Chapter Text
Steve Harrington punches like a rich kid and a pussy.
It’s more performance than anything, Billy can tell. A sort of resignation to the windup, the cheesy line. Like he’s only half-way committed to the role: Steve Harrington, fearless protector.
The idiot telegraphs the whole thing too, as if he’s never gotten into a brawl that wasn’t a show for some high-school cow, shaking out his fist like he’s already anticipating the sting in his knuckles. Billy lets it connect anyway. Because he’s been itching to get his evils out, sure—but also because this whole night has been fucked all to hell—so upside down and frustrating and just plain weird: Max’s open window, the ugly little melodrama with his dad, the long dark drive to Shithole Byers—and he just wants something he can understand.
Harrington’s first hit pops him right in the nose, gets the blood vessels going like same-shit-different-day, cinema perfect, all wallop and sound.
God. He’s going to cry—can’t ever seem to help it. It fucking stings in a way that’s connected to his defective tear ducts. Even the most perfunctory of hard-handed slaps from his dad can get him going, especially if there’s an audience. He can already taste his own blood and feel the burn of tears in his eyes, the fearful murmuring of those weird kids as loud as a rocket in his ears. They were all cheering a moment ago, except for Max; she knows better.
Harrington is pushing his ridiculous prom-king hair out of his face, having that quiet moment of realization that he’s started something altogether more dangerous than what he’d pictured in his little hero fantasy—that he hasn’t got the juice for what Billy can take, that Billy is going to make them both play this thing out ugly. He'd figured Harrington was dumb as a bag of hammers, but the guy’s actually surprisingly composed, using the diminishing moment of entropy before one of them swings to size Billy up to put him down, eyes dark and intuitive.
Huh.
Selective intelligence, he guesses.
But...there’s something else there too.
He could just be imagining things. He did just take a direct hit to the face after all—but there’s something about Harrington, some barely perceptible shift from trying on a role to something more familiar, something that’s been kept sleeping. Billy can sense it like a snake tasting the air: Harrington’s awake now. Almost...eager. Like he needs this fight too.
The thought of it is so absurd it’s hysterical—has this choked-up exhausted laughter coming out of him. He was supposed to go on a date tonight, sink a few beers, maybe get lucky—but instead he’s here, in this crackpot house, with these weirdo middle schoolers, and finally, finally, he’s getting a glimpse at the guy who might have been king.
“Get out,” Harrington says, voice heavy with contempt. Touches two fingers to his chest.
It’s ballsy. Suicidal.
It’s more than Billy could have ever hoped for.
Harrington presses and Billy lets himself be pressed, feeling the slow unfurling of violence inside him, the weight of his arms, the thudding of his pulse in his ears. There’s a silence between them, sparking with anticipation; as magnetic as a kiss.
Honestly? He hopes Harrington doesn’t plant his feet for this one, because he’s going to want to roll with it.
It’s a fast swing, hard enough to take teeth out. He doesn’t bother disguising the throw, and—of course—Harrington ducks, fast and graceful, coming through with some of that agility that makes him such a vexing defensive player. Then he’s up and punching Billy in the mouth, and again across the jaw; meaner now that he knows he has to put Billy down and keep him down.
The third hit hurts just right, gets him tasting his own blood over his teeth, shorts him out, everything else falling away to white noise. Harrington getting laid out now is just an inevitability; he can keep dodging or he can take his licks early—Billy’s not going to be able to stop until he’s pulp.
In the end, Harrington goes belly up without much of a fuss, cradling his head like he’s still trapped in the moment of a plate breaking over it. Billy barely sees him—can’t hear a thing over the rush of adrenaline. He’ll remember details later: the drawn-out hurt sound Harrington couldn’t control; the way he’d staggered, tried to draw away out of Billy’s grip, instinctively afraid to get hit again; the limp roll of his head side to side and the slick spill of blood as his lip split open.
The unexpected sting of the needle.
Max.
It’s better than being high, whatever she's just stuck him with. He stumbles to his feet, the world turning syrupy in the time it takes to pull the syringe out of his neck, the ground tilting out from under him just as soon as he tries to step forward.
Yeah, this is definitely cheating.
Max is saying something, angry, suddenly taller than him—over him?—the colors of her hair and face bleeding together like a smeared oil painting. Billy’s mouth is cotton candy. He can’t hear her, is too busy melting down to particles to reply.
