Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1: Anybody Have A Map

The therapist looked less than impressed when Jonathan stood to leave. This would be their fifth session over the past two months, and he hadn’t said a word. It wasn’t that he didn’t have anything to say; it was just that whenever he went to say something, the words got stuck in his throat.

He could stammer out a greeting as he entered through the door, and a farewell as he slipped away once again. But in the actual sessions, words failed him.

That was, of course, part of the problem. The entire problem, actually. Jonathan’s inability to speak, often overwhelmed and too anxious to even try, was finally being addressed. And he didn’t like it.

“Look, Jonathan,” Miss Slater said, wiping the rim of her glasses with a small cloth and putting them back on. “We don’t seem to be making much progress, and it is worrying how much you are struggling within these walls, so I have an assignment for you, if that’s okay?”

He nodded, fingers pulling at the loose threads of his shirt, stretched thin over the months it’d been in his possession.

“I know you like photography, so I would like you to take a photo a day. It can be anything, a bird, a tree, a rock on the ground, it just needs to be something you find nice. Then, I want you to print them off and write a message on the back. Not to me, but to yourself.”

He stared at her, fingers twisting and twisting until the skin turned white from the tightness. Miss Slater sighed, “Start it off like ‘Dear Jonathan Byers, today will be a good day. I saw this bird on the windowsill this morning, and it reminded me of my brother.’ Something like that, ‘kay?”

Jonathan nodded then, finally releasing his fingers from their trap.

“We have another session in a week; that’s at least seven photos. I can’t wait to see them.”

She walked over and opened the door, smiling kindly as he shuffled past. Her eyes lingered on his barren cast encasing his right arm, a new development since she’d last seen him two weeks before.

“See you later, Jonathan Byers,” she said, waving gently.

“Bye…” he mumbled, unable to meet her eyes.

He walked home, sunlight dappling the sidewalk and the sweet scent of spring in the air. Above him, the trees were blossoming, pink petals bright in the light. Before he could think it through, he lifted his cracked phone to take a picture.

It loaded, slightly out of focus, and the colours dulled by his old camera lens, but he let himself smile, for a moment. Then, a sudden bout of anxiety shot through his body, and he looked around like he’d been actively committing a crime. There was no one around. He continued to walk home.

Will waved from his seat on the couch, Minecraft up on their old TV screen. He seemed to be playing with Mike, Dustin and Lucas if the flurry of chat messages on the screen was any indication. They used to have a headset that Will used to talk properly, but it broke, and their mom, Joyce, didn’t have enough money to replace it. So, Will was stuck using the chat.

“She home yet?” Jonathan asked.

Will shook his head, hair flopping in his eyes. He seemed tired. But they all were, Jonathan supposed, as he opened the kitchen cupboards in search of the instant soup packets they kept.

As the water boiled, Jonathan sent a message to Joyce. She responded immediately, sending a long block of text filled with her anxious questions that constantly spiralled into paranoia. Jonathan reassured her that both he and Will were okay and handed Will his watery tomato soup.

“I’m going upstairs.”

Will nodded again, bowl now precariously balanced on the arm of the couch.

Jonathan’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth as he plodded upstairs. Even saying those few words to his own little brother left Jonathan feeling drained and anxious. The little voice constantly lurking in the back of his mind piped up then to inform him that Will probably found him weird and embarrassing.

Shakily, he sat on his bed, soup on his bed frame and trembling hands pressed between his thighs until they stopped.  His phone pressed into his ass from where it remained in his pocket, and he remembered the blossoms from earlier. How bright they seemed.

There was an old camera in the back of his closet, gathering dust and regret, a gift from his father before the man left forever. Not that Jonathan was too upset about it, the abusive piece of shit could be dead for all he cared, but the camera was expensive, and the school did have an old darkroom.

Soup forgotten and hands still, Jonathan shoved moth-eaten clothes out of the way and pulled out the dusty box. The sides were peeling, and the lettering faded, but the camera seemed in good condition, tucked in its leather case.

So, he checked the film, taking a few photos of the tree outside as practice, practically giddy with excitement. The small voice didn’t leave, whispering in the back of his mind, but Jonathan Byers did not care.

The sun was bright, and he needed to take a picture.

Dear Jonathan Byers,

Today will be a good day. The sun is bright outside, and I can’t remember the last time it shone like that. Maybe this year won’t be so bad after all.

Sincerely,

Me

Joyce was surprised when Jonathan told her he was going out, camera strapped around his neck and a grin on his face. He wanted to use the darkroom as soon as possible and needed more photos.

The Byers hadn’t been to the park for a while. Will was kidnapped a few months before, and after he’d been found, Joyce blacklisted the entire site. But Jonathan, like most teenagers his age, was rebellious at heart and had gone to the park the week prior.

It had been darker then, dreary with grey skies and a faint drizzle in the air. The sun had been a pale white dot, like a light at the end of a hazy, melancholy tunnel. The grass bent beneath his feet, still dewy from the morning, and the tree trunk was cold beneath his fingers. He’d gripped the branch between his hands and started to pull himself up, clambering up and up and up until his head emerged from the shining green leaves to a grey sky and the faint cry of a far-off bird.

Up there, as he stared at the world, now so small beneath his feet, Jonathan came to a realisation. A conclusion. The world was cold and damp and small, and Jonathan was colder and smaller. All he had to do was

                                                                                                              let

                                                                                                                          go.

Joyce had been horrified when he came home for dinner that night with his arm in a cast. A park ranger found him on the ground, curled in on himself like a terrified rat and helped him to the hospital.

“I fell,” was the excuse to the ranger, the doctor, his mother, his brother, his therapist.

“I fell.”

The branch slipped from his fingers. The sky was dull and uncaring as Jonathan lay on the ground, arm broken and heart pounding and still alive, despite it all.

Now, though, with his heart still pounding, Jonathan went to the park. The sky was blue, blue, blue, and the clouds drifted lazily by. He took a picture.

The grass was green, and small daisies were peeking through the strands, small white faces saying hello as he carefully stepped around them. There was a small cluster beside the base of the tree he’d fallen from, and he stooped down to snap a shot of those as well.

On the breeze, a faint ringing laughter followed by a sharp bark of delight. From his squat, Jonathan could just see the heads of four people meandering their way down the path at the base of the hill. A shock of gold, a flash of red, and two dark pinpricks.

With only a slight hesitation, Jonathan used his camera to zoom in on them, convinced he recognised them from somewhere. And there Nancy Wheeler was, face slightly blurred by the lens’s inability to zoom that far. But her lips were twisted into a delicate smile as she watched her brother, Mike and stepsister, Max, on their skateboards.

Further up the path, the golden hair of her stepbrother, Billy Hargrove, was coming dangerously close to having a direct eye-line to Jonathan. Luckily, something caught his attention, Max calling for him as she attempted a trick on her board. Billy stomped away.

Jonathan turned his attention back to Nancy, focusing on the way the sun caught the loose strands of her hair, the way the blue of the sky complemented her dress and eyes.

Taking pictures from his place amongst the daisies, Jonathan never felt more alive.

The school hallways were just as horrifying to navigate before Spring Break, and Jonathan found himself lurking in a small space between some lockers and the janitor's closet as he waited for the steady stream to dilute to a trickle.

Nancy walked by at some point; books cradled in her arms. She smiled in his direction. Beside him, Robin Buckley closed her locker, nodded her head in farewell and joined the current.

Just as he’d worked up the courage to head towards the darkroom (permission note firmly tucked into his shirt pocket), an arm aggressively wound its way around his shoulders, and he was pulled violently into Steve Harrington’s chest.

“Oh, Jonnie boy! Haven’t seen you for a while. How was your vacation, man?” Before Jonathan could even speak, Steve continued, “My vacation was great. I slept with a guy for the first time. Have you ever slept with a guy? Of course you haven’t. I don’t even know why I’m asking. It was Eddie Munson. You know Eddie Munson, right?” There was a pause with enough time for Jonathan to nod. “Anyway, me having a boyfriend now isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about. My dad’s been getting on my case about you, again. Asking when I last saw you, how your mom and brother are and all that other shit, so Jonnie, I need a favour.”

Jonathan was already exhausted. “What?”

Steve was practically vibrating. “I need you to come round for dinner sometime this week, talk me up, big me up, I’m such a good friend, etc, and hopefully my dad will forget about the weed he found in my car.”

“There was weed in your car?” Jonathan mumbled quietly.

“Eddie is a small business owner!”

Eddie is a drug dealer, Jonathan thought dully to himself. But Steve didn’t seem to want to let the conversation, or Jonathan himself, go, so reluctantly they made plans for Friday evening. Then Steve was gone, vanishing down the hallway where Tommy and Carol were hovering, as if he’d never been near Jonathan in the first place.

His cast itched. Everything seemed heavier, and all Jonathan wanted to do was curl up in a corner and let the day pass him by (maybe go for a walk, and walk past a tall tree and wonder how far up it goes, and climb and climb until he reached the top and the world was still and grey and clear and maybe, just maybe, he would let go again).

Heart pounding, he made his way to the darkroom. Someone glanced at him as they walked by, and Jonathan self-consciously curled in on himself, panicking. Was he sweating too much? Were there sweat stains around his armpits? Was it obvious? Could they see? Was he red? Flushed? Gross? Disgusting? A creep?

He opened the door, wiped at his damp forehead, swallowed and stepped into the fortunately empty room. The photography club must’ve been in recently, as their developing photos were pinned on some of the drying lines across the ceiling.

There were some instruction manuals stacked haphazardly on a seat. Jonathan picked at them, resting them on his knees and wiping away fingerprints that he was accidentally pressing into the pages. He found his camera's make and model and followed the instructions with trembling hands.

The sharp angles were pulled forward by the enlarger, as he aligned the images he’d taken until they were perfect. Blossoms stood out against sunlight, and Nancy Wheeler seemed to come to life beneath the lens.

Then he pressed each photo into the mixture, watching as the pigment reacted and the image slowly began to emerge. It became immediately obvious that some of the photos were blurry, out of focus or just plain bad, but there was also a sense of wonder budding in Jonathan’s chest as these images that he’d created emerged into the world.

The blossoms and the birds and the clouds and the people, a minuscule moment in a momentous world, forever captured even in a frame with a thumb in the corner. He pinned them up on the line and stepped back, unable to help comparing them to those of the club. To his untrained eyes, they didn’t seem too bad, just unrefined.

Excitement coursing, a welcome change to the constant anxiety, Jonathan moved on to his next batch. Nancy Wheeler’s face spread slowly like bursts of flowers at the beginning of spring. There was a stab of anxiety, a sudden awareness that he hadn’t asked her permission to take these photos, that they had barely spoken a word to each other, that Nancy Wheeler might not even know his name.

But he couldn’t help himself. These moments in her life he’d documented, instances where she wasn’t the perfect academic but a teenage girl out in the world, seemed so special now he was staring at them.

Jonathan should’ve destroyed the violation. He didn’t.

He pinned them instead, an entire line of Nancy out in the world. As he pinned the last photo, the door opened, letting a sharp wedge of artificial white light cut across the dingy room.

“What the fuck?”

Before he could even turn around, a big hand was reaching beside his cheek and tearing down the photos he’d just developed. Jonthan turned around, anger outweighing anxiety, only to come face-to-face with Billy Hargrove. Nancy Wheeler’s stepbrother, Billy Hargrove, whose obvious rage was etched permanently across his face. Jonathan’s anger died, and the rush of anxiety was so palpable it was as if Billy could smell it.

The boy’s pupils dilated, and then he lunged forward, shoving Jonathan back into the trays of solution, knocking the liquid out and onto the table.

“You fucking creep! Who the fuck do you think you are, taking pictures of her like that?” He slammed his hands down on the table so hard the room rattled. Jonathan tensed and curled in on himself, bracing for a hit, but Billy was prowling around the room like a feral dog.

Jonathan knew he should say something, should defend himself or explain the homework, but his whole body was frozen, and like usual, no noise escaped his mouth. Billy turned on him again, blue eyes black in the red light, teeth bared.

“Nothing to say, creep?”

Jonathan stared.

Billy stared and kicked forward, nudging Jonathan’s frozen ankle with the toe of his heavy boots. If this turned violent, Jonathan would need all the luck in the world to walk away with only a bruise. He’d seen the damage those boots, and an enraged Billy Hargrove, could do, and he didn’t think Jason Carver would be forgetting anytime soon, either.

“What are you, some sort of retard?”

Jonathan flinched despite himself, and Billy narrowed in on the movement like a shark with blood. He leant in closer, enough so Jonathan could feel the heat of his breath tinged with the bitter aroma of cigarette smoke, enough so he could see the small pimple on the side of Billy’s nose and the smattering of freckles against his tan cheeks, enough so the agitated glint in his bright blue eyes could not be missed.

“Listen here, you retarded freak, you come near Nancy again, and I’ll kill you myself. I’ll snap your other arm, and then your neck, and leave your body in the quarry like they did with your brother.”

There was a spark of anger at the mention of Will, but it was doused just as quickly as Billy gripped his shoulder. “Understand?”

Jonathan nodded.

Billy turned away then, the rush of heat from his body dissipating a moment later, leaving Jonathan cold and trembling against the table. He watched, body struggling to not have a panic attack, as Billy began to pull the photos from the line, Nancy’s pretty face disappearing into her stepbrother’s aggressive hands. Some of them tore as Billy ripped them from the line, but soon they were all piled on the desk, a wad of paper an inch thick.

Without a final glance, Billy left the room, taking the photos with him. The door closed, maliciously gentle, and the red darkness fell thick once more.

Jonathan sank to the floor, body trembling, breathing heavily, eyes wet with tears and promptly had a panic attack.

Dear Jonathan Byers,

How can everything change so quickly? How can happiness be so fleeting, yet sadness seems to stretch on forever? I should hold what happiness I get close to my chest, but it hurts too much to do so.

Sincerely,

Me.

After his body calmed, his hands stopped shaking, and the tears dried on his cheeks, Jonathan stood up and took stock. Billy had torn the room apart, the trays had been upended, and the solution was slowly soaking into Jonathan’s bag. Photographic paper, textbooks and even a poster torn from the wall lay scattered across the floor.

The rest of the photos on the drying lines seemed undamaged, but remnants of what had happened were still attached beneath the pegs. Torn corners, destroyed pegs and the line where he’d hung the Nancy photos had been snapped.

Before he could spiral once again, Jonathan began to tidy, using the time to decide what to do next. As he cleaned the desks, he noticed something was missing. He’d printed a photo he’d taken with his phone, using it for the therapy homework that morning. A photo of Nancy in the parking lot of the arboretum, talking to a flushed Max and Mike. He was going to show it to his therapist and tell her that he wanted to work on his relationship with Will.

But it was gone. Billy must’ve taken it with the others. Along with the message Jonathan wrote on the back.

The panic came spiralling back, and Jonathan let it pull him under once again.

With embarrassing familiarity, Jonathan changed his shirt in the bathroom. It was a similar shirt, another forest green, but he was always ashamed of having to do it. But panic attacks left him sweaty, and it would be even more humiliating to walk into class, damp and pathetic.

No one ever commented on the shirt change, but he was sure they noticed.

His last class of the day was English, and in English sat Nancy Wheeler. The dredges of anxiety began to well once again as he sank into his seat in the corner of the classroom, head down, bag still wet from the liquid. His notebook was damp around the edges, and the notes he’d previously taken were slightly smudged.

Jonathan breathed in. He breathed out.

This is why he photocopied all of the pages at the end of the day in the library.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Usually, Jonathan was a diligent student, the anxiety of not knowing an answer preventing him from losing focus. But today that anxiety was in argument with the tremors from the Billy Incident. Nancy Wheeler sat three seats in front of him, and Jonathan was terrified that Billy had already told her.

She hadn’t looked back at him once, which didn’t mean anything. Or it could mean something. Before, she didn’t really know him, so why would she look back? But now? Now, Billy had told her about Jonathan’s creepy photos, and she thought he was a stalker and was now actively avoiding him and messaging all her friends about the freak that took photos of her in the park and oh my God, Jonathan was going to go back to the park and climb the tree and throw himself off it again and die and –

“Hey.”

Jonathan looked up and was blindsided by Nancy Wheeler standing before him. Her hair was pinned back and curled softly around her ears. She wore a baby-pink cardigan, with a white shirt underneath and a small lace bow tied like a necktie. Her skirt was a pale grey, falling above the knee, and white socks with small bows stopped below the knee. Beneath her arm was her textbook, notebook and pencil case.

Anxiety prickled again, and Jonathan inhaled. Nancy’s sweet, floral perfume invaded his nostrils, and Jonathan tried to let it settle him, but instead he wanted to sneeze.

He looked up. Nancy was still watching him expectantly.

“Hi?” he greeted tentatively.

Nancy seemed to take that as an invitation as she pulled a chair over and dumped her things on Jonathan’s desk.

“Here, start filling this out,” she said, pushing a piece of paper towards him and opening her pencil case.

Jonathan squinted at the paper, where Nancy had already filled out their names in her neat cursive. A partnered English project. A project where Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers were partners.

The anxiety welled once again.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m excited about this project,” Nancy said, already writing furiously with her sparkly pen. “I’m going to study journalism at college.”

Jonathan hadn’t actually known that. He looked at her then, took in the concentrated furrow of her eyebrows, the firm press of her lips and the determined glint in her eyes. He wasn’t surprised, but not knowing this was disconcerting.

He wanted to say something, mention his newfound photography hobby, but that brought back the photos of the girl in front of him, Billy and the anxiety continued to mount.

Instead, he smiled tentatively and hoped it was enough.

In a burst of courage, spurred by fear, Jonathan decided he needed to talk to Billy after class. Nancy obviously didn’t know what happened, and after the class, Jonathan was determined to keep it that way. Having her in class, soft eyes and gentle laughter, caused Jonathan to experience a mixture of guilt, anxiety and relief, and he needed to have her close.

He knew from Steve that he and Billy shared a maths class, so Jonathan shuffled his way across the building as the classes got out. Steve didn’t look at him as he left, Tommy and Carol trailing behind him like malicious dogs. Jonathan peered into the classroom, hoping Billy was still there, but he wasn’t.

Anxiety rising once again, Jonathan raced to the car park, but Billy’s obnoxious blue Camaro was gone. Billy and the photos had gone home. Where Nancy was.

Clutching his shirt, feeling sweat begin to seep through the fabric, Jonathan began to fully panic.

To try and alleviate the panic, Jonathan walked home, camera secure around his neck. But every time he tried to take a photo to make himself feel better, Billy Hargrove and his raging blue eyes flashed behind his eyelids.

Listen here, you retarded freak, you come near Nancy again, and I’ll kill you myself.

Jonathan put the camera back in his bag and walked home. The sky seemed so grey now.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: Waving Through A Window

Jonathan doesn’t sleep that night. After coming home, helping Will with his homework, cooking dinner and making sure Joyce was alright, Jonathan went to his room, turned off all the lights and curled beneath his covers.

But he couldn’t sleep. He didn’t know what Billy Hargrove was planning to do with the information, with the photos of Nancy and the knowledge of Jonathan’s everything. How did he know he wouldn’t walk into school tomorrow and find everyone knowing what he’d done? With Nancy knowing who he was?

