The call had come at 8:49 pm, a fact that Mrs. Harrington had neglected to tell him.

"Why didn't you tell me that someone called? Christ, mom, what if it was important?"

"Well, they didn't tell me who they were. I figured it was one of your classmates pulling a prank!"

"Was is a male, female…?"

"It was a girl. She said it was about Billy. Sounded kind of rude if you ask me. Steve, is she referring to the Hargove boy?"

"Jesus, mom." A door slammed. Steve shrugged on a jacket and sprinted down the stairs.

"Don't you bring the good lord's name into this, young man. I feel like he'd be very upset with your behaviour as of late. Where are you going now?"

"I'm going out. Is that a crime?"

Steve snatched his keys from the kitchen table. His mother watched anxiously from the staircase, wringing her hands. "All this going out and staying out late. Jim said you had a little accident out in the hills-"

"Jim's a sack of shit."

"Steve!"
"Hey, I'm just telling the truth."

"Steve…"

Steve sighed. It was the pain in his mother's voice that finally stopped him. He turned to look her in the face and she smiled a small, pitiful smile. "How've the turns been?" She was whispering, for his father was shuffling around upstairs.

"They've been fine, mom. Everything's been sorted out." He walked over to her and planted a kiss on her cheek. "I love you, okay?"

"And I love you too, baby." She pulled back and planted her palms against his neck. "Look at how you've grown. So strong and... hairy ! Is that a little five o' clock shadow I see growing there?"

"Mom!"

"Oh, I'm sorry!" She pulled him into a hug and inhaled deeply. "I know I haven't been able to be there for you, sweetie. It's hard raising a little fur baby when you can't even turn yourself. Any other kid, well, you teach them how to play baseball and shuffle cards and clean their room."

"Which you've tried."

She laughed. "Unsuccessfully. But you...well all I can do is sit here and pray that you don't get hurt and that you'll find your way. I just wish there were others your age like you in Hawkins."

Actually, there is somebody . But there was no way in hell that he was going to admit to his liaisons with the town's resident chaotic neutral. The thought of Billy snapped him back into reality and he gently untangled himself from her arms. "Seriously, gotta go!"

"Why? Is it because of Billy? Why don't you go hang out with that one girl, Nancy? She seems like such a sweetheart. And pretty too!"

"How do you know about me and Nancy?"

"I may not have a heightened sense of hearing like you do, but your dear old mother still has ears. Better to hear you with, my dear!"

She scrunched her pointer and middle fingers next to her head in a poor imitation of animal ears. Steve laughed and told her goodnight. "Give the old man a solid punch for me, will ya?"

He arrived at the Hargove residence by 9:10 pm, record time. All of the lights in the house were out except for the ceiling light glowing faintly in a single upstairs window. There, on the porch, a small silhouette sat hunched upon itself, its frizzy halo of hair illuminated in headlights. The figure roused itself and shielded its face from the headlight's glare.

"Billy? Is that you, buddy?" Steve called as he stepped out of the car. The figure shifted its hand.

"Gross. As if."

"Oh, wait, you're his little sister, aren't you? Max?"

"Not technically his sister. Don't let him hear you call me that."

"Huh. Was gonna say...not much of a resemblance." He stood with his hands propped on his hips, suddenly feeling very awkward. The young redheaded girl before him seemed unwilling to say much more. Her feet were propped on her skateboard which she thumped against the porch step. The sound of it made him grit his teeth. "Is...is he in there? Is he okay? You're the one that called me, right?"

She was avoiding his eyes. Instead of answering, she balled her fists in her coat pocket and hunched over against the cold.

"Hey…" Steve knelt down until he was level with her. When she finally looked at him, her eyes were dark with distrust. But it wasn't aimed at him. The distant fire that he saw there was ages-old. "Is there something that you're not telling me?"

