Steve woke up the next morning, and he was alone again in his childhood bed. He wasn't as surprised this time, once he had adjusted to waking up back in his old bedroom for the second morning in the room, especially since Billy had napped through the day and then still come to bed with him the night before, but part of him still kind of wished that Billy had been there. They didn't sleep together very often, and he liked waking up with Billy, even if it did start to feel familiar in a way that wasn't quite what they had. Steve rolled over to pick up his phone, which wasn't plugged into its charger like he usually left it before he went to bed, but Billy's phone was right next to his, so Billy must have taken his phone off charge and used his cord when he had woken up. It was just after eight, and the funeral was at eleven that morning. Steve wasn't sure what time Billy wanted to get to the funeral home, so he figured he'd better go down and ask.
He pulled on a pair of briefs and rubbed a hand over his face as he left the bedroom, heading toward the stairs. First he looked out to the pool, because that was where he had found Billy yesterday, and then he glanced around the back yard and the lounge and didn't see him there either, and he was about to cup his hands around his mouth and just yell when he heard a car engine outside. He opened the front door and saw the rental car pulling up in front of the house and stopping, and then Billy got out.
"Uh," Steve frowned as he watched Billy walk up to the house, with a paper bag in his hand. "You good?" He wondered if maybe Billy had gone around to his fathers old house again and seen Max or Susan, although he couldn't imagine Billy putting himself in a position where he would feel uncomfortable and not take his phone with him.
"Yeah," Billy nodded, and there was a small smile on his face. "Got you something, pretty boy," he tossed the bag at Steve, and Steve had to move quickly to grab it against his chest so as not to miss it. Billy leaned in and smacked a kiss against Steve's cheek, which made Steve smile in response as a reflex, and then he followed Billy into the house. As Steve pulled open the paper bag and looked inside, he followed after Billy as he walked into the kitchen and tossed the keys on the bench.
"What time do we have to leave?" Steve asked as he leaned a hip against the bench and reached into the bag, a small smile spreading across his face as he took out a bottle of nail polish remover and then a smaller bottle of pearly-pink polish. They were both just cheap, grocery-store brands, but that was all that would be open in Hawkins this time on a Saturday. When he looked back up, Billy was watching him over his shoulder, and he turned back around to fiddle with the coffee maker when he met Steve's gaze. "Thank you, Billy," he murmured and Billy hummed in response, looking back at the coffee maker.
"I was thinking we would leave at ten-thirtyish," he said quietly as he reached up to the cupboard above him and take out a mug. "I'm not interested in being there when any family gets there, although I don't think there will be, but I don't want to leave Max for too long closer to the time. I don't know how Susan's gonna be, but I think she's gonna be...Messy." The coffee maker flicked off and Billy poured himself a mug before hesitating and reaching for another one, for Steve.
"Have you messaged her today?" Steve asked as he moved to get milk out of the fridge and then picked up the sugar tin, taking it over to where Billy was. "Is she doing okay?"
"She called me just about an hour ago. It's what woke me up—lucky my phone still had any charge," Billy muttered with a shrug. "She's fine." Steve nodded, not pushing it any further. They drank their coffee quietly, still standing in the kitchen and leaning against the counter top. Billy finished his coffee first, which made sense because he never seemed to feel the burn, and after he had rinsed out his cup, he squeezed Steve's shoulder as he left.
Steve took off the last scrapes of his nail polish while sitting on the counter top—something that he had never done as a kid, because there had been this one time when he had banged his heels too hard against the cupboards underneath, and his mother had basically screamed at him. He painted two coats of the pretty pink colour that was actually very similar to one that he had back at home, and it was a really nice one. It would go with the shirt that he had brought to wear to the funeral as well, a pale pink button down, and he was going to have to find an iron because his clothes were still folded at the bottom of his bag, which was on the floor of his room. Billy was still in the shower when Steve walked upstairs, and he went to his room to undress and get ready for his own shower. He was half-assing making the bed when Billy's phone lit up with a notification. Steve couldn't help but glance down and his eyebrows shot up in surprise.
It was an email notification, and so only the senders name and the first couple words of the subject line showed.
Rachel Blair - Realtor
RE: Question regarding 2 bedroom apartment on...
Steve felt as though a bucket of ice water had been dumped over his head and his whole body jerked as he stared down at the message on the phone. He know Billy's passcode, he could easily swipe his thumb over the phone and read the message, but he had never done that without Billy asking him too—unless it was to take a stupid snapchat or change the music on Spotify—and he couldn't make himself do that now.
