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1985
She doesn’t remember running towards El and Billy, nor does she remember sinking to her knees besides them. But one second she’s watching Billy and the Mind Flayer collapse together like marionettes on strings, and the next second her knees are clacking against the cold tiles.
El’s still whimpering, and Mike, who must’ve been beside Max as she ran, dives for her, pulling her into his arms and away from the black blood leaking from Billy’s body. Billy isn’t whimpering. He’s not making any sound at all. He’s just curled up on his side lying on the floor, the way he sometimes does when Neil gets too rough.
That’s usually when Max tries to reach out to him. To offer him ice, or bandaids, or even just company, and in return, he spits vitriol in her face. Once he’d actually spat at her. Or tried to — it had hit the ground beside her feet, tinged a pale pink colour from where he bit into his tongue.
He didn’t even seem to regret it, or feel embarrassed. He’d just called her a little bitch who couldn’t mind her own business, just like her mom.
She’d felt it when he fell, the dull thud reverberating around the mall. It felt like a hole suddenly formed in her chest, like someone had punched their fist right through her ribs, and come out her back. Like that time, back in San Diego, when Billy had punched a hole in his wall, and his fist came out into her room. They’d moved to Indiana not long after that.
She’s never felt an anguish that strong when she’s seen Billy hurt before. Not even on those rare occasions she saw Neil slapping Billy. Sometimes, when it happened after Billy had been yanking her around, and threatening her friends, and breaking her shit, she’d feel a little vindictive watching. Like Billy deserved it for being such an asshole. But she always felt bad afterwards. She doesn’t want to be like them, someone that likes it when another person gets hurt. Mostly though she just feels a little sad. Sad that Billy’s dad hits him, and sad that Billy doesn’t let her help him.
So when Billy fell, and it hit her like a truck, she knew this time was different to all the other times she’s seen Billy hurt. This time she’d known she’d just lost something. She knew she lost a brother.
But against all odds when she reaches Billy, he’s still breathing. Bleeding and shaking, his heart probably working in overdrive, but still, somehow, beating. Her heart still hurts, but she guesses this must just be how it feels when someone you… when you see a person you know hurt.
She doesn’t know where she can touch him without hurting him. She’s never really known how to. Neither of them have. Sometimes she thinks she and Billy are just predisposed to hurt each other. Billy hurts Max every time she tries to help him. He throws it back in her face; starts talking about her shitty dad, and how he didn’t even care enough to stick around, that he abandoned Max. Then he normally grabs her until her arm goes red and starts to bruise.
Max hurts Billy just by existing. She knows he wishes she was never born so his life would be easier.
When they’d first met, Max had been so excited to have a brother, she’s always wanted someone that got it. Someone that knew what it was like to live in her home. The harsh reality was revealed to her pretty quickly. She was just too unlovable.
“Max…” El’s hand settling onto her shoulder jolts Max, and she realises she’s spent the last few minutes just staring at Billy as he lay unconscious, bleeding out onto the floor. They probably thought there was something seriously wrong with her. How could anyone just stare blankly at their hurt sibling?
“Are you okay?” El asks stiltedly, her throat probably still hurting from where Billy choked her. Not Billy, Max reminds herself, the Mind Flayer. It doesn’t help that it was wearing Billy’s face at the time. It probably also doesn’t help that whenever she thinks of El’s face, and Billy’s expression as he chokes her, she just sees Billy throwing Lucas up against a wall, and promising to hurt him because of Max. She just sees that plate coming down on Steve’s head, and all the blood.
Billy didn’t mean to hurt El this time. But he’s hurt the people she loves before. If Max pissed him off enough, or broke one of his stupid rules, he’d probably hurt El anyway, just to hurt Max.
El’s still looking at her expectantly.
“I’m fine…” Max tells El, looking back down at Billy’s shivering form on the floor. “He needs help.” She says weakly.
“He’ll be okay.” El tells her, not a single waver in her voice.
“Hopper said backup was coming, right?” Mike asks. “They’re usually pretty useless for the actual fighting, but they should be able to help Billy.” Mike scoots closer. Not touching Max, but offering support all the same.
His nose was still bleeding from where… Max doesn’t actually know what happened to Mike, Billy had already thrown her aside before hurting El and Mike. Not Billy. Not Billy. Billy didn’t choose to do that. She reminds herself. But would he have? She doesn’t want to think about that. But she also can’t look away from the red blood dripping down onto Mike’s cheek.
