Chapter Text
That night, 1984
He had insisted that he didn’t need to go to hospital, but no one had listened to him. They’d all reconvened back at the Byers’ house, all the kids and Hopper and Nancy and Joyce and Jonathan, with fucking Hargrove sprawled on one of the sofas and Eleven – who he’s heard so much about, but never actually met – passed out on the other one. Hopper had carried her in, and Mike had rushed over to her side, and now sits on a chair next to her holding her hand and glaring fiercely at anyone who suggests otherwise.
Will is exhausted. He has enormous hollows underneath his eyes, and Joyce bundles him up and takes him to bed with a quick smile at Steve. So it’s Hopper who’s the last adult, the one to take over Steve’s position as person-in-charge and tell him he needs medical attention.
“I’m fine,” Steve protests. He’s sitting at the kitchen table with Dustin, Lucas and Max, a pack of frozen carrots wrapped in a tea towel against his swollen purple face.
“Steve,” Nancy says softly from the doorway. He glances up at her, and then wishes he hadn’t; Byers is holding her hand. “You look terrible.”
Max fidgets. “Billy nearly killed him,” she says, the traitor.
“But Steve put up a great fight,” Dustin adds quickly, as though that might be in doubt. Steve sighs and switches the carrots to the other side of his face.
“Hospital,” Hopper repeats, in a no-nonsense kind of voice. “You have no idea what brain damage this sack of shit—” He cuts himself off, glaring at Hargrove’s inert form from underneath his bushy eyebrows.
“I’ll be fine,” Steve says again. “I survived the Upside Down, didn’t I—”
Hopper takes a step forward. “Yeah, kid, you did,” he says. “And we’ll be discussing just what you were thinking, going there, another time.” He glances around at the kids, who have the grace to look away guiltily. “You were jacked up on adrenaline. You need to go to hospital, and goddammit, I’m not hearing another argument about it.” For a moment, his eyes linger on Eleven, lying next to Mike on the couch. “I’m not losing anyone else,” he says softly.
“I’ll take you,” Nancy begins, but Steve flinches involuntarily, and she subsides.
“I’ll take you,” Byers says, which is hardly any better, but Hopper nods.
For a while, in the car, neither of them speak. Steve leans his head back against the headrest and tries to ignore the pounding in his head and the way his eyes have swollen up so much he can barely see. Byers glances over at him a few times, tries to pretend he isn’t doing it.
Steve looks at him. Byers is biting his lip. He says, tiredly: “It’s okay, man.”
Another flickering look. “I want you to know,” Byers says, “I mean, me and Nancy… Nothing happened, you know, until after you guys…”
“Yeah,” Steve says. He turns away, looks out the window. “I get it.”
There’s a silence, which feel spectacularly loud. Byers says, quietly: “I’m sorry.”
Steve looks back at him. There’s a tiny hard part of him that wants to hold onto the anger, hold onto Nancy, but honestly? He doesn’t have the energy for it. He thinks about Hargrove, still passed out on the Byers’ couch. Maybe the old him, King Steve, would be ready for a fight over this. Ready to make his second attempt at beating Jonathan’s face in, and probably ready to fail again.
He’s not that guy anymore.
“It’s okay,” he says again. He sighs. “Look, I get it. Nancy’s…” He swallows. “Special. And I’ve always known you guys were close.” He looks straight ahead, watches the road disappear under the wheels of the car. “If it’s not going to be me, I’m glad it’s you.”
“I get that,” Byers says softly. He gives an odd, gentle laugh. “That’s kind of how I felt, before.”
“Yeah, so,” Steve says, leaning back. “We’re cool.”
They tell him, at the hospital, that he’s concussed. It’s not really a surprise; Steve’s really starting to feel the effects of the beating Hargrove dealt out now. He stumbled, rather than walked, into the ER. They clean up his face and give him some painkillers, and then he’s sent home, with strict instructions to Jonathan to wake him up every hour.
“You don’t have to stay with me,” Steve says half-heartedly, when Byers pulls up outside his house.