"Stevie! I forgot a towel! Can you bring me one?!" Came a shout from the bathroom, over the sound of the shower and Steve jerked back into an upright position, pursing his lips together and clearing his throat before quickly leaving his room to go to the linen closet. Billy flicked off the shower as Steve walked into the bedroom, and he opened the glass door, standing there in all his golden, muscled glory, holding out an arm for the towel, and Steve would usually let his eyes flick down to look over Billy and maybe even strip out of his own clothes but his head felt all muddled up right now.
"Here," Steve mumbled as he passed over the towel and then quickly turned tail and left the bathroom, heading back to the bedroom just to grab the clothes that he was going to be changing into for the funeral and then disappearing into his parents room to use their en-suite.
Billy drove the car on the way to the funeral home, and he plugged his phone in and turned In This Moment all the way up as they drove the slow streets of Hawkins. Steve had managed to calm himself down, after sending off a couple of texts to Robin Buckley, she'd pretty much just told him that he needed to take a few deep breaths and smoke a joint if he needed to, because even if Billy was thinking about moving out and he hadn't talked about it with Steve yet, it was his fathers funeral today and he needed to push aside any issues that he had. Pretty much she had just repeated back to him everything that he already knew, but it was good to hear it in a blunt tone, even over text message, from someone else. There was a reason why he and Robin were becoming closer friends, and the way that she told him shit straight was definitely one of them.
"Okay," Billy breathed heavily through his teeth as he turned off the engine of the car, and Steve lifted his eyes to look at the funeral home in front of them, and he dug his upper teeth into his lower lip.
He could literally count the amount of funerals that he had been to on one hand, and three of them had been old family members, and other than his grandma, he hadn't really known them, only met them a few times and didn't really have much of a connection with them. Another had been a girl he had gone to university with who had died in a car crash, and he'd only spoken with her a few times, but most of his class had decided to go to the funeral to show support and he had gone along as well. And the last had been Barb Holland, which had been the hardest, because they had been friendly, and then she had been best friends with Nancy, and it had been while Steve and Nancy had been together. She had been shot when she had accidentally interrupted a convenience store robbery, which had absolutely rocked Hawkins at the time. Steve hadn't really known how to process the fact that someone his age had been killed, and it had led to a lot of drinking, which was still an unhealthy crutch that he sometimes fell into.
"You ready?" Steve asked softly, looking over at Billy and Billy made a face, scrunching up his nose momentarily before nodding his head once. Steve reached over and rested his hand on Billy's arm for a moment, waiting for him to make the first move to get out of the car, but it took a few minutes before Billy finally did. And when he did, he squeezed Steve's hand first, before taking off his seat belt and jerking the keys out of the ignition. There were only three other cars in the parking lot, and Steve recognized one of them as the one that had been parked outside Susan's house when they had gone around there yesterday. He guessed the others were workers at the funeral home.
Steve followed a few steps behind Billy into the building, and there was an older man with glasses, wearing a suit that looked as though it had been brought off the rack and not adjusted to fit him properly, even though it was obviously a couple of years old. He smiled at them wanly, obviously in charge of greetings and handing out programs.
Steve had a suit—both his parents had always had a thing about him having a suit, and so even though he never wore them, he had one in the wardrobe that he'd brought a few years ago and been tailored—and it still all fit. It was a bit tighter over his shoulders, and he was glad that the baby pink button down shirt was a newer one or else that would be a bit uncomfortably tight, but the dark grey suit still looked good. He didn't wear a tie with it, the top few buttons undone, and Billy had seemed to like it.
Billy didn't have a suit, and Steve had made a motion to just offer to buy him one—or even rent him one—and Billy had shut him down straight away when they had been in the car coming back from Susan's to the Harrington house. It wasn't like there were many places in Hawkins to buy a good suit, and they properly wouldn't have been able to get it tailored, but they would have been able to come up with something, and Billy made anything look good. He had a pair of dark coloured pants that he'd brought for a work dinner last year, and he was wearing a short sleeved blue button down shirt that he had let Steve iron for him as well, so he had tidied up well.
Not like that was going to make today any easier.
Although...Steve was pretty sure that this was just for closure rather than to mourn, which was fine and something that Steve understood in these circumstances, and if that was all Billy needed, then he was happy to just be there and be whatever Billy needed from him.
Even if he was planning on leaving him soon.
The flickering thought made Steve's stomach turn over and he actually wondered if he was going to pop one of the pills from his wallet for the second time in as many days, which was the first time in a long time he had felt the need to do so in a short amount of time, but he forced himself to take in a deep breath and then his eyes found El, standing just inside the entrance way, giving both older men a small smile, and he forced another deep breath.