"Billy's in trouble. No, not like that!" She exclaimed when Steve sprung up. She stood up and took a step back. Her next words came in a broken whisper. "I mean, he's been getting into trouble. He doesn't come home and when he does he looks...beat up and sick. More than usual, I mean. And Neil - my dad, I guess - he and Billy don't get along so whenever Billy comes home late he…" she swallowed hard and angrily swiped at her face with the back of her hand. "Last night, Billy came home and he looked really bad, Steve. He was bleeding and he couldn't stop coughing. And lately he's been throwing up a lot. He tries to hide it but I hear him sometimes in the bathroom. It's just getting worse and worse and I don't know what to do."

"Are your parents here?"

"No. They went out for the night. Won't be back 'til midday tomorrow. He's upstairs. He hasn't left his room all day. And everytime I call him he tells me to go away."

" Jeeeeez . Okay." Steve put his hand to his head and glanced at the upstairs window. He could just barely make out the outline of a vanity dresser and a poster displaying a girl in a hot red bikini top. He wiped his upper lip, pointed at the door. "Do you mind if I…?"

"Door's unlocked."

Steve hesitated, then brushed past her. He heard the sound of her skateboard hit the concrete and he turned to look at her, only just realizing that she had called his name. The distrust had melted away, this time revealing something raw and almost childlike in her expression. She tried to sound hard but her eyes told a different story.

"Be careful, okay? There was another boy, back home. His name was Daniel. He and Billy were real close. Then Neil found out…"

"Uh huh." Steve didn't like the mention of another boy's name next to Billy's but he repressed the feeling. "Hey, Max, let me ask you something. Why me? I mean, out of all the people in the town that you could have called-"

"I hear him talking to you in his sleep." Here a small smile lit upon her freckled face. "I sort of pieced some things together. Don't worry! I won't tell."

With that, she rode off into the night.

Steve stood for a moment on the porch. Upstairs, Billy. Downstairs and outside, everything that made sense. He wasn't particularly good under pressure and he sure wasn't a nurse. A lot of things that she said had caught him off guard, especially the mention of the other boy, Daniel. But in the end, it was the thought of Billy talking about him that gave him the strength to walk into the strange house and climb the stairs. Though the house was neutral in design and barren of any distinguishable relics bearing his mark, Billy's scent was everywhere. His presence graced the worn indent in the couch. It settled with the dust on the mantle and in between sparkling dishes resting in the dish rack. Steve wanted to touch everything in a quest to know more about him. How many times had he picked up the dish rag hanging from the kitchen cabinet? Had he rested his hand on his cheek, remote in lap, while watching some boring TV show? Where did he sit on the presumably rare occasions when they all sat down together for a family meal?

The sound of rock 'n roll and the smell of cigarette smoke wafted from beneath the lit doorway at the end of the hall.

"Billy, are you there?"

Steve coughed as he approached. The music pulsed and throbbed in his sensitive ears, which he covered with both hands.

"Billy?"

The single wooden door was foreboding. Smoke curled from beneath it and around it as well as yellow fluorescent light. Was this the door to heaven or hell?

He pushed it open. Billy spun around to look at him. Blood dripped from his nose and onto his pale chest.

"Son of a bitch…" Billy muttered before stumbling forward and falling flat on his face.

X

"So then I said to her, 'I'm sorry, next time you gotta be more specific when you say you wanna go cow tipping.'"

Billy laughed and bit his knuckle. The water had long since gone cold but he insisted that it was alright. It reminded him of the ocean. Steve lifted the tupperware bowl and poured water down his back and over his hair. It was amazing how Billy could get water on his face and not even flinch. He looked like a picture in a magazine: glossy, wet, perfect.

"Yeah…" Steve continued, mesmerized. He was watching the small rivers spilling from Billy's hair and onto his shoulders. Now that the spray and conditioner had been washed away, the smell of Billy's hair was much more unique to him. "That little comment there got me a week in some bullshit correctional afterschool program. Dad was pissed. Mom tried to hide it, but she found it hilarious, though."

Billy laughed again. "Last time I made a comment like that, it got me laid."

