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[In the summer of '85, there are over thirty funerals in the town of Hawkins, Indiana. The papers spin tales of faulty wiring and other mundane things that all point to the exploding of the brand new Starcourt mall being an accident- which it was, of course, but only if you count government cover up to be in the same category. Half of the Scoops Troop is still recovering from nonFDA approved drugs weeks later and Steve's face remains mottled with dark marks and a split bottom lip that'll probably scar.]
___
A phantom thumb sweeps along the curve of his jaw, he can hear the dangerously low timber of Billy's voice amidst the cacophony of sirens and chatter.
"Baby... I'll fucking kill them."
But when Steve opens his eyes, he's alone and Billy is still dead. He'd watched him die with the rest of his fucked up friend group, watched a body made out of bodies skewer him. Steve had barely stumbled down the steps in time to hear Billy’s last gasping breaths, watch his eyes swivel from Maxs’ to his own, hear his final "I'm sorry", the last apology that would ever be uttered from his perfect lips and think, there's nothing, nothing nothing nothing you ever have to be sorry for.
And when Max had started to shriek and sob, Steve stuffed it all away. He’d stepped over Billy's body like it was nothing, like he was nothing. Like Billy hadn't approached him out of the blue, hadn't apologized, hadn't laid on the hood of the camaro next to him. Like he hadn't kissed him, hadn't gasped into his mouth, "come with me", and he'd gathered Max into his arms and carried her away.
He'd stayed with her until Susan Hargrove tore through the crowd like only a mother could, Neil right behind her. Then, he’d stayed for just a bit longer because, "where's my son", and Max sobbed so hard that she'd stopped breathing. Steve had never had to tell someone that their child was dead, he’d never had to deal with that kind of fallout and he hopes he never has to again. He can barely keep his head on straight, keeps thinking, come back, come back, please come back. Do a million more things to be sorry for and I’ll forgive you for every single one cause the thing is-
Maybe William Hargrove died a hero, maybe he'd saved his baby sister and her weird friends, and maybe he'd finally earned his father's respect in death the way he never could in life but it wasn't enough, not for Steve and maybe it’s a selfish thought but Steve would prefer Billy alive and a villain, over dead and a hero any day.
___
"Hey, Harrington! Man, wait up." Steve slowed to a stop and watched as Hargrove hurriedly snuffed out his cigarette on the red brick of the highschool. He’s not really sure why he'd waited, thought he was kind of an idiot for doing it but.. Well, he’d always been a curious guy.
"You need something, Hargrove?" He raised his voice to be heard as Billy jogged over to where he was standing by the beemer and if Steve didn't already know what Billy looked like murderous, he'd think he was coming over to finish what he should've in November. Steve raised an eyebrow, feigning impatience when the silence stretched on. Hargrove huffed in response, as if it's Steve that's inconveniencing him as he turned his face to the sky like he was praying for divine intervention. God, please give me the strength not to bash this motherfuckers face in. Again. The hint of a smile must’ve shown on his face cause when Billy had finally looked at him again, he’d narrowed his eyes into slits, leaned forward and raised his eyebrows as if to say what’s so funny but instead he’d followed up with something almost as shocking as the upside down.
"That night- at the Byers," He started haltingly, it was the first time Steve had ever seen him look so unsure of himself. "I took that shit too far." Billy swallowed harshly, his voice coming out sure and steady as he stretched one arm behind his head to ruffle his hair in a surprisingly boyish gesture. He looked off to the side before meeting Steve’s eyes again.
"Hargrove-"
"I thought I killed you.
When I woke up in that creepy, fucking house, by myself; I thought I- Yeah, I don't, I don't-“ He stops, starts again. “I'm sorry."
___
Distantly, Steve watches from the back of an ambulance as Ms. Byers gathers El into her arms and he knows, he knows, he knows that Hop is gone too.
___
"I miss the way it smells the most."
"The way it smells?" Steve snickered, a slow grin spread across his face. It was only the second time they'd hung out like that, just the two of them, and no pesky rugrats haggling for spare change. Still, it’d felt almost too normal, too easy. There were still tense moments, sure, but they were an entirely new kind of tense, less volatile feeling. Plus, and he hated to admit it, even to himself because the kids have grown on him like a fungus, but it was really nice to hang out with someone his own age again. Well, other than his ex and her new boyfriend. Billy rolled his eyes good-naturedly, that barely there smile Steve was starting to get really good at spotting pulling on his lips, and passed the half smoked joint back.
