Great. Dustin wasn't home. Neither was his mother, which was actually sort of great because that meant she still had time to find him before she was home. Even though it was dishonest. Maybe she'd tell Ms. Henderson to keep the money, it wasn't like she needed it anyway. Diane still babysat because it was something to do and she liked the ones she did babysit. Dustin especially, not that she'd tell the others.

As she began following a meat trail that had led her onto the old train tracts, she was debating whether to keep the money after all with the amount of weirdness already happening. She hated being out here, now that she knew what was running in between the trees. But her need to ensure Dustins safety was enough to propel her forwards, even if that meant following a trail of meat. With the danger lurking outside she'd probably berate him for this erratic science project he was clearly embarking on for his own safety.

Every now and then there'd be pieces of meat that had disappeared on the trail. She shivered, and wrapped the jacket tighter around her form. Her breath was coming out in white puffs lit up by the moons rays piercing through the overcast sky. The walk lead her up a hill and she struggled to find purchase against the wet leaves.

At the top the trees thinned, showing a car junkyard. As she passed a car she saw several figures up ahead and froze for a moment. But the way they moved was decidedly human. She hurried her step, relief as she overheard a familiar voice. It was Dustin, and with him had to be his friends. But who was the taller figure?

Hurrying her gate she manoeuvred around another car before doing a double-take. The tallest figure came to a sudden stop as well upon seeing Diane.

She squinted. "Steve?"

His eyes widened in shock. "Diane?"

The streets in the centre of town were silent and his own company was his shadow cast wide across the street. When he was younger and stupider, he'd thought he could separate himself from the darkness, but it'd always be right there in step with him no matter how fast he ran.

He was trying to run now, like he always did. His old man wasn't always right, but he'd been right about that.

The way she'd given up, relaxing against a force she couldn't possible fight against had caused something within him to freeze. Every word he tried to utter got stuck in his throat until it was only her name that poured out as he tried to get her attention. But it was his words in the first place that had caused her to lash out.

It was okay, it didn't matter, he'd deserved it. He didn't even know why her eyes had instantly blazed with regret at what she'd done, it hadn't even hurt. But everything had become tangled, just like his straightforward path in life had been twisted and turned around because of her, until there was no words he could articulate. Instead he turned to a language more familiar to him: physical. He'd held her, silently demanding her to stop.

Instead he'd trapped her. The fight left her at once, the way the words had slipped out in a quiet plea was worse than if she'd just punched him. She'd lowered her eyes in the only and last attempt she had at protecting herself, and his gut had twisted violently in response; it was a move he was intimately familiar with.

As the car that carried with it all the stories they'd never be able to tell bound by the absurd and bureaucracy disappeared from the parking lot, a feeling worse than fury and frustration was dredged up from deep within. It was guilt, and it was dragging him straight into its dark pit to suffocate him.

The feeling wasn't unfamiliar. It was a constant undercurrent for him, powered by his relations with semi-feral half-sister, Max. But now it had sprung up to be front and centre. He was a live-wire with a dangerously electric storm of volatile emotions within, and his fist had become the conduit as it'd connected with the wall outside the diner.

Now he was nursing his hand as he walked through the strip mall off the main street, intent on getting to the little convenience store that still sold booze. It hadn't been hard to flirt his way into a ride with good old Marla. The only clue he needed to her being receptive to his advances was the magazine she was reading. As he'd leaned close the rest had followed with ease.

The door swung open and out stepped Tommy H, carrying a six pack. He instantly lit up upon seeing Billy stalking towards the door. "Hey if it isn't- shit man," he caught sight of the damage on Billy's face, "did you get 'em good?"

Billy eyed Tommy's six-pack. Of course he'd gotten the brand that tasted like piss-water. But he probably couldn't taste anything other than the bullshit that was constantly streaming out of his mouth anyway. "Going somewhere?"

"Just buying this for tomorrow after the Chem test. Last class of the day and all." Tommy replied.

"How about we grab a beer first?" Billy asked, feeling the itch of desperation. He hadn't even been able to pay attention to the beer back at the diner, but he was craving to soak his brain now, maybe it'd absorb some of the memories of this night.

"Oh, I should get back, my parents-" Tommy saw Billy raise an eyebrow, a bored expression colouring his features, "yeah, but they won't mind I'm coming back late."

"Great." Billy drawled.

"Someone should be the, you know, more sober one." Tommy said. It was painfully obvious he was hedging Billy into playing sober driver.

"We're splitting them." Billy said.

Tommy furrowed his brow.

"Scared of the Keg King drivin' you home?" Billy hedged with a sardonic raise of his brow.