Then he’s underwater.
^^^
Once, Billy’s mom took him out of school so they could go to the beach. He doesn’t remember much about it, except for the anxious feeling of looking back to shore every so often, afraid she wouldn’t be able to see him so far out, and the sucking blackness of the current that pulled him under for a full minute.
He’s in that blackness now, one moment sinking, rolling, breathing water and then—jerking awake—Max slamming a bat full of nails between his legs, but then he blinks and—
Nothing.
He’s alone, the smack of the bat on the floorboards just an echo in his brain.
It takes him a long slew of moments to remember where he is, flat on his back, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, thoughts coalescing inside his aching skull. He has no idea how long he’s been out for but it’s long enough that his body is stiff with cold, the front door of the Byers’ house left wide open, paper sliding over the floor like dead leaves.
He’d registered that the place was a dump when he first pushed his way in. Beat-up furniture, busted window and glass on the floor, the psych ward drawings taped up everywhere—the Wheeler woman hadn’t given him the half of it. But now that he’s actually looking around the place is downright fucking creepy. No way in hell he’s ever coming back here, or Max either, once this gets back to Neil.
He picks himself up, scrubbing at the blood crusted under his nose and testing his jaw while he waits for his half-frozen legs to cooperate. His face is throbbing and numb so he heads for the kitchen.
This shithole better have ice.
His hand is on the fridge door before he realizes he’s standing amidst the wreckage of all its scattered contents. Shelves and soggy ready meals, and something spilled and slimy. Something fucking stinks. He scoops up a half-defrosted bag of peas, pressing it to his lip and then dropping it when he realizes the bag is more wet than cold. Peas explode everywhere, skittering over the floorboards, over the swathes of scribbled-on paper.
Jonathan Byers, he thinks with dim amusement. Billy dismissed the guy as just some inconsequential loner type too cliché to warrant his attention—a fact which they’d both used to their advantage, sharing the occasional lunch break in the school darkroom, mutually disinterested in each other. When Billy next sees him they’re going to have a little chat. Anyone living in this level of fucked up has layers.
Well. There’s no ice. And no food that Billy is interested in eating if the smell of rot coming off the fridge is any indicator. He’s wasted enough time here and he’s still not sure what his next move should be. When he steps out on the porch he’s half-expecting to see a police car, or Neil’s truck maybe. But there’s nothing. He's already patting his pocket for his keys before he even truly processes just how much nothing he’s seeing.
Bitch, he thinks.
Bitch.
His stomach goes cold and hollow at the shock of it—can barely process that she would dare. If Max thinks her little show of assertiveness is going to survive the night and letting Steve Harrington take his car out for a joy ride then she has another thing coming. Even his dad has never touched his car. It’s one of the few things they both respect.
God, his dad is really gonna let him have it over this—losing Max and now the Camaro. And losing a fight too. He doubts Neil will be too keen to hear Billy’s interpretation on that one.
He smokes two cigarettes on the porch delaying the inevitable. He can probably make it home in under an hour. The Byers are a little further out from the poor end of town but not too far from Cherry, and on foot there are some woods he can cut through.
He sticks his last cigarette in his mouth, jams his hands inside his shirt under his arms to keep them warm, and starts the long walk home.
^^^
He gets lost almost immediately after running out of smokes. He’s on some street that’s completely black, the street lights browned out. The houses either side of him are dark, people inside already fast asleep. He could go knock on somebody’s door and turn up the charm, maybe even score a lift home, but he honestly doesn’t have a smile left in him, and his face is probably too banged up anyway.
He’s so strung out from the cold that he’s no longer even angry at Maxine. He’s actually kind of impressed that she had the smarts to maroon him, keep him out of the house while she no-doubt spins her own stories to Susan and Neil about where she’s been all night and what Billy’s done. She might be a Mayfair but apparently she’s got the Hargrove spine.
He has plenty of time to figure out how he feels about this latest sucker punch to his ego on his walk.
When they’d first moved to Hawkins, he’d had this notion in his head that he could get all of the resentment and festering rage out of his system by giving it the reins. His anger was supposed to punish her—this is your fault—this is the brother you get now—and then, after it was spent, he was supposed to be able to forgive her, give her back the Billy she knew from before, like a sort of peace offering.
