Steve stood resolute with his hands on his hips. A gentle breeze whipped the tips of his hair across his forehead. It itched, but he wasn't about to thwart his masculinity by fondling his precious locks of golden-brown hair.
"I already told you," he said through his teeth, "she isn't here."
Billy came forward. His eyes never left Steve but they swam with defiance. It had been a long time since Steve had had a good old fashioned show-down with another man. Since his "King Steve" reputation had begun to precede him at Hawkins High most of the guys backed off entirely or clung to his hips like mouth-breathing parasites. But this guy was different.
Steve didn't know much about Billy but had to admit… he was curious. He came from California, and even if the rumor mill hadn't disclosed that one when he first arrived, his hair and style gave that away. He wore his sandy locks in a grungy mullet that somehow looked equal parts bad-ass and natural. It didn't look like he spent an hour on it every morning… unlike Steve.
Billy took a long drag on the cigarette pressed between his lips. The tip grew red and sizzled in the silence that hung in the air between them. When he finally plucked it out of his mouth he let the swirling puffs of smoke out inches away from the king.
"Then tell me, pretty boy… Who the fuck is that?"
In spite of himself, Steve pried his eyes away and cast a wary glance towards the house.
All four shitheads were present and accounted for in that split second before they dove beneath the window sill in fear. Including Billy's little sister; the reason he had tracked them down at the Byers house.
"Shit," Steve fumbled for a good excuse. Some sort of backstory, or any way for him to play that redhead off as being anyone in the world except Maxine.
Before he could think of anything clever enough to fly there were two strong hands gripping him by the collar of his shift, bringing his eyes back to Billy's.
Billy clacked his teeth together inches away from his nose, sending tendrils of fear down the back of Steve's neck. Fear. He felt frozen under the man's gaze. His mind reeled under the conflict; could he outrun the new kid? He probably could, but he would be seen as a coward. Steve was no coward. But could he fight him off? They were very close to the same size but he had squared off against Billy on the basketball court several times now and he had a sturdier stance. He could tell he had done this before, countless times undoubtedly, and almost all of Steve's fighting experience, well… couldn't be explained.
"Why are you stowing my baby sister away in a stranger's house, King Steve?" Billy murmured. His tobacco-scented breath hit his jaw hot and heavy.
Steve gulped. "It's not what it looks like."
"Which is exactly what a pervert would say, don't you think?"
Time turned to molasses.
Steve watched in horror as Billy's lips curled up and he set his jaw. One hand, his right, released the collar of his shirt and whipped backwards with his fingers curled into a fist. An animalistic snarl slipped through his teeth as he brought his fist rocketing towards Steve's jaw. He tried to lean back, out of the way, but his eyes were seeing the impact before his brain had time to process. A blinding flash of pain exploded in his right temple and everything went quiet except for a gentle buzzing sound.
"Billy!" a shriek came from somewhere in the distance.
Steve twisted on the ground. He had to get back to the house before this monster got to the kids; the kids he was responsible for protecting.
A woman appeared. She was a swirling image of curves and hair—long, wavy black locks that flew around her as she moved. She leapt towards Billy and yanked him backwards. Steve could hear her screaming and the vague, muted sounds of a struggle. He rolled over onto his stomach and tried to army-crawl towards the house. He needed to make sure the kids were okay.
Hopefully they were smart enough to hide.
"Your probation…" the woman was saying over and over while Billy seemed to be struggling to get her off of him. "You can't… they'll send you back… would you just, think, damn it!"
"Back off, Darla!" Billy snarled.
Steve managed to pull himself to his feet and make it to the front door of the Byers household.
A nagging impulse in the back of his head urged him to keep an eye on Billy because another sucker punch felt imminent, but he actively disregarded it. He had to get inside first. Barricade the door. Poor Max… He had only met this girl tonight and all he really knew about her, from what Dustin had told him throughout the course of the night, was that she was awesome, played video games, was wildly accepting of their party's strange history, and again, she was awesome. Even from what he had seen she didn't deserve to be related to such a shitty guy. No one did.
Then, from behind in the most sickening, ominous tone…
"Whoa, where do you think you're going, cowboy?"
A meaty hand clasped around his head of hair and pulled up to his feet. Steve groaned automatically as his follicles were ripped from his head, and he grabbed hold of the hand to keep him from getting a bald spot.
"Billy!" the woman was still screaming but she was farther away now.
Steve was spun around and before he could let his vision catch up with the sudden pull he felt two punches to the gut and it might as well have been a bomb detonating. He doubled over, struggling for breath, and a dirty boot met him in the side of the face.
Again he was on his back.
Billy loomed above, upside down and grinning in front of the full moon.
"I'm going to give you one last chance to hand over my baby sis, King Stevie. Then you can thank me for leaving you with most of your teeth."
Steve's vision swam. A stale, metal taste filled his mouth and the scent grew potent under his nose. The thought of handing over anyone or anything to this cretin was sickening.
"Eat… shit," he sputtered.
Billy's grin soured. "Why you little—"
"Max, what are you doing?!"
"Max!"
"Get back here!"
"Kid, watch out—!"
The last thing Steve saw before everything went dark was the little redheaded girl leaping over his body wielding his very own nail-encrusted baseball bat.
...
Pain. It radiated from the crown of his head, down the length of his spine, branching out to the tips of his limbs, and wallowed in the base of his stomach. Steve groaned and struggled to pry his eyes open. One was swollen shut, but the other eventually gave in. His whole face stung with open wounds going untreated but when he tried to inspect the damage he found his arms to be restrained behind him
"Wuss… go… on…" the back of his throat felt scraped with each incoherent syllable.