Tommy's apprehension was tampered by his need to defend his macho persona (or the one he thought he had). "'Course not. What're we gonna hit anyways this late, a cow?"

"I only hit what I want to hit." Billy replied. "But we're driving in my car. Just gotta pick it up."

They slid into Tommy's hand-me-down car. The car smelled of spilled soda and the fake pine tree swaying on the rearview mirror.

With Tommy, the car ride seemed endless. He turned up the shitty, staticky radio. It still couldn't drown out Tommy's voice. But it didn't take long for the lapdog himself to turn down the radio with a yelp of surprise.

It wasn't much of a surprise. Diane was a terrible liar in any normal situation. Ironically, she was criminally smooth when it came to lying in dangerous situations. So in the car before they were in attacked, her words were earnest. Of course Tommy would recognise her house. He might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he also didn't have the memory span of a goldfish.

Tommy was eyeing him with wonder as he pulled into the drive. "Seriously man, how do you do it?"

"Be me." Billy replied, sliding into the car.

For ten minutes Billy got some reprieve from Tommy as he drove alone in his car, following the vehicle in front of him. He'd missed his own car. They drove towards Tommy's house where he deposited it and plopped down into Billy's excitedly.

"Tina's party was crazy. I was so hungover in Lit I had to get a hall-pass just to go puke in the bathroom. Still better than listening to Mr. Calvestone though." Tommy said.

Tina's party had happened only twenty-four hours ago. He couldn't believe he'd had more action in the past night than he'd had for weeks in Hawkins, and it was because of Diane.

"But oh man, did you see Diane, she was wasted." Tommy said as if he'd telepathically picked up on exactly who Billy was thinking about, "Nance went right into Zombie Boy's brothers arms after Steve threw punch on her after their fight about what happened in the bathroom. Should've been a girl fight between was so pissed she had to clean it the next day-" Tommy continued, but Billy had zoned out.

The words had shot out of him before he his brain could catch up with his mouth when he'd told her about Steve fucking Harrington. She hadn't rebutted him, maybe she'd even been entertaining the idea of getting together with Steve. The way Harrington had strode out of that bathroom with a smug grin on his face, which Billy figured was wholly undeserved. Diane was exasperating if not infuriating, but knowing Harrington's pasty, scrawny body was all over hers in the bathroom, that only infuriated him further. Harrington was pathetic, he couldn't even find his ass with his own two hands and he was supposed to find someone else's?

What he needed was that smirk wiped off his face. Of course Diane hadn't rejected the notion of getting together with King Steve Harrington.

He jerked the car sharply right, going down the bumpy road of a field partially sheltered by the trees. That animal could still be lurking around the dark foliage, but screw it. He parked the car and then the both of them slid out, shutting the doors behind them. Billy rested against the hood and Tommy knelt down, removing the plastic packaging that held the beers together.

As soon as Billy got one he snapped it open and chugged it.

Tommy gulped a few times before wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "Weren't you supposed to be out with Andie tonight instead of Diane? She's gonna be pissed."

Billy grabbed another beer. "How'd you know that." Billy was fairly sure he hadn't told anyone. Not that it mattered. She just wasn't much to brag about.

"She told us. Heard she's kind of a wild cat, leaves claw marks." Tommy said, eyes lighting up in excitement like Billy would tell him anything. "She's trying to get with you so hard."

"Dating?" He asked.

"Duh."

He lit another cigarette, and muttered, "Her standards are six feet under if what I had planned was considered a date."

Tommy howled with laughter. Billy didn't join in.

When he told Diane that Andie was simple, he'd meant it. Andie wasn't perplexing, and he was only drawn to her in one way. Like the other girls in Hawkins High, it was an endless source of amusement to him how they thought they were hot shit. They lived in Hawkins, Indiana. If he grew up here he'd try to get the hell out of dodge - like Diane was doing.

That's why Diane wasn't simple. Every time his thoughts seemed to stray back to her. She'd dug his way into his brain and the more he tried to ignore her, the more stubbornly she became rooted in his mind.

She'd been in the shadows for so long she melted into the background. He wouldn't have noticed her if it wasn't overhearing Carols endless bitching about all those extra classes she'd been taking for years to graduate with their year even though she should be a Junior. But for girl reasons he didn't understand or care about, Carol hated the near-invisible Diane Dobler.

Getting her to write his paper would've been all too easy while he went to the reservoir and partied. Then she'd given him a blank paper in response, toying with him for days. It'd been the spark of her stubbornness that had first drawn him in to the fire that burned in her soul.