He’d really thought it would be that simple. Like maybe he’d wake up one day and what happened back in Cali wouldn’t—wouldn’t hurt so bad. Wouldn’t be this wound in him that he couldn’t even look at without feeling so hot-sick-embarrassed it made him want to rip out of his own skin.
The only thing that had made this shitstain excuse for a town bearable was knowing that she was suffering too, just as alone.
But then somehow she just...wasn’t. Against all odds she’d found something in Hawkins that got her out from under the same weight that was suffocating him. She’d made friends. As if Hawkins was her home. As if—
And Billy wasn’t even allowed to—
Billy was just—he swallows around the emotion. Left behind. Stranded. Empty. As if all the anger he’d let fuel him had hollowed him out, changed the fabric of him.
Timid little Maxine who’d been his burdensome shadow since their parents met, who’d dogged his every step like a hungry stray, cobbling together a personality out of his hobbies and his way of speaking and his music and his clothes. The girl who’d had to sneak into his school cafeteria because she didn’t have anyone else to eat lunch with.
She hadn’t been waiting around for his forgiveness.
She’d cut her losses.
The realization had only truly dawned on him once he was looking at her open window himself, needing proof, the night air ruffling the curtains, cool on his stinging cheek, brain swimming with the knowledge that she’d fucked him over so spectacularly. Again. “We can’t find Maxine,” Susan had said, the words knocking him off-center, recoloring their conversation. He’d still miscalculated anyway, digging himself in deeper, pissed about being left to babysit, missing the moment when he should have played the penitent son.
Driving up and down half of Hawkins he'd realized how stupid he’d been not to see it happening right under his nose; how he already had a handful of names and places to start looking for her at: Lucas Sinclair, Dustin, Zombie Boy. The kid with the stink-eye... Billy used to sneak out his window too, back when it seemed like there was nothing Neil could do to him that would get in the way of him and a good time with his friends.
He tucks his hands in tighter under his arms and grits his teeth, feeling pretty damn sorry for himself. He doesn’t indulge in the feeling often.
He’s so absorbed in coming up with plausible excuses for his return that he misses the slowing approach of a car, not registering the slice of headlights until tires are crunching over the dirt shoulder beside him.
It’s a cop.
Of course. The cherry-on-top of his shit luck tonight.
The car pulls up alongside him, rolling to a stop. It’s dark in the cab but he can make out the driver: a gruff-looking older guy—Billy’s specialty.
“Get in, kid.”
“You arresting me?” he drawls, coming a little closer to where heat is spilling out of the cracked passenger window. “Sir,” he adds.
“Sooner or later, I’m sure,” the guy says wearily. “Look. It’s been a long night, just—get in the car would you?”
Billy doesn’t need to be told twice, shoving himself down into the seat and jamming his freezing fingers up against the vents. The cab smells like Camels. The cop leans over and cranks the heat up, eyeballing Billy’s instinctive wariness. He checks the guy’s badge out the corner of his eye.
Police Chief Hopper.
They drive in uncomfortable silence for a couple of blocks.
“I just got done dropping Steve Harrington home with two black eyes he’s going to have to explain to his momma in the morning,” Hopper says, taking his eyes off the road to give Billy a shrewd look. “You know anything about that?”
Billy swallows. Harrington better not have grassed on him. “He told you it was me?”
“No.” The man cocks an eyebrow at his bruised face. “Just thought you looked like matching dance partners is all.” He eyes Billy’s near-open shirt. “There a good reason why you’re walking around at one in the morning without a jacket?”
Billy bares his teeth in the semblance of a grin. “Just looking for the nearest beach.”
Hopper sighs like he can’t be assed pushing the matter. “Okay, smartass. Where’s home then?”
Not fucking here, Billy thinks, giving him an address.
Hopper darts a look at him. “You sure about that?”
“It look like I want to spend another hour walking around freezing my fucking nuts off?”
“Okay, okay. Jesus,” he says, taking the next turn. “Your mother know you got a mouth on you?”
“I don’t know,” Billy deadpans. “Guess I’ll ask her if I ever see her ghost around.”
“Damn, kid, all right. Screw me for trying.” He runs a hand over his face. “Let’s not talk then. That’s just fine.”
Billy doesn’t push his luck by messing with the Chevy’s radio, but it’s a near thing and the drive takes an age, identical garden lawns and mailboxes sliding by his window as they navigate the sleepy suburban sprawl. It gets to him, how dark it gets out here. How quiet. In Hayward there was always someone with a light on, noise from people and cars in the street, televisions blaring away through shared walls. He used to hang a sheet over the top of his ratty curtains to keep out the glare of the streetlamp across from his bedroom window.