Footsteps race towards them, and Max catches sight of Lucas skidding across the floor to reach her, pulling her slightly away from Billy’s unconscious body like she needs to be protected from him. Maybe she does. She doubts Billy will rise up and start tossing them around again like he has been the last few days, but Lucas’ scared face flashes in front of her eyes again. She wonders what he thought about Billy in that moment. What he thought Billy was willing to do to him. What he thought Billy was capable of. Max remembers being scared that Billy would kill him. That he’d just snap Lucas in half like he had her skateboard, and her walkman, and her favourite picture of her and her dad.
For months afterward that November, she’d have this dream; that it wasn’t Steve Billy had mercilessly pounded, but Lucas. And he wasn’t lucky enough to walk it off after a short hospital visit.
They’ve never really talked about that night. Well. Not about Billy and Lucas. She’d told Lucas, once, that she wouldn’t judge him if he hated Billy. That she did too, sometimes. And he’d just nodded at her, and they never mentioned it again.
“…Max? Max?” Lucas calls out her, looking at her with big, worried eyes. “Are you hurt?” His eyes are scanning her face, landing on her cheekbone, and one hand reaches out to lightly graze it. She winces, and Lucas pulls back, apologising.
Her cheekbone is kind of aching, and her head’s pounding like it did a couple years ago when she and her dad had stayed up all night to complete a movie marathon of every shitty horror movie they could find.
Her heart aches a little too. She wonders if it’s because it still hasn’t gotten the memo that Billy is alive. Or maybe it’s just preparing for the worst.
“I’m fine, Lucas.”
He pulls her in, and Max gives herself a moment to relax into his arms. Suddenly it feels like her whole body is stiff and bruised. She doesn’t think she could stand up and back away from him if wanted to. And she doesn’t. She’s missed him, even though it hasn’t actually been that long since they were separated. But it feels like days. She doesn’t ever want to go through the end of the world without him. She spent every second sure that he was dead, or dying somewhere. That B… that someone had found him, and hurt him just because she loves him, and he isn’t the “right kind of boyfriend” for a girl like her. Which is ridiculous. The Mind Flayer doesn’t care about who Max dates, or if they’re white. It just wants to kill everyone. The only people that do care about Lucas’ race are…
She looks down at the black blood again. It’s starting to soak into her shoes.
“Dustin says about a dozen helicopters are coming our way.” Lucas tells her, “that’s gotta be a good thing, right?”
If Billy doesn’t get help soon, he’ll probably die.
Max doesn’t want Billy to die. Not right now. Not like this. Not as she watches him slowly bleed out. He’d tried to help. He’d saved El.
That’s got to be worth something. It has to be.
1984
Max doesn’t know who she was expecting to meet her and Lucas at the junkyard, other than Stalker’s fellow stalkers. But beside Dustin is an older teenage boy, with cool hair and expensive clothes.
He doesn’t look like the kind of teenage boy that would help a bunch of kids hunt monsters on a weekend, or the kind to help a bunch of middle schoolers play a really weird prank on her. Nor does he look like he’s Dustin’s brother or something. So he has no real reason to be here, but he’s taking this shit seriously. Like he’s invested. Like he’s involved in this whole thing.
He enlists her help quickly; telling her what shit to grab, and where to put it, and helping her carry a big sheet of metal with ease when she flounders under the weight.
He introduces himself as Steve. Steve Harrington.
Once the bus is fortified, and Max has opened up to Lucas in ways she hasn’t since she was a kid, Max comes face to face with a demon dog. It shrieks. She screams. Then Steve jumps in front of her, pushing her back, holding his spiked bat aloft, and yelling hoarsely at the dog-like monster. But not in fear, in a kind of protective anger.
It’s the safest Max has felt in years.
Which is kind of an insane thing to say, she guesses, about a guy she’s just met, while she’s surrounded by monsters and trapped in a rusting old school bus. But she does. Feel safe.
No one’s ever really managed to protect her, or kept her safe. Not her mom, or Neil, or Billy. Not even her dad, he’d just let her mom drag her off to Indiana with her asshole stepdad and stepbrother. A few of them had tried to take care of her, she’ll give them that. But she still got hurt.
