Steve swam with solemn determination and found exactly what they were looking for - a gate. He reaches out a hand to touch it, to make sure, but something moves underneath the glowing red surface and it spooks him enough to let out the air he had been holding, forcing him to swim back up. Steve breaks the surface of the water, lets them know he’s found it and barely gets a few breaths in before there’s a tug on his ankle. He realizes something freezing cold has wrapped itself around his leg with surprising strength and he glances up at his friends one last time right before it drags him under.

The next thing Steve sees is the dark gray sky, lighting up impossibly red every other second as he’s dragged along the ground by his leg, only coming to a stop when he crashes into a pile of vines. He lies there for a moment, gasping and confused, before standing and taking in what looks like scorched earth all around him. The lake is dried up and he’s standing on solid ground. A screech echoes above him and that’s when the bats come.

Steve reaches into the abandoned boat next to him to grab an oar, using it to fight off the first bat that gets close enough. He’s not as lucky with the next as one of their tails wrap around his neck and pulls him to the ground. More bats come and their teeth are razor sharp as they bite into flesh, over and over, and Steve’s losing air as the tail tightens further around his neck. Somewhere through the panic and fear, past his body’s natural adrenalin to fight to keep alive, Steve wonders if there’s not the tiniest bit of relief.

Before the thought can fully take hold, another all too familiar demon from this hell tears the bat off his left side. Steve’s mouth drops open to cry out at the pain of it, but no sound escapes. He’s sure he’ll die from lack of air before the demodog can eat him instead and decides he’s at least thankful for that.

A sickening squelch sounds right above his head before the pressure is suddenly released from his neck. The black spots clear after a few gasping breaths, but Steve thinks he must have died anyway because the next thing he sees as his vision returns is Billy Hargrove’s face.

“Billy?!” He barely whispers, doesn’t even feel the pain in his throat as he looks up at the familiar stranger staring back at him. It’s Billy, somehow alive, but so different; his hair tied back and displaying his more angular features, sharp hardened eyes with black shadows lining them. He’s lean, nothing but muscle and grit, looking angry but unafraid with an axe in his hand.

Billy reaches down to grab Steve’s arm, pulling him up to his feet, and before Steve can revel too much at the contact, he remembers the demodog and turns to find it tearing into another hellbat.

“Is Max alive?” Billy asks gruffly, ignoring the chaos around them and Steve jolts at the sound of his voice after having to live so long without it.

“What?” He asks, foggy brain struggling to keep up, and Billy reaches out his other hand to steady him when he sways to the side.

“Max,” Billy repeats, voice hard but urgent, eyes tense and focused. “I saw-”

“Billy?!” Another familiar voice cuts through the static in Steve’s head and he turns to find Nancy, Robin and Eddie ten feet away and frozen in shock.

Steve’s eyes meet Robin’s and she knows - her eyes widening as she takes in the two of them standing together, Billy’s hands still on Steve’s arms, before her face crumples into something like sad happiness for her best friend.

Steve’s not processing a thing until Nancy’s eyes zero in on the demodog, raising the oar Steve must have dropped and starting to charge but Billy steps into her path, whistling sharply and pointing to the ground beside his foot. The demodog immediately obeys, sitting next to Billy and ready for another command. The group stares in shock but Steve wants to laugh because of course, of course only a wild thing like Billy could figure out how to tame a wild thing like that.

“Dude, didn’t you die?” Eddie asks, and before anyone can respond, there’s a shriek from an incoming flock of hellbats. They all tense but the bats circle around the opening to the gate instead of attacking. The demodog seems to chitter in warning and Billy looks up, the rest following suit and finding a much larger amount of bats coming their way.

“Follow me,” Billy says darkly, whistling again before taking off at a run towards the woods with the demodog at his side.

“What the fuck -” Eddie says but follows after glancing back up at the sky and deciding the better option was following a living ghost. Robin has to grab Steve’s arm to get him to move and they’re all running until they stop at Skull Rock because of course Billy knows where it is.