In Hawkins there are only stars—not that he’s ever going to take the time to stand around in some cow field to look at them.
Hopper lets him out on the curb without a fuss, so Billy doesn’t play the stroppy teenager either, giving the man a respectful nod once he’s shut the car door, hoping he’ll leave before drawing too much attention from the house.
He doesn’t go in through the front door but cuts around the side, stumbling a little in the darkness, fishing around on the ground for a rock.
It takes three tries before the window opens.
“Carol?” Tommy says blearily, poking his head out, hair stuck up every which way.
“Hi Tommy,” Billy says dryly.
Tommy’s eyes blink properly open. “Oh. Uh...hey…man. What time is it?”
Billy takes an annoyed breath in through his nose. “Look, I need a place to crash. I don’t have time to get into it.”
“Oh,” Tommy says stupidly.
Billy raises his eyebrows after an awkward beat. “So…?”
Tommy frowns. “I mean, my parents are kind of uptight. Is there someone else you can hang with?”
Billy tries not to be disappointed. He sure as hell isn’t going to tell this glorified keg-stand assist he’s the closest thing to a friend Billy has in the whole world. He might not have much but he at least has his reputation.
“Yeah, sure,” he says, spitting into a rosebush to cover the tightness in his throat. “Catch you around, man.” He starts picking his way back towards the side gate.
“All right!” Tommy whisper-yells after him. “Jeez, yeah, okay, you can stay the night.”
Relief knots in his chest as he doubles back. Tommy hasn't moved, looking down at Billy, waiting. Billy stares back impatiently, following his gaze down to the sloping corner eave, to the nearby trellis and back to Tommy's stupid expectant face.
“This isn’t Romeo and Juliet, dumbass,” he hisses. “Get down here and unlock the door for me.”
“Fine! Fine!” Tommy says, shushing him. “Just keep your voice down okay. My dad’s a light sleeper.”
His head finally ducks out of the window but it’s quite a stretch of time before Billy hears him fiddling with the back door, his fingers turning numb in his balled fists. He ushers Billy in like they’re breaking into Fort Knox. As if anyone could hear shit in a house this big, he thinks as they march up the thickly carpeted stairs.
Tommy’s room is in the middle of the upstairs landing. It smells overwhelmingly of socks and something powdery Billy recognizes as Carol’s perfume. There’s a signed basketball jersey on the wall and a cabinet stuffed with little league trophies. It’s so tragically expected that it sucks the last dregs of adrenaline right out of him. Tommy has laid down a comforter at the foot of his bed like it’s a grade school sleepover and Billy’s so thankful he could just buckle onto it.
“Wait here,” Tommy says, disappearing into what Billy’d assumed was a closet but is apparently an ensuite bathroom. Christ. He cringes at the sight of Tommy’s freckly legs sticking out of his boxers when he returns holding out a wet flannel for Billy’s lip. Tommy whistles softly. “Oh man. What did Racy Lacey do to you?”
Billy frowns, taking the flannel. It’s dripping, freezing cold. What a fucking moron. “Huh?”
“Your date? Guess you’re not taking her to prom then.”
Oh. Lacey Fieldman. Carol had set them up, promising Billy she’d be easy. Apparently she used to give out blowjobs under the basketball bleachers between classes. Dammit. What a waste of cologne. He wonders if she’s still awake somewhere, blowing out a candle in the window perhaps, complaining to her diary about him standing her up.
Billy dabs at his lip. Now that he’s out of the cold his face is starting to throb again and there’s a shaky feeling behind his eyes from whatever Max dosed him with. It’s messing with him, making him feel like he’s about to spill his guts right here in Tommy H’s childhood bedroom.
“So who’d you fight?” Tommy asks after a while, eyes flicking over his scraped knuckles.
Royalty, Billy thinks.
“Figure it out yourself Monday.”
Tommy snickers, crawling into his bed and turning the lamp off. Billy is left to crawl onto the comforter on the floor in the dark, his jeans stiff and cold and his belt biting into his hip. They’re both too uneasy around each other to actually sleep, but they lay in silence, letting the warm stillness of the room close in, listening to each other’s careful breathing, until, at some point, Billy must close his eyes.
