Chapter Text
Memorial Day Weekend, 1989
Friday
“Max dreams about him too.” Joyce found Steve on the top step of the back porch stairs of the house. She didn’t bother with a ‘good morning’ or a generic comment about the beautiful sunrise, only lay a thick blanket around his shoulders then sat herself on the top step as well to huddle in close. “When she’s here to visit, I mean.”
“Who does Max dream about?” Steve had been up since 3 a.m. Had been staring at the rolling hills behind the tiny house since 3 a.m. Had been freezing in the early morning air until the sun peeked over the mountains in the distance and hit barely yellow at his skin since 3 a.m. Lenora, California was several things beautiful but being so close to the ocean brought up several things four years past painful and Steve hadn’t slept much since arriving on Wednesday night and now he'd been up for hours.
“Who?” he asked again, tugging the blanket closer and closing his eyes soaking in warmth. “Who does Max dream about?”
“You look sad.” Joyce answered without really answering. She was all things motherly-- appropriately perma-frazzled even with her boys grown, infinitely patient even when her voice got a little screechy, unfailingly right about matters of the heart thought it had been four years since the last time she and Steve had shared more than a few minutes of conversation.
The way she just knew things, knew when a conversation was needed, knew when a hug was more important-- it was both balm and battering at Steve’s heart.
“Well.” She fluffed her frizzy bangs up and out of her sleepy eyes. “You look sad still. Sadder than usual. Max does too, when she’s here. California was a chance to start over for me and Hop, for El and Will and Jonathan. But to Max, California is just bad memories so when she's here she can't help being a little sad. And for you, California is--”
“It’s a whole list of a whole buncha shit that never had a real chance of ever happening.” It was rude to interrupt. Ruder to curse. Four years ago Joyce would have flicked him in the ear for being a shit head. Four years later, she just made a quietly motherly concerned noise of agreement.
“How do you know?” Lenora was a sleepy town, even on a holiday weekend. It reminded Steve of Hawkins. Six a.m. and not a soul was stirring. Seven a.m. and Dad’s would be breaking out lawn mowers. Eight a.m. and breakfast would be on the table and kids would be in the streets making noise and the holiday weekend would really kick off by lunch time when picnics were planned and the fair opened it’s gates and the sun was out in full force.
“How do you know I was dreaming about him?” Lenora reminded Steve of Hawkins. Except Lenora was California and Hawkins was Indiana and neither was a place he belonged and both felt a little bit suffocating. “How did you know I was dreaming about.” Breathe. “Billy?”
Saying his name felt like sacrilege. Here by the ocean and the mountains and the California sunrise, saying Billy's name felt illegal. Steve should have just let it rest. Let it be. Let it clamor around in his head the way it had been clamoring around in his head since he’d crossed the California state line driving towards Lenora for a visit he’d promised would happen ages ago and was only now happening four years after Joyce had uprooted her family and moved.
California and Billy were synonymous in Steve’s heart. Entwined in his soul. It didn’t feel right for Billy to be gone gone gone while California was still bright and sunny and real.
"How did you know?" he wanted to know. "How did you know I was dreaming about him?" Again. Still. Always. "Was I talking in my sleep?"
“No, you weren't talking in your sleep. But four years isn’t long enough to grieve something like that.” She smiled. It was sad. “Not something like Starcourt and not someone you loved and lost in the worst possible way. Of course you dream about Billy when you’re in California. Max does too. El did, when we first got here. She walked through his mind at Starcourt and found him in a memory on the beach, so she dreamed about him a few times. It makes sense. All things considered."
Steve turned his head to look at her. He folded his arms over his drawn up knees and rested his cheek and turned his head to blink at her and Joyce did another one of those sad smiles again.
“Oh come on sweetheart.” She pushed his hair out of his eyes. “You can't be surprised that I know. That I knew. The two of you weren’t very subtle when you were together.”
“We tried to be.” He and Billy had tried to be subtle. Had tried to be secret. Had tried to be safe. “We tried to hide it.”