They quickly make their way under the rock, finding cover and waiting for the coast to be clear. Billy takes Steve by the shoulders again and maneuvers him to sit against the rock. He takes off the backpack he’s carrying and digs around before pulling out gauze and tape - first aid supplies.

“How is this possible?” Nancy asks quietly, watching like a hawk as Billy inspects Steve’s wounds, and Steve thinks there’s no point because he’ll probably just die from shock.

“I’ll answer all your questions, but I need to know about Max. Is she alive?” Billy demands, his eyes only leaving Steve’s abdomen for a second to meet hers with an intensity Steve had missed every single goddamn day. “I don’t know how to explain it but I felt… a rift? And when I got to the graveyard I heard her yelling out, but before I could get to her she just… disappeared, and I -”

“She’s okay,” Nancy tells him, her fierce and curious eyes begging for an answer and with her and Billy standing in the same place Steve can pinpoint exactly why he fell for them both.

Billy lets out a breath of relief before his eyes meet Steve’s, something completely unreadable in his expression and Steve wants to scream because there’s so much, so much, but it’s not the time or place and nothing is making any goddamn sense anymore but he wants to cry because he never really came to terms with Billy being gone and now here he was, alive and breathing, and looking at him with those blue eyes that never missed a thing.

“This is going to hurt,” he tells Steve, and barely gives him a second before pouring antiseptic onto the wounds and Steve grunts at the pain, relieved to feel something sharper than the hurricane inside his head and heart, but it still hurts like a bitch. Billy places the gauze and tape before wrapping a bandage around Steve’s midsection and reaching back into his bag to retrieve an extra shirt. Nancy’s explaining the details of what the group knew so far in terms of the Upside Down to Robin and Eddie while Steve’s been permanently dumbfounded into silence.

“Is that thing… safe?” Eddie asks, and Steve looks over to find him and the demodog staring each other down, or at least they would be if the creepy fucking thing had any eyes. And it’s not until then that Steve notices there’s something else wrong with its face, one of the petal-like sides had been ripped clean off and left it with the side of its mouth partially open. “What’s wrong with its… face?”

“Kreuger won’t hurt you,” Billy responds, zipping his bag up and tossing it back on before checking if the coast is clear. And again Steve wants to laugh and maybe cry; Billy and his fucking horror movies. “He’s an outcast too, we stick together. Come on, we need to move. This place… it can sense your presence.”

“What we need is guns,” Robin responds and Steve can’t look at her because he’s raw and she knows everything. “We should ransack the police station! I’m sure they have grenades and shit, all the guns we need?”

“No guns,” Billy responds, reaching out an arm and pulling Steve up to his feet yet again. “Too loud; attracts more of them. Come on, I’ve got a stash of weapons we can use.”

Billy’s moving before anyone can protest, seeming to know this place way too fucking well, and before too long Steve realizes where they’re headed.

The group runs up the driveway to Steve’s family home and Billy lets them into the house, his demodog running ahead and Eddie’s the last one in, shutting the door behind him and leaning against it.

“Yeah, so where are we?” He asks, because he’s the only one who’s never been there before and Steve watches, fascinated, as Billy seems to let out a breath and some tension releases from his shoulders. He couldn’t possibly think…?

“Steve’s,” Nancy answers, watching Billy just as closely before her eyebrows raise in surprise and she seems to put it together. Steve has to look away when her eyes try to meet his.

“This way,” Billy says, not offering any form of explanation as he leads them upstairs to Steve’s bedroom.

Steve looks around in confusion as his childhood bedroom sits there, mostly untouched apart from the items Billy had obviously been stockpiling and the relatively clean bed Billy must have cleared up.

“Wait…” Steve says, speaking for the first time in what feels like ages, and Billy can’t seem to look at him now. “How is this possible?”

Nancy’s looking around in confusion too before moving towards the desk, grabbing a sweater she must have left there ages ago and meeting Steve’s questioning eyes with her own.

“What do you mean?” Billy asks, eyes on the sweater with a look of familiar disdain. 