"You could smell the ocean from miles away. Even when it didn't look like you were anywhere near it. It was… nice. Comforting, I guess or whatever the fuck you wanna call it, man." Billy spoke about the ocean reverently and Steve was enthralled, he dug through his memories in hopes of finding something he'd ever loved half as much as Billy loved California. But the truth was, he hadn’t loved Hawkins in a long time. Maybe he used to love it, before it was just him and an empty house, (before faceless entities and their home dimension carved it's way into every place he'd ever felt safe), but he couldn’t remember. Mostly, he just remembered being hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and so fucking lonely that his chest bone ached.
There had been some things, some places that soothed that pain when the people he’d surrounded himself with weren’t enough. The pool, the quarry, the old and now rotten pumpkin patch, the woods just behind his house; those places had all been home once. All haunted by tunnels and Barb and a flashing camera. He tried very hard not think about faceless men. Suddenly, Steve wondered if the only way he’d be able to love Hawkins now was from a distance, the same way that his parents loved him.
___
By the time Steve arrives at the ever empty Harrington residence, the adrenaline has completely worn off. His legs shake with exhaustion, barely able to carry him to the couch before he collapses. His entire body feels like one giant throbbing pulse.
"Baby," Familiar fingers comb through his hair. "Baby, wake up." Cool, blue eyes meet his. Steve has long since grown accustomed to waking up with Billy looming over him, those pretty, pink lips spread wide in a smile that’s for him and him alone. Billy's thumb traces down the side of his neck. "Pretty boy." He can't help but smile sleepily at the familiar and now welcome endearment, his smile only grows wider when Billy leans down to press his lips to Steve's cheek in a chaste kiss and then stays like that for a long moment; a current of curly, blond hair shielding them from the rest of the world.
At least for a moment.
"Steve. Steve, honey, wake up! Steven-"
"Mom?" Barely a croak comes out but it seems to be enough for his mother. Watery, green eyes meet his, a parody of his foggy dream. It's disconcerting to realize that the soft hand petting him belongs to her and he absently wishes it was Billy with him, petting his hair like that.. His stomach lurches and he sits up too quickly, body protesting vehemently to remind him just how much of a beating he took.
"Oh, honey, don't talk. I'll get you some water." Her voice wobbles and her clothes are clearly wrinkled. It’s strange, to see her carefully crafted image crack. She almost looks like his mom, the one who kissed his scraped knees and finger painted with him in the garden. Steve almost doesn't notice his dad standing just outside the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, stoic as ever. If nothing else, his father has a presence that demands attention. He thinks it should be comforting, for his parents to be home but instead he just feels confused. Come to think of it, that might be all the head trauma talking but Steve swears he’s never seen his dad stand in that exact spot before and Billy has- had.
Billy had stood there a million times, which was probably about a million more times than his dad ever had, seeing as his dad hardly ever came out of his home office when he deigned to be at home. He’d caught Billy lurking there a fair, few times, just watching on as the kids made messes and Steve cleaned them up like the mother hen they all joked he was when really all’s he was doing was trying desperately to distract himself from the possibility of more portals to hell opening up. He’d gotten the feeling that Billy understood. Definitely not what he was distracting himself from, mums the word and all, but that that he was distracting himself. Dustin had told him once that if a shark stops swimming, it’ll die. It felt kind of like that. Sometimes Steve felt like a wild animal, he got the feeling that Billy could relate.
His dad shifted uncomfortably under Steve’s bleary stare and the Russians really must have knocked something lose cause for a second, he looked like Hopper and- Oh God, Hopper.
Hopper had stood there too, watched as El played the boys stupid nerd game, the one Steve couldn't grasp for the life of him and Steve had seen it all, a loving parent watching their kid, and then Hopper had turned around, an absent minded smile on his face that he didn’t even try to hide when he caught Steve staring. Instead, he’d clasped a hand on his shoulder and said, “you’re a good kid, Steve, you know that?” and ambled into the kitchen to “help” Joyce.
That was what a good parent looked like, that was what a good man looked like and it should be him standing there (and it should be Billy standing there, it should. Steve would trade the man presently standing there for a heartbeat so familiar it aches knowing it's not still out there. He would give up his own father just so El could still have one.)
"I'm gonna throw up-" Steve gasps, staggering to his feet. He makes it to the toilet just in time and when he opens his eyes again, he's back on the couch, plastic bag filled trashcan next to him.
___
His lips were soft, softer than Nancys, softer than any girl he'd ever kissed before. Billy threw himself back with a startled noise like he hadn't meant to do that, he stumbled as he slid right off the hood of the camaro and there was no excuse, he's sober, they both were but Billy's eyes were wide and glassy, cheeks flushed deep. He looked terrified, like he was a fraction of an inch away from crying. Or puking.
