billy, Billy who is right there, staring at him. Billy, who has just asked him a question.

“I-it was a – there was a – a demodog thing, you know, it’s – it’s an Upside Down thing, and it was creeping up the stairs, but I- I locked it in the bathroom with my – with my sock – ” Steve glances down, sees that he is wearing both his socks, “and I was – I was going to get Eleven, but then this – ” Steve takes a breath, “the – the Russian dude – he came out of my room and I think he hurt you and Robin, and I couldn’t fight, I couldn’t move, and he got me. I tried to shout, but he got me.”

Steve blinks, his own hands halfway up to his throat, and feels, with great horror and mortification, wetness running down his cheeks.

Oh God, he is crying.

Steve sees Billy notice the tears, on full shimmery display thanks to the moonlight flooding the ground floor.

“Fuck,” Steve laughs, a little manic, wiping a hand over his face and through his hair. “Sorry, dude. Fuck. This happens sometimes, it’s fine.”

Billy, thank God, doesn’t comment, or push, nor does he try to hug Steve. He stands there, quietly, then asks:

“Is this the point where you bake?”

“Yeah,” Steve laughs again, voice raspy with emotion, “yeah, usually, yeah.”

Steve sighs, his eyes drifting towards the direction of the kitchen.

“Let’s go, then,” Billy says. And Jesus, it is surreal, to be here with Billy. Steve is usually alone, and he certainly would have never imagined Billy would be the one to see him like this. “What are we making, chef?”

“Huh?”

Billy’s already heading to Steve’s kitchen, turning on the light and the oven. Steve follows, in a daze.

“You preheat the oven, right?” Billy throws over his shoulder, as he begins rooting around the cupboards.

“Uh… yeah.”

Billy hands Steve a glass of water, which Steve blankly takes, then returns to the cupboards.

“Guessing we need a bowl, right? What else, chef?”

“Measuring cups…”

And soon, this actually is happening: Steve is baking with Billy, at four in the morning. They’ve decided to make brownies. Billy seems quite happy to be bossed around, following instructions to the letter and spontaneously beginning the washing up process once the brownies are baking.

He is also, Steve just noticed, topless.

There are massive star shaped scars on each side of Billy’s body, where the Mind Flayer grabbed him, and Steve knows there’s another in the centre of his chest. He knows the scars are there, he’s seen them before, they’ve been to the creek and the pool together enough times for that. For some reason, though, this is the first time that Steve really looks at the scars, physically and cognitively. Emotionally, even. Damn, they have come really close to losing Billy. Billy’s been near ripped apart, and that has left huge marks on his body, and now Steve can see clear as day how close he came to losing Billy before he even got Billy.

He’s still handsome as fuck, though. Just a little less smooth skinned, but then again, it’s impossible not to see those scars and picture Billy standing his ground against the huge Upside Down monster. Steve can only ever hope to be that freaking badass. His one permanent battle scar is the one left by the plate Billy broke on his face, a lifetime ago.

“A what, did you say? A demodog?” Billy asks from the sink, as Steve is leaning against the worktop, watching him. “Is that bigger or smaller than the Mind Flayer?”

Steve frowns, confused by the sudden question. He tears his eyes away from Billy’s shoulders, the muscles working under golden skin.

“Smaller, much smaller. Why?”

“Nothing, just… I managed to hold the Mind Flayer back. Just saying. And that kid Eleven she can probably rip them to shred in her sleep.” Steve blinks. Billy gives a half grin, glancing at Steve over his shoulder. “And that Russian dude? Honestly, I’m a bit offended, Harrington. If a Russian dude had to go through me first, he’d never get to you. Come on, bro. Give me some credit.”

Billy’s tone is teasing, playful. Steve feels an amused scoff bouncing out of his throat, and he chuckles, shaking his head.

“You’re stupid.”

“Nah, I’m serious. How dare you doubt me like that. Russian dude would have been running to you for help, are you sure you didn’t misunderstand? Bet he was like ‘help me, bro!’” Billy mimes shaking someone by their collar.

Steve laughs again, feeling way lighter. Weirdly, it makes kind of sense, and at the very least it is rather soothing to think of it that way.

“And I heard you, Harrington,” Billy adds, as he puts the last measuring cup to the side to dry before wiping his hands on a tea towel. “You said you couldn’t shout, but you did, and I heard you. That’s why I woke you up. Ok?”

Steve nods, eye contact with Billy suddenly too much to handle.

“Yeah, ok.”

“So don’t fret, Harrington,” Billy’s voice is a low rumble, reassuring, gentle. It floods inside Steve’s chest and curls around his heart. “You can just sleep. I’m here.”

Steve nods, again. Billy’s eyes are so blue. His voice so steady. He’s so confident. He’s so sure.

And fuck, who is Steve even kidding anymore?

Steve watches Billy take the brownies out of the oven and leave them to the side. Thick scars on his body, not taking away from its beauty, testaments to his immense courage. They’re not… repulsive.

Nothing about Billy is repulsive. Steve knows he’s staring, knows he can’t stop.

He won’t ever be able to stop again.

“Better?”

Steve’s eyes briefly snap up to Billy’s, and he nods yes, not trusting himself to speak. His eyes fall downwards again, along the top of Billy’s shoulders, his pecs, the scars, the smattering of hairs that travels down to his waistband. The subtle bulge of his crotch. Steve then looks back up, to Billy’s clavicles, to his throat, the Adam’s apple there. You couldn’t possibly mistake Billy for a woman, and yet, Steve is attracted to him. There’s nothing feminine about Billy. Still, none of it is repulsive. Not in the least. Steve watches as Billy gulps, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. Steve has the wild notion of following that movement with his tongue. He feels himself swallowing nothing. Steve knows he’s staring, knows he can’t stop, not now, not anymore. Under his gaze, Billy is fidgeting, and still Steve cannot get himself to act normal.

“Come on, let’s get back to bed,” Billy’s voice is a little shaky and his shoulder brushes his as he walks out of the kitchen, and Steve follows him, up the stairs, down the corridor, into bed.

This time, when Steve lays down, there’s not much going on in his head. It’s very clear, now, what needs to happen. It’s obvious he cannot walk away from this – from Billy. Right now, it’s not scary.

Steve’s entire world has been spinned right round, and somehow it’s not scary. There’s a path forward – there’s only one path forward, no need for Steve to make decisions. All the decisions were made for him, probably from the moment Billy walked into his life. Steve feels calm. Settled. Billy’s steady breathing, close by, is consistent and reassuring.

Steve knows he has to think. He knows he needs to talk to Billy. Not now, though.

Steve lets his eyes close – for a quick nap.

He wakes at midday.