Now she was facing down men with guns, men in underground facilities, and driving a car she hated with cool calculation. As they'd rammed into the barricade her eyes had been unflinching as she stared straight ahead. He didn't even think she'd heard his warning over her speed.

She hadn't seemed to pick up his warning about him, either. The thought of what'd happen if anyone acted on those files the Energy Departments goons had unearthed had him tilting his head back and finishing the second beer hastily.

"Andie's gonna be so pissed." Tommy repeated with a snicker.

He tossed the empty can it into the bushes. "And I don't care."

Andie was going to come crawling back anyway, because the town which she lived in conditioned her that way. Small, tame hairstyles. Bell bottoms were still a thing. The biggest gossip around town was the mall being built. Hawkins, where everything arrived ten years later.

The worst part about everything arriving late here? It wasn't even the best of the culture at the time, it was the discarded scraps that weren't cool enough to ever really take off, like those conservative corduroy pants. So of course, someone like Andie would come back to him, because he was new and leagues better than anyone else around here.

They talked more about the party and everything that'd gone down. In comparison to the parties Billy had attended back in California, these stories were tamer than a newborn kitten. But as Billy was half-way through sipping his third beer, Tommy inevitably ran right back to getting the details on what had been going on in his life.

"Man, yesterday night and this afternoon? Like missing-out-on-Andie-for-her kind of afternoon. Come on, is she really that good?" Tommy implored, kicking a small rock with his foot.

"Are you getting blue-balled by Carol right now or somethin'? Seem to be real invested in this." Billy said.

"Come on man, you totally did, didn't you?" Tommy asked. "Is she as much of a frigid bitch in the bedroom as she is outside of it? Or is she one of the secret crazies? After everything that went down at Tina's party - oh man, she totally is, isn't she?"

Diane was good at deception. She was meticulous with time but didn't wear a watch. She was scared of driving but drove with the levelheaded abilities of a seasoned race-car driver when she was truly scared. How she became alive beneath his touch, the ice around her gone in an instant like it'd never existed in the first place. More insightful and sharper than she let on, yet marvellously blind in other areas.

The way she seemed to be uninvolved in everything around her, except she jumps at any opportunity to help others. She'd been willing to take a bullet for him though she was far from deserving of that fate; no one had ever done that for him before. But no one should for him, especially not someone like her. Except she had such an annoyingly unwavering compass, he was sure she could be in the North Pole and it'd still point North.

"Just . . . lay off her, all right?" He took another drag, looking at the tree line. The boring mundane trees that grouped together around the endless fields which glittered with frost in the early mornings on the way to school.

He missed California. He missed the scorching sand beneath his bare feet before the ocean dragged him forwards. But what he missed most was the freedom. He missed driving down the long winding road by the beach. The girls rolling skating in short shorts and sometimes nothing but bikinis, wind whipping their long hair around.

He missed feeling the weight of his surfboard beneath his arm. He missed the roaring silence of the ocean as he was dragged beneath the waves after a wipe-out, and for a few moments he understood what peace felt like. The weightlessness of it, cocooning him from the overwhelming tide of his own mind; there was only the present.

He missed the smell of fried food by the boardwalk as he dredged himself up from the beach, hungry to stretch out and relax after a long day of surfing. Occasionally a brave seagull would make a sharp dive for a fry in the tray before narrowly evading his hand batting out to hit it away; they'd learned to manoeuvre through years of greedy expertise.

The days stretched out endlessly, and the nights went by too fast. When families and the tourists went home as the dusk stretched out over the sea, painting it in glittering reds and yellows is when the partygoers crept out of their easygoing day-slumber to come out to play. Excited sparks leapt up from the bonfire like they were trying to reach the twinkling stars.

Hoots and hollers crashed around like the waves thrown onto the shores of the beach. They were unshackled from whatever lives they led during the day. They were free.

At least for a while, with the beer warming his veins and the cigarette smoke curling around his lungs and some tipsy girl that clung onto his side it felt that way. If he didn't throw himself hard enough into the present, then the past threatened to drag him down.

Now he wished he was in the past instead of being present with Tommy Fucking H. He wasn't even good enough to just get the name Tommy, so he had to be distinguished from the rest of the fuck-ups at Hawkins High with the same name.

"Oh, man!" Tommy yelled, placing his palms on his scalp in shock. "You are totally fucking whipped. By Diane freakin' Dobler. That's what this is, isn't it? Is it true the geeks are always the freakiest?"

Slowly, Billy licked the back of his teeth. Then his eyes flashed over to look at Tommy. "Heard you wanted to get into her pants for a while, but don't worry, Tommy. There's plenty of other fish in the sea, right?"