"Yeah, of course. I'm sure every comment you make gets you laid." Steve couldn't help it. He bent down and buried his nose in Billy's wet hair.

Hmph , Billy pressed his tongue against his cheek. They were silent for a moment, Steve's cheek against Billy's hair, Billy's wet fingers gripping the edge of the porcelain tub. The morning light filtered through the window and illuminated them both. A finer eye might have seen the uncanny resemblance to a renaissance painting: an angel resting upon Narcissus, or an artist clinging to his muse. But there was nobody in the house but them and their eyes were trained on the crooked line of black birds in the distance, beyond the window.

"You think I'm weak," Billy said, so quietly that Steve almost didn't hear him.

"No, of course not-"

Billy reached back and caught Steve's neck in the crook of his arm. "Don't lie to me, pea brain!"

"Dude, watch the hair!"

"Or what, Harrington?"

"Or I'll kiss you."

Billy let him go and leaned back against the tub to survey his handiwork. Steve's shirt was dripping wet and, though Steve tried to feign annoyance, the speckles of water that had transferred from Billy's hair to his face didn't bother him at all.

He leaned down and kissed him anyway. He was quickly losing control over his feelings for Billy. If he was honest with himself, he'd lost control that day that he had made out with Billy in front of everyone in the gym. The feeling of submission to Billy's charm was almost as euphoric as transformation.

There, Billy sat below him with his face turned towards his. The image of him was so raw in that moment. For once, his face was unobscured by distance or darkness. Steve could see the individual lashes bordering his lovely eyes (and he had quite a few lashes, too. Much more than Steve remembered.) He could see the baby hairs bordering his face, the wide nose beneath his eyes, the rough bristles of hair sprouting above his strangely pink lips. This was Billy: his foe, his crush, his unexpected white night. It was in that moment that he realized that he, alone, shared something with Billy that no one else had. They had fucked, they had run together, they had hated and loved each other with a fierceness unparalleled. And now? He was his to stroke and kiss and babble with to his heart's desire.

Billy stared up at him, a question in his strangely alert eyes.

"You're not weak." Steve said quickly. His mouth was moving faster than his mind. "You're amazing."

Billy closed his eyes - was he embarrassed? - and laughed. The quick contractions of his chest sent ripples through the water: water that smelled like him. Steve wanted to bottle it up and keep it under his pillow. Such was the magnetism of Billy Hargrove.

"But I have to ask you some things."

"Aw, shit, Harrington."

"Really!"

"Then ask," Billy said suddenly. He leaned out of the bathtub and grabbed a pack of cigarettes from beneath his damp clothes. For a moment, Steve caught a glimpse of his wonderfully sculpted ass. He was dazed and confused but there was no better time for an inquiry.

"You and I...what are we? I mean, where do we go from here?"

Billy laughed again. "We fucked. We transformed together. And now you're giving me a bath in my parents' house. Gee, why don't you use your head for once, Steve?"

Steve twisted his lips and nodded. It was a fair answer. It was a truth wrapped in sarcasm but a truth that warmed his heart nonetheless. So you're my boyfriend, he thought but couldn't bring himself to say it. Images of them together flashed across his mind: he and Billy in the school parking lot, he and Billy fucking in the hills post-transformation, Billy coming over to dinner in his best white button-up, he and Billy lying in bed together.

"Next question." Billy said. The smell of a cigarette filled the bathroom and Steve wrinkled his nose.

"You're the wolf. The blond wolf who attacked me in the hills that one night."

Billy exhaled. "Sorry about that. Didn't know who you were."

"It's fine," Steve said dryly. "Why did you make me bite you on the full moon, if you were going to transform anyway? It doesn't make any sense…"

Billy was quiet for a long time. He raised the cigarette to his lips, sucked, and stared out the window. Steve saw the blankness in his eyes and knew that he didn't want to hear what he had to say, and Billy didn't want to tell it. Part of him wanted to recant his question but it was too late. He couldn't let naivete run his side of their partnership.