"Hey," El greeted them after they'd collected a program and moved further into the building. Billy's eyes were almost manic, trying to see further into the open room of the funeral parlor, and Steve's fingers itched to reach out to touch him, but then Susan appeared and there was an older couple with her and Billy's spine suddenly seemed to snap ramrod straight, so Steve stayed where he was.
"William," the older woman nodded her head forward, giving him a small smile and Steve glanced at Billy and didn't miss the tic in his cheek.
"Grandmother," he responded quietly. Steve blinked in surprise and looked closer at the older couple. They looked like they were probably in their seventies, and they looked healthy and held themselves well, wearing well fitting clothes. Steve didn't really see any similarities between them and Billy, and he guessed maybe there was between them and Neil, but he had never really paid much attention to Neil, so he wouldn't be able to see it.
"It's good to see you, boy," the man—Billy's grandfather—said, his voice gruff, but he looked genuine enough and Steve's eyebrows twitched, pulling together as he noticed Billy clenching his hands into fists, and it was clear that he really didn't want to be there.
Obviously, Steve knew that Billy didn't want to be here at all, but specifically, he gathered that he didn't want to be talking to these two people. El was looking between the couple and Susan and then at Billy, and it was clear that she could feel the tension as well, and she looked over her shoulder, maybe toward where Max was in the main room, before looking at Steve and making a subtle face, jerking her head a little.
"Did you want to head inside?" Steve tried to keep his voice light, and unable to stop himself from reaching out and touching his hand lightly to the base of Billy's spine. Billy didn't relax, but he didn't pull away, and then he nodded and they were walking inside, El leading the way.
"There's water and juice and coffee and stuff," El said quietly as they walked in, and Steve noted that there was only two other people in the room. Max was one, and the other looked like he was another employee, in a similar, demure suit to the man who had been handing out programs at the main door. He was standing by a long table where there were cups and pitchers of water and other drinks and Billy gritted his teeth together for a moment before letting out a breath.
"I told them about what he was doing to me," he said quietly as Max walked over to him. "After my mum left, I rang them every night for as long as I could, telling them what he did to me, asking for them to let me live with them. I don't know if they didn't believe me, or if they just didn't want to believe that their son could do that, but either way, they fucking left me with him." It was Steve's turn to tense and grit his teeth as Max joined them, El's eyes narrowing as she looked over Billy's shoulder and toward where Susan was still talking with Billy's grandparents.
"If you want to go..." Steve said slowly, fingers curling into Billy's shirt instinctively, feeling his protective instincts flare. "Just say the word and we're out of here." Billy forced a small smile that didn't reach his eyes, and then he was looking over to where the drinks table was.
"I'm gonna get something to drink. You want anything?" He asked. Steve just shook his head, his arm falling back to his side as he watched Billy go. Max was wearing a dress and looking extremely uncomfortable about it, tugging at the material at her hips and making a face before fiddling her hair, which was in double braids over her shoulders.
"Where's Lucas?" Steve asked, looking around for Max's boyfriend.
"He's coming with Jonathan and Hop and Joyce," Max replied. "El stayed over last night so that she could help us with mum and setting things up this morning, but I told Lucas to come in with Jonathan and that. You know he's not the best with small talk, especially if there's more relatives that show up," her upper lip curled and she tugged at her braid again. She looked a lot like the teenager that Steve had first met when she had moved to town when she did that, and it was kind of adorable, although he would never say that to her.
"Do you know if there's more relatives coming?" He asked after a pause and Max shrugged a shoulder. Her face was pale, and she looked as though she hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, so Steve didn't ask anything else, just reached out and put his hand on her shoulder, giving it a squeeze. She gave him a wan smile before heaving a sigh and then jerking her head up when Susan called out to her, waving an arm jerkily.
"I better go over," Max muttered, leaving El and Steve and quickly walking over to her mother and the older parents. El was wearing a dressy black jumpsuit, with a belt cinching the waist and her arms bare, and she looked more comfortable that El did in her dress.
"You okay?" El asked quietly and Steve forced himself to nod. It wasn't as though he really talked about his own personal shit with the kids anyway—he didn't care that they were in their twenties now, they were always going to be kids to him—and today definitely wasn't the time to start. Today had nothing to do with him, and he had to focus on Billy. And Max. Although that girl seemed to be holding her own just fine, and Steve knew that El and Lucas would have her back.
"I think we just need to get through today," he said quietly, looking over to where the blonde man was pouring himself coffee and adding milk and sugar. "I'm glad Billy decided to come." And he was. He was glad that Billy had actually listened to him, because even though this was going to be hard, Steve truly believed that it was the right thing to do.
