#&. queue

     It was the last thing she expected, of course she does not at all mind. Frankly she didn’t realize he was there, not until he took her hand. While she is surprised, she doesn’t pull away, instead she smiles. “Well hello there, dear one.” She took a moment to quickly glance around, trying to see just where exactly he had come from.

@kingofdirtandnothing​ asked:  [Hey Alex, here's your reply. It's an ER selfie, Brooklyn ball cap pulled low over his eyes and not hiding his smile. Or the sling on his arm.]

[msg 11:38] i mean you’d think by now people would have a better grasp of simple keynesian economics

[msg 11.38] a THIRD-GRADER could comprehend that when people can’t work, they can’t buy things. is it too much to understand that a grown man do the same???

[msg 11.39] the only thing i haven’t tried is drawing him a picture and that’s only because i have about as much artistic skill as he has common sense

[msg 11.40] maybe you could draw one for me. i’ll staple it to his fucking forehead

[msg 11.40] laurens, it’s imperative you talk shit with me about this imbecile

[msg 11.41]  il est bête comme ses pieds. je te jure, j'en peux plus, la.

[msg 11.46] alright, what’s going on? you never miss an opportunity to talk shit in french

[msg 11.46] it’s the middle of the day, i KNOW you’re not sleeping

[msg 11.48] J O H N 

[msg 11.49] i pour my heart out to you and you can’t even send me that stupid winky emoji??? i’m hurt

Alexander huffs a frustrated sigh, and jams his phone back down onto the desk, drumming his fingers against the keys of his laptop as he watches the screen. Sure, John is a less... prolific texter than he is. He’d rather call than send a message, or better yet just turn up at Alexander’s door. Not that Alexander has a problem with that, per se, it’s just that when he’s stuck at a desk for another—he checks his watch—five hours, a message would be quicker.

If he has to save all this balled-up frustration until the end of the day, he might crack under the pressure and just start saying these things to people’s faces. Which, probably not a great idea; it’s hardly the most interesting or challenging internship in the world, but it’s what his resume needs.

He pulls open the briefing he’s been asked to look over again, and tries to quell the rage that still boils his blood from his first reading. Here’s the thing: when they ask an intern to look over a briefing, they mean check it for minor errors, fill in any necessary links or pull the appropriate supporting documents. They don’t mean rewrite it with a much firmer grasp of economic theory and the current administration’s response to unemployment and spending.

His fingers twitch.

Fuck it, what’s the worst that could happen? He gets a slap on the wrist but they keep him around because he’s clearly got potential, and everybody loves a plucky underdog. Right? And  at best, they fire this idiot and give Alexander his job because he’d be about ninety-six times better at it than him.

His phone buzzes half a second before Alexander hits the backspace key, like some divine intervention.

“Typical,” he snorts, seeing 1 NEW MESSAGE: LAURENS slide across his screen. John probably has a sixth sense that tells him when Alexander is about to do something stupid. He flicks the message open idly with a finger. The first thing he notices is John’s smile, the dimple pressed into one cheek among his freckles. Alexander can’t help but smile too, at the sight.

Then the rest of the picture registers, and his smile fades fast, hardens into a frown.

“What the fuck,” he says out loud, dumbstruck, and realises that he’s already stood up, chair rolling back unchecked to hit Ben, his fellow intern, in the back.

“What the fuck what?” Ben asks, interest plain in his voice, all too eager to find something that’s not his spreadsheets to engage with.

“I have to go,” Alexander says faintly, still staring at his phone. He’s off before Ben can so much as ask why. He practically slides into his boss’s office, hand flinging out behind him to knock somewhat after he’s already pushed through the door. 

“Uh, sir? I have to go. John’s in the ER and I have no idea what happened and I’ll make up the time to you next week I swear—”

“Alexander,” the man interrupts with a frown, clearly not best pleased at having an intern fling himself into his office to babble at him. “I’m sorry to hear that your friend is unwell, but you have a commitment to this internship.”

Alexander bites down on an expletive. Of course he has a commitment! He’s been putting in hours at this stupid financial consulting firm for two months now. Longer hours than most of the damn consultants! John is hurt. Sure, he’s smiling in the picture, but John could crawl out of an eight-car pile-up laughing as he coughed up blood. Alexander blurts out the first thing he thinks of that might cut this argument short.

“He’s not my friend. He’s my boyfriend, and I’m seriously worried about him, and he doesn’t have anyone else to go get him.” All bullshit, but he watches the man’s face change a little, considering. “Please.”

“Fine. I’ll need the hours next week.”