"I don't...I can't transform every moon. I used to. It was soooo easy, letting it happen. And then my mom, one day she left. Just left me alone with that bitch . And then Neil, he started putting his hands on me. Not like that," Billy said in response to Steve stiffening behind him. "The fucker could throw a punch, though. And the older I got, the harder he hit until uh…." Billy looked down into the water, clenched his dripping hand against the tub. "Well I guess the old man just beat it outta me."

"No way! I'm so sorry, man."

Billy shook his head. His breathing had grown heavier. His lashes fluttered against strands of damp hair. "I still don't know how it happened. But one day he hit me so hard that I just up and ran. Called my mom from a payphone at the edge of town, begged her to come back but she couldn't, Steve, the bitch wouldn't. That was the night of a full moon. I thought I'd transform as usual and maybe be able to run it out but I didn't. I mean I did, I did transform. I became this hybrid thing. Half-boy, half-wolf. God, Steve, it was fucking painful." He coughed and took a hurried drag of his cigarette. Steve wanted to slap the ugly little stick out of his shaking hands but the pity that he felt then was too overwhelming. He tried to imagine Billy as a scared little boy alone in the woods, his body protruding with oddly-angled bones and blood-slick tufts of fur. He'd never experienced that, never knew that such a thing was possible and for one terribly selfish moment he was glad of the fact that his transformations had always been smooth and uninterrupted.

"Ever since that night it was a 50/50 chance whether or not I'd transform. There were days where I just stopped caring about her and I'd beat the shit out of people - and I found that if I stopped caring enough I'd be able to do it. But you can't just cut 'em all out Steve." He paused, glared at Steve's reflection in the mirror in front of them.

"So you found a pack."

"I found a pack. Several rough 'n tough 'em boys just like me. Now they could transform but had no idea that I couldn't. On the moons where I couldn't feel it, I'd hide out, tell 'em that I was doing my own thing. And then Daniel. Fucking Daniel."

Fucking Daniel. Why did the name make Steve's stomach turn? Billy laughed softly, steeped as he was in some memory that Steve was only a spectator to.

"Daniel was one of the boys. He found me on one of those nights, only half transformed and ugly as shit. Told me that if he bit me then everything would be okay. And it was! Obviously, you know what happens when you bite someone before a moon." Billy whipped his head up and trapped Steve with a devious stare. Steve hoped that Billy didn't see the melted look on his face. "Fucking Daniel...that was my boy…"

"So what happened to him?" Steve asked quickly, his voice choked with annoyance. He didn't want to hear Billy praise his relationship with another man. Billy shrugged, raised the cigarette to his lips, and found it snubbed with water.

"Good ol' Neil found us in a... compromising position one night, a few months back. Called me a fag and moved us out here. He thought the change in scenery would straighten me out. He doesn't know that I'm really a -"

"Right."

"So I called the boys, called Daniel, had them meet me out here. Told them that we can start again in this little town of Hawkins, granted we kept things hush hush . But Daniel's a bitch, couldn't take it. So he left me. He's not like you, Harrington."

He's not like you. Steve scrunched his toes in delight. He thought back to the day when he caught Billy mourning a loss in the locker rooms. Have you ever lost someone that you loved, Harrington? He had asked him. He wondered if he had been referring to Daniel or his mother.

"He's not like you because he doesn't matter. I don't care about his weak guts." Billy was saying.

Liar, Steve thought. But was it a playful thought or a serious one, he didn't know.
"So there you have it."

Billy braced his hands against the tub once more and lifted his magnificent body. Water tumbled from him like fountains, as if Billy was an ecosystem flushed with a thunderous deluge. Steve stood up, unsure of himself, and simply watched Billy wrap a yellow towel around his waist. Billy coughed once into his palm and spat a bloody clod of phlegm into the toilet.

"How'd you like my little autobiography? Think Mrs. G. would be proud?"

Mrs. G. was their English teacher. Steve poked his bottom lip out, shook his head and picked up a small hand towel.