"Did you..." El dropped her voice even more, leaning in closer to Steve. "Did you see Susan's face and arms? She's—she's got scars and stuff—from him." Steve's back teeth ground together as he remembered the fading bruising yesterday. "I never...We never realized it was that bad, back when we were living here. Max never really said anything, other than that they sometimes got into fights." Steve felt the same sick feeling that he had felt yesterday when they had been at the Hargrove house latch onto his stomach, squeezing it, and he forced himself to take in slow, deep breaths through his nose and then let them out through his mouth.
"I knew that things weren't great, but just...We weren't friends in high school," Steve said, but the words sounded hollow, even to him. "But...I didn't even know how bad it was after we became friends. I still don't know how bad it was—" he broke off purposefully as Billy walked back over to them.
"Coffee tastes like ass," he muttered.
"The juice is okay?" El offered with a sympathetic smile. Billy just hummed under his breath and then looked toward the front of the room, where chairs were gathered in a semi-circle, and there was a podium where the priest or the funeral director or whoever was going to take the service was obviously going to stand, and behind it there was a coffin on a long table.
Steve couldn't believe he had missed it when they had come in.
"Did you...Want to go over?" Steve asked slowly, trying to gauge Billy's reaction, but then the curly haired mans upper lip was curling in a blatant disgust and he shook his head once. "Okay," Steve twisted his mouth, wondering what he was meant to do or say, because he wasn't good at situations like this, but then there was some noise from the doorway, obviously more people arriving, and El shifted as she tried to see into the entrance way.
"I think that's Hop and Joyce," she said. "I'm gonna go over and see them." She left without waiting for a response and Billy blinked, eyebrows pulling together.
"Hopper and Joyce are coming?" He asked slowly.
"Yeah," Steve murmured, watching Billy closely. Joyce hadn't told him that they were going to come the other day when they had been at her place, but he hadn't been surprised when Max had said that they were, not after the conversation with her. And Joyce had this habit of adopting all of the kids that came into contact with her children, and Billy had become one of them along the way. She wasn't as close to him as she was with some of them, even Steve, who she wasn't especially close to, but she always asked after him, and when she was visiting Will in the city and they all got together for a big brunch, she always gave Billy a big hug and included him in conversation.
"I didn't—" Billy's voice caught and he cleared his throat. "I didn't expect that." Steve's heart broke a little because Billy still didn't seem to realize that he had people on his side, people who cared about him.
In the end, there weren't any other family members that showed up other than Neil's parents. Steve didn't know whether there were any other close family members and they had just chosen not to come, or if there wasn't really anyone else, but Billy didn't seem to expect to see anyone else. Hopper, Joyce, Lucas and Jonathan were all there, standing together and talking quietly, and Steve and Billy had slowly migrated over to stand with them. El had seemed to basically glue herself to Max's side, and Max was flitting between the group with her boyfriend and checking on her mother, El moving with her. Susan was greeting each of the people that were coming in, and sometimes she would looking over at Billy and wave her hand in his direction and the people that she was speaking with would look over, and Steve knew that she was pointing him out as Neil's son, but Billy didn't make any effort to go over, and Steve couldn't fault him for that.
It wasn't as though any of these people had really known who Neil was.
And if they did, and they hadn't done anything, and were still showing up at this funeral and pretending that everything was fine? Then that was even worse.
Seeing Carol Talmadge come through the entrance way and nervously step into the main room just before the funeral director asked everyone to begin taking their seats was a surprise. She was wearing a black dress that was a few inches above her knees and showed off her cleavage, and she was wearing bright red lipstick—so it was clear that some things never changed—and Steve was surprised how nice it was to see her. Steve nudged Billy's side with his elbow as they began moving toward the seats and nodded over to her just as her eyes landed on them, and her eyes widened when she saw them, before giving them a tentative smile. Steve smiled back, hoping to convey his thanks, because he knew the only reason that she would be there would be out of support for Billy, which was nice, even though they hadn't had anything to do with each other in years.
Steve honestly didn't pay too much attention to the service, because it was so obvious that it was all just fake words, being read outloud off a script. They were sitting in the second row of seats even though Susan had initially patted a seat on her right for Billy, but he had shaken his head and firmly moved into the second row. Max and Neil's parents were in the front with Susan, and then there were three empty seats in the front row, which seemed kind of fitting, showing that he really didn't have that many close friends.
Hopper, Joyce, Lucas, El and Jonathan were in the seats behind them, Joyce directly behind Billy, and she had her hand resting on his shoulder through the entire service. Steve had seen the way Billy had tensed up to begin with, but then he had reached back and squeezed her hand before letting it fall back to his lap.