He rolled over and stared at a wall, watching his hands tremble in the darkness. The camera was in his bag. He itched to use it, but the fear of taking a photo to develop in the darkroom prevented him. Instead, in the late hours of the morning, Jonathan booted up his laptop and started to scroll through some of the photos he’d taken on his shitty phone camera.

The cranky printer beneath his desk spat out a bad-quality photo of the tree he’d thrown himself from, and in the dim lamp light, he began to write.

Joyce drove him and Will to school, humming cheerfully and tapping her fingers against the steering wheel as she went. The brothers learnt long ago to go with the flow when it came to Joyce’s moods. No point in fighting it, better to weather it together until the next ray of sunlight.

They dropped Will off first, who was immediately almost bowled over by Mike and Dustin. Jonathan couldn’t help trying to search for Nancy in the car Mike came from, but it pulled away too quickly.

Now that they were alone, Joyce’s joy dimmed as she reached out and took one of his trembling hands in hers. He wondered what she saw when she looked at him, whether she loved him like she had before, or if he was as disappointing to her as he was to Lonnie.

“No one signed it,” she murmured, tracing the cast with her thumb.

“Forgot to ask,” Jonathan forced himself to reply. He’d hoped Steve would’ve offered, or Nancy during English.

“Will you try today?”

“I guess.”

Jonathan was used to lying by now.

Billy Hargrove was not at school. This wasn’t uncommon. There were periods where he would just disappear, and no matter how many people phoned home or asked Nancy, they couldn’t find him. Then he would turn up like nothing happened, raging like a bull, and everything was a red flag waving before him.

Usually, Jonathan was so detached that he never noticed, but today he was hyper-aware. He needed Billy to be here, needed to confront him or explain or just scream, but he wasn’t, and that was a problem.

“Where’s Billy?” Tommy asked Nancy, a smug, freckled face leaning against her locker.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Nancy snapped, shoving his arm away to open her door. “He didn’t come downstairs this morning, and that isn’t my problem.”

Jonathan wanted to ask more questions, wanted to know if Billy had gone straight to his room the day before or if he’d spoken to her. Then Nancy caught his eye across the hallway and smiled.

It should’ve relieved him that she didn’t seem to know, but it didn’t. Billy loomed over him like a spectre, knowledge ready to drop from his lips at any moment, and the threat still rang clear in Jonathan’s mind. It was creepy to take photos of Nancy, and it was creepy to stare at her from across the hall.

Jonathan smiled weakly, turned, walked to the closest bathroom and sank on the toilet seat, gasping for breath.

Nancy saved him the seat beside her during English. Her notebook was open, pens neatly lined, and she’d already written the date and subject title in her tidy script. Jonathan felt almost feral beside her as he pulled his coffee-stained paper from his bag and scrounged around at the bottom for a working pen.

“I’m excited to work on this project with you. Robin told me you did photography?” Nancy said. She always turned to face him when she talked, focusing entirely on him as she waited.

“It’s just a hobby,” he mumbled, looking at his hands. There was dirt beneath his nails, ink smudges in the crevices of his palms. “I’m not very good.”

“I’d like to see them anyway,” Nancy said gently. Her eyes were wide and soft, glinting with an emotion akin to pity.

Jonathan swallowed down the vomit welling in his throat. “I- not today.” It was all he could manage. Another question burned his throat, and he spat it out without thinking, “Where’s Billy?” He went red when she stared.

“Billy? Like Billy Hargrove?”

“Yes,” he murmured. He sank lower in his seat, hoping the floor would open up and swallow him whole. Why did he say that?

Nancy was silent as she looked at him, eyes flicking him over as if taking him in for the first time. Whatever she saw relaxed her as she said, “He got in trouble last night. I could hear him and his dad arguing from the lounge. It sounded bad.” Her eyes hardened, looking past him at the wall. “He didn’t come down for dinner. Wouldn’t come to school this morning.” Her voice quietened gradually as she spoke, trailing off at the end. Blinking, she turned to Jonathan again, eyes clear and frustrated. “He’s annoying.”

Her tone was finalising, bookmarking the conversation. As she started to write down the project advice their teacher was giving, Jonathan pondered her answer and formulated more questions. What did Billy and his dad argue about? Did he speak to Nancy at any point during that time? Did it seem like he wanted to tell her something?

But he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

He spent the rest of the time swinging back and forth between starting at the table and starting at the wall, trembling hands resting on the table. At times, he made to pick up his pen, pressing the tip to crumpled paper before the tremor would scrawl the ink into the margins.

His broken arm ached, the empty white space a blinding reminder of his loneliness.

“Can I sign your cast?” Nancy asked.

Jonathan jolted, rocking back on his chair, almost smacking his head on the wall behind. After his heartbeat stilled to his regular anxious rate, he finally looked at her. She held a marker between her fingers, nib out and ready.

Unable to speak, he raised his cast, starting in embarrassment at the slight tremors racing up his arm. Nancy didn’t even glance at it, instead taking his hand gently in hers to stabilise it as she wrote her name.

Nancy.

Permanently on his arm. It wasn’t as exhilarating as he’d expected. Instead, the familiar prickle of sweat on the base of his neck made him hunch in on himself with a small thanks.

Nancy’s smile wavered slightly. “I was wondering,” she started, hands rhythmically smoothing out a crinkle on one of her pages, “if you wanted to come around my house this evening to do some more work on the project.”

Jonathan still wasn’t entirely sure what the project was. But it was the least of his worries when his major concern came in the form of Billy Hargrove. Jonathan didn’t care to find out how the other boy lived, didn’t want to be in his presence any more time than necessary, but he needed to speak to him about the photos.

Jonathan needed to be brave.

“Okay,” he said. “I’d like that.”

Mike and Max were waiting for them after school, sitting on opposite sides of a bench. Will was going to Lucas’s house so Jonathan could relax as Nancy herded her two siblings down the road.

Mike was tall and lanky, still growing into his awkward limbs as he walked slowly to match Nancy’s shorter pace. He had the same resting face as Nancy, coupled with pursed, downturned lips and an eyebrow that loved to twitch upwards.

Max, on the other hand, had the same ferocity as her older brother. Her blue eyes burned with contempt as she trailed behind the two siblings, hands gripping her bag like it was all that was preventing her from throwing hands.

Jonathan hovered between the two groups, too awkward to join in with Mike and Nancy and too scared to talk to Max. His hands were still shaking, so he stuck them into his pocket and shuffled behind the Hargrove-Wheeler household.

As they walked, the neighbourhood grew nicer and nicer. Gardens became neater, doors were freshly painted, but there was a deafening silence in the air. Max seemed just as uncomfortable, scowl deepening the longer they walked.

“Will says you're nice,” she said suddenly, appearing by his side. Her blue eyes were dark with questions as she peered up at him.

“Oh,” he said back. He didn’t know what she wanted from him, and words refused to form in his mouth.

“Are you a good brother?” she prodded.

“I think so,” he replied. He knew he messed up with Will, sometimes letting emotions overwhelm him, letting his frustrations with Joyce leak into his interactions with his brother. “I try.”

“Billy doesn’t try.”

He’d never thought about Billy as a brother before, even in relation to Nancy. The other boy was always a separate entity, an embodiment of rage that stalked the hallways like an animal. He saw her brother’s features in Max’s face, and something shifted within him. A reality distorted, tucking Billy into a category labelled ‘human’.

“I’m sorry,” he responded, lacking anything else to add.

“He used to.” She walked quickly, allowing the gap between them to grow. Her bag bounced as she walked, too big for her to move comfortably. But if he squinted, Jonathan could make out the faint letters spelling out B I L L Y.

The Hargrove-Wheelers lived at the end of a cul-de-sac, a large, white house with a neat lawn and two cars parked in the drive. A black Ford and a blue Camaro. One of the windows on the upper floor had closed blinds, pitch black in the late afternoon sun. Jonathan swore he saw it move slightly when Nancy opened the front door with rattling keys.

“Home sweet home,” Max said, shoving Mike out of the way to enter first.

Now that he was here, Jonathan wanted to leave. The surge of bravery he’d felt earlier dissipated, leaving the slow, constant, encroaching sense of doom that kept him company.

“You coming?” Nancy asked.

Jonathan tried to shake the feeling off, tried to dredge up another bout of bravery as he stepped over the threshold. He never quite caught onto it again.

The interior of the house was as organised as the exterior, decorated with fine China and other delicate decorations. As he took off his shoes, trying to place them neatly by Mike and Nancy’s, he heard low voices coming from another room. Max kicked her shoes off haphazardly, scuffing the wall slightly with dirt before heading upstairs.

“Max!” A woman’s voice called, and the door to Jonathan’s right opened.

The smell of freshly baked bread wafted through, warming him quickly. The woman was blonde, with long curls twisted into a loose bun. Her eyes were brown rather than blue, but she was almost the spitting image of Billy.

“Go away!” Max yelled back. A door slammed upstairs.

The woman sighed, shaking her head. Then she spotted Jonathan, spinning around in exaggerated surprise, a theatrical gasp escaping her.

“I didn’t see you there!” She swiped a hand through her hair and held out her hand. “Karen Wheeler. And you must be… Robin?”

“Jonathan,” Jonathan said, taking her hand.

She grimaced, either from the mistake or from the sweat on his palm. “Well, Jonathan, are you here for business or pleasure?” Pleasure brought forth certain images in quick flashes, and he willed down his blush as she laughed, high-pitched like a tea kettle, at her own joke.

“Kidding, kidding!” She waved her hands. “She told me you were coming earlier!”

Jonathan forced a smile as she fluttered about. There was a falseness to her actions, a coolness to her gaze that made the housewife aesthetic seem calculated. She beckoned him into the kitchen, saying, “You can call me Karen. All of Nancy’s friends do!”

Nancy was already pouring boiling water into mugs as he entered. “Coffee?”

“Nancy! You can’t have coffee after school! We talked about this,” Karen chided.

Nancy rolled her eyes. “Come on,” she said to Jonathan, “let’s go to my room.”

There was a room without a door. The door frame looked worse for wear, and the wood where the door hinges would’ve been was splintered in places. Jonathan tried to pretend he wasn’t looking, but Nancy’s unbothered glance made him curious.

It must’ve been obvious because Nancy said sullenly, “That’s Billy’s room.”

“Oh.”

Nancy peered into the room, wrinkling her nose at the messiness. The bed was unmade, the single, thin pillow scrunched up against the wall. Clothes were piled up on the floor. The closet door was off its hinges, swinging open to reveal a smashed mirror on the inside. The air was thick with the stench of aftershave, and the culprit was lying on its side, dripping onto the black jacket beside the dresser.

“He’s not here,” Nancy said with a frown. “Mom!” She yelled, facing the stairs. “Mom! Billy isn’t here!”

There was loud swearing, and Karen came up seconds later, face screwed into a furious scowl. She shoved past Jonathan and Nancy and stood in the centre of Billy’s room.

“The window’s open,” Nancy said.

They peered out, Jonathan standing slightly behind. The blue Camaro was missing.

He moves quick, Jonathan thought. Billy must have climbed out the window as they entered the house. Karen muttered something about ‘calling Neil’ and left the room, the cheerful façade no longer a priority.

Nancy rolled her eyes again. “At least he’s terrorising somewhere else.” Then she left, beckoning Jonathan after her.

Jonathan cast one last look at the space containing the remnants of rage. The Evita poster stuck to the wall above the bed bore her eyes into his, condemning and cajoling simultaneously.

Nancy’s room enticed him now.

Hours passed with Jonathan and Nancy working quietly side-by-side. They rewrote their proposed project to suit both of them and started to work on their individual sections, a combination of journalism, newspaper clippings and photo collages.

Jonathan was resting against Nancy’s when he heard a car pull into the drive. He sat up fully and tried to catch a glimpse out the window, but it was dark with the last scattered sun rays disappearing.

“It’s not Billy,” Nancy said, not even looking up from her highlighting. “You would know if it was him.”

The door slammed.

Jonathan jumped and scrawled a thick pen line across what he’d written. Nancy sighed and placed her highlighter neatly in her pencil case. The household seemed still, like it was waiting for whatever had entered to leave again.

Even the music coming from Max’s room was switched off mid-chorus, and Mike’s videogame went silent.

Jonathan remained still. The tremor in his hands was back.

“Kids!” Karen’s voice was shriller. “Dinner time!”

Nancy slipped from her bed and gestured for Jonathan to get out of the room first. Mike stomped from his room, teenager scowl firmly in place. Max was quieter, almost standing on the balls of her feet, wincing at every creak of the stairs.

They all sidled into the dining room, where Karen was dishing up the food. Jonathan loved his mom with all his heart, but it was common knowledge that she could not cook. She’d only just got a handle on not overcooking pasta, and this accomplishment paled in comparison to the entire roast chicken Karen produced from seemingly nowhere.

At the head of the table was a man. He wore deep scowl lines with ease, and his eyes were flinty as they sat in their seats. He was straight-backed and square-shouldered, commanding the full attention of whoever he spoke to. But he had Billy’s nose and chin, carved into something stern by time.  

“Who are you?”

Jonathan’s entire body froze. He stared at the man, feeling momentarily like a deer facing an oncoming truck. He closed his eyes, prayed his mouth could form the correct words and stammered, “Jonathan Byers, sir.”

Neil Hargrove smiled. There was no comfort. It was more akin to being cornered by a predator who knew he’d caught you. “At least you have manners, unlike my ungrateful son.”

He cast his eyes around the table with a hum. They landed on Max. She froze, but her eyes were burning. “Where’s your brother?”

“I don’t know,” she gritted out and proceeded to shove a large piece of chicken in her mouth. She chewed obviously, puffing out her cheeks.

Neil seemed disinterested in anyone else, complaining about Billy to an uncomfortable degree. Lonnie used to complain about Jonathan and Will, calling them useless and weird and strange, but the contempt Neil had for his son was borderline dangerous.

“When he comes through that door, I’ll wring his disrespectful neck,” Neil said, taking a drink from his glass. He turned to Jonathan, “I’m sure you know my son has issues. I’ve been trying to corral him for far too long, and if tonight is any indication, I don’t think it’s working.”

Karen hummed in agreement before picking up the bowl of potatoes. “Would you like some, Neil?”

“Sure,” he said. “What’s your father like, Jonathan?”

Jonathan’s chest tightened. “He doesn’t live with us, sir.”

“On the job?”

“Divorce.”

Neil’s eyes narrowed, and any standing Jonathan had with him vanished in an instant. “Divorce is for cowards and failures. Any woman who can’t keep the peace in her own household produces broken children.”

No one said anything. The rest of the meal finished in silence. Jonathan forced himself to finish his plate despite the pulsing headache and bile in his throat.

Karen cleared the dishes whilst Neil turned his attention to Nancy and Milks, asking them about their days and their plans for the coming weekend. They both answered in stilted words, but it was Max’s face that really hurt him. Her eyes were downcast as she played with a strand of her hair. Neil hadn’t said anything else to her.

Jonathan decided he wanted to leave, only he didn’t know how to leave. He sent an awkward, pleading glance to Nancy, who seemed to catch on. After revealing she’d got an A on her math test, she then said, “Jonathan, didn’t you say your mom wanted you home soon?”

“Uh,” he stammered, “Yes, she wants me home.”

Neil didn’t seem impressed, but Jonathan felt he couldn’t leave the table without Neil’s permission. The man nodded once, and that was all Jonathan needed to jump up and practically sprint from the room.

Nancy followed him, eyes downturned. “Sorry about that. Billy brings out the worst in him.”

“Oh.” There was nothing else he could say.

The sky was dark, the faint glint of stars struggling through the late pollution, as he walked home. The moon was a pale dot shrouded by clouds, grey slithers against the light. The roads are quiet, a lone car struggling by, and Jonathan took out his phone to take a photo.

He started composing the message in his mind. Dear Jonathan Byers, it would say, today has been a good day.

He shivered in the cold, drawing the jacket in on himself, hiking his bag up around his shoulders. Along his path home, he came to the gates of the park, the tree silhouetted against the moonlight. Jonathan rested his hand on the cool metal gate for a moment before his eyes were drawn to a shape tucked around the corner.

As he neared it, squinting at the shadowed outline, he realised it was a car. But not just any car. Billy’s car.

Jonathan felt the dredges of panic build up again, but he couldn’t resist the curiosity. The car’s windows were fogged up, and the engine was running, blasting heat into the cold night. He would’ve been out there for hours.

Glancing around, seeing no one around, Jonathan then knocked on the window. No response. He tried again before wiping away the condensation that had built on the glass. He stepped back.

Inside, Billy was slumped over, limbs awkwardly hanging like he was unconscious. Jonathan didn’t think much of it for a moment, but he noticed the empty pill bottle knocking around at Billy’s feet.

Then he started panicking.

He knocked on the window frantically, shouting, “Hargrove!” like the car was on fire. Yet, Billy did not stir.

The car was unlocked, and Jonathan flung the door open, scrambling over the passenger seat to shove his fingers against Billy’s neck. A pulse, weak, fluttering, but there.

Jonathan knew he should call someone. Knew Billy needed help. But his entire reality was shifting beneath his feet.

Because Billy Hargrove tried to kill himself.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: For Forever

The Billy Interlude

Billy was born angry. Born red and raging, spit and tears dripping down his face, wailing to the world. His mother cradled him against her chest, blonde curls drifting before him like a mobile. She delighted in his anger, delighted in knowing he was alive.

His father was not as delighted.

Neil Hargrove was not a man who liked his son. Neil Hargrove was not a man who liked the mother of his child. Neil Hargrove was a man who was left with a child and a dead mother.

So, Neil cultivated anger and cultivated it in Billy, too. A steadfast, ever-burning fire that blazed in his chest like an inferno. Spitting embers and ash before ABC’s.

Then Susan Mayfield came along, and from her, like a phoenix from the ashes in all her flaming glory, Max came into the world. Neil wasn’t there either, so Billy sat in the waiting room, hands clenched into fists on his knees.

Max came into the world, and Billy exploded. Erupted. Ripped the IV from Susan’s arm and threw a metal medical instrument across the room, where it disappeared behind a monitor with a clang. Billy would never say what set him off, but as Susan disappeared out the Hargrove-Mayfield door one day, never to return, Billy would know that it was because the nurse called her his ‘mom’.

So, it was just Neil and Max and Billy. Anger, angrier and angriest. The house was a constant pan about to boil over, oil on the cooker spilling into water. Neither Billy nor Max was the child Neil wanted, too angry and disobedient and too much like him.

Billy brought home more detention slips than tests, suspensions dogging him like ghosts. Neil changed the emergency contact number the school had to the landline, so he never had to pick up when the school called with an inevitable complaint about Billy.

“Mr Hargrove, your son is disruptive in class.”

“Mr Hargrove, your son needs to control his anger.”

“Get him therapy.”

“Get him a pet.”

“Where is his mother?”

“Where are you, Mr Hargrove?”

The first time Neil Hargrove hit his son, Billy was seven years old, and Max was screaming in her highchair. Susan had been gone three weeks now, and Neil had left most of the responsibility for raising a toddler in the hands of his son.

Billy liked Max; she was just as angry as he was, but as she threw her Sippy cup on the ground once again, his anger bubbled like bile in his throat.

“No!” Max shrieked, whipping her red hair like a flame.

“Fine!” Billy yelled back, throwing the cup at the wall. The lid opened at the collision, and the apple juice slipped down the wall like blood.