But Steve doesn’t even know her, and he’s already putting his life on the line for her. He’s throwing himself at monsters just to keep her safe.
She doesn’t know how she’ll thank Steve for that. For doing something her own family couldn’t.
1985
Despite it still being the middle of the night, though creeping into the early hours of the morning, it doesn’t take long at all for Neil and her mom to get to Hawkins Memorial. Max guesses that hearing your son is in intensive care might make a father blow through a few stop signs. For most parents that driving force would probably be worry; no doubt Neil was just pissed that Billy landed himself in the hospital and forced Neil out of bed.
Max had called them as soon as Billy was carted off for surgery; the waiting room was suddenly so quiet after everything that had happened in the mall. Her ears were still ringing from the fireworks, and her head was steadily pounding now, right behind her eyes.
The nurses had quickly looked her over, but they seemed pretty preoccupied. There aren’t many patients. There aren’t really many survivors of Starcourt to become patients. But Max knows that the Flayed had been through the hospital earlier, wreaking havoc and destruction and killing the few they ran into. To be honest, Max is surprised the hospital’s even open. They’d caused a hell of a lot of damage.
Max is just sitting in a waiting room chair, thinking about the past few days, and worrying about El and Lucas, when her mom rushes in. Her eyes dart around the room before landing on Max and running to her, pulling her up into her arms and looking her over in worry. Her thumb brushes the air on top of her bruise, but seems to know better than to touch it. Max’s mom kisses her forehead fiercely, and started rapid fire talking about how worried she’s been the last few days; that they hadn’t had contact with her at all only to find out she’d been in some kind of explosion?
Max hadn’t noticed Neil coming in, but she catches sight of him talking to the nurse, waving his arms around. He looks… agitated. She can’t exactly hear what he’s saying, but he seems to be yelling.
“Come on, sweetie. Let me take you home. You need at least a few hours of sleep.” Max’s mom says, rubbing her hands up and down Max’s arm.
“No, Mom. I want– I have to wait here. I can’t go home yet.” Max couldn’t just lie down in her bed and sleep, not after everything that’s happened. Not without knowing whether Billy will live, or if he’ll wake up still Flayed and start attacking everyone. She has to be here to watch him. To make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone else. And if he dies, she has to be here. She just has to.
Her mom eventually relents, and Max is allowed to wait in the hospital with them, but it’s not until early the next morning that they’re allowed to see Billy.
The doctor tries to talk low, so Max can’t listen in, but she hears that Billy’s stomach has been pumped, and he has about a bajillion stitches to keep his insides inside. The doctor says he’ll probably have lasting damage from the bleach and scars that’ll never go away. But he’ll live. He has a second chance. They both do.
Max promised herself last night, before the sun started rising, that she wouldn’t be a shitty little sister if Billy lived. She’d do her best, and she wants to imagines Billy will too. He’ll turn over a new page, and realise he was a dick to her before, a dick to a lot of people. But his near death experience will change all that, and he’ll start hanging out with Max and talking with her the way a real big brother does, the way Steve does.
When they get to Billy’s room, Neil just stands at the foot of Billy’s bed; brow furrowed, just listening to the heart monitor and watching Billy breathe. Max’s mom runs her hand up the Neil’s shoulder, and he lets her keep it there. He doesn’t normally like to do romantic stuff in front of Max or Billy, like holding hands or kissing her mom on the cheek.
Billy’s in a hospital gown, still knocked out on the bed. He doesn’t look that different, Max thinks. He just looks like Billy, but a little sicker.
She feels like seeing Billy look like this should invoke some kind of emotion, but she doesn’t feel anything, really. She’s a little worried, maybe. Like she felt looking at Billy knocked out on the floor at the Byers’ after he’d hurt Steve. He’s sleeping, but something in her is saying that he’s still dangerous. Like a sleeping predator. Like he was someone she had to be wary around, even unconscious in a hospital bed. Like he could rise up at any second, and smack her in the face again, or try to hurt El.
Max kind of just wants to curl up in one of the chairs by his bed, attend to him like a little sister would in those old stories school’s made her read. But her mom suggests running down and getting something to eat. Max knows that’s just code for “Scram, so I can tend to Neil”, but Max is hungry anyway, so she goes.