^^^
Tommy kicks him out early. He gives him a waffle for the road at least, still warm. Billy eats it in four bites, hustled out of bed and down the stairs towards the front door with his boots in hand. He remembers only the vague outline of his dreams, a soup of confused half-memories: Lacey Fieldman waiting for him somewhere under the bleachers; the kaleidoscopic skittering of frozen peas over a kitchen floor; Steve Harrington ducking under his swinging fist, again, again, again…
Tommy is practically bouncing with excitement at getting to sneak Billy out of the house like Billy’s his girlfriend. He keeps bumping their arms together all jock-friendly, leaning in way too close and clapping his hand around Billy’s shoulder. Personal boundaries eroded by one night of poor judgment on Billy’s part. If his mouth wasn’t crammed full of dry waffle he’d tell the guy to push the fuck back.
Tommy pauses at the foot of the stairs, peering around the open entrance where Billy can hear pre-coffee murmuring and the dull clink of cutlery. Tommy waves him past, like now—quick. There’s a flash of some woman with her back turned, pink towel robe, cordless phone hunched up under one ear—and then he’s across, pressing up against a row of hanging coats. He bends down to stuff his feet into his shoes. His body, still warm and clumsy from sleep, prickles at the thought of the cold walk ahead of him.
“Tommy, come help me with this bacon please,” Tommy’s dad says from the kitchen, spying his son in the open space between the stairs and the front door. “Your mother’s been called in for a settlement.”
“Sure, pa,” Tommy says. Fucking lame. He turns his head to mouth, See you at practice at Billy.
Billy gives him an exaggerated thumbs-up he hopes conveys how ambivalent he is towards that prospect—and, as he does so, one of the coats he’s leaned against falls off its hook and onto the floor with a thump.
They both freeze.
“Hold on Jan—Tommy?” a woman’s voice calls from the kitchen. “Who’s there, honey? Did Steve stay over?”
Tommy’s face goes from caught red-handed to hurt to embarrassed inside of a second. Billy doesn’t stick around to see it, grabbing up the coat and sliding out the door before he has to find out any more than he already has. He doesn’t feel sorry for Tommy. Tommy’s about to sit down to a hot breakfast with his Betty Crocker family. What does Billy care if he’s still pining the loss of his friend? Billy’s about to get the strips torn off him. He’ll be lucky if Neil doesn’t make him shave his head again.
He books it over the lawn, slipping into the coat as he jogs. It’s Tommy’s ugly-ass letterman jacket. Great. Now he probably looks like a prick as well as a vagrant.
The walk home in broad daylight is actually infinitely more uncomfortable than the previous night because of the disturbing amount of Loch Nora residents up bright and early, fetching the paper and pushing lawnmowers around. They watch him with suspicion as he walks by, a garish stranger cutting through their cookie-cutter scenery, arms tense at his sides. He’s so focused on not making eye contact with anybody he walks right into the path of a sprinkler, the looping spray soaking the bottom of his jeans.
By the time he makes it home his head is pounding again, a headache settling like a band around his temples, his mouth dry and metallic. He stalks right past the Camaro parked neatly on the verge, taking note of the dented front, the side scraped down to the metal—nothing he can’t fix. Neil will probably relish the opportunity to get some quality father-son time out of it. Just about the only thing they have in common is a knack for fixing cars (and breaking things).
It’s actually a shock that his dad isn’t being his usual huge asshole self and waiting for him in the doorway, but a quick scan of the driveway reveals his truck is gone, and the house is locked and empty. He fishes out the spare key Susan keeps under an ugly ceramic frog and lets himself in.
The first thing he does is strip off and head straight for the shower. There’s still hot water for once and he lingers, letting it stream over him, washing the itch out of his hair, stinging over his bruised face. It’s the first shower he’s had in forever without someone waiting in line or banging on the door for him to hurry up. It seems like a wasted opportunity not to jerk off, but he’s so wrung out and fried, and he knows better than to touch himself under Neil’s roof. He grabs the closest bottle—Susan’s herbal shampoo—and uses it to lather up, rinsing once he’s clean and the warm water has soothed the worst of the cold ache out of him.