Billy didn’t even have time to react before a hand was in his hair and he was flung backwards. As he crashed into the table, Max went quiet at the sudden movement. Neil Hargrove loomed over his son.

There was a cold anger etched into his face. A tightness around his eyes, a press to his lips that Billy would soon learn to connect to black and blue.

“What is this?”

“She wouldn’t drink it, sir.” Billy let the table edge press against his spine and assured himself that his heart was still beating in his chest. Pounding in his ears. An unsteady thump preparing for something more.

“Max is three years old. How old are you, Billy?”

“Seven, sir.”

Neil hummed, picked up the cup and threw it. It hit Billy on the nose, but before he could even feel for a mark, Neil was picking him up by the collar of his shirt and slamming him against the juice-stained wall. Ears ringing, Billy blinked blearily. Over his father’s shoulder, a wide-eyed Max stared, shoving handfuls of raisins into her drool-covered mouth.

Then, a rage. A lock and a key thrown away. As Neil slammed his head into the wall once more, Billy decided he hated his sister as well.

Then Karen Wheeler came along, bringing with her a perfect son and daughter, Nancy and Mike, buttoned up to the chin and so, incredibly normal. Karen Wheeler came along, and Neil had the perfect family he always wanted, a housewife, a daughter like a doll and a son who would grow up normal.

Billy and Max, who had come to some sort of understanding on the basis that no matter how much they disliked each other, Neil was the real problem, had come to another understanding. That they were now the disappointments, so all they had was each other.

If Billy thought the abuse and anger would stop just because the Wheelers moved in, he was sorely mistaken. Karen was willing to turn a blind eye to Billy and his bruises as long as Neil didn’t turn to her children, she was fine with the screaming and the fighting and the blood until it was Max slamming a door in Mike’s face or Billy shouting at Nancy over the dinner table.

Billy had disliked Susan because he’d been scared she was trying to replace his mother. But he despised Karen Wheeler. He despised the way she looked the most like his mother, the way she’d try to hug him after school without even cringing at the bruises decorating his body, the way she’d look at him sometimes when no one was watching and the way she had called herself his mom in front of other people.

At the age of twelve, Billy Hargrove began to fall apart. There were no nets to catch him, no arms to break his fall, just pain and anger and the overwhelming urge to make it all stop. Everything was shadowed by a curling anger, a rabid dog in his chest that bit and barked at anyone who came too close, who threw itself against the bars of its cage, at the hand that fed and hit simultaneously.

And then a revelation, a salvation, a balm that soothed the anger for just a moment, made everything quiet. It was Nancy who’d given him the idea, across the dinner table, in her smug, perfect voice as she announced that her friend Barbara Holland was hurting herself.

“It’s all over her arms,” she said, eyes wide and soulful, picking at her peas. “She doesn’t even try to hide them anymore.”

Karen had simpered as she always did, praised Nancy for being such a good friend to ‘such a troubled girl’ whilst Neil had crossed his arms and said she was doing it for attention.

Max and Mike hadn’t really understood and forgot the conversation as soon as it shifted to their days, but it stuck with Billy. There was an itch beneath his skin that he’d been unable to scratch. Sometimes he’d wake in the night to deep scores in his skin, but they always faded before lunch that day.

The next day, he cornered Barb at school, demanding to see her arms. He wasn’t entirely sure what she saw when he stood before her, but she rolled up her skin to display the angry slashes, red and raw and raised. He stared at them, heat flaring across his body like she’d just given him a drug.

He’d gone home that night and sat on his bed, scissors clutched in his hands. Everything was so blindingly bright as he made the first cut, and everything was quiet. Blood welled, and he watched the small beads carve paths to the floor. Before he could stop himself, he made more and more, every drop of anger coursing through his veins bursting forth when it finally found an outlet.

Neil walked in at some point, and Billy knew nothing would give him more relief than the marks on his arms. Because when the bruises bloomed across his cheeks as Neil called him weak and pathetic, his arms stung better and brighter.

They never spoke about it, Barb and he, but they were both angry and scared and sad, and then they had each other. But then it got too much for Barb, the misery more prevalent than anger, and one day she was gone.

Another revelation Billy itched to pursue.

At the funeral, as her parents wept and people consoled, Billy was bitter and furious. Teachers talked like they never saw the cuts, Nancy cried like she hadn’t been the one to tell Billy in the first place, and the sun shone above them anyway.

But if there was one thing Neil wanted more than his son miserable was his son alive. Couldn’t punish Billy if he was dead, he supposed. But it wasn’t healing, it wasn’t a need to keep his son alive, it was a cage, a trap, a leash around his neck with Neil declaring to the world that Billy could only die on his orders.

It didn’t stop Billy from trying.

He regretted it once, when Max and Mike found him unconscious in the bathroom. The itch was worse that week, unable to be satiated by the blood and fights and rage. It called to him quicker, and he hadn’t been careful. Forgot to lock the bathroom door, forgot to wait until he was alone.

Max cried when he came home from the hospital, calling him a selfish coward for wanting to leave her alone in that house. He told her it was an accident, that he wouldn’t do it again, and tried to pretend he wasn’t lying.

Yet it called to him like a siren in the night. But he tried for Max.

There was another problem with Billy, beneath the fury and loneliness and longing for quiet. A hidden urge he tried desperately to ignore, that he pressed deep down where he hoped no one could see. Neil could see, he could always see what was wrong with Billy.

He hadn’t realised at first that it was wrong to do it. When he found himself staring at the back of twelve-year-old Steve Harrington’s head, kicking his feet beneath his desk and wondering why his chest was tight and warm. Everything seemed kinder when he looked at Steve Harrington.

But a kinder world wasn’t meant for Billy Hargrove, and Neil stamped it out quick.

After a basketball game, back when Billy tried to channel his anger into something healthier, Steve had slapped Billy on the back and congratulated him on making the final shot. His face was red when he walked over to Neil and Max.

Neil wasn’t proud; he never was, but Billy hoped the win would placate him for the moment. Then Neil saw his red face and the boy who waved farewell, and nothing mattered anymore.

Dragged by the hair into the house and thrown into the dining table, Max’s homework flying with the impact, Billy didn’t even have time to grieve Steve’s warmth before everything hurt.

“If I had known you would grow into a faggot,” Neil spat, golden hair grasped tight in red fingers, “I would’ve left you in the hospital with your bitch mother.”

And Billy tried so hard to change it, to show Neil he was trying to be better. He took girls on dates and lost his virginity to Heather Holloway in his bedroom, but Neil still watched him like a hawk. If Billy’s gaze lingered on a classmate, on a cashier, on an actor, Neil made sure he knew.

So, Billy tried and tried, and yet it hadn’t mattered. When he was fifteen years old, and Barb was dead for three weeks, and everything hurt, Eddie Munson offered him weed. He’d taken a drag, and then Eddie Munson kissed him. Everything bloomed bright like a revelation before fear swiftly took hold.

Fear pushed Eddie Munson away and dragged Billy home. Fear ignored Neil’s anger, and Max’s worry and fear pushed Billy into the bathroom, where a bottle of pills waited like an orange grail. Fear looked him in the eyes, reflected in the mirror as he swallowed mouthfuls, and then it was dark and quiet and gentle.

Fear coiled around him like a snake when he awoke in the hospital with Max and Mike and Nancy gathered around his bed, with Neil and Karen arguing with the doctor, with the idea they were a normal family devastated by their son trying to kill himself on a random Thursday evening.

They watched him when he came home. Took his door and his privacy, exposing him to the world. Nancy would invite friends over, and they would peer into his room and giggle like he was an animal in a zoo. Mike’s friends, especially the loud-mouthed little shit Henderson, would goggle, and he could hear them through the walls as Mike explained in excruciating detail how he found Billy on the floor.

(Little Will Byers would look at him sometimes with something akin to understanding in his eyes, and when he’d gone missing, Billy had pulled himself from the darkness to help. When it was revealed he’d been kidnapped by Henry Creel, Billy was the first to find his body in the quarry, small and silent but alive. He never told anyone he found Will Byers, but he thought the boy knew.)

Despite all his secrets laid bare and his skin flayed open, nothing changed. Billy still lay in bed, arms stinging with fresh cuts, longing for the darkness and quiet. He still longed for his mother and longed to kiss a boy, and longed to end it all.

The Wheeler siblings could not keep a secret, and the school gossiped like it would be on the final exams. Did you know Carol cheated on Tommy with Keith? Did you know Heather Holloway kissed Chrissy Cunningham at the party on Saturday? Did you know Steve Harrington failed English again? Did you know Eddie Munson was held back?

Did you know Billy Hargrove tried to kill himself?

He was sixteen years old, still angry, still lost, still talked about, when he walked into the school’s darkroom to get away from prying eyes. It was dark and quiet and away from it all, and he usually spent the time curled beneath a desk, eyes closed, breathing in and out, telling himself it was okay he was alive.

Sometimes, he looked at whatever the photography club hung to dry. Simple photos, mostly, practising angles and lighting and composition, but Billy liked them, nonetheless.

Yet, when he stepped through the door that day, white light beaming a thin strip onto the person already inside, all Billy could see were pictures of Nancy. Nancy laughing and studying, walking and talking and living a life free of pain, and Billy felt the rage and jealousy and fear boil over once again.

Two things became apparent. One – he didn’t like it when Nancy’s joy was presented in his face like that. Two – Nancy didn’t know that these photos had been taken. Some of the developing images revealed the park they’d been at the day before. No one asked then.

Enraged, Billy pushed past the oblivious boy and started to tear the pictures down. Freaky Jonathan Byers stared at him with wide, anxious eyes, and Billy couldn’t help himself. He shoved the other boy, hard, sending him stumbling against the desk and knocking equipment over.

Jonathan Byers, much to Billy’s chagrin, got away with being such a freak because Billy was louder. It didn’t matter that Jonathan Byers stared at girls across the hallway when Billy Hargrove had just thrown a chair across the cafeteria. It didn’t matter that everyone knew Steve only hung out with Jonathan to get his car back when people asked to switch partners immediately after learning it was Billy. It didn’t matter that Will Byers went missing and Jonathan was a suspect when Billy Hargrove tried to kill himself.  

In his only therapy session after the hospital incident (before Neil said it was cowardly and Billy needed to take his punishment like a man), the woman gently suggested that Billy hated people who reminded him of himself. That he saw them the same way his dad saw him, and he wanted to have the same power over them that he feared himself. Billy told her she was an idiot.

Now he stood over Jonathan, wondering if he looked up at his father with those same scared eyes, wondering if Neil felt the same flash of guilt before he steeled himself. Decided Neil Hargrove didn’t have a remorseful bone in his body. Told himself he didn’t either.

Afterwards, when the words he couldn’t take back left his lips and he stepped back, photos clutched in his hands, Billy looked down at Jonathan. He seemed so small all of a sudden. Billy walked away before he did something stupid, like apologising.

When he walked down the hallway, he swore people were looking at him. Peering out of the classroom to catch the freak and his marked-up arms. He could go to maths, should go to maths, knew that he couldn’t skip any more classes if he wanted enough credits to pass the year, but he walked out of the school without looking back.

Neil wasn’t home when he pulled up in the drive, but Karen was dusting, hair pinned up like a 1980s housewife. She turned when he stormed in, eyes wide with a tinge of fear, which got his anger boiling again. What right did she have to be afraid?

Truthfully, Billy tried his best to avoid being alone with Karen. She wasn’t his mother, she wasn’t his friend, just a strange woman in the same house as him who sometimes leant too close and smelt strongly of flowers.

“You’re home early,” she said. “You want some coffee?”

“No,” Billy responded and went upstairs.

Without a door to close, all he could do to pretend he had privacy was to turn and face the wall. He curled in on himself, chest aching and eyes stinging, back exposed in a house that hated him. Karen clattered around in the kitchen, making coffee despite Billy’s decline because she never listened to him anyway.

Byers’s photos were still tucked into his jacket pocket. Slowly, Billy took them out, curling in tighter as he flipped through them. They weren’t great; some perspectives weren’t creative, some frames were blurry, some compositions were off, but there was a strange sort of joy poured into them.

Nancy’s delicate face smiled up at him, a genuine smile instead of her usual tight-lipped quirk. Billy stared at her, wondering if that was a joy she felt despite living in the Hargrove house, and how she managed it.

There was movement, a creaking step closer than he thought, and he shoved the photos beneath his pillow in time for Karen to enter the room without knocking, mug of unwanted coffee in hand.

“You need to knock,” he muttered, refusing to look at her.

She rolled her eyes and placed the coffee on his shitty bedside cabinet, nudging the only photo he had of his mom. It fell, glass saved by Billy’s quick reflexes. Karen didn’t seem to notice, instead sitting herself on the edge of his small bed. Billy drew his knees closer to his chest, trying to ignore the disgust welling in his throat when her skirt brushed his bare skin.

“Your father is worried about you,” Karen said. He could see she raised her hand as if to touch him, but she thought better and rested it on her lap instead. “You’ve been isolating yourself. You need to make more of an effort to be part of this family.”

Billy bolted upright, startling Karen. She stood and backed away like she had encountered a hungry bear, hands held outwards, placating.

“Family?” Billy hissed, “Why the fuck would I want to be part of this family?”

Karen gasped dramatically and scarpered, probably calling Neil to tell him Billy threatened her again.

Suddenly, Billy was hit by a wave of exhaustion. Everything weighed insistently on his back, his limbs felt heavy, and all he wanted to do was sleep. Curl up beneath the stars, close his eyes and let the blackness of nothing roll over him, rock him into the dreamless void where he would never have to open his eyes again.

The house rang with silence. Like he was dream-walking, Billy slipped the photos back into his pocket, walked to the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet (which Neil hadn’t bothered to lock or clear despite the doctor’s recommendation). Pills rattled like secrets as they slipped into his other pocket. He paused and listened for Karen, heard her unfaltering raised voice in the kitchen and squared his shoulders.

One last decision. One last truth.

The window was a familiar escape route, so Billy slipped out with ease, although he no longer cared about hurting his knees when he landed. He got in his car, reversed and sped down the road, a strange adrenaline surging through him. A reckless abandon he’d missed.

But he wasn’t angry. He almost missed the feeling.

He pulled into the parking lot of the park from the day before, where Jonathan Byers was so enthralled by Nancy Wheeler’s smile he’d taken so many photos, and Billy’s scowl was immortalised in three of them. He ran a thumb over his tiny, scowling face, sadness and exhaustion and pity roiling within him.

Then he flipped it over. Something was scrawled across the back, in scratchy, unorganised writing.

Dear Jonathan Byers,

This week feels different. I feel more alive than I have in months. The world seems brighter, and I feel settled. Less angry, less scared. Did you see the sunrise this morning? I’ve never seen a shade of orange so beautiful before.

I’m going to put my best foot forward this week. I think I can be happy.

Sincerely,

Me.

Tears came. They stung, and they burned, hot and heavy and so real. There was a weight on his chest that suddenly lifted as he hugged the photo close to his still beating heart. Grief, overwhelming, undefeatable, unknowable grief, ratcheted through his body.

He would never know that feeling. Happiness.

The pills weighed resignedly in his pocket. Still crying, vision blurry, Billy unscrewed the cap with trembling hands. As he shook them into his palms, some dropped to the floor. He tried to shove them into his mouth, but he was sobbing too much he struggled to swallow. He spat them back into his hand and sat there for a moment, heart thumping rapidly in his chest. He took deep, gasping breaths, tried to remember how he taught Max to stop crying, and his chest hurt so bad, he wanted to rip his heart out of his chest or let someone hug him.

Billy missed his mom. He wanted to meet her. Wanted to know how she would say his name, how her laugh would echo, how she sang and danced and lived her life.

The pills went down easier the second time. Thoughts of his mom, blonde hair curling just like his, smile bright, and eyes so blue, hands out to pull him into the calm darkness that welcomed her all those years ago.

She’d killed herself in the bathtub. It must’ve been so warm.

It was warm now.

Everything felt fuzzy. His head hurt, and his eyelids drooped. Billy slumped forward, rested his head in his arms and with a smile,

                                              he

                                                   let

                                                        the

                                                               darkness

                                                                               swallow

                                                                                             him

                                                                                                    whole.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: Sincerely, Me

The hospital was busy as Jonathan hovered by the front desk. The receptionist hadn’t looked up from her monitor, and he was too awkward to ask. Every time he worked up the courage to cough, someone else would sidle up, and he’d shrink once more.

It wasn’t until the Hargrove-Wheelers walked in that Jonathan managed to get her attention.

“We’re here to see Billy Hargrove,” Karen said. Her hair was up in a tight ponytail, and her makeup was pristine. Neil stood with his arms crossed, as if he would rather be anywhere else.

Nancy and Mike looked tired. The bags beneath their eyes were practically purple in the artificial light, and Nancy hadn’t washed her makeup off completely. Max’s eyes were bloodshot, and her hair was wild and unkempt. She was anxiously peering over the desk to the doors that led to the hospital rooms, face pale and drawn.

“Room forty-five, just down the corridor.” The receptionist sounded completely uninterested as she spoke. “There should be a nurse ready to give you updates.” She gestured them through.

Jonathan waited for them to pass by, but Nancy grabbed his wrist and pulled him through as well. It was quieter on the other side, a low humming droning in the background. Machines were beeping, and people were talking, and Jonathan’s arm began to twinge at the reminder.

Taking a deep breath, Jonathan allowed Nancy to pull him along until they reached Billy’s door. A nurse stepped out as they came to a halt, and she asked for the parent. As Neil went to speak with her, they opened the door.

Billy was lying in bed, eyes closed, hair splayed like a halo on the pillow. The hospital gown made his skin look pallid, and the IV stuck into his arm bared the skin to the world. Thick, white scars laced his forearms in all directions and angles, a memorial to an angry boy.

Jonathan was glad Billy was asleep. He didn’t know what he’d do with his blue eyes looking, knowing.

Max slid her small, pale hand into Billy’s bigger one, slumping into the seat pulled up beside the bed. She bent her head and pressed her forehead to his arm, murmuring something. The sound was lost beneath the beeping monitors.

Nancy took the other seat, hands hovering like she was scared to touch him. The shadows on her face deepened as she gazed at Billy’s face. Beside him, Mike shifted uncomfortably, unable to decide what he should do. He opted to stand beside Nancy, laying a hand on her shoulder.

Staring at them, the odd mismatched family, Jonathan felt he was intruding, but he couldn’t leave. He watched Billy’s chest rise and fall, replaying the action over and over, turning the scene in the car over in his mind. Billy hadn’t been breathing then. He wanted to press his hands against Billy’s chest, to catch the breath in his lungs and reassure himself he was alive.

“He lied to me,” Max said, voice breaking in the still air. Her eyes were damp with tears, some slipping down her cheeks in a silver trail.

“You shouldn’t say that”, Nancy said. She brushed a strand from Billy’s cheek. “We couldn’t have known.”

“He lied to me,” Max repeated. “He lied to me. He told me he wouldn’t do it again, and he lied!” The tears weren’t stopping, coming in thicker waves, dripping off her nose and getting caught on her tongue. “You liar!”

She got up and started to shake Billy, sobbing out, “You liar. You liar. You liar.”

Nancy went to pull her off, but Max was inconsolable now, slumped against Billy’s chest and sobbing like the world was burning around her. Nancy joined then, tears falling and face pressed tight.