“Cos of Neil.” Joyce’s thin lips pursed. “I hope that asshole is rotting in hell.”
“How did you know?” Steve’s eyes found the hills again. Staring at the trees was easier than maintaining eye contact. “About me and Billy. About Neil.”
“I was married to Lonnie.” The name sounded like a curse. “And Will is my boy.” It sounded like a prayer. “Of course I knew about you and Billy. You never said anything so I never did either but. I knew."
“Being here.” California. “It brings everything back up.” He admitted it slowly. Joyce already knew, but Steve said it out loud anyway. “Can’t think about California without thinking about Billy. When um--” Breathe. “--when’s that gonna stop? When am I gonna be able to come see you guys without thinking about him and how he should be here too?”
Joyce didn’t reply. Steve kept talking.
“It’s been four years.” The kids had graduated just a few weeks ago. Steve had a stack of polaroids of the Party in cap and gown. Starcourt Mall had been rebuilt. There was a memorial at City Hall for everyone who’d been lost in the fire. “It’s been four years and I can’t seem to-- I can’t ever--”
Steve needed to move on. Instead he drove past the Hawkins Public Pool every day on his way to his job at his Dad’s office and scanned the parking lot for a bright blue Camaro.
“He used to write me love letters.” Steve hadn’t ever told anyone that, but he told Joyce. Told the woman who knew more about life and love and loss and terror than anyone ever had a right to know. “Like. Poetry. He’d leave them in my locker and I kept all of them. I had a box full of pictures and love letters and stupid shit like a pretty rock from the quarry cos that’s the first place we hooked up. A copy of his favorite tape. After Starcourt, I kept the keys to his car."
Joyce didn’t reply. Steve kept talking.
“I buried it.” Somewhere down the street, a lawn mower started. Steve stayed staring at the hills and the rising sun. “A few weeks after the funeral. I went out to the cemetery and buried it all right next to his headstone. Wish I would have kept it though. It was all I had left of Billy and then I didn’t have anything left of him and now--”
He cleared his throat. Cleared his throat. Joyce put a small hand on his back and Steve cleared his throat. “Now it’s been four years and I’m in California and I can’t stop dreaming about him. It’s like he’s haunting me. When is that gonna stop?”
“After everything everyone went through that summer, four years seems like it was only yesterday.” The meat monster, the flayed, the mall, the Russians, the death and screaming and gore and blood and loss might as well had been yesterday.
“And other times.” Joyce took a deep breath. “Other times it seems as if it’s an eternity ago. All we can do is take it one day at a time.”
“One day at a time.” It had been four years of one day at a time and Steve was still lost in the memory of watching the boy he secretly, desperately loved die screaming on the ground floor of Starcourt Mall. “Sure.”
*****
Sunday
Steve held the BMW’s steering wheel loosely. One hand, just a few fingers. He didn’t have to clutch tight to direct the big car through the curving roads, he didn’t have to coax the grumbling engine for more power to make the inclines of the steep hill. He’d been driving the car for six almost seven years now, he’d taken it down every road in Hawkins and opened it up blaring down the freeways to Indianapolis and Chicago, he’d gone skidding through dirt roads and gravel patches and slipping sliding through ice, he knew his car and sometimes sometimes, Steve thought the maroon BMW knew him too.
He didn’t have to hold the steering wheel tight. Steve sat easy in the driver’s seat and let the BMW take on the hills and S-curves of the scenic route with very little guidance, his mind far away and eyes barely registering the yellow painted lane dividers flashing by under the cars tires.
“Take the long way home.” Hopper had suggested that morning when Steve packed up to leave for Hawkins. “Skip the highway, take the side roads. They get narrow and a little hilly but slow down and enjoy it, kid. No rush to get back to Hawkins and that job you hate.”
Steve did hate his job. He hated working for his Dad and being boxed into the little cubicle and he hated how four years had gone by and all his friends--former friends?-- were married with kids or graduated with college degrees and growing up while he was still stuck. The Party was all graduated and heading off for one last summer of utter bullshit before leaving to different colleges in the fall and Steve was stuck entering data and attending meetings, not meeting his Dad’s expectations and not meeting his own expectations day after never ending day.