He pads over to the sink with a towel wrapped around his waist to assess his reflection in the streaky mirror. His face isn’t half bad. There’s a splotch on his neck where Max stuck him with the syringe, and a dark bruise with a livid center on his jaw—nothing he needs to put iodine on. His eyes are bloodshot. He rakes a comb through his hair, thinking of those weird drawings again and the bitter look Tommy hadn’t even slightly been able to cover. He presses a finger to his chest under his pendant. He heals fast. In a week it will be like no one ever touched him.
When he finally comes out of the bathroom his dad is waiting for him, standing in the kitchen. He puts Billy’s keys down on the counter, next to Susan’s simmering pot-roast.
“Maxine came home at midnight last night,” he says.
Billy swallows, his grip tensing up around the knot of his towel. He can hear Max and Susan outside, Max whingeing, car doors slamming, getting groceries out of the car.
“Do you want to tell me where she was?”
It’s the same tactic as the cop had used: rope to hang himself with—except that it’s completely different stakes. Except that his dad wants him to lose. He’s watching Billy, jaw not ticking yet, but tense, waiting for Billy to make it easy for him to take the mask off.
Billy has no idea what line Max has already fed him about her disappearing act or how well their stories will line up. He has to think Maxine wouldn’t have told Neil about Sinclair, or stealing the car, or the bat full of nails. He still doesn’t know himself where she snuck off to before ending up at that creepy house. Or where she went after. Not that any of that really matters to his dad anyway, he couldn’t give less of a shit about where Max’s been—that’s just a show for Susan. No, it’s going to be about Billy not getting Maxine home himself, about failing his bullshit test.
“I’m waiting, Bill,” his dad says.
Billy licks his lips. “She was with her friends. I found her at the Byers’ place—off Cornwallis,” he adds lamely.
“She told us you got into a fight”—and didn’t win it, hangs unspoken in the air.
“So what?” he huffs. “I found her with some creep, dad. Some senior from school. What the hell else was I supposed to do?”
His dad raises his eyebrows at his tone. “You telling me you don’t how to handle yourself without acting like some rabid animal, is that what you’re saying?”
“She got home didn’t she?”
“She got home, in some stranger’s car, after her mother was up the whole night, worried sick—”
“That’s her problem!” Billy says, voice coming out whiny and juvenile like it always does when he gets into it with his father. “It’s not my fault her kid wants to run around town with a bunch of freaks.”
“And her disappearing on your watch? You think that’s not your fault either? How do you think that looks? Like I can’t teach my own kid some basic damn responsibility.” He pauses, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. “You know, I try and I try and I try with you, Billy. I give you every opportunity to prove to me you deserve to be a part of this family.”
Billy swallows. “Yeah, well I—”
“And all I ask is that you don’t embarrass me,” he says, voice gone quiet and dangerous. “All I ask is that you respect the rules of this house, respect that woman out there who is doing her best to raise you right, like you’re her own son.”
That’s laughable. Susan’s not his mother—not even close. His mother was a spitfire, a lousy cook. She had a laugh like a chainsaw.
Susan is just a fixture in his life, a piece of furniture. It makes Billy sneer, thinking of her waiting up in her slippers and hair rollers, acting as if Maxine’s some spoiled little doll who’s never run off before.
“Well maybe she should focus on raising her own kid right first.”
“Wrong answer,” Neil says.
“Well, what do you want me to say?”
Neil looks at him, disbelieving. “Say? I don’t want you to say anything. I want you to act like a man.” He leans in, eyes sliding over him slow and disdainful. “But that’s too much to ask of you, isn’t it, Bill.”
Billy’s heart squeezes in his chest. Neil’s insults never miss, he’s learned over the years what really gets under Billy’s skin. But even he draws the line at certain topics. They’ve both been so careful, stitched the memory of that last night in Hayward up so tight it’s like it never happened. Neil had wanted it that way too, and now he’s ripping off the scab, making them both acknowledge things that are best left alone. Like he can smell it all over Billy again. Like Billy’s slipped up somehow, and he hasn’t.
“Dad, I—”
He’s interrupted by Max bursting through the door, her arms full of bags.
“—never does chores and—Billy!”
She seems surprised to see him. Had she counted on him being smart enough to stay away? Her eyes dart between him and Neil, the tense space between them, her sharp little mind working as Susan bustles in behind her.
“What’s—oh,” Susan says. At the sight of him, her face goes tight and pale. “Hello, Billy.” She makes to close the door behind her and then seems to reconsider. “Maxine, I think we left something—"
Nice try, lady, Billy thinks bitterly. He’s learned not to expect much from her in terms of running interference. What little motherly backbone she has is exclusively for Max.