Jonathan’s hands started to shake. This isn’t the time, he thought to himself, frustration burning in his chest and his eyes. You aren’t allowed to fall apart now.

Even Mike, who’d seemed quite distant from the situation, was slowly becoming more and more distraught watching his two sisters cry.

The beeping in the room continued, Jonathan’s hands wouldn’t stop trembling, and there was a tightness in his chest growing and growing, stuffing his throat and lungs with cotton until everything was heavy and muffled. The air grew thick as the emotions bubbled over and percolated in the air.

Then, the door opened.

A wild-eyed Neil stormed in, ignoring the tears and not even looking at his son in the hospital bed. His eyes were on Jonathan instead, and there was something clenched in his right hand.

 “What is this?” he shouted, shoving it in Jonathan’s face.

The sound was so loud and startling, both Max and Nancy stopped crying, looking over to see what was happening. Karen hovered by the door, face pale and wringing her hands.

With sweating palms, Jonathan plucked the slip from Neil’s and smoothed out enough wrinkles to see the words, Dear Jonathan Byers, written in familiar script. He turned it over and found Nancy’s face, smiling up at him.

“My son,” Neil snarled, “wrote that for you.”

Jonathan felt the tendrils of a panic attack boiling beneath his skin. “I- I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you?” Neil stepped forward; Jonathan feared for a moment that the man would hit him. “My son tried to kill himself, and on his body they found a note to you. And yesterday, you sat at my table and ate my food. All the while, my son was in his car, popping pills.”

It was an absurd speech, and Jonathan barely understood the point Neil was trying to make, mind buzzing and ears ringing.

“Are you saying Jonathan knew Billy was planning on killing himself?” Nancy asked. Her voice was hoarse from the crying, and her face was a splotchy red.

Neil bared his teeth. “I’m saying this boy knew more about my son than he’s let on.”

This would be the correct time for Jonathan to put down the note and tell the room the truth. The time to look Nancy in the eyes and admit he took pictures of her without asking, and it was because he was in love with her, and the only thing Billy had to do with it was that he took the photo from Jonathan in a fit a rage.

But Jonathan would have to be brave to say that.

Instead, he said, “I’m sorry. He never told me.”

Neil’s eyes flared with dark anger. Jonathan took a step back in preparation for the lunge, but Karen stepped in at that point. She placed a hand on Neil’s shoulder, drawing him towards the bed and his son.

Nancy and Max scattered from the bedside like mice, allowing Neil to sit in the chair. He didn’t reach out to take Billy’s hand like Max, nor did he watch his face like Nancy. He stared at his son’s bared, marked arms, face twisting and untwisting in disdain and fear and grief.

“Can I see it?” Nancy asked quietly, coming to stand beside Jonathan.

He hesitated.

For a moment, a decision warred on his mind. The truth burned his tongue.

“Sure,” he said, swallowing the fire. “I swear he never told me.”

Tell her, a voice sounding like Will said. It will be better if you tell her the truth.

But then Nancy gasped at the photo of her face. She glanced between the image of her smile and Billy in the bed, tears beading once more. “He carried a photo of me with him?”

Jonathan couldn’t take that from her. Couldn’t take the beautiful moment she’d just spoken into existence and crush it, make it weird and strange and creepy. Couldn’t say, ‘no, it was me, the guy you’d only spoken to twice at the time’.

“He asked me to help him develop it.” He didn’t know why he didn’t stay quiet, why he inserted himself into the scenario, other than the fact that he wanted Nancy to turn those wide, sincere eyes to him.

Would she care if he died? If that fall from the tree a week ago was successful, would she have even noticed? If they found a photograph of her with a note on his body, would she be as touched as she is now?

That’s her brother, Will said, a tinge of disgust making Jonathan hunch down. Her brother, who just tried to kill himself.

“Thank you,” Nancy whispered and hugged him, small body pressed tight against his.

The voice went quiet. Jonathan reassured himself that the silence meant it was the right thing to do.

“Are there more?” Neil’s voice sliced through the moment.

Nancy stepped away quickly, tucking the photo into her pocket. Max watched her do so, face twisting into something angry and ugly, but she’d joined Billy once more, hand clasped around his.

“More?” Jonathan croaked.

“More notes?”

He could, should say no, but Nancy turned to look at him, hand resting inside the pocket. Her eyes were wide and pleading. Max stared, searching, and Jonathan remembered he’d taken a picture of her and Mike that day as well.

“They’re at home,” he said, voice shaking. Hands shaking. Body shaking.

“Bring them to my house tomorrow.” The order struck like lightning, the final blow to the lie Jonathan told.

Billy’s chest rose and fell, oblivious still to the events unfolding around him.  

Jonathan slipped through the front door as quietly as he could, wincing as it creaked. The silence told him no one was home, so he allowed his shoulders to relax. He took his coat off, but as he tugged on a button stuck in the hold, the panic he’d been suppressing crashed over him at once.

He collapsed, coat half off, struggling under its weight, limbs tangled and fabric constraining. He couldn’t breathe; all he could hear in the empty house was the beeping of Billy’s monitor intermingled with the machines that screeched on the ambulance ride, the tears, the pain, his mother taking his broken arm gently in her hands and crying and crying and Billy in the car, not moving, slumped over and dead, dead, dead.

Hands tugged at his, trying to pull them from his hair. His fingers felt soft fabric and a steadily thumping heartbeat. Instinctively, his body reacted, tears finally spilling, breathing laboured, but his chest no longer struggled to inhale air. His body slowed, the ringing stopped, and he matched the breathing body before him, resting his forehead on a shoulder.

Once the trembling lessened, he looked up to find Steve staring at him, eyes wide and panicked. Steve smiled, small and relieved, asking tentatively, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Jonathan whispered, voice hoarse. “Thirsty.”

“I bet.” Steve chuckled, chest shaking beneath Jonathan’s hands. “Come on, I’ll get you a glass of water.”

Jonathan stood on trembling legs, and Steve led him into the kitchen. The bowls from breakfast were still on the table, along with Joyce’s half-drunk coffee. Steve took a glass from the drying rack and filled it from the tap.

“Why are you here?” Jonathan asked after he’d taken a sip.

“Eddie said Billy Hargrove tried to kill himself in the park, and you found him.”

“How do people know about that already?”

“Word travels fast around here.” Steve sat beside him, looking like he couldn’t decide between hugging Jonathan or maintaining the boundary he’d set for himself.

“So, it does.” Jonathan drained the glass. “Steve, I think I fucked up.”

“How?”

“My therapist suggested I write notes to myself, like ‘Dear Jonathan Byers, today will be a good day because blah blah blah’ and Billy found one. He had it on him in the car.”

“Right…”

“They asked me if Billy had written it for me. I said yes.”

“Why?” Steve was incredulous, a disbelieving laugh following his question. “Why would you lie about being friends with Billy Hargrove?”

“Because Nancy was there.”

Steve’s entire body crumpled in as he buried his head in his hands and laughed. “Yeah, okay. Nancy asked if you were friends with her psycho step-bro and you said yes because you didn’t want to disappoint her, yeah?”

“Yeah. And now they’ve asked if there were more.”

“Why would you say yes?”

“Because I panicked,” Jonathan hissed, “and now I have to fake a bunch of notes between Billy and me to prove I was friends with him.”

“Okay, I’ll help.” Steve clapped his hands together like Jonathan had gifted him a puzzle.

“You will?”

“Hell yeah! Helping annoy Billy Hargrove’s family and helping you get a girlfriend? Count me in!”

Jonathan found himself smiling despite the guilt building inside.

Jonathan’s hand hovered, pen tip still pressed to the back of the photo as he scrawled the last ‘me’. Steve was beside him, printing off photos using the shitty printer, suggesting things for Jonathan to add, from genuine conversations to allusions to gay sex.

“Do you think I’m doing the right thing? I mean, Billy will be awake soon, and he’ll just tell everyone it’s a lie.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Obviously, this is the wrong thing to do. But we’re in it now.”

They weren’t, not really. Jonathan could walk straight back to the Hargrove-Wheeler house and tell them the truth. But then Steve handed him another photo on glossy photo paper, Max’s hair a smudgy fire.

They were going through a difficult time, and if Jonathan’s fake notes helped them through, then so be it.

Dear Jonathan Byers, he considered, you’re a liar and a freak. I wish I were dead, and I wish Billy were too. I wish we both had killed ourselves in the park that day. Maybe then, we’d be happy.

Dear Jonathan Byers, he wrote, I’ve always wondered what it was like to have a friend like you. Life is hard, and there’s nothing anyone can do to help me. But you’re here, and I’m here, and you’re alive, and I’m alive, I think that can be enough for me. I hope it will be enough for you. Sincerely, Billy Me.

He imagined slipping him these notes through the gaps of his locker, tucked into his bag or notebooks. A quick hand, a fleeting smile, an emotion, a secret only passed between the two of them.

Two lonely boys alone in the park, high in the trees, trying to talk the other down. Both letting go, both climbing down, both dead, both alive.

Both boys in a car, downing handfuls of pills, waiting for the darkness to come.

“What a freak,” he whispered, wiping away a tear trying to drop onto the page.

“You say something?” Steve asked.

“No,” Jonathan murmured, staring at the photo of the tree. “Nothing.”

It was Neil who opened the door when Jonathan arrived. His face was closed off, his actions stiff as he invited him inside. Jonathan shuffled into the house that seemed so different from the day before.

The air was thick with tension. The clock on the wall was face-down on the cabinet, the batteries missing. Karen hovered as she always did, wine glass in hand, face drawn tight and sullen. Max peered down from the stairs, face still tear-stained.

Nancy smiled when she saw him, a small, embarrassed one, like she didn’t want him to see her like that. But she moved her phone to let Jonathan sit beside her.

“Well,” Neil said, arms crossed. “Do you have them?”

“Uh, yessir.” Jonathan hurried to pull them from his bag, almost dropping them in his hurry to give them to Neil.

Neil and Karen immediately start to read, eyes hungrily devouring fake words and real emotions. Jonathan felt lethargic as he sat and watched, aware, briefly, that they were reading his thoughts and fears before his therapist.

He wasn’t sure what he expected, but the stark relief that spread across Neil’s face was not it. Jonathan’s shoulders went up to his ears, and every hair stood on end as Neil sighed like he’d taken a sip from a particularly nice drink and started to reread the letters at a leisurely pace.

“Do any have me?” Max asked quietly from the doorway.

“One,” Neil said coldly. He made no move to hand it to her, watching as she scurried across the room to take it from him. “There’s more with Nancy.”

Nancy straightened. Max cradled her little photo close to her chest and left the room.

Later, Nancy sat on her bed, the four photos with her front and centre, spread out on her bed. Jonathan perched on the end, trying hard to seem casual and normal.

“You know,” Nancy whispered, like she was telling him a secret, “I always thought I hated how loud Billy was. There were times when I wished he’d go away so it would be quiet. But now, I realise the silence is much, much worse.”

Then, she started to cry.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: Requiem

There was a span of months where Jonathan slept through the night back when he was younger. He never got months anymore, but some days he could sleep fully through the night and not remember the dreams he had. Those were the good nights.

Jonathan hadn’t had a good night for a while.

Some nights it was Will, lost, alone, so scared, Jonathan unable to find him. Other times, it was Joyce and Lonnie, merging and changing into one another, berating him, calling him a failure of a brother, a freak, a loser.

And now, Billy Hargrove loomed over him, photos in hand, melting over his fingers like sand in an hourglass. “Look at me, freak,” he would say, “look what you’ve done.” Then blood would pour from his mouth, and he’d collapse, leaving Jonathan standing with a camera.

Jonathan would spring up, heart pounding wildly, entire body trembling. The sky would remain dark, the world would be still, and Jonathan would lie back down, pull the covers over his head and wish he had killed himself properly.

Dear Jonathan Byers, he thought as his eyes began to close, you’ve never had a good day in your life. No point in starting now.

Nancy texted him when he got in the car that morning, eyes hurting and head pounding. Joyce had been manic over breakfast, and Jonathan refused to let her drive Will to school when she was like that, but as he stared at the message, he regretted it.

“Jonathan?” Will’s voice was quiet from the passenger seat. “Do you want Mom to drive me?”

“No,” Jonathan tried to reassure him. “No, I just got some shocking news.”

Billy Hargrove was awake.

“Good news?”

“I guess.”

“Is it Billy?”

Jonathan looked at him. “How do you know about Billy?”

Will shrugged, fiddling with his fingers. “Mike told me. Said it scared him.”

“Well,” Jonathan’s voice went soft, “he should be okay. He’s awake now.”

Will’s face was blatantly relieved, and Jonathan felt guilty that his little brother seemed to care more than he did. Not that Jonathan wasn’t relieved Billy was awake, but the problems he’d been trying to avoid were rearing their ugly heads once more.

Those fucking pictures.

Jonathan really needed to speak to Billy first.

Nancy was quiet in class that day, face still pale. People would ask her questions, ask her if it was true, ask her if her crazy brother finally snapped and offed himself. Quite a few people were disappointed to discover Billy survived.

Jonathan tried to be supportive, didn’t intrude, didn’t bother, just let her sit in silence. She seemed to appreciate it.

“Do you want me to drive you to the hospital?” she asked, as the last bell rang. She forged through the crowd with a single-minded determination.

“I need to drop Will off first,” he said, instead of saying yes.

“Can I pick you up from your house?” She stared up at him, resolute but afraid. Jonathan realised she didn’t want to do it alone.

Will was quieter on the way back, a contemplative expression worrying his features. He didn’t say anything when Jonathan opened the door, nor when Nancy arrived ten minutes later, just gazed with the knowing, solemn look he now perfected like a signature.

Jonathan let the door click behind him, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. Nancy hovered beside him, car keys in her anxious hands.

“How is he?” Jonathan finally asked when they were on the road, houses passing by in monochromatic blurs.

“I didn’t get many details, but he seems alright. Slightly confused, I think.” She was quiet, the only noise the song from the radio turned down low. Then, she whispered in a way that Jonathan probably wasn’t supposed to hear, “I don’t think he wanted to wake up.”

He didn’t, Jonathan knew for a fact.

Suddenly, he was faced with the possibility of meeting someone who understood. Someone who welcomed the darkness and the numbness and the longing to let it all fade away.

The letters he and Steve wrote came back to him. The odd sincerity he poured into each one, imagining, just for a moment, that he and Billy cared enough to be that kind to each other.

Dear Billy Hargrove, I understand how you feel.

Nancy laughed suddenly, incredulously. “I can’t believe you and Billy are friends.”

Jonathan swallowed the guilt, reminded himself that the lies helped them get through the night. “It was odd a first, but we have more in common than we thought.”

“Like what?”

We both want to die. “Photography. We met in the dark room when I was developing some photos.”

She hummed. “I guess I never tried to get to know him. Maybe I would’ve noticed sooner.”

“Max said something,” Jonathan said slowly, not looking at her, “in the hospital. She called him a liar.”

Nancy sighed. “This isn’t the first time he tried to commit suicide. It happened about a year ago. I’m surprised you haven’t heard; the whole school wouldn’t stop talking about it.”

A year ago, Jonathan had been drifting, everything muddied and muffled. He barely got through his classes, let alone paid attention to gossip and rumours.

“I’m surprised he never spoke to you about it.”

Jonathan swallowed tightly, felt the hole fill around him. “We didn’t really talk about that kind of thing.”

Nancy didn’t seem to believe him.

Despite being awake and alert, Billy seemed so small, sitting in bed. The covers were tucked around him, and he drank apple juice through a straw. Max was beside him, sharing her headphones with him. Both of their eyes were closed as they listened to the music.

Billy’s eyes flickered open as Nancy and Jonathan stepped to the end of the bed. With a shaking hand, heart monitor still attached to his fingertip but no IV, he removed the headphone. Max opened her eyes at the movement and glanced over as well, face closing off instantaneously.

Billy held Jonathan’s gaze, and Jonathan had the dreaded realisation that Billy hadn’t forgiven him for the photos, which felt so long ago now. That Billy could just open his mouth and tell the entire room he was lying.  

“Come on,” Nancy beckoned Max over. “I think we should let them talk.”

Max huffed and stood, giving Billy’s hand one last squeeze. Nancy curled an arm around the younger girl’s shoulders and guided her from the room, muttering something about hot chocolate and muffins.

The door shut behind them with a thump, leaving Billy and Jonathan alone.

Billy’s gaze was like a dying fire, embers still glowing in the ash, waiting to be lit once more. They appraised each other.

“They told me you found me.”

Jonathan swallowed, forcing the bile back down. His hands were shaking once again, shoved deep in his hoodie pocket. Billy’s eyes flicked to them anyway.

“I did.”

“Why?”

“I couldn’t leave you there,” Jonathan said. He wanted to cry, he wanted to curl in his bed and shake, he wanted to climb the tallest tree in the park and let go, and fall, fall, fall.

“Max said we’re friends.”

“I need to sit down.”

The spark flickered in Billy’s eyes; the embers glowed in the blue before he nodded. Jonathan slumped into the chair Max sat in, eyes downcast.

“Wheeler signed your cast, freak.” Billy’s pale finger prodded at the plaster, like a child exploring a new texture. “Guess you got what you wanted.”

“I tried to kill myself,” Jonathan blurted out, before burying his head in his hands, pulling at his hair.

Billy didn’t move away, tracing the seam of the cast with a finger. Almost without realising, he turned Jonathan’s arm and moved his sleeve. He was searching for cuts, Jonathan realised, shame and relief passing through quickly.

“How?” Billy asked. He moved his hand away. Jonathan wanted to grab it, hold onto it, let it ground him.

“I climbed the tallest tree in the park and then let go.”

“The tree in your photos?”

Jonathan flinched at the reminder but nodded. “I was trying to create happier memories to associate with it.”

“Did it work?” Billy hadn’t looked away once.

“It just reminds me that I failed.”

“Damn,” Billy said, then he laughed. It sounded tired and disused, layered in thick dust.

“Damn,” Jonathan agreed, chuckling into his hands.

“Why did Max think we were friends?”

Dear Jonathan Byers, he thought to himself, blinking back tears, today is the day you will be brave. You will face your fears, and you will face the consequences.

“I told them we were because they found the photo of Nancy on you that night. I’d written a note on the back to myself, and they all thought you wrote it for me.” It poured out at that moment, the day in the park when the sun was bright and the daisies bloomed, and Nancy’s smile fit into the scene. His therapist and her assignment, the night at Billy’s house, and the walk home, the fear and desperation.

“Why didn’t you correct them?”

“You called me a freak and a creep. You called me a retard, remember?”

Billy’s full-bodied flinch wasn’t as satisfying as Jonathan needed it to be. “Because you are.”

“But they didn’t know that. They were treating me like… like I was normal. And, Nancy, she….”

Billy scoffed, folding his arms over his chest. “And it all comes back to her.” The softer tone he’d been maintaining slowly disappeared into something more mocking. “You told Nancy it was me, so she didn’t know how much of a freak you are!”

Jonathan nodded shamefully. “There’s more,” he muttered, anxiously scratching his cast.

“More?”

“I faked letters between us,” he said. “Steve helped,” he added moments later.

Billy was laughing now, a sharp cackle which bordered on deranged. His entire body shook, and the monitor beside him went crazy. Jonathan watched the door, but no one burst through.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Billy asked.

