bury me anywhere (but hawkins, indiana) | harringrove

chapter two: the night before

JUNE 29TH, 1985

STEVE | THE NIGHT BEFORE

Steve had really thought Billy was going to show, was the stupid thing.

It was the night of some astronomological thing, a meteor shower, one Billy had mentioned a while back. Guy was a little obsessed with the stuff - they'd laid out under the stars more than once on the hood of Billy's Camaro, itchy wool picnic blanket under their backs because Billy didn't mind them laying on it but he did fucking mind scratching the paint job, thanks.

Steve had never really cared about all that blank, studded space stretching over their heads – really, looking at it too much kind of creeped him out. (Especially after last year's... revelations.) Steve liked things he could reach out and touch, things in his world. But... he liked how Billy liked it. He liked the way Billy studied it, eyes sharp and the rest of that shitty bluster softening up around the edges. How he'd point things out and make Steve care a little bit about them, whether it was a shitty blip of a satellite, or a constellation that'd been there long before them and would still be there a billion years later.

And yeah, so it might've been a while since they said they'd watch it together... Had it really been months since then? Steve had actually put it on his calendar. (Okay, on his mom's then brand-new '85 calendar by the phone, carefully scribing a little star in the corner to keep it in his head. And yes, on reflection, he should've probably written down what it was.) But long story short, they'd said they'd watch the shooting stars or whatever it was, out on that quiet, hilly strip of abandoned land by the quarry, and Steve didn't need a library or textbook to tell him he should be there.

And the last time they talked might have been a couple weeks ago, before their latest falling-out, but... he had the thought, this pretty sure gut feeling, that Billy would show up too.

That was how they worked for the last six months and change, after all.

So Steve had taken his four-door out, and maybe packed a small not picnic - 'not picnic' being a couple illicit beers stolen from his dad's den fridge and some chips, those courtesy of the old Corner Mart on the way. They didn't have his favorite, so he just got the kind Billy liked, instead.

It hadn't mattered much, because Billy actually hadn't shown.

Maybe their last dust-up had been worse than Steve remembered - sometimes, he hit buttons he didn't even know Billy had. Christ. Buttons. More like landmines, the way they set Billy off sometimes. He didn't even fucking remember what it was about, not really. Since graduation, weird little arguments had been popping up, more and more often.

Anyway, all this meant that Steve spent his Saturday night sitting in his car, drinking his beer and then Billy's beer and eating stupid Billy's chips and feeling more lonely than in a long time.

Steve watches the stars fall until the sky starts to lighten into dawn and then, cold and uncomfortably sober, he decides maybe he doesn't want a dumb argument he barely remembers to be the last time he ever gets up close and personal with Billy Hargrove's stupidly pretty face and wow, he's spent some serious time not going there since that day in the stupid fucking locker room and he's not starting now.

Maybe he's not as sober as he thought. Fuck. He's on at Scoops tomorrow. As in in like, five hours. Fuck.

He doesn't know when Billy would be home, and Billy doesn't like him just swinging by on account of his dad being certifiable (they usually hung at Steve's empty house, where he had spent years proving that no one cared what he did there)...

But he does sorta kinda perfectly remember Billy's shifts at the pool.

And since the pool's on the way home from the mall (as Billy put it often enough, "It's fucking Hawkins, everything is on the way,"), why wouldn't Steve duck out a little early from his shift and swing by before Billy was off, right?

Right. Fucking right.

Later, after a heinously short nap, a freezing shower and coffee, he's wheeling up to the mall. The caffeine is bursting out of his pores, even though he only had a cup. (On reflection, he might not know how to use the coffee maker - that, and he'd half assed the measurements when his bagel started burning.) His nerves are chiming like sonar radar. He could race NASCAR. He's only two tiny miniscule nothing minutes late. Robin doesn't even notice. Maybe Steve's actually a genius at coffee.

At least, Steve thought she didn't notice.

The second he brings up the topic of skipping out even a little early, he finds out that she did notice his two tiny nothing minutes, as a matter of fact, and also somehow knew – off the top of her head!– the total amount of late minutes he's accrued since they started in May.

His practiced pitiful face must be still sort of working, but Steve is already dreading a little whatever she's going to want for the massive favor he's promised her. He has no doubt she's going to cash in on it.

Stupid fucking Billy. Since when was the guy fucking standing him up (definitely it was standing him up, it wasn't a date but Steve had decided on it, they hadn't said they weren't going to meet up, and on two hours sleep Steve's not feeling very generous), anyway since when was a guy standing him up enough for Steve to run around after him like a headless chicken? Who the hell was Steve turning into? Was this going to be his whole post high school life? ...Wait, was coffee depressing? Was that why adults were crabby and boring pretty much all the time? Robin refuses to answer any of his insightful, thought-provoking questions. Not that he mentions the Billy stuff out loud, but. God.

Banished to his ten minute break way too early, Steve's tempering the jaggy caffeine nerves with empty waffle cones in the backroom, snapping them in half and voiding them out as broken merchandise as he went. He leaps to his feet when he hears a familiar voice at the counter, though, and leaves a minefield of crispy waffle crumbs behind him as he comes out to greet the Henderson kid back.

Dustin's a more than welcome distraction, wound up about Russian codes and spies and shit. Holing up in the backroom to puzzle it out even sucks Robin in– soon enough she's deeper in the potential conspiracy rabbithole than Dustin is, the nerds.

Unfortunately, that means Steve's soon relegated to ice cream slinging and jealously peering into the backroom as they went full nerd without him. He's even still distracted enough that by the time he notices the clock and full-on dashes through the mall to get to his car, he doesn't even have time to change out of his Scoops uniform. Steve knows that Billy tends to jet the second his shift is up, so being late isn't going to work for this one. So if it's between getting seen by the Sunday pool crowd in a polyester sailor suit, or having to hunt Billy down all over again?

...Yeah, sailor suit it was. He does jam the hat in his pocket, though, because at least his hair never let him down.

Last night was probably nothing. It was probably just Billy being... Billy. Guy's like that, sometimes. But something feels off, and Steve can't let it go, turning it over and over again in his head.

And Steve's gut told him if he missed him now, it was gonna be hell cornering him later.

(Too bad Steve's gut didn't let him know that finding him now might be hell, too.)