“No, Susan, let her see,” Neil says, not looking away from him. “It’s about time she learns.”
Billy feels the bottom drop out of his stomach. He hadn’t predicted this. Somehow this has gone wrong, just like the argument last night, sliding into more dangerous territory. Neil almost never gets hands-on when his step-daughter is in the house. It’s like Billy’s North Star for how much he can get away with, whether he should brace for impact.
His dad is watching him carefully, waiting to see how he processes this development, if there’s something there he can use.
Susan frowns, putting her groceries down. “Can we talk about this first?”
“You want her to start running wild, with boys?” Neil scoffs. “You said it yourself, she needs to start thinking about how her behavior looks now that she’s a woman.”
“Mom!” Max hisses, turning furious red.
Oh Jesus. Now he wishes he’d choked on his own saliva and died on the Byers’ floor.
“Neil,” Susan says, wringing her hands. “She’s still tired from last night—”
“No,” Neil’s says, tone firm. “You want him embarrassing us again? Here, in this nice town? You want him teaching her his goddamn…aberrant behaviors, like that’s some way to act?” His nostrils flare. “It might take longer to stick with Billy, but it’s not too late for her. You’ve got to get them early, that was my mistake. I should have stepped in before Roxanne let him turn out—”
“My mom would—” Billy starts, but cuts himself off, biting his tongue.
Neil’s eyes light up with cunning understanding. “Your mom would what, Billy? Something you want to add?”
“No,” Billy says through grit teeth.
“‘No,’ what?”
“No—I fucking said no!” he yells.
Neil shoves him, hard, sends him slipping all over the floor, trying to keep his towel up, his hip clipping the table. Max gasps and Susan says something low and urgent to her.
“So now you want to be tough?” his dad asks, shoving him again while he knows Billy can’t get his voice to come out right, getting all up in Billy’s face the way he knows Billy hates. “You a tough guy, huh, Billy?”
It’s like a goddamn magic trick, that combination. Billy locks his jaw, trying to keep a lid on it, but his eyes are already burning, Neil’s big square face blurring out of focus. He’d rather Neil put him through a wall than anyone see him like this.
Of course, Neil knows that too.
There really is something wrong with Billy. Maybe his mom really did raise him too soft or he’s too much of a sissy or something—and Neil knows that he doesn’t want to be, and this is his way of reminding him that he is—the slaps and shoves, they're just the most expedient way of getting there. He knows the part Billy really hates is the part immediately after, when he’s exposed and squirming, when the delusions he’s bought about himself are peeled away.
He glances at the doorway and, yes, they’ve both seen already. Susan is looking at the ground like she always does, and Maxine—Maxine is looking at him like she doesn’t know what she’s seeing exactly. He can feel his ears turning red, a sick tumbling feeling in his chest.
Neil’s eyes track the suppressed line of Billy’s mouth, trembling at the corners, his balled, useless hands. Whatever he sees is enough to satisfy him. Fuck you, Billy thinks, but he keeps his mouth shut, blisteringly aware that he’s about to cry, that there are always more humiliating parts of him that Neil can dig up and use.
“Remember this next time you want to play big man,” Neil says. “You just remember what you’re made of.” He turns away, dismissive. “Now, go put a shirt on. You’re dripping all over Susan’s clean floor.”
^^^
It was Tommy’s jacket.
That’s what set his dad off, he realizes, after, closing the door to his bedroom softly behind him and sinking against it. He bites into the side of his hand instead of screaming. It just gets so tangled up inside him, all the things he wants to say, all the ways he’s imagined he could win, could make Neil feel small instead. Neil’s right. They do this dance again and again and again and it never sticks.
Tommy’s stupid letterman jacket, so ostentatiously obviously not Billy’s. He’d left it strewn on top of his clothes when he went to take a shower. Fucking careless. It even smells like something else. Tommy’s aftershave, something clean and citrus, something a mom would keep throwing in her cart at the supermarket. It makes his skin crawl to think of Neil in here looking at it, picking it up, listening to Billy in the shower.
He shudders.
It’s coming up to the surface again.
He'd thought it was gone, but here it comes, out from under the wave, legs beating against the bottomless darkness, desperate, striving for air.
He needs to find a way to drown it.