“A lot.”

When Billy finally stopped laughing, he appraised Jonathan once again. “You want me to go along with this, don’t you? You want to pretend to be friends so you can get with my stepsister!”

A split second to decide. “I do,” Jonathan said bravely.

“Get out,” Billy replied.

Neil Hargrove was in the corridor when Jonathan left. The rest of the Hargrove-Wheelers had a variety of warm drinks in their hands, faces drawn still. Max was curled on a seat further along the hallway, headphones firmly in place.

Nancy handed him a drink, and when he inhaled, the bitter aroma of unsweetened coffee hit him. He smiled tightly at her, not wanting to ask if there was any sweetener.

“I suppose your talk with my son went well,” Neil said.

“Um, he asked me to leave,” Jonathan replied meekly, taking a swig from the bitter drink to stop talking. He tried not to make a face.

“Ungrateful brat!” Neil’s eyes blazed as he slammed through the hospital doors. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Whatever he shouted next was lost as the doors closed. Jonathan sat down stiffly, looking around at the rest of the family as the yelling continued. It was muffled now, but Jonathan could hear the higher pitch of Billy’s voice join the fight.

No one else seemed bothered, not even Max, who’d originally taken out her headphones to listen before putting them back in. Mike started to complain, asking why he had to be there and why he couldn’t go to Dustin’s instead. Nancy was doing flashcards on her phone.

The yelling grew louder. Something fell to the ground with a loud crash. Jonathan went to open the door, but Karen’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“Give them space,” she said, unaffected by the noise. “You had your turn.”

Anxious, Jonathan sat back down and tried to catch Nancy’s eye, but she was too enthralled by the flashcards to notice.

After what felt like hours, but was a passing few minutes, Neil emerged, face red from frustration. His eyes were like a wild animal who just devoured their meal.

“He understands now,” Neil said and gestured for Jonathan to re-enter.

Billy was staring at the bed, pupils blown wide in shock. The water bottle that had been on Billy’s bedside was on the floor by the door. There was a slight tremor to his shoulders, and he flinched bodily when Jonathan shut the door with a gentle click.

“Hey,” Jonathan whispered, but it echoed like a gunshot.

“Pretend to be my friend,” Billy said.

“Huh?”

Billy swallowed, blond hair falling across his face. His eyes shone so blue, illuminated in the white hospital light.

“We can pretend to be friends,” Billy repeated. There was something wet in his voice, a tone that made Jonathan want to reach out to comfort him, press a gentle hand between his shoulders and pull him close.

Instead, he stood by the bed and rested a hand on Billy’s knee.

“Okay,” Jonathan said. Then, “Why?”

“My dad.” Billy swallowed, entire throat convulsing. “My dad made some suggestions about my behaviour. This seemed the easiest way to appeal to him.”

Jonathan held out his hand. He left it suspended as Billy regarded it with cautious eyes. Then, slowly, like he was weighed down, his hand clasped his, and they shook on it.

“Friends,” Jonathan said.

“Fake friends,” Billy agreed, and they shook on it.

It didn’t feel as good as Jonathan hoped. Another lie spun into another web.

Nancy passed vaguely through his mind, and he latched onto the thought, bringing it to the forefront of his mind. Nancy, and her soft hands and gentle smile, who liked that he was friends with her brother, who liked the photos, who liked the lies.

Nancy. Jonathan thought, You’re doing this for Nancy.

Jonathan let go first, and Billy’s hand dropped limply back down on the bed. He curled back in on himself, an awkwardness now enveloping the air.

There was no next step beyond the hospital door.

Billy took something from beneath his pillow, smoothing his thumb over the surface in a repetitive soothing motion. It was the photo that started it all, Nancy smiling her genuine smile, and the note written in Jonathan’s scrappy handwriting still on the back.

“Where’d you get that?” It sounded like an accusation.

“Max gave it to me because she thinks we’re friends,” Billy said, voice sharp. He clutched it protectively to his chest.

“Right,” Jonathan said. “Okay.”

The panic came again, and he turned and left without a backwards glance. As he exited, he bid farewell to the Hargrove-Wheelers, who looked like they’d rather have left as well.

Nancy hurried after him as he continued by. “I should drive you home!”

Jonathan tried to speak, but his tongue lay heavy in his mouth. He shook his head, but Nancy was already pulling him towards the car park.

“I hope your talk with Billy was okay,” she said, pushing him firmly into the passenger seat. She got in the other seat and continued, “He and Neil can be quite scary together, and it's best to ignore it when it happens.”

Billy’s wide-eyed look flashed in his mind.

“They’re always fighting,” Nancy lamented. “I used to think my relationship with my mom was bad, but watching Neil and Billy go at it really puts it in perspective, you know?”

“Does he ever yell at you like that?” Jonathan asked.

“No. Mom won’t let him.”

Jonathan nodded and let the conversation fizzle out, watching as the streetlights flickered on in preparation for the sweeping night.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6: If I Could Tell Her

Billy Hargrove was back at school the next day. He probably shouldn’t have been, but he walked through the doors with a confident swagger, eyes scanning the watching audience like a wild cat. Other students scattered as he moved, ever watching and ever talking.

People watched him like he was half-dead, like he was a ghost haunting the halls.

Jonathan learnt more about his previous suicide during the passing moments between classes than he did from Nancy. People whispered about during classes, exchanging glances, all the while unable to take their eyes off the golden-haired student walking the corridors.

“Did you know he and Barbara Holland made a suicide pact?”

“Did you know Barb killed herself in front of him?”

“Do you think he did it for attention?”

“Did he think we’d care?”

But as much as they talked and as much as they joked, no one dared ask Billy directly. They asked Nancy, who refused to tell them anything, and Tommy, who knew nothing, but whenever Billy came over, the gossiping would peter out.

Jonathan lingered anxiously on the sidelines, boundaries between the two of them still unclear. There was a line before him he’d yet to step over, and to do so would be fully committing to things.

The night before, Jonathan tossed and turned, secrets and whispers crawling over his body like ants. Inescapable truths on the tip of his tongue as he woke that morning, trembling and sweating.

He toed the line, gazing out into the bustling hallway, disconnected, standing on the outside. Nancy, resting against her locked, Robin Buckley hovering beside her. Nancy was sad as she gazed out, and like everyone else, her gaze turned towards Billy as he emerged from a classroom.

Jonathan, as he followed Billy’s path, was struck with the knowledge that Billy was lonely. No one asked him how he was, if he was doing okay, or even seemed to care beyond the rumours. Jonathan understood the feeling well and decided, in a sudden burst of courage, to step over the line.

He pushed through the flow of students heading in the opposite direction, acting out more force than he’d ever done before, muttering a single apology rather than an avalanche of platitudes whenever he knocked against someone.

Billy was moving faster now, further away, and Jonathan was determined not to lose sight of him. He reached out, grasped Billy’s wrist in his hand and pulled and pulled. They stumbled and practically fell into an empty classroom.

Billy shook him off, spinning around with a wild look in his eyes, fist raised to strike. When he saw Jonathan, he lowered it, but his shoulders were still tense.

“Um,” Jonathan said, if only to break the silence.

Billy then relaxed, coming to rest against the desk. “Byers,” he said coolly.

“I wanted to…” Jonathan paused, suddenly worried about what he’d done. They’d agreed to fake being friends for the sake of certain relationships, but he didn’t know how far it extended. “I wanted to check on you.”

“What?” Billy looked up from his nails.

“Are you okay?” Jonathan asked bluntly.

Billy flinched, a hand coming to scratch at his arm. Jonathan wondered if the cuts had healed over, or if there were fresh ones beneath the fabric. Yet again, he was weirded out by Billy coming to school so soon after the attempt.

“Not really,” Billy whispered. “It’s happening again.”

“Again?”

“Barb,” Billy said her name like a prayer, like a secret.

Jonathan didn’t remember Barbara Holland that well; she’d been quiet and invisible, slipping into the background, slipping through the cracks so fast no one could catch her. She died on a Wednesday, Jonathan had a maths test the next day, but it was cancelled instead. He took the test on a Friday instead. He remembered the B he got on it, but he couldn’t remember how Barb died.

“They talked about you then.”

“They’re talking about me now,” Billy replied. “They know nothing about me but the fact that I tried to kill myself. They don’t even know how I did it.” Jonathan remained silent as Billy chuckled mockingly. “They think I tried to hang myself. I can see them looking at my neck.”

Jonathan’s eyes flick to Billy’s neck. It’s smooth and tan despite the strain. Unmarked.

Before Jonathan could reply, the classroom door opened, and Nancy stepped in. Automatically, Billy tensed, reangling his body in defence. Nancy nodded to him but turned her eyes to Jonathan.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” He shoved his hands in his pockets to hide the slight tremor of nerves. “What’s up?”

Three days ago, Nancy Wheeler seeking him out specifically to say hello would’ve been a dream come true. But now he hovered awkwardly, waiting for her to say something, watching Billy tense himself into anger.

“Just came to see if you’re okay,” Nancy told him. “You seemed in a hurry to get out of the crowd.”

Billy looked incredulous, a disbelieving laugh bubbling up. Nancy shot him a glare.

“Oh, thanks,” Jonathan said. She smiled brightly, coming closer. “But I’m doing okay.”

“I’m glad.”

“I’m not,” Billy said bluntly.

Nancy rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” She squeezed Jonathan’s shoulder. “I’ll see you in class.”

But Billy was already leaving.

It’s Steve who cornered him next, shoving him roughly into a corner between the lockers and a water fountain. Steve leaned in real close, an odd anger in his eyes, swimming green with a familiar jealousy.

“What’s with you and Hargrove?”

Jonathan blinked. “Huh?”

“You and Hargrove. I saw you watching him this morning, and I saw you pull him into the classroom.”

“You know why,” Jonathan pointed out. “You helped me write the letters.”

Steve scowled. “I thought I was helping you with Nancy! You haven’t even looked at her since Hargrove walked in!”

Jonathan shoved Steve’s hand off his shoulder. “Why does this matter to you so much?”

Steve spluttered. Gestured wildly like it explained anything. “Because it’s Hargrove!”

“Why does that matter?” Jonathan didn’t shout. He wasn’t good at raising his voice, but Steve heard the frustration, rearing back.

“Whatever,” he spat. “Don’t come crying to me when Hargrove hurts you.”

“I wouldn’t come to you for anything,” Jonathan replied. He shoved past Steve and let the crowd swallow him whole.

He found himself seeking out Billy during the passing periods, blond hair like a spotlight. They didn’t speak, but they nodded to each other over their heads and smiled as they passed each other. They had the last class together, which Jonathan hadn’t realised since Billy hadn’t turned up to a History class for the entirety of last week.

Billy sat near the back, a piece of paper and a pencil sharpened down to a stump, all he had to show for his willingness to learn. People were still talking, still looking, but Billy was writing diligently. Jonathan turned around and faced the board, a warm feeling blooming in his chest.

“Do you want to come to the park with me?” Billy whispered as they started their individual work.

“After school?”

“Yeah.”

Jonathan peered at him, at the blue eyes shining in the white classroom light. There was a sincerity reflected in them, becoming more and more natural for Billy with each hour that passed.

Fake friends, Jonathan reminded himself, he agreed to be fake friends.

“Sure, I’d like that,” he agreed and started to scribble down his answers. Beside him, a girl giggled, smile hidden behind her hand.

After class, Billy followed a step behind, shoving his paper scrunched into his pocket. Jonathan walked to his locker, with Billy like a guard dog at his back, creating a divide between them and other people.

Steve passed at some point, not even glancing in Jonathan’s direction. Nancy and Robin walked by Nancy offering to give Jonathan a ride home. He declined immediately, Nancy and Billy shooting him confused glances at the reply.

As they got into Billy’s car, Jonathan’s bag was chucked carelessly into the back. Billy didn’t start it. He sat with his hands on the wheel, facing forward with a contemplative look on his face. Jonathan fiddled with his camera lens.

“Why didn’t you go with Nancy?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nancy? The entire reason we’re even talking right now is because of Nancy. You wanted to be fake friends so you could see more of her and yet….” He trailed off.

Jonathan didn’t know what to say. The Nancy situation had faded into the background with everything that happened. She’d given him so many opportunities today, so many hints that he’d brushed off or ignored. He remembered Steve’s frustration at his supposed lack of interest and pondered why he was suddenly uninterested.

He looked at the boy sitting in the driver’s seat. “You asked me first,” he said simply.

The park was busy with younger children and families, their shrieks of delight carried by the breeze. Billy parked in the same spot where he’d attempted to kill himself, seemingly unbothered by the parallel. Jonathan paused for a moment before he stepped out, forcing the memory of the night from his mind.

Billy was getting out of his car, leaning against the roof and lighting a cigarette. No longer slumped over and unresponsive, and dying.

The sun was bright, the sky was blue, and Jonathan and Billy were both alive.

Today was a good day.

They walked up the hill towards the big tree. Billy would glance at him from time to time, cataloguing his expressions as they approached the site. Jonathan wasn’t as bothered today, just let the wind caress his face and stepped over the daisies blooming by his feet.

“How are you and Nancy?” Billy awkwardly asked.

Jonathan flushed and stopped to take a photo of a crow above his head. He waited, then said, “We’re doing okay. Our project’s going well.”

Billy stopped and stared. “Dude. The whole reason we’re hanging out is so you can flirt with her. That is literally what you told me yesterday.”

Jonathan fidgeted, cycling between looking at Billy, the camera and the sky. Why did you invite me here?

“It’s a work in progress.”

“Slow-moving progress.”

“She didn’t know I existed until our project,” Jonathan said. “Of course it’s slow.”

Billy didn’t believe him, which was understandable. Jonathan didn’t even believe himself.

He didn’t want to admit that Nancy was only part of the agreement. Both their emotions felt fragile at the moment, standing in the shadows of their suicides.

“Can I ask you a question?” Billy asked.

Jonathan rested his hand against the tree trunk, feeling the rough texture beneath his fingertips, wanting to capture the sensation on camera but unable to figure out how. He inhaled. “Okay.”

“What’s your mom like?”

“She loves me,” Jonathan said after hesitating, struggling to formulate the complicated words in his throat. “She loves me, but she’s crazy. Some days she’s fine and can take care of herself and us. Some days she can’t. It’s difficult to know when these days come. But she loves me. I miss her, the old her, but I know she cares.”

Jonathan took a photo of the sky, a flock of birds, black silhouettes against the sun. Billy’s eyes glow in the light. Jonathan wants to take a picture of them, too.

“She loves me,” Jonathan repeated. Billy nodded.

Crunching footsteps forced them to turn. An unfamiliar man was moving up the path towards them with determined steps. Jonathan shrank in, edging behind Billy as the other boy became tenser and tenser like a cat preparing to pounce.

“Hargrove!” The man bellowed, voice ricocheting off the hill into the silence surrounding them.

“What?” Billy yelled back, fists clenched by his sides. “I’m not doing shit!”

“I see you up there with that boy!”

Jonathan flinched at the accusation, confusion bubbling up. He let out a hum of confusion, an offended ‘huh?’ coming out.

“Not like that,” Billy muttered. “He thinks I’m gonna hurt you.”

“Huh?” Jonathan responded.

The man was before them now, the sheriff's badge fully visible on his chest. His thick moustache twitched in rage at Billy’s defiant stare.

“I’m not doing anything,” Billy repeated, voice quiet. “We’re friends.”

“You don’t have any friends,” the Chief said.

The hurt that crossed Billy’s face was quick but obvious.

He turned to Jonathan to back him up, but Jonathan found himself frozen. He couldn’t have a panic attack now, but could feel it oncoming nonetheless, and the words were jammed in his throat.

The Chief nodded like he’d suspected it and beckoned Billy over. Billy’s face had clouded over, but he went with a petulant shuffle.

“I wasn’t doing anything,” he mumbled.

“Are you okay?” The Chief asked. He said this quietly, the glance at Jonathan indicating he wasn’t meant to have heard. “I heard about what happened.”

“I’m okay,” Billy replied, slightly louder. “He was the one who found me.”

The Chief turned to appraise Jonathan then. “You were the kid who fell from the tree last week.”

Jonathan nodded, waving his cast in awkward confirmation.

“Glad you’re okay as well.” The Chief clapped his hands. “Right, I’ll walk you to your cars.”

“I drove him,” Billy said.

“And I’ll drive him back,” Chief said. Billy rolled his eyes and stomped off. “Sorry about him.”

“It’s okay,” Jonathan replied. “He wasn’t bothering me.” It felt like something he should’ve said in front of Billy.

“Can’t be too careful with him,” was the response. “He worries me.”

Me too, Jonathan wanted to say.

They caught up to Billy quickly, who’d been hovering by the base of the hill, lips still down-turned. The Chief clapped a hand on his back and began to guide him to the car park, Jonathan trailing behind.

Billy got in his car, making it obvious that he didn’t want to do it, flipping off the Chief as he sped off without saying bye to Jonathan.

After the Chief dropped him off, asking oddly pointed questions about not just Billy but Jonathan and Joyce as well, Jonathan slumped on his bed. The camera was still around his neck, and he started to review the results.

The tree. The daisies. The sky. Billy. Billy. Billy.

He didn’t even remember taking them.

He picked up his phone and flicked to his barren Instagram, clicking on Billy’s profile when it popped up in his recently searched profiles. He’d scrolled through the profile the night before when he couldn’t sleep, amazed at how young and sullen both Billy and Max looked. They didn’t follow each other, but Jonathan needed a way to reach out.

Hi. Sorry about Hopper. I got scared. Sirry.

There was no response. He waited; Billy didn’t read it.

Jonathan put his phone face-down and started to boot up his computer once again. He then started the excruciating process of downloading his photos from his camera.

His phone buzzed with a notification, and he lunged for it. Billy replied.

it’s ok. i miss my mom too.

Chapter Text

Chapter 7: Disappear

Dear Jonathan Byers, today will be a bad day.

Jonathan stared at the ceiling, body numb and cold. He blinked blearily but couldn’t move, his mind weighed heavily with a pounding headache. He would rub at his forehead to alleviate some of the pain, but that would involve moving. He couldn’t move.

Beside him, his alarm blared, and yet he didn’t move. The headache grew worse, and tears burned in the corners of his eyes, but his breathing was steady, and his heart was numb.

His door opened slowly, letting in a sliver of warm light. Will peered around the corner, pale face tight with worry.

“Jonathan?” He whispered, but to Jonathan’s hurting head it was like a sledgehammer. He curled in further as Will slipped into the dark room. “I’m going to turn it off, ‘kay?”

The alarm stopped, but there was a ringing in his ears as the silence unfurled itself.

“Time?” he croaked out. Everything hurt. He wanted to go to sleep.

“School starts soon.” Will hovered, dark eyes flicking between Jonathan and the door. “Mom’s waiting. I’ll go tell her you’re unwell.”

Jonathan grunted. He wanted to roll on his side, wanted to bury his head in his pillows and block out the world, but he couldn’t move. His fingers twitched. He wanted to die.

The door opened once again, and Joyce came in. Her hair was soft and damp from the shower, and she was wearing a clean uniform.

“Will says you’re sick?” Her hand pressed against his forehead, gently swiping loose hair from his face. He stared blankly at her and couldn’t even find it in himself to smile. “Baby,” she said softly, kneeling by the bed, “is it bad again?”