“Yessir, next week, I promise,” Alexander throws over his shoulder already taking off towards the elevators, not bothering to stop for his jacket. He’s got his phone and his wallet, anything else is a waste of time. He hits John’s contact name and presses the phone to his ear as he jabs at the call button for the elevator.

"Looking for my step-sister. Little birdie told me she was here." versus "My 13-year-old sister goes missing all day, and then I find her with you in a stranger's house, and you lie to me about it."

It's subtle, but I think it shows us a small glimpse of Billy's frame of mind, particularly regarding a fissure in that loud persona he creates.

First, I've spoken before about Billy creating this loud persona here-- a projection of an image that forces people to look at him so as not to see what's going on internally and to maintain an illusion of control over his life when he has none (despite that loud persona also essentially being almost a cry for help). And I've also talked about Billy and Max both stubbornly reminding people that they're step-siblings here despite the fact that they're both very much made of the same things.

And in the beginning of this conversation with Steve, Billy is in that persona I've mentioned above.

As a reminder, Billy has just showed up at the Byers' house after being groomed and preyed upon by an adult woman (read here and here) and physically abused by his father. He's been abused in two different ways by adult figures that strip away his agency and control. And so, Billy's coming into this with a critically heightened sense of fear and a fight response that dials up his sense of maintaining control.

He can't let Steve see that fear because fear (to him) is weakness and weakness (to him) means no control. And so he leans into the loud persona, which means also leaning in to the fact that he has to make sure he reminds everyone else that Max is very clearly his step-sister. That's what he's been doing at school and around his peers all. the. time. It also means that Billy's not being very forthcoming. When he says: "Looking for my step-sister. Little birdie told me she was here," Billy is only giving the barest of details. He's trying to find Max, and he's not saying who told him that Max is here. He reveals nothing about what he's just faced at the hands of adults, and he also doesn't get into the details as to why he's looking for Max (again, because Neil beat him and made him go find her even though Neil and Susan were gone all day and 3 hours late and not watching their kids!). That said, I do think some of the implications are still there even if Billy doesn't reveal much. In other words, it's not rocket science to understand that if anyone's looking for anyone, siblings looking for each other makes sense.

Now, Billy comes into the conversation giving Steve a chance to explain. Steve, who's approaching this from his own sense of needing to protect Max and the kids and knowing that Billy's got a fighting side, digs into a lie in what he believes is the best way to protect them. Unfortunately, they both just give each other the exact ingredients for this to escalate (i.e. Steve continues to lie, which makes Billy's aggression/fight response escalate, which also further affirms to Steve that he should keep lying-- thus, they do the exact things that make them do what they do... even more). I've mentioned before that Billy knows when people are lying, and I think his heightened ability to pick up on lies is that Billy comes from an abusive household where he is constantly in this state of hyper-vigilance to read emotions in the room (from the way footsteps sound to subtle changes in facial expressions or tone). It's a survival/self-preservation instinct on Billy's part to catch people's lies or emotions before things get bad (abuse).

And because of that, Billy knows Steve is lying from the start. They go through a little verbal sparring here whereupon Billy offers three entry points for Steve to say what's really going on. Steve doesn't. After that third chance, Billy shifts from calling Max his step-sister to his sister. It's the one time (that I recall) that Billy publicly calls Max his sister to anyone, and it comes with also revealing what's really bothering him: grooming and abuse.

Again, I spoke about this here, but regardless of what's really going on at the Byers' house (the kids are safe and everything is okay, minus interdimensional monsters), I think it's very clear what Billy thinks is going on. Billy, who has never had any positive interaction with adults, just immediately came from being groomed and preyed upon by an adult woman AND physically assaulted by an adult man. For him to walk into this situation with Steve (who's 18 at this point) in a stranger's house with his 13-year-old sister and who's repeatedly lying about not knowing her means that Billy jumps straight to the worst case scenario. (Which that, by the way, also reveals how the abuse Billy faces in his life makes him immediately jump to worst case scenarios.) His immediate thought is that there's something bad going on here.

I invite you into Billy's Camaro. He's got a cassette playing as he drives, windows rolled up (no cow shit smell in his car, thank you), and volume cranked so that the rearview mirror vibrates a little. He just carefully curated his own playlist by recording some of his favorites while listening to the radio at home, swearing off the DJs as they talked over the intros.

10 tracks per side.

SIDE 1 of Billy's Cassette

I Wanna Rock - Twisted Sister

I Love it Loud - KISS

Highway to Hell - AC/DC

Dangerous But Worth the Risk - Ratt

Go to Hell - Alice Cooper (Billy's specifically thinking about Neil with this song)

Runnin' With the Devil - Van Halen

Smokin' in the Boys Room - Mötley Crüe

Young and Wasted - KISS

Lack of Communication - Ratt