“I moved into an apartment last August,” Steve tells him - well, tells the floor because meeting Billy’s eyes isn’t an option right now. He couldn't tell him how impossible it was to live in this room when it still smelled like Billy and so many of their memories haunted the space. “All this stuff shouldn’t be here.”

“This shouldn’t be here either,” Nancy confirms, eyes searching the desk and starting to sort through the discarded papers. “You gave it back years ago.”

“Wait, I…” Billy starts, looking up at Nancy with new clarity. “That makes sense, actually. When I went to my house none of our stuff was there, I thought everyone had moved out… Maybe we just hadn’t moved in? And the mall, I thought it had burned down but maybe it just hadn’t been finished being built?”

“We’re in the past,” Nancy concludes, holding up a couple incomplete school assignments dated two years ago, eyes alight with the new discovery and Steve just wants to lay down.

“Back to more pressing issues,” Robin prompts, looking to Billy expectantly, and Nancy opens her mouth to protest but stops herself, too curious not to find out too.

Billy sighs, leaning against the wall beside Steve’s old window, eyes keeping watch as he takes a deep breath, his demodog settling down on the floor beside him. “I don’t remember that much of it, to be honest. I remember that I… hurt people. Hurt Max and her friends. Hurt others. It felt like a bad dream until the end. El? That’s what you all call her? She pulled me out, and I remember thinking… at least I can do this. Save her. Try to stop what I’d started. And I remember the pain… I remember the cold floor, I remember Max and -” he cuts himself off but Steve and Robin both knew what he was about to say because Steve had been there. Had bolted down from the second floor but hadn’t made it in time. Had to watch as the raging fire that was Billy Hargrove fizzled out to nothing.

Steve blinks hard, jaw clenched as he tries to repress the memory scorched into his mind and every nightmare. He feels Robin take his hand quietly, supporting him the best she can while everyone’s attention is on Billy.

“When I woke up, I thought I was in a hospital. They’d patched me up and there were all sorts of monitors, but it was… strange. No windows. No other people. I didn’t realize I was locked in until I finally had the strength to get out of bed. And then there were these… tests. Experiments. They realized I had some sort of connection to this place and wanted to exploit it. I figured no one knew I was alive, or at least if they did, they’d have no idea where to find me. I was stuck. I have no idea how long I was there. And then one day, they wanted to try something else. They sent me through a gate and I figured it was my only chance. So I cut the cord, ditched the tracker and took off.”

“You’ve been living here all this time?” Nancy asks softly, unbelievingly.

“Hell of a choice I had,” Billy scoffs, but the bitterness isn’t directed at any of them. “Either be a prisoner here or there. At least here I’ve been free.”

“Why didn’t you try to come back?” Steve tries to demand, finally speaking again only to have his voice break on the last word. Billy’s eyes snap up to his and Robin’s hand squeezes tight.

Billy’s jaw clenches, eyebrows coming together briefly before he swallows. “I only knew one way in and out. And like I said, it wasn’t much of a choice.”

“But if you were here, I never…” felt you, Steve wants to say but stops himself. As if it isn’t obvious enough to the rest of them now, but he’d promised forever ago that it would always be their secret. Robin already knew too much and Steve lets the guilt of betraying that promise chew at him now.

“You said yourself you moved out,” Billy reminds him gently, arms crossing against his chest and Steve wishes they could be alone right now. Wishes he could close the space between them and wrap his arms around the other boy. “There’s no real sense of time here. How… how long has it been?"

Steve looks down at the floor, tears threatening to spill and feels Nancy’s eyes on him before she turns to answer Billy. “It’s late March. Almost nine months since Starcourt.”

There’s a long silence before Billy speaks again. “It was quiet for a while. I think they were right; I’m connected to this place somehow. I can feel changes. I knew something was happening and I tried to keep a lookout for any signs. Max was the first person I’d seen… I felt another rift and thought maybe it was her coming through again, that’s how I was at the lake in time.”

“Thank you,” Robin says, hand squeezing once again as she looks at Billy with her chin raised high and tears threatening her eyes. “For saving him.”