“I want to sleep forever,” Jonathan managed to say, words almost non-existent.

Joyce’s face crumpled, and she cupped his cheek. “Okay, you can sleep for a bit. I’ll call the school and let them know you can’t come. I have to go to work today, but I’ll see if I can get off early.”

She wouldn’t be able to. She never did.  

“ ‘kay,” he murmured, soothed momentarily by her thumb stroking his cheek.

“Sleep well, baby,” she whispered and kissed his forehead.

The room went dark, and Jonathan closed his eyes, begging sleep to take him.

Dear Jonathan Byers, you want to try again.

A notification buzzed, pulling him from the darkness. He blinked the dredges of sleep from his eyes and tried to sit up, struggling to move his body in its lethargic state. The sunlight was smothered by the heavy curtains, but the room had a warm orange glow of late morning.

There was a glass of water on his bedstand. Jonathan took it in both his shaking hands and managed to take a sip, spilling some down his front. The water was cold, and his headache dulled slightly with the sensation.

His phone screen went black with a lack of interaction. Jonathan stared at it.

No one cared enough to reach out. No one would bother to check in on him, to pretend they cared. He knew this, down to his slow-beating heart, but he picked it up anyway.

There was a message from Steve. Jonathan swallowed the disbelief as the phone struggled to use Face ID. When it finally unlocked, and he read the message, his heart dropped to his stomach.

King_Steve23: u still coming 2nite

King_Steve23: i rlly need my car man

Jonathan’s cast began to itch, and he scratched at it furiously, nails catching the skin between the seams. He scratched and scratched until the skin was red and streaked with nail marks.

He swiped away the notifications and slumped back down in bed. Sleep tugged at him again, like a siren across the sea, lulling him with whispers of eternal rest.

Dear Jonathan Byers, sleep murmured to him, just close your eyes. The pain will be gone soon.

The anger that had surged through his body at Steve’s messages was gone now, leaving him with the pooling feeling of wrongness, of apathy. Of the knowledge that Jonathan could throw himself from a tree, and no one would bother to find him.

The weather was meant to be nice today. The daisies would be facing the sun. They’d welcome him amongst them, he was sure.

Shadows danced across the walls and ceilings, spurred on by the rising sun. He watched them, amusement dulled. They’d disappear when he opened the curtains. Fleeting moments of happiness never lasted long.

He lay back down and closed his eyes. Sleep still cradled him, but the grim determination that settled in him stopped it from taking him fully. In the shadows of the ceiling, he could see his tree take shape, branches extended like hands, beckoning him forward.

His arm was heavy when he lifted it, trying to reach the branches. It fell limply by his side. The tree disappeared, shadow dissipating as a car trundled by.

His phone lit up again. He picked it up and didn’t bother lifting it to his face; he was sick of seeing his reflection.

n-wheeler: There’s been a change of plan with the project. We’ve been asked to join with another group. I’m meeting them in the library today. I’ll keep you updated.

n-wheeler: I think you’ve forgotten to email me your section as well.

Jonathan’s laugh was bitter as he typed out a message. The words flashed at him, warning him not to send it. His thumb hovered over the arrow, wondering, for a moment, what Nancy would do if Jonathan Byers told her to fuck off.

He deleted it. Didn’t write anything else. Left Steve and Nancy on read and let the phone screen turn black once again.

The bitterness that was brewing in his chest began to boil over. He scrubbed a hand over his face and found them damp with tears. His body ached, and not even the cool water was enough to push back the thumping pain in his head.

One of the photos he’s taken in the park with Billy caught his eye. He’d printed off his shitty printed late evening, before the nightmares took hold. It was the clump of daisies he’d been watching, but in the corner, was Billy’s shoe, buckle glinting silver in the sun.

He turned it over, pulled out a pen from beneath the pillow, and wrote in a messy, frantic scrawl.  

He scrunched it in his hands afterwards and threw it across the room. It missed the trash can and rolled back towards the bed.

A shadow moved, and when Jonathan turned his head to follow, he almost jumped out of his skin at the knock on the window. A figure moved behind the curtain, a silhouette waving and knocking again.

Jonathan stared, before slowly unfurling himself for his bed, shoving the covers to the floor. The carpet was soft beneath his bare feet as he shuffled over and slowly opened the curtains.

Billy’s face was pressed close to the window, breath fogging up the glass. He grinned widely when Jonathan appeared, tongue swiping across his teeth when the window opened far enough for him to squeeze his body through.

“Glad I found the right room,” he said brightly, dumping his plastic bags on the bed.

Jonathan went to close the window but was hit by the staleness that permeated his bedroom air. He left the curtains and window open, letting the warm sunlight and fresh air in.

Billy turned to face him, and Jonathan wondered what he saw. A pale, tired face and bedraggled, greasy hair. Unwashed clothes and tired eyes, a body trembling with frequent nerves.

“Do you want to get dressed?” Billy prodded gently. “I did come over without asking.”

Jonathan nodded and shuffled over to his dresser. As he slowly peeled the clothes from his tired body, he heard rustling behind him and realised Billy was digging through the bags instead of watching him.

Jonathan’s eyes burned suddenly, and he hurried to the bathroom to wash his face and hide his tears. Looking in the mirror, he could see he already looked much better, still tired, still sad, still numb, but ready to say a few words to the boy who climbed through his window.

Billy smiled in delight when Jonathan emerged. On his neatly made bed, pillows plumped and blankets smoothed back down, Billy had laid out whatever he’d brought in his bag. Snacks and drinks, sweet popcorn and salty pretzels, soda and beer, and even a bag of weed in the middle.

Jonathan’s mouth opened, but he struggled to say anything. Billy seemed to understand as he began to set up his laptop. Jonathan settled on top of his covers, letting himself sink into the comfort. His hands hovered over the food uncertainly, and Billy nodded in acceptance.

There was a photo of Billy’s car. The colours were streaky from terrible printer ink, and the composition was rushed, but when he turned it over, there was a message.

Dear Jonathan Byers,

Are you okay? You weren’t at school today, and I was worried.

Sincerely,

Me.

Jonathan cradled it to his chest. Looking up, he met Billy’s concerned gaze and shook his head. He still couldn’t find the words to speak, but Billy seemed to understand. He crawled the length of the bed until he was beside Jonathan, his body radiating heat.

They balanced the laptop between them, watching a nature documentary, passing the snacks between them. Billy cracked open a beer with a hiss when the lions caught the antelope and offered it to Jonathan.

Jonathan had only drunk once before, when Steve had invited him around. He took a sip and wrinkled his nose at the sour taste. Billy’s body shook with laughter, but when he tried to take it back, Jonathan pulled it close to his chest, smiling mildly.

They passed the rest of the afternoon in silence, watching nature documentaries and eating their fill of pretzels. Billy rolled a blunt at one point, and Jonathan took his first-ever hit, finding he enjoyed the sensation more than alcohol. They relaxed into each other after that moment, Billy’s arm wrapping around his shoulder.

He wasn’t as tired. His body wasn’t as tense; it stopped trembling at some point between the second and third documentary, and the headache was subdued by the food and weed.

A car door slammed, and they shot up, exchanging panicked glances. Jonathan checked the time, half past three, and realised it was probably Will coming home.

“Nancy,” Billy said from where he was peering through the window. “She’s dropping him off.”

Jonathan shuffled over as well, seeing Will by the door trying to find his keys, as Nancy waited until he entered the house to take off. In the passenger seat, he could see Robin Buckley, whose head was poking out the wound-down window to ask Will if he was okay.

Will got the door open, Robin yelled out a farewell, and the car sped off, disappearing quickly around the corner. Nancy hadn’t even come in to say hello or to check if he was okay. If he were to check his messages, he’d probably have one from her asking for his section again. He tried not to feel too bitter; he wasn’t her responsibility, and he didn’t seem to be much of a friend either.

The stairs creaked, and soon Will knocked on the door. “Jonathan? Can I come in?”

Billy shrugged when Jonathan looked at him. “Yes,” he said, walking over to the door, hoping the stench of weed and alcohol wasn’t as strong now. He noticed momentarily that the letter he’d written was missing from the floor.

Will entered, wide-eyed as he stared at Billy.

Jonathan sat down on the bed; any semblance of joy drained from him. Both Billy and Will let him work through whatever he needed until he finally asked, “How was school?”

Will shrugged. “Fine. I was worried about you. Mom couldn’t get away early, and I was scared.”

“You don’t have to be scared of me.”

“For you,” Will corrected. His small hand squeezed Jonathan’s shoulder, trying to provide the same comfort Jonathan gave him. “I was scared for you. I’ve never seen you like that before.”

Jonathan shrugged, not knowing what to say.

Will nodded and smiled awkwardly at Billy. “I’m glad you weren’t alone.”

“Do you want to watch a nature documentary with us?” Jonathan asked. “We’re just watching baby penguins almost freeze to death.”

Will grinned. “Okay!” He clambered over Jonathan and settled in the middle, small body pressed against his brother’s side, bony elbow digging into his ribs as he started to shovel popcorn into his mouth.

Billy chuckled and sat down. Will was now between them, but Billy’s warmth still seeped into his skin.

Billy made dinner. The Byers didn’t have much food in their house, but Billy seemed to combine the ingredients into a hint of real food. He placed a steaming omelette in front of the two of them, making one for himself and leaving some mixture, covered, for Joyce later on.

Both Will and Jonathan lived more frequently on microwaved meals and soft, overdone pasta when Joyce tried, so having good, homemade food was a novelty they didn’t want to miss out on.

Billy watched in stunned amusement as they devoured the food, cheese and peppers and precooked chicken, all melting in their mouths.

“This is good!” Will said enthusiastically. “You should come around more often!”

“I don’t think your brother wants me here that often,” Billy said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Jonathan replied quietly, taking a drink from his Pepsi.

“Don’t say that,” Billy muttered.

Will looked between them, not understanding the sudden tension.

“I’m going to Steve’s tonight,” Jonathan announced. He didn’t know why he did it, but the glint of anger in Billy’s eyes made him feel more alive than anything else that afternoon.

“I’ll drive you.” Billy stood up and took the dishes to the sink, rinsing them beneath warm water.

Will shot Jonathan a glare and went to help, his small body almost swallowed by Billy’s shadow.

“You don’t have to drive me,” Jonathan said. His arm felt itchy again.

“I’d like to,” Billy replied firmly. “I don’t think you’re in a good state to drive today.” Will nodded in agreement as he dutifully dried the plates.

“Fine.” He sent a message to Steve letting him know he was coming over that evening and got a thumbs up in response.

Billy got his keys and shoes, as Jonathan pulled on a coat, the numbness creeping over him again. He wanted to be back upstairs, beneath the covers with Billy’s arm around him, the warmth seeping into his blood.

Instead, he waited for Billy to drive him to Steve’s.

“You’ll be okay?” he heard Billy ask Will.

“I’ll be fine,” Will said. “Mom will be back soon. I’ll tell her you made omelettes.”

Billy chuckled. “Thanks, kid.”

“Take care of him,” Will said.

“I’ll try.”

The car ride was stiff and awkward. Billy’s hands were white knuckled as he drove, jaw working like he wanted to say something.

Jonathan swallowed. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For checking in on me. No one else did.”

“Not even Steve?”

Jonathan began to shake again. “No. Not even Steve.”

“Thought you were friends.”

“Fake friends.”

Billy laughed his fake laugh again. “Of course. No one can be a real friend to Jonathan Byers.”

“That’s not fair,” Jonathan murmured.

“I suppose it isn’t,” Billy said, and then said nothing else for the rest of the drive.

Dinner with Steve’s family was awkward. The obligation radiating from everyone sitting at the table was pungent, the silence wrought with underlying arguments. Everyone knew Steve’s parents were one argument away from divorce.

Jonathan was sure Steve’s friendship with him was brought up more often than not. Steve’s mother, Laura, and Joyce had been friends back in school, so Laura felt like she owed Joyce Byers her own son’s friendship. Steve wanted his car back from his uncaring father, and Mr Robert Harrington was always acting like Jonathan was a stray dog riddled with fleas.

“How’s your mother?” Laura asked, drinking slowly from her wine glass. The deep red liquid swirled in the candlelight. Jonathan’s arm itched.

“She’s doing okay. Hard at work.”

Mr Harrington grimaced like the concept of hard work left a bad taste in his mouth.

“That’s nice. Always a hard worker, our Joyce.”

The conversation went stagnant again before Steve and his dad began to argue. Jonathan poked at the dry chicken on his plate as their voices flew over his head. He wondered how Billy was, if he got home okay. He wondered if he knew how truly grateful Jonathan had been for today, despite the way it ended for them.

“And you, Jonathan. Any new friends?” Laura asked, ignoring her husband and son.

“I guess Billy Hargrove,” Jonathan offered quietly.

Steve stopped arguing with his father. “You aren’t friends with Billy Hargrove. He doesn’t do friends.”

“I never liked that Neil Hargrove,” Mr Harrington cut in.

Then they were off again, voices clambering on top of each other, spitting vitriol at the Hargrove-Wheelers. Jonathan’s hand trembled so much that the cutlery rattled against the porcelain.

“Excuse me,” he said, pushing his plate away. He got up and left the large dining room, stumbling down the corridor and finally entering the fresh night air.

Steve followed him out, huffing in anger.

“What’s up with you? You weren’t at school, and now you’re acting all grumpy. I don’t even think my dad will give me back my car now!”

“Would you care if I died?” Jonathan asked, staring up at the sliver of moon through the clouds.

“What?” Steve’s laugh was incredulous.

“If I killed myself, would you even care?”

“Why would you ask me that?”

Jonathan smiled. Sad and thoughtful and still warring with indecision. “Why do you think?”

Steve stared at him, eyes flicking between Jonathan’s serious face and his arm in a cast. “Are you joking?”

“No,” Jonathan replied softly. “I’m just wondering if anyone would notice this time.”

“I would,” Steve said, hurt and sincere and so, so worried. “Of course I would miss you! You’re my best friend.”

Jonathan turned to him, eyes bright with tears. “I am?”

“Can I sign your cast?” Steve asked desperately. He held a highlighter in his hand. “I’ve wanted to for a while, but I was waiting for you to ask.”

“Okay,” Jonathan replied, voice soft in awe. “I’d like that.”

Steve wrote his name in bright orange, taking up the entire back of the cast. After he clicked the lid back on, he pulled Jonathan into a hug, both bodies trembling.

“You’re my best friend, Jonathan Byers, and I would care if you died.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 8: You Will Be Found (To Break)

Jonathan stared at his hands as Miss Slater carefully parsed through the photos and messages he’d brought with him. She read each word carefully and would analyse each photo he presented with a critical eye.

“These are lovely,” she said after a moment, placing them gently back on the table. “You did well with my task. How did you find it?”

“I, uh,” he struggled for a moment. His hands played with the edge of a photo, crinkling the corners as he tried to formulate the words. She waited patiently as he thought before he finally said, “I found it easy. I learnt a lot of new things about myself.”

Her eyes crinkled when she smiled. “I’m glad,” she said. “You seem happier today. More settled. Do you think so?”

He shrugged. The bad day haunted him, and he was still struggling to sleep through the night. But the daytime seemed brighter, kinder to him than it had before. “Settled? Yes. Happier? It comes and goes.”

“Unfortunately for us, I think happiness is the most fleeting emotion we experience.”

“Are you happy?” he asked, curious.

She smiled again and laughed, hiding it behind her hand. “I am happy most of the time.”

“That’s amazing,” he told her sincerely.

“I suppose it is,” she agreed. “Now, what do you think made some of those moments happy?”

“Nancy,” he said without hesitating. But as soon as he said her name, he knew it wasn’t the entire truth. He wanted Nancy to make him happy because he’d put so much work into that belief. But each interaction had grown more and more sour as the days passed.

Their project was no longer their own as Robin and Ben joined their group. Nancy and Robin were often at one end of the library table, heads together and giggling into the obnoxious silence, whilst Jonathan and Ben worked quietly on their sections.

In those moments, he clung to the smiles she’d given them during the initial days of the assignment, when it was the two of them in her bedroom. He held onto the smile during the session, determined to not waste a moment of happiness before it fled again.

Miss Slater searched his gaze, a knowing look in her eyes. She didn’t believe him, not entirely. Maybe she thought there needed to be something bigger, but he couldn’t find it in himself to admit it.

He needed Nancy to be the answer because otherwise, everything he did would be for nothing. Those initial photos, those initial notes, those initial moments where he began to discover a new side of himself were because of her.

“Did anything else happen?” she questioned, getting something from his silence.

“Billy Hargrove tried to kill himself,” he blurted out and immediately felt guilty. Then told himself not. Therapy was a place for secrets, not just his own.

“Oh?” She replied in a tone suggesting she already knew that.

“I found him.”

She leant forward, eyes soft but probing. “And how did that make you feel?”

“Scared,” he said. “Jealous.”

A selfish thought wormed its way to the forefront of his mind. He hadn’t wanted Billy to kill himself, partly because he hadn’t wanted him to die, but also because Jonathan had failed to do so himself. He wanted someone to wallow in the same aftermath as him.

Miss Slater waited. She wasn’t writing anything down, but he was sure she was making notes in her mind for later.

“I tried to kill myself last week,” Jonathan said softly. His fingers in the cast lightly touched one of the photos, the tree standing tall on the hill. “I climbed that tree all the way to the top and jumped off.”

She nodded in encouragement. He pushed another photo forward, the daisies in their small, happy clump. “I landed by these. I dream of them at night. I dream of the climb and the fall, and in my dream, I fall and fall, and the daisies catch me, but they are red with my blood.”

“That must be scary.”

“It wasn’t scary when it happened.”

“What was it?”

“Relieving.” He scratched at his cast again. “I wanted to die. It was a grey day. It felt like every day was like that.”

“Are they like that now?” she asked. Do you still want to die? Was left unsaid.

“Some days are dark. Some days I look out my window and see the tree and imagine myself walking over to it, climbing up and letting go again.” His fingers rested on the scrap paper with a terribly photographed car on it. “But some days, the sun is bright, and it blinds me. I miss it more when it's gone.”

“Do you wish you’d never felt the sunlight?”

He thought for a moment. “No,” he said finally. “I just love it more when it comes back.”

She smiled like he’d said the most amazing thing. “That’s lovely.” Her eyes were drawn to the car, and she said, “That one was written by someone else.”

Jonathan turned it over, revealing Billy’s oddly neat writing to her like a tarot card. Unlike the others, showing her this now felt violating, for both him and Billy.

“Are you and Billy friends?”

He wished she had asked about Nancy again. He was getting good at lying about Nancy.

“I don’t know. It’s complicated.” He picked at the cast, where only Steve and Nancy’s names stood out. He’d thought about asking Billy to sign it, but the thought of him saying no was anxiety-inducing. The thought of him saying yes brought another feeling to light, one he wasn’t quite ready to name yet.

“Did you tell him about your attempt?”

“Yes, I saw him in the hospital and told him then.”

“Do you spend time together?”

“We went to the park, and he came to my house yesterday.”

“Then?” She let it hang in the air.

He shrugged helplessly. “I would like us to be friends.” His chest loosened at the confession, like it had been a secret he’d been desperate to hold onto. Another one took its place, but he was unaware of it.

“Maybe that can be what you work on next week,” she suggested. “Building your friendship with Billy. Do you think you could do that?”