Jonathan looks at him. “Are your parents home?”
Of course they aren’t. “No,” he says sullenly.
Byers laughs. “Then I’m staying,” he says simply.
Steve’s head is pounding, so he takes the painkillers they gave him at the hospital and flops onto the couch with an exhausted sigh. Byers sits on the armchair, glances over at the TV and then doesn’t turn it on. Steve is too tired to ask why. He lets his eyes close with grateful relief.
“Do you think Billy will make things difficult for Max?” Byers asks thoughtfully.
Steve cracks open one eyelid. “Hargrove?” he says. He can feel his teeth grinding together at even the mention of the name. “He’s a coward.”
“True,” Byers acknowledges. “Still.”
“Hopper will take care of him,” Steve says sleepily, letting his eyes close again. “He’s going to talk to Max’s parents. Get them to keep him in line.”
Byers makes an odd, shuddery sound. “I don’t envy him,” he says. “Neil Hargrove creeps me out.”
“Never met him,” Steve says.
“He’s come into the store before, when mom was working,” Byers tells him. “Kinda lost it at one of the cashiers. Not mom, one of the guys. I was there. It was weird.”
Steve settles himself further into the couch cushions. “Well, good,” he says. “Maybe he’ll lose it at Billy.” He touches his face gingerly, winces. “Kid deserves it.”
“He sure got you good,” Byers agrees. “Go to sleep, Steve. I’ll wake you up to check you’re still alive.”
“Good to know,” Steve says dryly, but honestly he feels warm, and kind of safe, falling asleep on his couch with Jonathan Byers at his side. His face is aching, but the painkillers are starting to kick in, and the pain isn’t so sharp anymore. The cushions are soft underneath his head - way softer than the ones on Joyce Byers’ lumpy sofa, though he doesn’t say that to Jonathan - and his eyes flutter closed.
It’s over. They fought the monsters, and they won. Steve knows he’s not really important, not like that freaky Eleven kid or Byers’ little brother or even Nancy, but he managed to keep the kids safe, and now…
Now he can rest. So he does.
*
Billy wakes up to a sharp nasty smell prickling his nose and too much unnatural light. He’s still in the creepy shack with all the drawings on the walls, lying on a couch underneath the window, and it’s still dark outside. He can’t have been out too long.
There’s a man standing over him, and as he blinks and makes himself wake up – his head feels as though it’s splitting apart – he realizes that it’s the Chief.
“Sir,” he says, almost respectfully, because he’s not an idiot.
The Chief just growls. He looks… weary, and kind of dirty. His clothes are creased, and there’s a smudge of something dark on his forehead. Billy pushes himself into a sitting position, and takes stock of the room.
Walls, still creepy. The drawings are everywhere, mostly on white paper but some on blue or orange. They’re joined together like some kind of fucked up map. His eyes track the nearest pathway until he reaches the doorway. Max, the fucking traitor, is stood just slightly behind the rim of the door. Sinclair is with her, and that other curly-haired kid he’s seen her hanging around with. There’s another boy there too, with dark hair and watchful sharp eyes.
Billy doesn’t bother meeting Max’s eyes. She made her point pretty clear earlier, and while he’s still mad at her for it – so, so fucking mad – he also has the unpleasant sensation of not wanting to confront her again. Like he’s intimidated by her, or something. He feels his teeth grind together in his mouth, and he shakes his head and looks away.
The wallpaper is dingy, the whole place mildly unpleasant, and Billy hasn’t even begun to catalog the books on the shelves to his right or the corridor leading off to other rooms or the color of the kitchen table. It’s making him itch under his skin, not to know this place, to be able to map it out in his head, but he ignores the sensation and looks back up at the Chief.
“Where’s Harrington?” It’s a legitimate question, but it’s not what he’s really wondering. He remembers beating Harrington pretty bad. He’d lost it, just given over to the red hot burn of it all, and he’s not totally sure he hadn’t killed him.