On the bottom floor, she hears rising voices, and one, very familiar, voice draws her towards the sound.
“Please! I know I’m not family, but I have to see her.”
“I’m sorry, Sir—”
“Lucas?” Max asks, wandering back over to the front desk. He’d offered to come with her the night before, as Max followed Billy into the back of an ambulance, but she’d told him to stay, to keep an eye on things and wait with the others. She didn’t want to be alone, but she didn’t want to put Lucas through, well, Neil.
“Max…” Lucas looks relieved to see her, but also like he’s about the throw up his breakfast. Every step he takes towards her look painful.
“Lucas. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. I have to…” Lucas hesitates. “It’s about Steve.”
“Is he okay?” Max asks. Dustin had told them yesterday all about the Russian code, and secret lab beneath Starcourt Mall, and about Steve and Robin, Steve’s kinda biting coworker, being captured by the Russians to give Erica and Dustin a chance to get away. They’d all wanted to head down with Hopper and save them, but he’d told them all to stay away. Max was pretty sure Nancy was considering shooting them all down if she had to, but eventually relented and stayed with the kids. Hopper had said something about the fact that without her, they’d have only had Jonathan to protect them. Max has been thinking about Steve through the night, worrying about him. Sure that at some point he’d burst through those doors, badly hurt but alive, and run to Max the way her mom had. But he hadn’t.
She’d convinced herself it was a good thing. That it meant that Steve just wasn’t hurt that badly. But now Lucas is here, and looking like that, and she isn’t so sure anymore.
“Is he alright?” Max demands, voice catching. She almost damns Billy for being hurt, for drawing her to the hospital when she should’ve been there, waiting for Steve with the rest of them.
“He– He didn’t make it out, Max.”
Max doesn’t even mean to start shaking her head, but she just– It just can’t be right. It doesn’t make sense. It’s Steve. He always gets back up. He gets hurt, but he gets up, and he keeps them safe. He can’t be– Of course he made it. Lucas is just– He’s just wrong! He got it wrong, or someone else didn’t make it and he’s confusing them for Steve. Or– Or this is all just some horrible prank, and Steve’s gonna burst round the corner with another black eye and he’ll ruffle her hair like he always does when he’s trying to annoy her.
Because Steve has to have made it out. He wouldn’t do this to Max. He would never hurt her like this. He’s one of the only people who never has. He– He wouldn’t change that now. He wouldn’t hurt her, not when she needs him most.
She wants to break down and start crying in Steve’s arms. Where it’s safe. But he’s not… He’s not here. It’s just a quiet, sterile hallway, and Lucas’ clumsy arms around her.
1984
Blood trickles slowly down the side of Steve’s head, just as Max finishes with picking the shattered pieces of ceramic from his hair. Steve had taken that plate to the skull because of Max. She’d tried to protect him back, like he’d protected her, but she was too late to keep him safe.
None of the boys have any first aid training (and Max only really knows what her dad taught her for skateboarding), so she’s been assigned as Steve’s nurse. She would find it a little demeaning, but she… she wanted to help clean Steve up, she wanted to help take care of him. It’s only fair, she figures.
Max wrings one of Mrs. Byers’ dish towels in a bowl of warm water, and tries to gently dab at the blood running along Steve’s hairline, but he flinches violently to the side, blearily opening his eyes, and Max jolts back as if she’s been burnt.
She’s expecting harsh words and a tight fist lashing out; grabbing her wrist, her hair, anything he can reach, to drag her away and off him.
But Steve just looks at her. She’s not sure he even really recognises her, or knows who’s there.
“It’s just me, Max. ‘Random Girl’, remember? I’m just trying to help.” She speaks slowly, holding up the bloodied rag, and silently begging for his mind to be together enough to understand.
Dustin’s searching for bandaids, Mike is down the hall, redrawing the map on a more portable scale, and Lucas is searching the entire property for supplies. Steve just has Max, and she needs to help him. But she can’t do that if he throws her aside like Billy always does.
Steve’s eyes fall to the red-stained towel, and then back up to Max.
His fingers kinda twitch against her knee, and then he’s… patting her, and nodding, and closing his eyes again. “‘anks, Red.” He mumbles, almost incoherent.
Max sits back on her feet. She takes a breath, squeezing Steve’s hand, and continues to clean him up.