“I can try,” he said quietly.

“Maybe he could sign your cast!” She laughed, not knowing the magnitude of the task.

He laughed as well, knowing he was standing on the precipice of something monumental.

Joyce kissed him on the forehead when she dropped him off at home, before driving off, already late for work. Will was waiting by the door, eager to see if his brother was okay. Jonathan ruffled his hair and offered to make them both hot chocolate.

As they settled in front of the TV, watching old reruns of Ben 10, Jonathan pulled the photos from his bag. He kept them in a folder. Will glanced over at times, interested but not invasive.

He hadn’t noticed that one was blank, no note on the back and decided to rectify it. He didn’t look at the photo, didn’t think about what to write, just pressed pen to paper and let his pen move. He rolled out his shoulders and smiled down at what he wrote. But it faded quickly.

Dear Billy Hargrove, the letter said.

He made to scrunch it up but paused. Flipped it over. A slightly blurry photo of Billy driving greeted him. Jonathan had taken it quickly when they’d driven to the park, anxiety fuelling him and too awkward to ask permission. He’d been delighted that it had come out at all.

Will watched with wide eyes as he slipped it into his folder. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with it, but he wanted to keep it.

To build a friendship with Billy was suddenly seeming less scary.

Billy messaged him, offering to drive him to school. Jonathan, already awake after another sleepless night, agreed immediately, before throwing his phone across the room in a bout of sudden anxiety, scared he came on too strong.

When Billy pulled him, he had both Max and Mike in his backseat and yelled for Will as well. Will scurried from the house, grinning widely. Mike grumpily sat in the middle, Max kicked at Billy’s seat after she’d been ousted from the passenger seat for Jonathan, and Will was chattering excitedly about a documentary about jellyfish he watched, which only Billy seemed remotely interested in at eight in the morning.

In Jonathan’s pocket was the note he’d written on the Saturday. The one he’d spent the entirety of Sunday debating setting it on fire, or throwing it away. But in the rush out the door, he’d shoved it into his pocket.

“Well, maybe you should’ve gone with Nancy!” Max shouted when Mike complained again.

“I would have, but she was with her girlfriend!” Mike yelled back.

The car went awkwardly quiet fast as Jonathan stiffened in his seat. He didn’t turn, but he could feel Billy and Will staring at him.

“Robin isn’t Nancy’s girlfriend,” Billy said, both to annoy Mike and reassure Jonathan.

“She wants her to be,” Mike grumbled, unable to read the room to save his life. “She won’t shut up about her.”

“Oh,” Jonathan said. It came out strangled. “That’s cool.”

“It’s annoying,” Mike replied.

“Shut up,” Max said.

The rest of the journey was done in silence.

When Billy parked at the middle school, Mike clambered over Max in an attempt to get out, whilst Will hopped out the other side, waving goodbye to Jonathan before running after his friends. Max grumbled something about murder and flipped Billy off before disappearing into the crowd.

Billy started to drive again when he said, “Nancy and Robin aren’t dating.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“They aren’t, though.”

“It doesn’t matter!”

Billy paused. “I thought you were in love with her. Isn’t that why you took those creepy photos and wrote those weird notes?”

“You kept that note,” Jonathan pointed out.

“Not important,” he replied in a tone that implied it was. “But you’ve put in all that effort and now you just, what, stopped caring?”

“I guess I have.” It was relieving to say it out loud.

“You’re really fucking weird, Byers,” Billy said, but he was smiling.

They pulled into the high school parking lot, and as Billy shifted to get out, Jonathan reached out and tugged at his covered wrist.

“Wait, I have something for you.” Before Billy could reply, he pressed the note into his hand and then scrambled out of the passenger seat and fled into the crowd of students, face red.

There was a note waiting for him in his locket at lunchtime. A picture of Jonathan lying on his bed, a pretzel hanging from the corner of his mouth with a small cat nose drawn on in pen.

Dear Jonathan Byers,

Today will be a good day. My friend is happy, so I am happy. My sisters are happy, so I am happy. My brother is an obnoxious little shit, and that makes me happy.

I don’t think I want to kill myself today.

Sincerely,

Me.

Nancy sat beside him in English despite Robin’s pleading looks.

“Do you want to come around my house tonight, to work on the project?” she asked, something desperately hopeful on her face.

He took her in. Her face was still shadowed, and he was sure Billy’s attempt hadn’t left her, no matter how put-together she tried to look. Maybe Nancy Wheeler needed a friend, too.

“Okay,” Jonathan said. “I’d like that.” And almost told her the truth there and then.

“Great.” Her smile seemed less broken then. She glanced at Robin then, and Jonathan found himself rolling his eyes, fond.

“Go,” he said. “She’s not being subtle.”

Nancy blushed but rushed over to Robin before Ben could take the seat. The two boys exchanged long-suffering looks. Jonathan wondered if this was how people made friends.

The Hargrove-Wheeler household was still thick with unresolved conflict. When they entered the house, each child grew quieter, peering around corners and hurriedly taking off their shoes before fleeing in their separate directions.

Billy offered to make Jonathan and Nancy coffee. Nancy looked shocked as she accepted, with Jonathan following them into the kitchen. Karen was at the oven, stirring something sweet-smelling, looking up as they entered.

She greeted all of them, but her eyes didn’t leave Billy, tracking him around the kitchen. Jonathan couldn’t tell why she was doing it, seemingly a mixture of fear and worry. It didn’t seem like the correct response, and Billy was tense as he boiled the kettle, aware of the eyes on him.

“You stayed at school all day?” Karen asked suddenly, still stirring.

“I did,” Billy replied, pouring coffee beans into the grinder.

“Good. Your father hates getting those phone calls.”

“Right,” Billy said.

“I’m sure he appreciates you getting your life together,” Karen continued.

Billy stirred sugar and cream into a mug for Jonathan, handed Nancy’s hers and said, “I’m not doing it for him,” and left the room.

“That boy,” Karen huffed, still not looking up from the pot.

Jonathan and Nancy left quietly as well.

Billy’s room still didn’t have a door, but he’d hung a blanket up for privacy. Jonathan wanted to rap his knuckles on the frame, enter the domain and ask him if he was doing okay, but Nancy seemed anxious to continue the project.

Jonathan let Billy go for the moment, the note he’d received securely in his pocket.

He said he didn’t want to kill himself. Jonathan reassured himself.

It didn’t help much.

Jonathan had never had dinner at the Hargrove-Wheeler household when both Billy and Neil were at the table. It was like the Harrington dinners on steroids, the tension thick and heavy before they’d even started to eat.

Neil’s eyes were locked on Billy as soon as he was through the door. Billy’s back was straight and tense where he sat, eyes forward, fists clenched in his lap.

“I didn’t get a phone call today,” Neil said after he was seated. “Have you finally started to take responsibility for your own education?”

No one said anything. No one started to eat. They watched Billy inhale then exhale, a calming motion Jonathan had done many times before.

“Yes, sir, I’m trying now.”

“Not trying, Billy,” Neil said. “Doing.”

Billy nodded. Neil took the opportunity to start eating, eyes still locked on his son. Everyone else took that as the cue to start as well, trying to eat as quietly as possible to not draw his attention. Jonathan sank low in his chair.

Billy barely ate anything, cutting everything into tiny pieces and forcing it behind his teeth. He looked like he was going to vomit at any moment.

“I see you’ve stopped showing those things off,” Neil observed. “I’ve had enough of that attention-seeking behaviour.”

Billy’s hand wrapped around the opposite arm, where the scars and cuts resided. “Yes,” he agreed hollowly. “No one seemed to care.”

Nancy flinched as she cut into her broccoli. Neil’s eyes flicked to her and then back to Billy.

“Good, it’s time you learn respect and responsibility.”

Billy tensed, hand gripping the fork tight. “Sure.”

Neil started to speak to Jonathan. “My son has spent too long taking advantage of my kindness, don’t you think?”

Jonathan was rooted to the spot. Billy stared at his plate.

“No,” he managed to force out.

Neil’s face dropped his smarmy smirk. “What?”

Billy looked shocked. Jonathan couldn’t bring himself to say it again, vision blurring. He turned away when Neil started to shout, “Respect and responsibility! What did I just fucking say?”

Billy shouted back, “You wouldn’t know respect if it smashed a bottle in your face!”

There was a crash, the sound of something shattering. Billy shoved himself from the table, knocking into Jonathan as he fled.

When Jonathan looked up, his eyes were immediately drawn to the wall above Neil’s head, drenched in brown from Billy’s drink, the shattered remains of his glass sprinkled on the floor. Neil’s face was white with rage.

Jonathan stood when everyone else did, fleeing to the safety of their bedroom.

As they walked upstairs, Nancy murmured to him, “I’m surprised it’s taken him that long. He’s always been violent when angry.”

Jonathan swallowed the guilt and turned to Billy’s room, where the blanket was drawn as tight against the frame as it would go.

“What are you doing?” Nancy asked as he took a step forward.

“I’m going to make sure he’s okay,” he snapped back.

Billy was in the midst of a panic attack; Jonathan recognised the signs immediately. It seemed much more violent than Jonathan’s, where his panic attacks involved curling in on himself until he could breathe again; Billy’s was much more visceral.

He’d ripped his hoodie off at some point, the crumpled fabric and broken seams thrown against the wall. His arms were bare, and they were a mess, deep white scars from past self-harm and fresh new cuts that couldn’t be more than two days old. Some were starting to bleed again, from the picking during dinner.

But the problem lay in the moment, where Billy was digging deep, red scores into the flesh of his arms with his nails, pressing so deeply that pricks of blood were being drawn. His face was screwed tight, a mess of tears and snot, and his breathing was so heavy, Jonathan didn’t think Billy would be able to hear anything.

Like that night, which suddenly felt so long ago, Jonathan couldn’t leave him like this. Alone and in pain and so, so lonely. He crawled forward on his hands and knees until he reached the heaving body, the stench of sweat and fear thick in the air.

Nails raked down skin, leaving another row of skin missing, blooming red and purple in agony. Jonathan reached forward, placed his hand on Billy’s ankle.

Billy’s body froze, eyes wide and terrified, pupils blown so wide they were black.

“Hey,” Jonathan whispered, “You’re okay.”

He moved his hand upwards, to where Billy’s fingers were still digging into his skin. As he touched Billy’s right hand, Billy moved quickly and suddenly. Jonathan fell backwards, eye blooming with pain.

He reached up to touch it. His body trembled in the aftermath of Billy’s punch.

Billy was staring at him. Mouth agape.

“Oh god,” he said. “Oh god, I hurt you.”

Jonathan backed away, suddenly frightened as Billy began to work himself into another panic, repeating, “I’m so sorry. Oh my god. I’m sorry.”

Jonathan…

Jonathan needed to think. He couldn’t be here right now, with the onslaught of his own panic attack surging through him.

He needed to go. He needed to think.

He raced past Nancy, whose eyes were wide with horror when she saw his face.

He needed to go. He needed to think.

Chapter Text

Chapter 9: Only Us

His phone wouldn’t stop vibrating with messages. Jonathan watched the notifications flash in his hands as his vision blurred. He didn’t quite know where he was or where he was going, but he knew his face hurt, and he needed somewhere to think.

He needed to think.

There was rough bark beneath his back. Jonathan pressed his hands into it, digging the flesh of his palms into the sensations. The texture sent little sparks of pain up his arms. He blinked, saw Billy digging his nails into his arms, and slumped forward.

His breathing had softened now that he was distracted, so he took the time to find his bearings. Above him, his tree loomed, and he let out a disbelieving laugh. Of course.

The branches were thick and laden with leaves, the first few turning red in preparation for autumn. A bird was flitting between the highest branches, and the air was alight with song.

Without thinking, Jonathan gripped the first branch, like he did all those days ago, and began to climb. Each step and pull was familiar, following each hold like he’d done it a million times before. He swung his legs over a branch, not even halfway up, and sat back against the trunk, admiring the view.

He hadn’t allowed himself to do this last time.

The town was alive in the distance, a constant movement of cars and people, scurrying along with their lives. The sun was setting over the horizon, spilling its thick, orange glow over the hills, houses and people below.

Jonathan watched it and reached for his phone. His pockets were empty, bar Billy’s note from that afternoon. He must’ve left his phone and keys amongst the daisies during his panic. They’d still be there when he climbed down.

After the last of the sun’s rays dipped below the horizon, Jonathan began to climb again. He went slowly, with the loss of light impeding him, relying more on touch and sound than sight. His foot slipped at one point, and he clung desperately to the trunk, cast catching awkwardly amongst the branches, but he managed to regain his footing promptly.

The air was fresh, and the stars were bright when he emerged from the canopy. Moths fluttered from their disturbed resting place, and he could see bats flitting from tree to tree, catching the moths mid-flight.

There were the beginning lights of stars emerging, winking feebly as the night crept in. Jonathan inhaled. Exhaled.

“Oi! Byers!”

Jonathan flinched so hard he almost fell. He clung to the top branch, balanced on shaking legs and peered through the thick leaves into a beam of torchlight and Billy’s horrified face.

Jonathan wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. His face stung, from the punch or the wind, he wasn’t sure, but it made his body feel so, so alive. There was a smile on his face, making his cheeks ache with disuse.

“Byers! Jonathan!”

The shout of his name from Billy’s lips almost sent him tumbling down. His voice was thick with fear as he peered through the leaves, waving his light like a signal, searching higher and higher. Jonathan was a shadowy figure hidden up high, no joy or fearlessness obvious from below. Just a boy in the tree he’d thrown himself from days before.

“Jonathan, get down from there!” Billy sounded close to tears, and Jonathan felt a small tinge of guilt at the distress.

But then the panic set in once more. A full-body tremble that shook the entire branch. He didn’t know whether it was Billy, or the pain that was still pulsing, or the sudden realisation he was too far up. He couldn’t breathe.

The air was cool and sharp, but he couldn’t breathe.

His chest tightened, his pulse quickened, his throat constricted, and all he wanted to do was curl up as small as he could until the world stopped, but he couldn’t, couldn’t because he was far up and everything was so small and so was he and the tree was shaking now, the panic in Billy’s voice apparent.

The torch swung wildly as Billy began to climb the tree, the light disorientating both of them momentarily.

Jonathan needed space, he needed to think, he needed Billy to go away.

Words wormed their way to the tip of his tongue, and he spat them out like poison. “Leave me alone! You hurt me! We’re not friends! Leave me alone!”

It was as if the wind picked the words up, tossing them between currents until they became a mantra. All Jonathan could hear over the ringing in his ears was ‘we’re not friends. We’re not friends.’ It sounded like him and like someone else as well, bitter and angry and cruel.

He wanted it all to stop.

Billy was still climbing. The torch was pointing downwards, beaming a white circle on the waiting ground. Jonathan couldn’t see where Billy was, but he was getting closer.

“I was only friends with you to get with Nancy!” he screamed, clutching the top branch tight as the wind buffeted the tree.

It started to rain. Jonathan was unprotected against the fat droplets spewed from the heavy, grey clouds. They rolled down his face, sank into his clothes, gripping him tight. The tree rocked with wind, with rain, with Billy slowly pulling himself up, with Jonathan’s panic.

He hoped, suddenly, desperately, that Billy hadn’t heard anything he’d said. He wanted to get down. He wanted to go home. He wanted it all to stop.

Billy’s face was clearer now, face wet with rain and tears, tinged red and twisted in pain. There was a bruise blooming across his cheek, stretching towards his neck and disappearing behind his loose short collar. Jonathan felt sick looking at it, not even pretending he didn’t know who did it.

“Go away,” he cried weakly. His hands were cold and shaking. The branch was slick with rain.

“I know we aren’t friends,” Billy said. His voice was hoarse from crying, from screaming, but the mounting grief was evident. “I know we aren’t friends. I know you only pretended to be my friend so you could spend time with Nancy. You never hid that; you never misled me. I’m sorry I got too attached. That was my fault, and I’m sorry.”

Jonathan trembled. He wanted to reach down. He wanted to let go. The rain roared down. “Stop.” But it was lost to the wind.

“I promise,” Billy’s voice broke, “if you come down, you will never have to see me again. I’ll tell everyone, I’ll tell Nancy, it was my fault, okay?”

No.

“No!” He said. Shouted. Bellowed.

Below him, Billy froze. His hair was soaked through; the torch was struggling through the mess of water, and Jonathan needed to be near him. To explain. To say he also hurt people when he panicked.

“I’m coming down!”

He looked down as he said it, hoping it reached Billy. The other paused, then nodded uncertainly, and shifted his weight. Jonathan also waited, wanting Billy safely out of the tree first, but realised quickly he wouldn’t move unless Jonathan started.

So, with wet hair in his eyes and his hands slippery with blood from the branches, Jonathan began the slow, careful descent. Billy started to move as well, shining the torch down, then up, before holding it out for Jonathan to take.

“No,” Jonathan said.

He moved to step down as a large gust of wind shook the tree. His hands were wet. His feet were unstable.

Jonathan let go.

Jonathan fell.

Jonathan fell.

Jonathan fell.

He hit the ground, body cringing in pain, fire spreading from his shoulder, down his spine to the tips of his fingers and toes. His face was wet, rain getting tangled in his eyelashes, seeping into his skin. The pain was white; it was white and blinding, and everything was on fire.

It was raining. A drop fell directly on his tongue. It was salty.

Someone was crying. Deep, wrenching sobs that echoed around Jonathan’s ears. Warm hands cradled his damp face, sending shivers through his hurting body.

He cried out in pain. The sobs grew louder.

Blue eyes appeared in his blurry vision, wide and panicked and more salty rain dripped onto his face, trickling down his cheeks and joining the rest in the divots of his neck.

“Someone is coming, okay? You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”

The tree stood silent behind the weeping figure, branches outstretched like a mocking god. See, it seemed to say, I knew you’d be back here again.

It didn’t hurt this much last time, he wanted to say.

You were already in pain, the tree replied.

Something stroked his cheek. Something warm pressed against his forehead.

The pain didn’t stop.

He woke to the familiar beeps of a hospital room. The walls were white, and the obnoxious beeping was close to his ears.

Beside the bed, slumped on a chair, hair unruly and deep, purple bags beneath her eyes, was his mom. Joyce was asleep, still frowning, still fretting despite the lack of activity.

On another chair, curled up like a puppy, was Will. He clutched his bag against his chest and rested against a hospital pillow. Joyce’s coat covered him like a blanket, and beyond the beeping machines, Jonathan could hear Will’s little snores.

With a grunt, Jonathan tried to sit up, but a searing white pain shot through him. He slumped as the monitor freaked out.

Joyce bolted upwards, almost sending the chair flying as she looked around wildly. Her panicked gaze settled on the wide-awake Jonathan, and her shriek woke Will. She seemed to only just hold herself from pulling him into a hug, instead pulling her seat back over so she could sit down, hold his hand and cry.

Will was crying as well, deep, heartbreaking sobs that seemed to physically hurt him. Jonathan tried to raise his arm to pull his brother into a hug, but the pain that consumed him was deep and extreme. He tried to hide the wince but failed.

A nurse hurried into the room, bowling Will over in her hurry to check Jonathan’s vitals. Joyce beckoned her youngest over, pulling him to her side like a mother bird taking her baby under her wing. Will burrowed his face into her side, body still quaking.

The nurse seemed to decide nothing too serious was triggered and finally turned to face the Byers’.

