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Steve shouldn’t be surprised that this is where they’ve ended up. Not when every sign pointed in this direction, when every carefully calculated moment that Billy fucking Hargrove had orchestrated between them was to get them all here.
Now that doesn’t mean that he was expecting to end up here exactly - he hadn’t really anticipated nursing a black eye, a split lip, an almost busted nose on the front step of the Byers’ house, with Castellan perched carefully on his knee, one wary, golden eye fixed to Billy and his panting hyena daemon.
Steve doesn’t even know her name.
He should’ve expected the inevitable truce, though. And where that truce would lead.
But for now -
Billy’s leaning against the railing of the porch, chewing on his cigarette more than smoking it, his bag of frozen peas he’d been halfheartedly given sitting untouched on the wooden railing next to him. Steve watches the water from the bag soak into the railing and grimaces a little when Billy’s hyena turns her gaze to him, her blue eyes just as piercing and sharp as Billy’s. Neither of them miss anything.
“So, you gonna explain the corpse in the Byers’ fridge, Harrington? Or am I just gonna have to make guesses?”
Steve’s just sorta glad he didn’t have to make the first move. Be the one to break the silence.
Castellan chitters from her perch on Steve’s knee, stretches up to nudge his chin with her beak. She shakes out her feathers.
Tell them. They deserve to know, especially now that Max is involved.
And Steve had really been hoping that he wouldn’t have to bring anyone else into this, but if anyone was gonna find out about it, it was gonna be Billy. So he grits his teeth and steels himself and tells Billy about last year.
“Look, I don’t have time to go into it all right now,” he says, because he doesn’t - the twerps are inside coming up with some sort of battle plan, and they’ll be out any minute clamoring for Steve to help them and drive them. “But a lot of whack shit happened here last year. Will Byers went missing, got taken into some - some other fuckin’ dimension.”
He grimaces again, and the cut in his lip pulls. He sounds fucking insane. Billy’s looking at him like he is, and honestly, Steve isn’t all that surprised.
“Another dimension,” Billy repeats, slowly, as if testing how the words feel when spoken out loud.
“Look man, I know it sounds insane. It is insane, trust me, I know. But you saw the corpse in the Byers’ freezer, and the kids all talk about Dust and travel between realms and like -” he throws out his arms, the sudden movement startling Castellan. She flutters her wings to keep her balance and digs her talons into Steve’s thighs and finally gets shooed away and onto the wooden step beside him. She’s always been bossy, though, ever since they were little, so she gets bold and lofts up to the railing just beside Billy, who moves his arm away to avoid touching her.
Settling her wings again, she fixes her beautiful golden eyes on Billy in a sharp glare. “Whether or not you believe us is up to you. But you’ve seen evidence of the Upside Down, now, and Max is involved whether you like it or not. That was her choice. You have a choice here too - either leave, say nothing, and we’ll make sure Max is back home and safe when this is all over, or you can come along and help us fight this, and keep an eye on Max yourself.”
Billy’s eyes widen, and so do his daemon’s, who’s currently gazing up at Castellan, both ears perked up and facing forward. Castellan eyes Billy a moment longer, clearly waiting for a response, before turning her attention to the hyena. She bends forward, still perched on the porch railing, and extends her neck toward the hyena, offering her beak in a gesture of truce. Billy and Steve watch with similar expressions of shock as Billy’s hyena sits up after a moment and reaches forward to touch her nose to Castellan’s beak.
Billy looks at Steve then, his expression serious, before a feral grin splits his face. Steve’s stomach swoops.
He doesn’t have time to unpack all this right now.
“Looks like Vega’s made the decision for us. I’m not letting you cart my shithead sister around to fight monsters from another dimension without me, no way in Hell,” Billy says, taking one last drag from his cigarette flicking it to the ground so he can stamp it out with his boot.
Vega.
Vega and Billy.
Steve’s mouth goes dry for a second. When he doesn’t respond right away, Billy laughs.
He’s saved from having to say anything by the rugrats bursting through the front door, armored up and armed to the teeth, all clamoring and speaking at the same time.
“We have a plan -”
“Wait, I was gonna tell him -”
“Why is Billy still -”
“Shut up!!!!”
The shout comes from Steve, who stands and turns toward the group, hands on his hips, eyes narrowed. The kids’ jaws all snap shut and Henderson looks like he’s going to argue back, but with a glare from both Steve and Castellan, he closes his mouth again.
“We don’t have time for you to fight over who gets to spill the beans right now. Tell us where we’re going, and give us the details on the road. Are we clear?”
Four heads nod somberly. Without much fuss - not counting the racket Mike and Max make when they find out they get to ride with Billy, which Billy finds hilarious - they hit the road, and make their way down into the Upside Down.
Nothing Steve could have said or done would have prepared Billy for the Upside Down and the things it creates. And nothing could have prepared Steve for the ferocity of one Billy Hargrove as they ventured into Hell.
Armed with an axe and a bitter rage, and Billy was formidable. If Steve hadn’t been so focused on making sure the kids were okay, he wouldn’t have been able to take his eyes off Billy.
Focus, Steve, Castellan had chastised more than once, from her perch on Steve’s shoulder.
Once, as they finally made their escape, a creeping vine had gotten too close to them, had almost wrapped itself around Castellan’s body. Steve had shouted for her, slipping over vines in his haste to reach her, but Vega had been quicker, snarling and darting through more encroaching vines, ignoring Billy’s shout of her name as she leapt, closing wicked teeth around the vine and snapping it in two. Castellan had tumbled to the ground and Steve had scooped her up, tucking her into his jacket the way he always used to when they were little, even if now she was a little too big for it to really be comfortable.
He’d sent her up the rope they came down in after Billy had boosted Vega up and through. Convincing Billy to go up first had felt like a monumental task, and he’d almost regretted it a little when he heard the shout of “Harrington!” when the pack of Demodogs had rushed past him and Dustin, paired with Castellan’s shriek and the echo of his name in his mind.
Once his feet were on solid ground, and his lungs were taking in fresh air, Steve turned on the kids, all of whom were wearing matching expressions of sheer disbelief.
“I am never doing that again, you hear me? I refuse to go down there again.”
“Hey man, never say never,” Dustin panted, turning over onto his back where he’d collapsed on the ground, clutching his little ring-tailed lemur close to his chest.
“Yeah, Stevie,” comes Billy’s voice, his grin just this side of feral. “Never say never.”
He looks ready to go four more rounds with the monsters of the Upside Down.
Steve isn’t surprised that this is where they’ve ended up. And he’s never been more relieved to have Billy fuckin’ Hargrove on their side.