“Take the long way home.” Joyce had packed him a lunch for the road. Snacks. Drinks. A thick slice of the cake she’d made for Will and El’s graduation. She’d hugged him and kissed his cheek and insisted, “Take the time to breathe a while, sweetheart. The dreams are bad and the memories are bad right now but-- but take some time and let yourself breathe through it and you’ll be alright. It’ll be alright.”
Steve didn’t know if it would all be alright. He didn’t know if he’d be alright. He did know it spoke to buckets of unresolved issues when he couldn’t be in California without edging on a panic attack every time he saw the ocean. He did know he’d buried that box of Billy’s letters and pictures and buried any thought of actually coping and had mostly been pretending to be okay for the last four years.
…Steve did know hanging on to the past and the what if’s and the maybe’s was stupid and unhealthy and crippling cos all of his and Billy’s whispered plans of running away together to beaches and sunshine and freedom had been permanently, irrevocably thwarted when that thing had grabbed onto Billy mind and body and soul and turned him inside out.
Steve knew all that. And he knew taking the scenic route South from Lenora before finally resigning himself to heading East back towards home wouldn’t solve a goddamn thing but--
But.
It was a pretty drive. Steve had always pictured California as beaches and sand and eternal sunshine but the trees here were big, towering and shady and sweeping their branches almost into the narrow, two lane road as the BMW roared along beneath them. The grass was green and lush, huge fields appearing around corners and stretching towards the horizon. Cows and horses, sometimes even sheep, Steve thought he saw deer blinking big eyes and twitching big ears in his direction when he took an old stone bridge over a small river, he knew he saw a solid thousand squirrels darting every which way and sometimes onto the pavement, a bunny there, perhaps a fox over there, he hadn’t seen a glimpse of ocean blue in hours and it was all beautiful.
It was all a little bit stunning. Steve never went into the woods around Hawkins, he never drove alone down dirt roads, he didn’t even like being out after sunset anymore but cruising the seemingly endless lanes through the forest made him miss being… what? Being younger? Being unafraid?
Steve didn’t know.
It was a pretty drive, though.
The towns he rolled through could have been anytown, anywhere in the Midwest. They could have all been Hawkins. They were all typical Main Street with a slower speed limit. A movie theater with two or three screens and a general store proudly proclaiming fresh groceries. Some had signs for one of the megastores coming soon, others had fairs and festivals and red-white-and-blue bedecked lamp posts for the upcoming holiday. All of them had a church, a city hall, a beautifully displayed Welcome sign for all who came to linger.
Steve wasn’t one to linger. The towns flashed by outside the car windows as the BMW growled it’s way through downshifts and slower speed limits then cranked up purring smoothly once they were on the open road again. The sun moved across the sky and the day moved on, shadows of the over tall trees changed and lengthened and Steve started the morning with the air conditioning on high, then on medium, then low and finally off as the sun reached West and started to sink.
The sky was darkening purple when he passed through a tiny town with nothing more than a diner, a tire shop and a motel on the dingy Main Street. The clouds were fading blue and gray by the time he crested a steep mountain incline and couldn’t see the lights of the little town behind him anymore. The growing darkness of the coming night hovered at Steve’s shoulders like memories and trauma and he held them at bay with a crank of the heater and a flip of the BMW’s high beams.
Lenora had been a good visit. Joyce had begged Steve to come with them the first time, summer 1985, promising he could ride along and stay with them until he found a job and a place and got his feet under him. Steve had turned her down then and turned down every subsequent invitation to come visit even though the rest of the Party took turns flying out for holidays and long weekends, even though Hopper himself had called a couple times to check in and all but ordered Steve to get the hell outta Hawkins and give his heart and soul a rest.