The Chief grunts again. “Hospital,” he says. He frowns. “He’ll be fine, no thanks to you.”
Ah. So here it is. Billy, resigned, holds out his wrists; he knows how this story goes. “Take me away, Chief,” he says dramatically, and then laughs, the sound harsh in the small quiet room. He thinks of how incredibly pissed his dad is going to be, and laughs again.
Max makes a tiny, muted sound. The Chief looks over to her; Billy does not.
“Okay, kid,” the Chief says. He turns back to Billy, and his glare intensifies. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to take you and your sister home—”
“She’s not my sister,” Billy interrupts, tipping his head back lazily.
“Goddammit!” the Chief says, and then he bangs a fist against the wall so unexpectedly that even Billy flinches a little. “I’m taking you and the kid home, and you’re going to leave her, and these kids, and Harrington, alone, and in return I’m not going to arrest your ass.” He brings his face close to Billy’s, too close, and his eyes narrow meanly. “Got it?”
Billy swallows, and focuses on not looking anywhere near as intimidated as he feels. “Sure,” he says. The Chief takes a tiny step forward, and Billy holds up his hands instinctively. “I got it,” he says.
“He already promised,” Max says from the doorway.
“Not actually true,” Billy says, holding a finger up, because sometimes he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. He puts it down again when the Chief growls at him. “Sentiment was there,” he allows. He thinks about Max, yelling at him with that bat in her hands, making him repeat himself. And then he thinks about where she learned that from.
The Chief takes them home, Max sitting in the front of his cruiser and Billy sprawled across the back seat. He’s deliberately not thinking about how his dad is going to react to the pair of them being dropped home past midnight by the chief of police. No one says anything all the way home. Max sits hunched over, her red hair falling over her face, and Billy just looks out of the window and watches the bare trees go by and tries to ignore his migraine.
The lights are still on when they get to Billy’s house, which means that Susan is up worrying. He leans forward, speaking for the first time. “What are you going to tell them?” He hates the faint tremor in his voice.
Max glances back over her shoulder, and then whips her head back around as though she wishes she hadn’t.
“The truth,” the Chief says slowly, and Billy is suddenly struck with the odd sense that whatever he’s about to say is going to be the opposite of truthful. “Your sister snuck out to go sleep over at Will Byers’ house, and you came to find her.” He turns to glare at Billy. “If you hadn’t got yourself into a fight with Harrington, you’d have been home hours ago.”
“You’re going to tell them about the fight?” Billy says, and then wishes he could bite back the words.
The Chief narrows his eyes. “Someone needs to get you in line, kid,” he says, his voice harsh, and Billy’s stomach feels like it’s dropping to his feet.
He gets out of the car first. Better to face the music sooner rather than later.
The Chief strides over to the front door, raps sharply a couple of times. Max looks small and damp behind him, her hair a curtain around her face. Billy shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks on his heels, watching as the shadow behind the curtains of the living room window rises and moves towards the sound.
The door opens, and Billy deliberately looks the other way.
“Maxine!” Susan sobs out, and she practically falls onto Max’s thin shoulders, pulling her into a hug. “Where have you been?” She glances up at the Chief. “We were just thinking of calling you!”
“Hopper, isn’t it?” comes a new voice, and Billy’s heart starts thumping. “My God. Thank you for finding her.”
Chief Hopper coughs. “She was at the Byers’,” he says. “You know Joyce Byers?”
“Oh,” Susan says confusedly, “yes—” She looks at Billy’s dad.
“Her kid Will is in Max’s class,” Hopper prompts. There’s a pause, and then he adds, awkwardly: “And her other son Jonathan goes to school with Billy here.”
Neil Hargrove takes a step forward. It’s just a step, just one little movement of his feet, a yard closer, but Billy feels it like a thud to the back of his head. “Billy,” he says quietly. He looks at Hopper. “What happened?”
Hopper opens his mouth to speak, but Billy gets there first. “Got in a fight,” he says, looking off to the side like he’s bored. “Creeper kid from school.”