1985
Max thought she’d understood how it would feel to lose a brother. For those few seconds before she’d gotten to Billy, she was sure he was dead, and she felt… loss. She thinks. She’d felt pain in her chest, and she thought that was it. That was grief.
But now she knows.
She feels like she’s been hollowed out. Like someone has just opened her up and scooped everything out, and just stolen it all from her. It’s like she’s missing something vital. Like she needs something to keep her heart beating, but someone’s taken it, and she’s not sure how to keep going without it.
She’s not even sure anymore that it was watching Billy fall that gutted her. She thinks she just knew. She’d just known that miles beneath the surface Steve had died. Even as she watched Billy breathe she felt it, as sure as she felt her own pulse, that her brother was dead. And she was right.
She’s numb to the world around her, but trapped in the vicious torture of her own mind. Steve’s dead. A voice keeps whispering the words in her head. Steve’s dead. Over, and over, and over again.
He’ll never bitch about giving them free ice cream again. He won’t complain and roll his eyes, but ultimately still drive them wherever they want to go again. He’s never going to ruffle her hair, or awkwardly pat her shoulder to comfort her again. She’s never going to hear his dorky laugh again, or listen to him sing along to songs on the radio, refusing to lower the volume or change the station no matter how much they make fun of him.
He’s never going to pull her in for a hug again, or tell her that her stepbrother’s a dick that doesn’t deserve to call her family. He’s never going to stand in front of her and throw himself at whatever danger is headed her way again. He’s just… stopped existing. There’s just some big, empty space where he should be standing.
She can’t even comprehend it at first. It just… can’t be true. July is a month in summer. The world is round. Steve’s alive. It’s a simple fact of the universe.
Steve’s vibrant, and excitable, and protective, and alive. There can’t be a world that he doesn’t exist in anymore. It just doesn’t make sense.
But Lucas is shaking as he holds her, and she can feel tears drop onto her face that aren’t hers. And she has to come to terms with the fact that Steve’s death is somehow, horribly, true.
She thinks that’s when her mind starts to shut down. It doesn’t want to live in a world without Steve, so it just blacks out. She doesn’t remember saying goodbye to Lucas, or watching him get into his dad’s car and get pulled in for a hug. She doesn’t remember swerving away from the cafeteria, and heading back up in the elevator to Billy’s room. She doesn’t remember her mom seeing her crying and pulling her in for a hug.
She just blinks and comes to sat at Billy’s bedside. Her mom and Neil are gone somewhere, she doesn’t know where, and she can’t bring herself to care. She’s still stuck in that hallway trying to keep it together in Lucas’ arms.
She knows her face must be red and blotchy, the way it always gets when she cries. Billy makes fun of her for it every time. He likes seeing how long it takes to turn her whole face red; either by pissing her off, or trying to make her cry. But Steve just let Max hide her face in his sweater, and gave her a bottle of water, and waited until she calmed down. He could’ve made fun of her, she knows she looked like a mess. He just chose not to.
The door to the room is propped open, and Max wonders what people would think if they poked their head in as they walked past. They’d see a hurt teenage boy, and his weeping younger sister. They would think she was crying over Billy. They would think they’d put all the pieces together, but they won’t have. They wouldn’t know anything.
She watches Billy. She looks at the ventilators pushing oxygen into his lungs, and the thought slips out before she can stop it. It should’ve been you.
And once it’s out there, she doesn’t want to tuck it back into the hard, dark parts of her heart. It should’ve been Billy.
Max wants to yank out the tubes, and the needles, and the stitches, and take everything flowing into Billy and keeping him alive, and she wants to give them to Steve. He deserves to live. He deserves to be by Max’s side. Hurt, but fighting through it.
Why did Billy get a second chance, when Steve is already cold under the rubble of Starcourt Mall. How is that fair?
She’d wanted Billy to go away forever. She’d wanted him to disappear off the face of the Earth. Not Steve. Never Steve. She’d wanted… She’d… She used to wish her mom had married Steve’s dad. Or that Steve was Neil’s son. So she could call him her brother, and it would be real. It would be true. No one could say she was lying, or making something out of nothing. Steve would be her brother.
She’d wanted her shitty stepbrother gone, not Steve. All her fucking wishes for her brother to disappear, and they’d taken Steve instead.
She’d wished for her brother to die, and he did.