Steve had said no every single time, loathe to leave Robin and then loathe to leave when he was barely settled into his new apartment, reluctant to make the trip on holidays and reluctant to make the trip on regular days, uncertain about the time off of work and uncertain about leaving Hawkins city limits as if he and his nail bat were the only things keeping the monsters at bay.
He hadn’t been able to say no when it was time for Will and El to graduate, though. Memorial Day weekend and graduation was a perfect excuse to make the drive, to spend three days in the crowded household cos Joyce insisted everyone had to stay right there with them. It had been a noisy, chaotic laughter and drama filled few days and Steve would miss every single one of the shithead bratpack smart ass kids.
He’d still left early. Taken Hopper’s advice about the long way home. He’d still snuck away at sunrise and tried to shake off the lingering dream about Billy and now he was fifteen hours down the highway and here came the dreams and memories turned nightmares creeping in as the road stretched out long and the shadows hovered at his shoulders and he was starting to feel lost again…
…the last lights of the tiny town were more than an hour behind Steve when he first felt the wobble at the BMW’s rear axle. A minute later the wobble was worse, the steady comforting blanking hum of solid tires on a solid road punctuated by the odd splat of misshapen rubber.
“Shit.” Flat tire. It must have been a slow leak, a nail or screw or whatever sharp picked up somewhere down the highway and finally leaking enough air to affect his drive.
“Shit.” Steve coasted to a stop atop a low rise and pulled over to the side, wincing when the back left tire seemed to abruptly drop with an audible wheeze, the last bit of air giving out against the hard packed dirt.
“Shit!” The rim was bent, what was left of the tire mangled. The slow leak had bulged at the tire until the unevenness of the roll had finally shredded it to pieces and the high speed up and down the roads had warped the rim bit by bit until it was finally entirely unusable. A search through the trunk proved what Steve had already known-- the spare tire hadn’t ever been replaced from the last flat tire courtesy of Dustin bouncing off a curb while practicing parking.
“Shit shit shit.” Steve slammed the trunk back closed and propped both hands on his hips. He should have replaced the spare tire. He should have double checked all his emergency supplies before leaving Hawkins. He should have not let the emotion and upheaval of graduation and nostalgia drag him hurrying into the roadtrip all in a rush and he certainly should have stopped for dinner in the previous tiny town because then he’d be looking at a flat tire in a well lit parking lot instead of a flat tire at the top of a hill in the middle of the woods at sundown.
Instead, Steve had taken the scenic route in an attempt to outrun memories and nightmares and now he was stranded on the scenic route with the sun dropping further every minute and nothing in either direction but road and woods and shadows.
“Had to take the scenic route.” Steve zipped into his jacket and emptied his backpack of anything unnecessary so he could pack the few water bottles and sandwiches left from Joyce’s care package. “Had to take the long way.” he pocketed the keys to the BMW, his wallet and the extra cash stuffed into the ash tray. “Couldn’t have stayed on the freeway and just gone home, I had to give myself time to breathe.” His voice pitched high mimicking Joyce on the last words, but he wasn’t really mad.
Steve didn’t get mad about much of anything anymore. Shouting and stomping his feet and putting his hands on his hips had never solved much of anything so he just didn’t get mad anymore.
The flat tire sucked but at least it was all downhill towards the barely visible flicker of lights in the distance. The hike sucked but at least he was warm and his shoes were relatively sturdy and he had supplies. The way the flat tire would cut into his money and add hours of delay to his roadtrip sucked but Steve didn’t really want to be back in Hawkins anyway so it was all fine.
It was all fine.
The sun went down fast, the downward slide beyond the horizon quickened by the hills looming larger behind Steve as he headed into the narrow valley and towards the beacon of a few lights--houses?-- at the bottom. When he started walking, his shadow stretched long in front of him, but within a few minutes the dark behind him had caught up then overtaken his strides and he had to turn on a flashlight. The top of the hill was covered in twilight, the valley still glowing gold in the last remnants of sunlight and there was a metaphor there, a lesson about-- about walking towards the future, or leaving darkness behind or coping… Steve didn’t know.