"I-"
"Come back here." Steve whispered because it's what he’d wanted to say every time Billy had pulled away from him and now he knows, he knows. It wasn’t safe, not in a place like Hawkins but then and there… Well, let’s just say the next time they kissed, (literally less than a minute later), it was Steve who reeled Billy in by his collar and kissed him breathless.
___
The funeral is beautiful. Steve hates it. It's closed casket, which is probably for the fucking best, can only imagine what he'd do if he had to see Billy in that goddamn box. There's a beautiful woman with curly blonde hair and blue eyes standing at the back of the crowd. And it is a crowd.
Billy died a hero after all.
Steve can't stop turning around, can't stop staring; there's no question now that Billy got all of his looks from his mother.
His parents chose to come with him to the funeral, against his insistence that they didn't have to. He knows they're worried about him and not just his future for once, probably because when they got home two days after the exploding mall incident, he'd still been dressed in his Scoops uniform, still bloodied and bruised and passed out on the couch like he hadn't moved in two days, which he hadn't, so. It doesn't matter if they're worried, it was like Jonathon said: too little, too late.
___
"I used to call everyday, several times a day. Until Neil got fed up and tore the phone off the wall." Billy always spoke of his father with such a casualness and it wasn’t all bad but the bad was, well, really bad and it irked Steve. Probably in the same way that it irked Billy when Steve talked about every missed birthday, holiday, weekend, like it was nothing. (Because it was, because that’s normal, because loneliness has never been something you can charge someone with.)
He ghosted his fingers along Billy's ribs and Billy retaliated by ruffling Steve's already mussed hair.
"You deserve better." He peppered kisses along Billy's chest, his collarbone, his neck, his face. Steve knew he couldn’t ever make up for what other people had done or would do but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to ease the sting, chase the lemon with some honey.
"I wish she had at least let me beg to go with her, maybe then I could hate her for leaving." Billy spread large hands along Steve's sides and hauled him up an inch so that their faces were level. "At least this way I got to meet you." Steve snorted and shoved Billy's face away when he tried to lean in for a kiss.
"You’re unbelievable.” It came out more breathlessly than he meant it to and Billy dug his fingers into the meat of Steve's thigh, laughed along to his sounds of torment.
"You love it." You love me.
"Yeah, I really fucking do."
___
It's as shocking to Steve as it seems to be to Billy’s mother that he approaches her, his feet had just carried him off without his say so.
"He really love- loved you." His voice comes out steadier than he thinks it should've while stumbling over past tense and present tense. "I hope you know that." Her face is too familiar, the blonde of her hair and her eyes even bluer while bloodshot. It hurts too much.
"You were a friend of-" Steve can't help it, cuts her off because he doesn't think he'll survive if she says his name.
"You shouldn't have left him, you should have taken him with you." It’s not fair and he sounds desperate, like by saying it, he could go back in time and change everything. Maybe Dustin knows how to build a time machine.
___
He's standing underneath the opening to the tunnels, Dustin pressed against the dirt wall behind him. The dogs are coming up fast, there isn't enough time. Fuck fuck fuck. He pushes Dustin through the hole and then tries to scramble up behind him but it's closing. The ground warping above his head. It's closing and he's gonna be stuck down here and the kids are screaming, trying to dig at the earth but nothing is working. If anything, it closes faster and he just has enough time to see Dustin's terrified face before the tunnels swallow him whole and sharp, sharp teeth-
"Baby, come on, wake up. Steve, it's just a nightmare, come on, come on, pretty boy- Steve, wake up!" The lamp on the bedside table is on. Billy's sitting on his knees facing Steve and looking absolutely terrified and Steve feels guilty. He feels so guilty but he can't breathe. "It's okay, baby, it's okay." Billy walks forward on his knees and that's what Steve focuses on, the sheets barely clinging to Billy's muscular thighs, the way it wrinkles, the way it feels- and he usually likes it but- but it's slippery, so slippery and he's losing his footing. How is he going to get out if he can't even plant his feet?
"Okay, okay. Steve, look at me." Billy says firmly, clearly out of his depth but trying and, and isn't that so sweet. Nancy never- Nope, don't think about Nancy. Instead, Steve slumps forward until his forehead rests against Billy's neck, who takes it as the invitation it is, brings warm hands to run up and down Steve's back. And the heat helps, helps in ways Billy will hopefully never know because the- that thing couldn't survive, could never survive in Billy's warmth.
_ __
(But it could and it would and it did.)