Tommy's face contorted into a grimace and he was already spluttering to defend himself, "Man I don't care about that basket cas-"

"I'll be sure to leave you some." Billy said, slipping off the hood and bumping into Tommy roughly as he walked by. A soft click resounded as he locked all the doors.

Tommy turned around and tried the door handle. He tried pulling it again several times, then looked at Billy. An unsure smile was growing on his face as he waited for Billy to let him in on some joke. But Billy stared right back, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel.

"I'm not coming?" Tommy asked in an uncertain tone.

"Why would you?" said Billy as he readjusted his hair in the mirror. He could see the growing look of uncertainty on Tommy's face from the corner of his eye. If Tommy said man one more time, Billy was going to run him over. Twice.

Being used as a second-rate speed bump would make him more useful to society than he'd ever been in the entirety of his existence.

"We're friends, man."

Slowly he righted himself and turned around, blowing smoke lazily out between his lips curling into a sharp smile. "Cute."

Tommy's face grew a hot red at the dejection before he tried to regain his wounded ego and puffed his chest up. "Whatever man, no one care-"

"Don't care."

Tommy gathered himself for his last words, yelling "Yeah, well, fuck you too!"

In the rearview mirror he saw Tommy flipping the bird at him. Billy grinned as he revved up the engine. Tommy H was finally funny.

They were only a mile or two from his part of the neighbourhood, he'd probably be fine to walk back. It hadn't been his initial plan, but he didn't feel all too bad about it as he drove home. Tommy would most likely be fine walking back, Hawkins was a small town with large tracts of land. Plus, that animal had to rest at some point and it'd already been pretty damn active.

As he parked the Camaro outside he stared into the Hargrove house. The light in the living room was on. He sat in the car for a long drawn out moment before sighing and getting out, slamming the door behind him. No point in delaying coming inside. Either something was going to happen or it wasn't.

He opened the front door slowly and his shoulders lowered immediately. The living room was empty. The door closed gently behind him on the possibility his old man and Susan were asleep. As he peaked down the hallway he saw their door wide open without the lights off. They weren't back from their trip yet. Some of the tension ran out of his body.

Billy sat down on the sofa and stared at the floor. He rubbed his temples. Jesus, what a night. Tomorrow was a concept he'd completely forgotten about. But time was going to move on, and his life would stay the same, just like he'd told Diane.

Tomorrow they'd bump into each other at school. He figure she'd avoid him tomorrow and forever onwards, pretending like the previous night had never happened. He wasn't going to say anything, because he wasn't going to chase her. He never chased. Yet he had a feeling he'd be waiting a long time. Diane wasn't someone who loitered around waiting for something to happen. If she'd come to a decision she'd stick with it.

The silence was lingered in here was too much. He stood up. It really was too much, Max's alternative music was always drifting out of her room when she was home, which she should be now.

As Billy opened her door, he saw it was empty, except her skateboard was still on the carpet. That little shit better be hiding somewhere. He'd pick up his pace as he strode through the house, peaking into each room. Billy opened the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink in desperation like she'd stuffed herself beneath there. That too, was empty of her presence.

Billy strode over to the front door and ripped it open. He took a step onto the porch. "Max!" He roared into the silence. She was somewhere out there, and so was that animal.

A/N: I know I'm a lazy writer who just transplanted two show lines from Billy and Steve's conversation into the story here so you can boo and throw tomatoes at me now. (Well, fish instead of bitches but that was deliberate).

Crzychigurl343: They really are stubborn. Just imagine the possibilities when they unite together and turn their stubbornness on the same target. Diane will be getting a more instantaneous epiphany soon. I think Billy's is more of a culmination of factors that's leading him to viewing Diane differently which has been ongoing over the past 24 hours.

Abby: Thanks! Exploring his psyche is always fun to do.

I-am-sarah123: Thank you! I'll take your comments as 5/5 likes instead

MotherAiya: He's in a pretty tough spot, both in coming to terms with what's happened himself but also in trying to protect Max from now the governments focus and Diane from what/who's played a big part in shaping him. He's also protecting himself I suppose, he has everything nicely compartmentalised right now and lines blurring means losing control. But he'll have some decisions to make once he can't protect them like he wants to anymore.

MulishaMaiden: Thanks! They really needed an emotional break to just let everything out since it's been bottling up the entire night. Billy isn't the best at communication at the best of times, but he's really restrained in what he can tell Diane at the moment . . . unless an event occurs which just knocks straight through his carefully hidden home life.

As for the lab they'll continue to play a part through for a while. They're just getting started.

Guest: A more filler-esque chapter is what happened. Billy ended up taking over much more of the chapter than I had planned.