Joyce would know. She always knew in that motherly, traumatized, seen-it-all sort of patience that reflected like sadness in her wide eyes. Steve thought Joyce was beautiful, more beautiful than he’d ever thought his Mom was with her salon perfect hair and manicured hands and posh pronunciations and dry cleaned clothes. Joyce was beautiful like Nancy was beautiful, all hard edges and brittle toughness and fierce determination and more love than seemed possible for a tiny body to hold.
Steve already missed Joyce. Steve always missed Nancy. He’d miss Billy and what might have been for the rest of his life. It was all fine.
It was all…fine.
*****
It was well past fully dark by the time Steve reached the lights at the bottom of the hill. It was well past cold by the time he was close enough to squint and read the letters on the low lit sign declaring the two story building a mechanics shop, a familiar silhouette of a tow truck painted on a cardboard sandwich style board right next to the road.
“Thank Christ.” A couple hours hike down the hill had Steve’s fingers tingling towards numb, his coat zipped clear up to his throat and movements a little sluggish. Memorial Day in California was hot as hell during the day but the drop to fifty degrees at night was brutal and Steve was freezing.
There was a door bell by the front of the shop and Steve pushed it a few times, head tilted listening to the answering buzz come from somewhere behind the closed doors and from somewhere behind the windows and space above the garage.
There was an actual bell hanging next to the door too. Steve grasped the braided cord and clang clang clang let it split the quiet night air loud enough to make him jump, loud enough to send something small scattering and squealing in the nearby bushes, loud enough to echo through the surrounding woods and up into the shadowed hills.
“Hey! Hey, sorry. I had my music on. Didn’t hear the doorbell.” Someone came around the side of the garage, crunching along a gravel path Steve hadn’t noticed curving back behind the place. “That’s why I installed the big bell though, y’know? I end up working on the cars in the back and can’t hear shit all most of the time.”
The person--the mechanic-- was tall, maybe an inch taller than Steve, maybe just barely an inch shorter. Big arms bulged from the ragged edges of a cut off t-shirt and faded letters stretched wide over a broad chest. Long blond hair was gathered into a curly, messy bun off his neck and brilliant blue eyes lit up above a smiling red mouth and he was criss crossed in scars, white lines spiderwebbing from his back and showing along the edges of his tank, standing out skin warped and a little red along his arms, blotchy and thick when he reached to turn on another outside light and his shirt rode up over his ribs.
And Steve thought for a moment, for a second, for a breath-- Steve thought he was gonna lean over and be sick all over the gravel path.
“...Billy?” The words didn’t work. His tongue and mouth and voice didn’t work. Steve stared at the starburst scars, the mangled, mottled skin. He heard the echo of screaming in the back of his head and the words didn’t work but he rasped out, “B-Billy?”
“Yeah man, that’s what the sign says.” The guy, the mechanic, Billy jerked his thumb towards a small hand painted sign hanging haphazard over the newly illuminated window.
Billy’s Shop.
“Did you walk here?” The guy, the mechanic, Billy glanced both ways down the dark road then back to where Steve stood gaping at him. “Where’s your car, man?”
“I-- I--” Steve thought for a minute, for a second, for a breath that he’d fallen asleep in the BMW and was dreaming something awful and beautiful all at the same time. “I um--”
“You okay?” Billy’s brow wrinkled in real concern. “How long you been out here walking? You need some water?”
“I got a flat.” The words didn’t mean anything. Steve wasn’t even blinking. “Couple miles back? I just uh-- I didn’t--”
“Good thing you didn’t try to hike back the other way, you’re a solid hour from anything in that direction.” Billy pulled out a circle of keys and unlocked the door to the shop, motioning for Steve to follow him in. “Only about fifteen minutes away from town this way though, so you’re in luck. Lemme get the truck started and we’ll go get your ride.”