“Everything is okay! I’m sure Mr Jonathan here just got a bit nervous when he woke up, and that’s why the heart monitor went up.” None of them appreciated the perky tone she used. She continued regardless, “Now, I’m sure you’re eager to go home, but we’ve decided to keep him for monitoring overnight.” She turned to face him, perky smile gone, replaced with a grimace. “You had a terrible fall, Mr Byers, and you were fortunate to sustain the injuries you have. If you’d landed at a different angle, we would’ve had a serious problem.”

She turned back to Joyce. In low tones, they started discussing the plan forward and what check-ups Jonathan would need.

Will scurried back to Jonathan, face still wet with tears. Jonathan gathered his small hands in his. “I’m okay.”

Will nodded.

“I promise.”

Will nodded.

“Will.”

Will flinched, hunched over, face screwing up in a desperate bid not to cry again. “Max said Billy told her the same thing,” he murmured finally.

“What?”

“Billy promised Max he wouldn’t hurt himself again.”

Jonathan closed his eyes at the mention of Billy, but he could see the blue eyes peering down at him, imprinted behind his eyelids. Distraught tears were dancing across them.

“I’m not Billy,” he whispered, his own cruel screams echoing.

“Okay,” Will said, not quite believing it.

The nurse left at some point, and Joyce’s eyes were fixed on him, still shimmering with tears. A hand was over her mouth, like she could keep back whatever she wanted to say.

“What?” Jonathan asked pointedly.

“I’m a terrible mother.” She started to cry again, hand finding his, still trapped in a cast. She stroked over the skin. “My own child tried to kill himself twice, and I didn’t even notice.” She didn’t seem to be directly talking to him; her eyes fixed on her thumb stroking over his knuckles. “I didn’t even notice.”

“I only tried to kill myself once. The second fall was an accident.”

That didn’t seem to help much.

Jonathan began to drift at some point, pain reaching a crescendo. He still didn’t know the source, and he was too scared to ask. The nurse came back and administered something that dulled the pain considerably.

Joyce was still by his side, but her face was dry now, despite a red rim around her eyes remaining. She’d reached an understanding about Jonathan and the tree and the fall. She changed his therapy appointment to twice a week for the foreseeable future. Jonathan couldn’t find it in himself to argue.

There was a small knock at the door.

The nurse poked her head in, perky smile firmly back in place. “You have another visitor!” She stepped aside.

Jim Hopper had to duck to get through the door, his bulky body seeming awkward in the small room. He wasn’t wearing his hat, nor was he in uniform, but he was shoved into a Hawaiian shirt and casual slacks. It was disorientating, like seeing a teacher out of school.

“Oh, Jim!” Joyce scrambled up. “I didn’t know you wanted to see Jonathan!”

Jonathan wasn’t entirely sure why the Chief of Police would want to visit him. Unless falling from a tree was illegal. He opened his mouth to ask exactly when Hopper grunted.

“Not exactly here by myself.”

Will perked up curiously as well.

Hopper stepped aside, revealing the hunched, bewildered, terrified form of Billy Hargrove.

“Hey.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 10: Good For You

Billy Interlude 2

Billy awoke in the hospital, still tasting the chalky remnants of pills on his tongue, and decided he was in hell. It wasn’t until he opened his eyes hours later that he realised he was truly still alive. He lay there, on the soft white sheets, staring at the bland, white ceiling and blinked back tears.

Inside, a mixture of grief and shame and relief churned. He leaned over the side of the bed and vomited into the bucket beside it. The dusty texture remained. He was alive.

He threw up again.

Jonathan Byers stood before him, playing with the hem of his battered sweater, white cast still startlingly barren. He stood there and fiddled and told Billy what happened, the lies that seemed to seep into every corner of Billy’s life.

He asked Billy to be his friend. Not a real one, like Billy longed for, but a fake one so Byers could get closer to Nancy. Nancy always got everything.

He should’ve said no immediately, but the sudden relief of living stopped him. “Get out,” he said instead. He pretended it was a no. It wasn’t.

Neil burst through the door, already raging. Billy wondered what his father was living for, what he was furious against. He didn’t think long because the rage was in his face, gripping his shoulders and screaming.

Billy didn’t know what lies Byers had told Neil to get him so defensive about the other boy, but the ultimatum came to stand that either Billy treated Byers with respect or Billy would be put in a psych ward.

As he shook and shook in his father’s heavy grasp, he wondered what had changed. Why was Neil suddenly so desperate to get Billy help after implying the last hospital-assigned therapist was a freak and a fraud? Maybe he decided that Billy killing himself was more embarrassing than Billy getting help.

There was a crashing noise as Neil threw the water bottle Max had brought across the room at Billy’s silence. Billy wished he were dead.  

When Byers slunk back into the room, eyes wide and knowing, Billy held out his hand.

He wasn’t sure if life was worth living, but he knew he wanted to outlive Neil. He couldn’t give the man the satisfaction of ridding the world of his failure of a son. He’d stay in the house, haunt his father with the knowledge that Billy hated him so much he’d rather die, and would live.

Because why the fuck should he be the one to die?

“Fake friends,” he agreed. Byers’s hand was warm when they touched.

The door was still missing. Neil refused Billy’s quiet request to have it back, citing worry about Billy hurting himself again. Billy was sure his father took more pleasure in watching Billy flinch every time he walked past the door than he had before the hospital.

Billy wasn’t allowed to lock the bathroom door. He wasn’t allowed near scissors or knives, or razor blades, by himself. Karen had to supervise him using scissors at the dining room table, Neil would stand directly behind him and stare him down in the mirror when he shaved, and the entire table would tense up whenever he reached for a knife to cut his food.

Every step he took was documented and catalogued. Any time he raised his voice, he witnessed the recipient slide the action either into mentally unstable or mentally vulnerable. Karen would simper whenever Billy got upset, Nancy would gently offer to help with homework, Max and Mike were walking on eggshells, and Neil was like watching a tiger getting ready to pounce. Just waiting for a sign of true weakness.

But none of them talked to Billy. Asked him why he did it or how he was feeling. They just watched and waited for the next time.

School became more difficult. Before, when Billy hadn’t cared much about living past the year, his outsider status hadn’t bothered him. In fact, he revelled in the fear he instilled, knowing that people would remember him when he was gone.

(Not like Barb, who was the subject of rumours for three days before the weekend came. The next week, when Billy was still haunted by her smile, Jason Carver asked Chrissy Cunningham out, and no one cared about the nameless dead girl anymore.)

But people weren’t frightened of him. They laughed at him like Big Bad Billy Hargrove failing to kill himself was the funniest thing in the world. Maybe it was. Maybe he was meant to be a joke, still hovering on the outskirts of a life he longed to have and not quite knowing how to grab it.

As he walked down the hallways, people would peer at his neck and arms, like they could see the scars he bore. He kept his arms hidden and his neck bare, and the rumours spread like wildfire.

Nancy watched him, like she too didn’t know what to do with this new information. This new perspective on her brother. Billy ignored her as he’d always done and let her separate her life from his once again.

Byers pulled him from the fog, big, dark eyes imploring as he asked if Billy was okay.

They weren’t friends. Byers made that very clear in the hospital room. But standing beside him, in an empty classroom, he couldn’t find it in himself to lie. No one had asked him if he was okay, and Billy was slowly learning he couldn’t keep secrets as well as he thought – it was that no one had tried to discover them before.

He couldn’t keep his eyes off the cast either, knowing what he did now. Knowing Byers failed to kill himself a week before Billy did, wondering if he was going to try again, if he missed the cool embrace that had beckoned him so sweetly into the darkness.

He wanted to ask Byers so many questions.

When did you start wanting to die?

When did you decide it was time?

Will you try again?

Will you be my friend?

Byers stared at his neck as Billy spoke. His gaze left the skin tingling as it moved on, skirting across Billy’s face like he was discovering something new. Billy wanted to press the sensation into his blood until it became as needed as oxygen.

Nancy walked in a moment later, and the illusion shattered, soft, warm light slipping into the cool artificial tones and the tingling skin replaced by a deeper sting. Billy picked at the scabs beneath the shirt fabric, felt them tear the new skin. The pain kept him grounded, kept him sane as Byers and Nancy gazed into each other’s eyes.

When he went to the bathroom, blood was drying beneath his nails, and his black sleeves smelled of blood. It was a necessary reminder.

Pain was needed to live after all.

Byers became Jonathan on a hill in the park.

The tree behind them, the spot before them, it felt like they stood on a knife’s edge. On a precipice between life and death, clinging to the falseness between them and pretending they were healing.

Byers became Jonathan, and Billy felt something in him break. It felt like his heart, but his mom had taken it with her all those years ago.

Max started to come to him again. Her face was red as she cried into his shoulder, small fingers pinching the scabbing skin beneath his sleeve, but he didn’t say anything as he stroked a hand through her hair.

Guilt was a feeling Billy wasn’t often accustomed to. Shame was his best friend. Both greeted him fondly when Max cried.

“You lied to me,” she whispered through the snot and tears, hair tangled in her tongue, eyes puffy with pain. “You lied to me. You told me you wouldn’t do it again. You liar. You liar.”

Billy wondered if he had broken her heart like his mother had broken his.

“I’m sorry,” he said, crying as well. “It hurt so bad. I’m sorry.”

A shadow froze at the threshold. When he looked up, Billy locked eyes with Nancy, who hesitated, eyes flicking between him and Max. For a moment, he thought she’d enter, but she straightened herself out and vanished down the hallway.

He wondered if he broke her heart, too.

Steve Harrington was like a dog with a bone, unrelenting and disgusting to look at. He’d taken to following Billy around school, chomping at the chance to talk to him but never actually brave enough to do it.

It was Billy who took the initiative. Billy, who pulled Harrington aside. Billy, who stared him down.

“What do you want, asshole?”

“Listen here, you dick, I want to know your intentions with Jonathan!”

Billy crossed his arms. “Why?”

He’d seen Steve and Jonathan before, hanging about each other like feral cats.

“Because you’re you, and he’s, you know,” Steve gestured wildly.

“He’s what…?” Steve glared. Billy found himself smirking, leaning in closer. “Answer the question, king.”

“He’s sensitive,” Steve said.

“Shut the fuck up,” Billy replied immediately. “Are you and Jonathan actually friends anyway?”

Steve walked away.

Billy didn’t feel any better.

Jonathan wasn’t at school. Billy was not worried about this. Really, he had no reason to be worried. Except, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. That maybe Jonathan was lying in the dark, waiting for someone to care.

Billy could be that person. Probably. Maybe. Be a real friend who asked and cared and was there at the end of the day. Be the person he longed for himself.

He skipped school for the first time since his return and drove to the local convenience store. The bowl cut behind the cash register didn’t bother asking for ID, and soon Billy was laden with snacks and drinks, body pulsing with something exciting.

Arriving at the Byers’ house, Billy pulled up the empty drive and squinted at the windows. One had the blinds shut. He knocked on the door, but there was no response. Taking a step back, he surveyed the house once more before notching a foot in the trestle and started to climb.

It was reminiscent of climbing in and out of his own window, something he hadn’t realised he missed until now. He pulled himself onto the small ledge sticking out, bags still strapped around his elbows.

He knocked on the window.

The curtains opened, and Jonathan’s tired face stared back. The other blinked in shock before scrambling to open the window enough for Billy to squeeze through.

Inside, the room was dank and lonely. The bed was rumpled, not messy but in complete disarray, like Jonathan hadn’t been sleeping well. Billy felt his entire body soften, not disgusted but relating to the stench of despair percolating the air.

“Do you want to get dressed?” he suggested gently. Jonathan stared blankly at him before shuffling out of the room.

When he heard the soft click of the bathroom lock, Billy sprang into action. He efficiently made the bed, swallowing the sadness at the uneaten food lying out on the bedside cabinet. It was a familiar scene, and he was sure his own bedroom was in a similar state.

Karen tried to clean his room once, and Billy had almost hit her. Neil had told him that if he wanted to act like a feral beast, he should sleep in a room like one as well. He wondered if his mom would’ve made his bed for him when he couldn’t bring himself to move.

He shook those thoughts away, trying to focus on the matter at hand. Jonathan wasn’t doing well, and Billy wanted to help. Needed to help.

There was a crumpled ball of paper on the floor, the faint smudges of colour of a photo and the familiar scrawl of Jonathan’s handwriting. Without thinking, Billy shoved it in his pocket.

When Jonathan came back, Billy almost couldn’t look at his expression, suddenly embarrassed by the effort he’d put in. Jonathan made it very clear they weren’t really friends. He hoped the other wouldn’t accuse him of being clingy or annoying.

Jonathan didn’t say anything, blinking slowly like he was still trying to wake. Billy guided him to bed, where he’d laid the food and drinks out. Jonathan slumped amongst the freshly plumped pillows, sinking lethargically into the comfort.

Billy didn’t know what to do or say, so he handed Jonathan the note he’d written on his dashboard during traffic. He knew it was Jonathan’s thing, writing the notes, and didn’t want to overstep, but he needed a way to connect. To bring him back.

Jonathan clutched the note in a tight grip like it was something precious. Something worth keeping. He looked at Billy, relief and gratitude warring in his dark eyes. Billy couldn’t help himself then, moving slowly up the bed, letting Jonathan rest against him.

Jonathan curled in closer, eyes lazily watching the documentary, slowly eating popcorn. Billy wanted to run his hands through his hair, wanted to stroke across his cheeks, swing his arm fully around Jonathan’s shoulder.

He almost sprang out of bed at the thoughts.

At the slow, pulsing realisation that, maybe, he wanted to kiss Jonathan.

He swallowed the thought. The feelings.

Jonathan wanted Nancy. Jonathan was only near him for Nancy. Jonathan wasn’t his friend. Billy couldn’t kiss him.

That night, after cooking Jonathan and Will dinner, after dropping Jonathan off at Steve’s house, Billy drove home. His entire body was shaking, anger and grief and fear incompatible in his bloodstream.

For a moment, just a moment, when the sky was dark and the headlights dim, Billy considered crashing his car. Letting the internal pain break free. Letting his body break.

He continued down the dark road instead.

Dear Jonathan Byers,

I’ve decided it’s not worth killing yourself over a boy. Life doesn’t have to be all pain and misery, and I don’t have to make myself miserable to live. I can just take what you are willing to give me and survive off that, at least for a while.

Being in love is not worth it, period. I don’t know how you do it around Nancy. I would’ve killed myself a long time ago.

I think that’s a lie.

I think I would’ve kept living, just to see you. I think I’ll keep doing that now.

Sincerely,

Me.

Everything hurt. Everything needed to hurt. Nails dug into skin, scoring painful stripes with each breath. His head ached, his arms stung, his eyes burned, and he couldn’t breathe.

Why couldn’t he breathe?

Someone called his name, through the darkness and the fog. Desperate and fearful. Just like Billy.

He pulled into himself tighter. Dug his nails in deeper. The fog started to clear as the pain overtook his senses. His chest heaved with the force of his panic.

Something gentle touched his ankle, and his entire body seized still. He waited for the danger to pass, but instead, a hand reached towards him. To hurt him.

Billy lashed out, punching forward, hitting something. Jonathan stumbled into view, hand clutching his eye.

Oh. Oh god.

Jonathan fled, and Billy started to cry. Everything hurt.

He needed to find Jonathan.

Everything hurt.

Neil was in the room, grinning like he’d won something. Before his face exploded in pain, Billy could see a horrified Nancy by the door, trying to corral Mike and Max away.

Everything hurt.

Up in the tree, the wind and the rain whipping around him, Billy felt like the entire world was ending. Jonathan stood at the top, balanced precariously on the branch, reaching towards the heavens like he could ascend at any moment.

Desperate, Billy scrambled to another branch, still crying, still in pain. His entire face hurt. His arms ached. His nails were caked in blood. But his heart was in agony, beating in a frantic rhythm, anxious to get to Jonathan.

Jonathan yelled something down, but Billy couldn’t hear him. On the wind, the words ‘We’re not friends!’ tried to latch on to him, but he shook them off. It didn’t matter now. He just needed Jonathan to get down.

Then, Jonathan fell, and Billy’s entire world fell too.

He was sure Jonathan had broken something else. His body was splayed unnaturally, and he seemed so small on the ground beside where Billy knelt. Jonathan was blinking, unseeing, at Billy.

Billy panicked, and Billy called Hopper.

“He’s fallen, and it was my fault. He’s really hurt, and it’s my fault.”

He couldn’t stop crying. Everything hurt.

He sat, still trembling, in Hopper’s car, watching in muted shock as the ambulance carried Jonathan away. He wanted to ask if they could go too, but no words were willing to come out.

Hopper drove in silence, face contemplative and solemn. The rain hammered the windshield hard. The lights were muddied through the water. Jonathan was still lying on the ground, all his bones broken, covered in blood.

“It’s my fault,” Billy whispered.

Hopper shot him a look. “Did ya push him?”

“No.”

“Then it wasn’t your fault.”

“I hit him earlier. That’s why he went up the tree. To get away from me.”

“Why did ya hit him?”

“I was panicking,” Billy scratched his arm again, reopening another wound. A gentle, calloused hand loosely gripped his wrist. He looked up. Hopper watched him, eyes sad.

“He hit you back?”

Billy froze. Hesitated. Knew he couldn’t blame it on Jonathan. “No.”

“Ya gonna tell me who did?”

“No.”

Hopper released his wrist and continued driving in silence. Billy didn’t scratch himself again. Something much worse was waiting for him at home.

When Hopper pulled up at the house, only the porchlight was on. The rain stopped, and the world was quiet, as if holding its breath. Billy didn’t want to get out of the car.

“I’ll walk you to the door,” Hopper said, voice hushed.

They got out, shutting the car doors quietly. Billy tried the handle. Locked. Inside, there was a faint amber glow of lamplight. At Hopper’s nod, he knocked instead.

Footsteps. The door swung open.

Neil didn’t hesitate to pull Billy in, practically throwing him to the ground. In his rage, he missed Hopper’s widening, angry eyes as he turned to face his crumpled son.

“What the fuck have you done?” he hissed. “We just got a call from Joyce Byers saying her son is in the hospital.”

Without hesitation or bothering to shut the front door, he stamped on Billy’s fingers until they cracked. If Hopper hadn’t picked up on what was happening before, he sure did now.

Billy curled in on himself as Hopper threw Neil into the wall, slapping handcuffs on him and practically screaming his rights at him. Karen came rushing out from the lounge, stepping over Billy in her rush to get to the shouting Neil.

It was Nancy who helped him off the floor, face tight in anguish as the entire neighbourhood woke up. Lights switched on, and doors opened, sleepy faces peering out just in time to witness Neil being shoved into a police car.

“This is my fault,” he whispered.

“No,” Nancy replied. “It’s mine. I was the one who answered the phone and told him you’d gone after Jonathan.”

Before, Billy might’ve lashed out at the accusation. Proved her right in some regard.

Now, he slumped against her, resting his head on her shoulder, so tired. Everything hurt.

“I want to see Jonathan,” Billy said, wrapped in blankets and clutching a mug of hot chocolate.

“Only if you go to therapy,” Hopper replied, partially joking.

“Okay,” Billy said quickly. “I’ll go to therapy.”

“Sure,” Hopper agreed after a moment. “We can go and see Jonathan.”