A gentle force shook his body to the right and he fell to the side. The cool, hard side of Billy's '79 Camaro kept him from toppling over but he still winced from the impact. He was sitting in the back squished between a warm body and the arching ceiling of the tiny car. He was way too tall for this to be comfortable.
"Be quiet." The woman's voice floated back from the driver's seat. He could only see the back of her head from where he sit, her long hair coiled over her right shoulder. She was white-knuckling the wheel as they flew through the trees getting further and further out of Hawkins, Indiana.
The car rolled and jumped at each bump in the road and Steve could feel the mixture of anxiety and bile rising up to his mouth.
"Sl… Slow down!" he tried to scream but his mouth was so swollen it was hard to move. It felt like he had been stuck outside in a snowstorm for hours and his skin was so frozen his brain had lost most of its ability to control it.
The woman didn't respond. Her hand reached forward and cranked a dial on the dash board. The car was filled with bass—Steve couldn't make out the song because everything was shaking and pounding in his head and he could barely differentiate his own pulse from the music.
Trees whipped by at an alarming rate. The road was dark, incredibly uneven, and tightly wound. Nothing looked familiar. They were outside of Hawkins without question, but how far? How long had he been out? And who…
Steve's head lolled to the left as the car took a sharp right without slowing down and got a mouth full of greasy, curly hair.
Billy's mullet.
Steve's good eye widened in reflex and he shot back towards the right side of the car like the sight had electrocuted him. Billy was slumped against the window, his steady breathing creating thick patches of fog on the glass. He was asleep. Whether that was by choice or by force… Steve had no idea.
His attention turned back to the woman in the driver's seat. She had relaxed behind the wheel. She now had her elbow propped on the window resting her head, the other lazily slung over the wheel. The road was so overgrown that Steve could barely follow it but she tore through the underbrush like she knew every twist like the back of her hand.
"Who are you?"
No answer.
"Where are we going?"
She stared straight ahead like she hadn't even heard him—which might have been the case, given the music. It was beginning to sound familiar. The Smiths.
"End of the pier, end of the bay
You tug my arm and say,
Give in to lust, give up to lust,
Oh heaven knows we'll soon be dust..."
Steve looked around wildly. The realization hit him all at once like a runaway train and he felt the fear of Jesus quickening his blood.
"Where are the kids?" he screamed, and kicked the front seat to get her attention.
The woman twitched and turned down the music ever so slightly.
"I thought I told you to be quiet."
"Where's Dustin? Max? The others…"
"They're fine. You need to calm down."
"CALM DOWN?" Steve exclaimed. For the first time since his waking he felt restless and wanted to continue the fight he'd helped start. "You kidnap me and tie me up and leave four kids alone and abandoned while… while they…with everything going on with… but you need ME to say calm? STOP. THE DAMN. CAR."
He felt the car slow down and for a moment felt relief. She was complying. He could still get back to the kids… who knows what fresh hell they got themselves into without him to act as the voice of reason.
But the car didn't stop. The woman did throw her head back to shoot him a brief, dumbfounded glare.
"You're not tied up, dumbass."
Steve blinked.
"You're sitting on your hands."
Steve tried wriggling his fingers. His hands were asleep, but he could feel them behind him and he pulled his shoulders together to free them. The back seat was cramped with two fully grown men shoved back there, but he was, in fact, unbound. He looked down at his hands sheepishly and began shaking them trying to put some life back into those digits.
"And the kids are fine. While you two boneheads were napping I dropped them off at a pumpkin farm close to their house. That old guy Earl said he'd keep an eye on them and his wife was making cocoa when I left."
Steve's eyebrows shot up.
"Oh no… You don't understand, those kids get into some severely messed up shit when you leave them unattended. We have to go back. They're going to get themselves killed."
"I don't know, their plan seemed pretty flawless…"
"They told you what they were doing?!"
The woman shot him another look but this time she was smirking. "They didn't have to. I played Dungeons and Dragons when I was a kid, too."
Steve fell back against the seat, defeated. "They're all dead," he whimpered to himself. "And Nancy's going to beat whatever part of me isn't beaten until I'm dead too."
"Oh please. Little Miss Drama Queen couldn't give you a black eye if you were tied to a pole at her eye level and you gave her three tries."
Steve's eyes slid her way. "You underestimate her."
"Whatever. Now be quiet. You're bumming me out."
Steve scoffed. His mind reeled with horrible images... There was poor Dustin lying crumpled up like a human paper ball in a field of pumpkins... Nancy finding her little brother dismembered and scattered across various dimensions or whatever the hell it was, wherever the hell it was, that they were up against...
But there was no way to explain what was happening, not to this... stranger. Outsiders didn't understand. All he could do was hope that the kids had enough sense to stay alive.
Billy stirred in his sleep causing Steve to flinch. He was still sore and aching but if he attacked first he was sure he could beat Billy this time. At the very least, he could grab his arms and keep him down. The cramped car didn't feel like the best battleground for a full on throw down.
Without warning the car came to a halt and both boys were thrown forwards, meeting the front seat face-first. Billy fell into the headrest with his face smeared into the sticky leather seat while Steve rubbed his jaw angrily.
The woman threw the car in park and finally turned around enough to meet Steve's eyes. There was a burning familiarity behind those eyes, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
She bared her teeth. "We're here."