“He’s not a creep!” Max cries. She turns to her mom. “I wanted to go to Will’s to hang out with my friends. Steve was babysitting.” She glares at Billy. “Billy beat him up.”
Billy holds up his hands. “Hey, dude lied to me,” he says. He looks at his dad, then, registers the quiet tight fury in his eyes. Tries to will him to get it without sounding like he’s doing it. “He told me Max wasn’t there. What was I supposed to think?”
“That I didn’t want you around, asshole!” Max says impatiently. “Mom, Billy’s always trying to stop me hanging out with my friends. It wasn’t Steve’s fault.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t, honey,” Susan says, hugging her again, but Billy isn’t listening anymore. Neil has a hard, angry look in his eyes, and it’s more effective than if he’d drawn a line across his throat.
The Chief says: “Harrington will be alright, but he took one hell of a beating.” He scratches his chin, glances at Billy. “I’m not going to be taking this any further this time, Mr Hargrove, but I’m going to need you to have a word with Billy. I know kids will be kids, but this…”
“I understand,” Neil says quietly. “Trust me, Chief, I know this is unacceptable.” He looks, very briefly, at Billy. “I’ll make sure Billy knows it too.”
Susan takes Max to bed after the Chief leaves, with just one shaky glance back over the top of her daughter’s head at Billy and Neil. Billy just waits.
Billy, later, thinks about Harrington. He thinks that, on balance, he’s glad he didn’t kill him. It’s difficult to remember the fight in any real detail; he’d been so angry, so fucking angry, and he’d had Lucas Sinclair up against the wall because he wouldn’t leave Max alone and she wouldn’t fucking listen to him—
Harrington had hit first. He knows that much. Sure, he’d pushed and shoved and shouted, but it was Harrington who threw the first punch. For the first time that evening, Billy had stopped feeling angry and coiled up like a loaded spring with nowhere to go; all that fucking rage, all the unfairness of the whole thing, all of it had given way to a kind of weird exhilaration that coursed through him, taking all the other crap with it.
King Steve. He’s heard that one a few times, but tonight is the first time he’s understood it. Understood who Harrington was, before Billy came to town. It was incredible, like the world’s greatest high, fighting Harrington. Absorbing his punches, and cracking back down. But then Harrington had stopped punching back. Just laid there, like even as Billy bloodied his face he was too good for it all, and all the anger had come rushing back, his head pounding, and the rest isn’t too clear anymore.
He remembers Max, smashing that stupid fucking bat between his legs. Remembers her demanding his complicity. Say it, she’d said. His dad does that too. Always works. He knows – he’s done it himself, to Max, after all.
He wants to get into it again. Wants Harrington to fight back, wants it to go on long and bloody. Was Harrington even really trying, or is he just a pussy? He wants Harrington be stronger. Wants it to be a proper fight. Imagines Harrington hitting him in the side of the head, laying him out. Taking him down.
Carefully, Billy touches the lump on the back of his head. It’s just slightly sticky, but he doesn’t think it’s bled much. His dad did it, shoved him up against the wall, and it’s not fair because Billy can’t fight back. He wants it to be a mark from Harrington. Wants it to be even. His cheek is flaming from the heavy-handed slaps Neil gave him, his nose throbbing from the punches Harrington did manage to get in. The pain feels good, grounding. He can imagine that all of it is from the fight, from the adrenaline of going toe-to-toe with Harrington. The aftermath, the quick ugly shove that caught his side against the kitchen counter, the dirty slaps, the spittle hitting his face, the push that sent him to the ground – none of that has to be real.
“Harrington, you little bitch,” Billy whispers into the warm air of his bedroom. If you look at it that way – if Harrington did all this to him – you kind of have to be impressed. Such a pretty boy, with his carefully styled hair and expensive car, but underneath it King Steve must be a real badass. Went head-to-head with Billy Hargrove, of all things – gave as good as he got, knocked Billy to the floor, made him bleed, left him with marks.
Better King Steve than Neil Hargrove, that’s for sure.