Billy looks from her to their entangled hands and back again before nodding. His gaze returns to the window for a moment before he sighs and stands up straight. “We’ve got to get you guys out of here.”

“What?” Steve chokes, because he can’t mean what Steve thinks he means.

“Whatever my connection is, it seems to camouflage me for the most part. I just lay low and I’ve been able to get by okay. But it knows you’re here. I can feel it. You’re not safe.”

“Billy -” Steve starts and Nancy opens her mouth to protest too.

“Harrington -” Billy tries, but Steve isn’t having it.

“Can you guys give us a minute?” He asks tightly, and there’s barely a second of pause before Robin grabs Nancy and Eddie, leaving the room and it’s too quiet.

“Do you have any idea what it’s been like?” Steve demands quietly, tears finally spilling and he’s shaking with anger and sadness; a million feelings swelling up in his throat. Billy’s jaw clenches and his nostrils flare but he doesn’t look away. “And now I find out I haven’t really lost you, and you want to send me away?”

“That’s not -”

“There is no way in hell I am leaving this goddamn place without you, Billy Hargrove.”

“I can’t go back,” Billy says, shaking his head with finality. “Not after what I’ve done.”

“That wasn’t you, Billy!” Steve tries to tell him. “Everyone knows that. Max has been a wreck without you! I’ve been -”

Billy looks up at Steve, waiting for the rest, but Steve can’t talk. Steve can barely hold himself together. “I watched you die.” He whispers instead, arms wrapping around himself in a last ditch effort to keep from falling apart.

“Stevie,” Billy says softly, taking a step towards him and Steve can’t breathe.

“All that wasted time last summer,” Steve lets out a watery, bitter laugh. “You were so scared of your old man finding out and I was so hurt you were staying away… I didn’t even know you were flayed. I saw you follow Heather into the locker rooms one day when I came to try to convince you to talk to me and I just figured…” Steve’s laughing but it hurts, his hands reaching up to press into eyes that won’t stop crying. “It was so stupid. I was jealous and the whole time you were… I wasn’t there. I didn’t know and I wasn’t there for you. And then it was too late. I hated myself, I…”

“Steve,” Billy says again, this time from right in front of Steve. His hands drop to his sides and Billy pulls him into his arms. Steve’s falling apart in earnest now and Billy’s the only thing keeping him upright. The guilt and sadness and confusion eating him alive because none of it has ever been fair. All the time they spent hiding and meeting in secret. All the time they spent apart because of miscommunications and the opinions of people who never really mattered. Not when what they had was the most real thing they had ever known. “It’s not your fault. I got scared and left you again when I said I wouldn’t. There was no way you could have known anything different was happening.”

“Billy, I can’t” Steve cries, shaking because it’s all too much. “I can’t lose you again, I can’t take it. Please. You have to come home.”

Billy squeezes him tighter, and it hurts his wounded sides but Steve wouldn’t mind if Billy crushes him into dust at this point. He presses his nose into the side of Steve’s head and inhales for a long moment before letting out a sigh. “How are we gonna do this, Stevie? Everyone thinks I’m dead. And what if the people from the lab find me?”

“We’ll go to California like we always talked about or I’ll hide you under my goddamn bed, I don’t care. We’ll figure it out. You’re coming home with me. If not for yourself, then for me. For Max. We need you, Billy. You’ve suffered enough.” Steve pulls away, determination making him strong because this time he’s going to fight. He wasn’t going to let Billy run away or continue paying a price way too high for all the wrongs he’d tallied against himself. He wasn’t going to let Billy sentence himself to isolation, nor was he ever going to lose him again.

Billy Hargrove had died abused, scared, confused, alone, but still used his final act to save everyone he could in that moment. Steve was going to make damn sure he got to start finally living a life he deserved after all that sacrifice. And it sure as hell wasn’t going to happen here.

Billy presses his forehead to Steve’s, fighting the tug of a smile as his hands move up to either side of Steve’s neck, holding him close. “I’ve fucking missed you, Harrington. Kinda figured you’d have moved on by now.”