Susan said a few words, nothing too long, but all the nice things that she said sounded as fake as the person before her. Then both of his parents spoke, and they kept things short as well, mainly mentioning Neil as a child and that they wish they had made more of an effort to visit when he had moved out to Hawkins. Billy reached out for Steve's hand then, gripping his fingers tightly at that, and Steve wasn't sure what it meant or what the words were in direct reaction to, but he let Billy hold onto his hand as hard as he needed, even though it felt as though he was crushing all of the bones.
Then the funeral director spoke again, asking if anyone else wanted to say anything, and Steve could feel eyes shifting, resting on Billy, given he was Neil's son, but Billy didn't move an inch. Steve tightened his grip around Billy's hand, trying to show support, even though there wasn't much he could do. A previous boss of Neils got up and took the floor, just spinning some standard tale about Neil being a stand up man at work who had barely missed a day and would be missed, and then the room fell completely quiet. No one else came forward to say anything, and after a few silent moments had passed, the director stepped forward, obviously deciding to move on with the service.
The service ended with a prayer, and then people were encouraged to move to the back of the room where refreshments would be set up.
Billy slipped outside right away and Steve hung back, not wanting to crowd Billy, and he checked his phone and had a couple of messages. There was one from both Will and Mike, saying to pass on their sympathies to Billy, and one from Dustin, saying to pass on a kiss, since he knew Steve had no issues with that when it came to Billy. The last one was from Robin.
Hope everything's going okay, doofus. Ring me if you need to x
Steve couldn't help but smile a little at the message before looking up as Jonathan came over to stand next to him.
"Billy doing okay?" Jonathan murmured and Steve shrugged a shoulder.
"As well as can be, I guess?" Steve replied quietly, letting out a heavy breath through his nose. "The guy was an absolute asshole to him. Worse. He was—he was meant to be his father, he was meant to protect him and he..." Steve gritted his teeth together and Jonathan put his arm around Steve's shoulders, giving him a half hug.
When the coffin was taken out to the hearse, there weren't enough family members and close friends to help carry it out. They needed six people, and Neil's father, two people from his work and Susan were all pallbearers, although Susan obviously couldn't handle too much of the weight given her frail stature. Steve was a bit confused as to why they hadn't sorted all of this out before the funeral, but maybe it was just assumed that Billy and Max would both be helping, even though Max was resolutely standing between El and Lucas and Billy had his arms crossed firmly over his chest. It wasn't until Hopper moved forward and nodded his head at Billy that there was any movement.
"Come on, son," he said in his rough voice, moving to the coffin, and even though Steve knew that it was taking every ounce of strength that Billy could muster, he was then moving to stand on the opposite side of the coffin from Hopper.
Steve was stupidly proud of him.
There hadn't been many people at the funeral to begin with, and even less went to the cemetery. Once the coffin had been brought to the hole in the ground, Billy was moving away quickly, to stand with Billy, near the back of the small group of people. Carol had also come, and she moved to stand next to Steve, giving him a small smile.
"Hey," Steve whispered.
"Hi," she replied, and it was weird, because, yeah, they hadn't seen each other in years, but they'd been friends for so long in high school, even if things had ended on a bitter note, and Carol obviously thought the same thing, because when he turned to look at her, she was already leaning in for a hug. "It's been forever," she murmured as Steve squeezed her. When they parted, Steve stepped back so that Billy was included in their little bubble and her eyes flicked between them. "I always told Tommy that it was more than just some dumb rivalry between the two of you, I knew I felt some sexual tension happening," there was a smirk pulling at the corners of her lips. "When I saw you guys get tagged in a photo together on Instagram a couple of years ago I was actually pretty happy about it." Steve didn't think now was the time to get into the fact that they weren't together years ago—even now they weren't a couple—so he just smiled a little awkwardly. "Anyway," Carol's voice turned somber as she looked toward Billy. "I just—I heard about your dad, and we were kind of friends in high school, and I just wanted to come and pay my respects."
"Thanks, Carol," Billy gave her a smile, a more genuine one than he had given his grandparents or any of his fathers colleagues that day. They all fell quiet again as the coffin began getting lowered into the ground, and people began moving forward to toss handfuls of dirt into the grave. Family was all meant to go first, which would be Billy, but he didn't budge and it moved onto colleagues and acquaintances.
Billy stayed at Steve's side, and Steve didn't move forward to throw any dirt into the grave, even as Carol did, and Jonathan and Hopper and Joyce did. People began moving away, back to their cars, and eventually, Billy took in a breath through his nose and looked at Steve.
"I want to go home," he whispered, leaning his weight against Steve's side. Steve wrapped an arm around him and slowly led him back to their rental car.