"Didn't like it at all," he said as he began to run the towel along the curves of Billy's face. "You do know what happens when you get bitten too much, right? This sickness thing you got goin' on? That's all from the bite."

"Figured," Billy mumbled platonically.

"So…"

"So what, Harrington?"

"So I can't bite you anymore."

Billy became very still. His eyes seemed to zone in on Steve's face and for a moment Steve feared that he was going to punch him.

"Is that so?"

Steve didn't notice Billy's hands clenched into a fist. He froze, a deer in the headlights, and felt his breath catch in his throat. Billy scrunched up his face, cocked his hand and then, after a brief second, let his body relax. A smile inched across his lips, more like a grimace. "Why?" He asked in a tone that implied that Steve had just made a hilarious mistake.

"Because I love you and I'm not going to let you kill yourself."

Billy nodded, and looked away. For a moment they simply stood there, warm body to warm body, with a load of curious tension between them. Billy sniffed, swiped the back of his hand beneath his nose. He nodded. "Yeah," he muttered but he was pleased about something. "Whatever."

"Billy?"

"Hm."

"Look at me. No more biting. Let's get outta here, okay? I don't know, take the pack, and just leave. Maybe it'd be nice to start all over again somewhere, somewhere better than Hawkins. That's what you need."

Billy sniffed in response.

"And maybe you can tell the pack. Get it off your chest, man. I mean, you're their leader, for chrissake. They'll understand."

That night he was gentle with Billy. He took in every heartbeat, every rough and knotted patch of battleworn skin. He held his eyes and let every slow moment have its place in their shared history. You're perfect, you're perfect, you're beautiful. He could not get enough of his voice, his laughter, the shudders that darkened his otherwise stoic face.

"Do you love me?"

"More than anything in the world."

X

Eventually, he had to leave. Billy didn't know when that 'bitch sister' of his or his parents would be back. It was almost a relief for Steve, seeing Billy lying there asleep as he snuck away. He felt as if there was so much between them and so much more still to do. He needed space to think and to analyze the miracle unfolding before him.

The Sun hung high in the sky as he stepped out of the Hargrove residence. There, leaning against his car was a young man that he had never seen before. Though the heat was sweltering, he wore a distressed leather jacket over his shoulder. When he saw Steve, he pinched the cigarette out of his mouth and flicked it into the grass.

"Hey, buddy, what's the deal?" Steve yelled. The man smirked and pushed himself away from the car.

His eyes weren't friendly as he walked towards Steve. On the contrary, the look of malice within them made the hairs on the back of Steve's neck rise.

"Figured I'd drop something off." The young man said. He was close to Steve. Suddenly, he leaned forward and brought his nose inches from Steve's neck. "You smell like him," he rumbled.

"Back off, man."

"No, you back off!" The young man whipped the jacket from his shoulders and shoved it against Steve's chest. "You don't know jack shit about what you're getting yourself into."

"No, obviously I don't." Steve said awkwardly and sidled along the side of his car. "I thought I cancelled my subscription to the Jehovah's witness program yesterday."

The young man giggled and watched Steve climb into his car. He lay a curiously soft brown hand on the rim of Steve's window and peered at him with yellow-brown eyes. "You think you're special, kemosabe ? Billy's a user. He'll use you until you break. And you'll keep crawling back for more because you're a bitch. We all are when it comes to him." The man jerked his head towards the Hargrove residence. "Ever tried telling him no ?"

Just did, Steve thought but refrained from telling him. He was too busy staring into the man's face, desperately trying to ascertain whether or not he had seen him before. The young man backed away and thumped his hand against the hood of Steve's car.

"Try it. Just you wait and see."

With that, the man hunched his shoulders and walked away, his gaze fixed pensively on the ground beneath his feet.

Weird, Steve thought as he backed out of the driveway. He briefly wondered if he should tell Billy about the incident but he didn't feel right waking him.

On the way back to his house he drove past Max riding her skateboard. She saw him, gave him a pinched smile, and disappeared in his rearview mirror.