“I um.” Steve stood stock still and watched the guy, the mechanic, Billy make his way around the well organized shop slow and a little stiff but alive. The fingers on his left hand didn’t close all the way but Billy was right handed and the lack of motion on his left side didn’t seem to bother him too much. He had to read the labels on the files of paperwork twice, lips moving with the words like maybe his mind and memory didn’t work as well as it used to but he looked up and shot Steve a smile straight out of Steve’s favorite memories and most devastating nightmares and oh it was Billy.
“Billy.” Steve said it again just softly. Just quietly. Just on the edge of a disbelieving scream and just on the blink of a incredulous sob. “You um-- how? I can’t--?”
“I’ll need the registration out of your vehicle to complete most of this.” Billy didn’t hear the faint words struggling to make it past Steve’s slack lips. He didn’t hear the wetly shocked gasp or the anxious, grateful noise and he didn’t notice how Steve kept staring like he was seeing a ghost.
Steve was seeing a ghost. He had to be.
“Can I have a copy of your driver’s license?” Billy filled out his part of the paperwork for the inevitable insurance claim, then held out his hand expectantly for Steve’s license. “Or if you left it in the car, just your first and last for now will work.”
“First and last.” Steve repeated numbly. “That’s um-- yeah, it’s--”
He blinked and his mind flashed back. Blinked and got lost in a memory. Blinked and it was Memorial Day of 1985, and Billy’s Camaro had broken down. Instead of spending the day at the fair and festival stealing kisses behind booths and surreptitiously holding hands on the rides, Steve had spent the day watching Billy curse and fuss and get greasy beneath the hood of the car trying to replace spark plugs or a battery or tighten a gasket or something.
Steve hadn’t paid attention to what was wrong with the Camaro. He’d been too busy admiring the pull of Billy’s jeans across his ass and the golden skin showing at Billy’s back as the cropped tank top rode up along his spine. He’d offered to just buy the part, to run to the automotive store and buy it so Billy could replace it and they could get on with their day but Billy had snorted, “This’ll shock you pretty boy, but money doesn't fix everything. Sometimes it’s better to do things with your hands.”
“Doesn’t shock me at all.” Steve had retorted, waggling his eyebrows in a lewd expression. “Everything’s better with hands. In fact, if you don’t hurry this shit up, I'll be jerking off tonight instead of using my hands on your needy ass so let's go."
“Keep that attitude up and you’ll only be jerking off for the rest of the summer.” Billy had grinned right back, crooked and cocky and running his tongue over his teeth like he was tempted to lean in and take a bite right out of Steve’s skin. Out of his heart. Out of his soul. “C’mere and I’ll show you what I’m doin’. C’mon. Every Camaro needs a hot piece of ass draped across it, get over here.”
Steve had laughed and they had kissed, sun soaked and in love and lazy for the holiday weekend. A month later, Starcourt had burned down and buried what was left of Billy with it. Steve hadn’t been the same since.
And now--
And now--
“Easy does it bud, you still with me?”
Steve blinked and he was back in Billy’s shop, standing in front of Billy on Memorial Day weekend when Steve should have taken the freeway instead of the scenic route and when Billy was supposed to be dead.
“You need to sit down?” Billy was concerned, handing Steve a cup of water. “How long were you out there hiking? It was hot as hell today, you might be dehydrated.”
“Yeah. No. I’m.” Steve blinked and forced himself back to the moment. To this Memorial Day and not the last Memorial Day. “What? Sorry. Sorry, I’m--” he shook his head. “Sorry.”
“Ain’t no thang.” Billy said it casually, easily, just like he used to say it all the damn time. “Take a drink then tell me your name, yeah?”
“My name.” Steve couldn’t feel his lips, his tongue, the tips of his fingers, the soles of his feet, he was numb from head to toe stunned. “It’s Steve. Um. St-Steve Harrington.”
“Steve Harrington.” Billy’s answering smile was brilliant and beautiful and heartbreakingly void of any and all recognition. The name meant nothing to him. Steve meant nothing to him. He didn’t remember. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Sure.” Steve was gonna throw up. “It’s nice to meet you too.”