Work Text:
Object Permanence: (psychology) The understanding (typically developed during early infancy) that an object still exists even when it disappears from sight, or other senses.
-:-
When Steve Harrington lost his mind, the thing that struck Dustin was how normal he seemed.
He wasn’t having hallucinations, he wasn’t talking to himself, he wasn’t screaming or crying or sobbing, he wasn’t attacking random people for no reason, he didn’t start trying to hurt himself, he wasn’t rambling nonsensically in a catatonic state, or doing anything out of the ordinary.
No, he’d simply convinced himself of something that wasn’t true.
They didn’t notice it at first. As Starcourt Mall caught fire and went up in smoke and Dustin was retrieved from the top of the hill in the middle of nowhere by some government agents, he was told by said government agents that a man in a blue sailor’s outfit had told them Dustin and Erica were here and had been very insistent that someone come and get them as soon as possible. Dustin and Erica had been taken to the hospital where everyone was getting checked out. There, he had been informed quietly by Lucas that Hopper and Billy had died.
The mood on the ward was not a pleasant one. Steve and Robin had both earned overnight stays thanks to Robin confessing they’d been drugged, while Mike, El and Max were set to join them after getting knocked out by Billy. Jonathan needed an x-ray after one of the paramedics had noticed him walking strangely and he’d explained he’d been hit in the back with a metal stool. The others were present to get checked out and to wait until responsible adults arrived to take them home.
The mere mention of parents had been enough to jerk Max out of her vacant stare at the end of her bed. She had looked wildly to Joyce, to Murray Bauman, wide eyes begging either of them to deal with them, to explain to Neil what had happened to Billy.
“It’ll be okay, Max,” Steve had piped up then. “He’s going to be fine.”
There was a warm smile on his face, a reassuring, hopeful smile that didn’t fit in with the mood around them. Hope had no place on this hospital ward. It was a bright comment that made no sense whatsoever as he was met with several confused stares.
“Steve,” Robin breathed quietly, her expression much more in keeping with the mood. “Not now.”
Steve frowned at Robin, confused. “What?” he murmured. “Why is it not – you can’t think like that – it’s going to be okay – Max, he’s going to be okay.”
“Steve,” Nancy’s voice was soft, but her tone was a little sharper than Robin’s. “Now’s not the time, okay? You don’t know that – he’s just lost his son.”
And Steve’s eyes went wide, huge round orbs of confused innocence. “What are you talking about?”
Nancy’s tone suddenly went very sharp as her voice sounded like someone reprimanding a disobedient child. “Steve, that’s enough.”
Steve looked hurt at that, his huge brown eyes twitching slightly as he shrank back into himself. Dustin felt like he’d missed something waiting on Weathertop for any news to come through the radio. He frowned as he turned to Steve.
“Steve, what are you talking about?”
Steve turned his huge, confused, hurt eyes onto Dustin, frowning slightly. “Billy,” he explained, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Several confused looks were sent around the room in an exchange that Steve was not a part of. Dustin looked from Steve to Robin to Lucas. “I thought you said…”
“He died,” Jonathan said softly. “We all saw it – Steve saw it – that thing…”
He trailed off as Steve looked from Dustin to Jonathan to Max and then back to Jonathan before picking up the story earnestly.
“Yeah, but then Doctor Owens and his men came,” he said. “They took Billy – they sent us out while they took Billy away to make him better-”
“Steve,” Robin breathed. “That’s not what happened.”
Dustin frowned as he looked at Steve. “Steve,” he muttered. “Is Billy here? You know, with us? Right now?”
Steve turned his wide eyes to Dustin. “Of course he isn’t,” he said shortly. “He’s probably in the ICU or something – or Owens took him away somewhere safe – but he’s going to be fine – he will be, Max, I promise.”
“Steve, that’s enough,” Nancy snapped. It lacked the sharpness of earlier but there was still a very definite edge to it. “Billy’s gone. Pretending like he isn’t won’t bring him back.”
“I’m not – I’m not pretending, Nance!” Steve implored earnestly. “He’s still alive, he’s still out there, he’s still fighting – I know it, Nance! This isn’t like Barb, this isn’t me pretending everything’s okay when it’s not – I know Billy’s still alive – I know it-”
He was broken off by Joyce giving him a heartbroken look as she got up and stepped out of the ward in search of a doctor. She was back a moment later with the same doctor that had treated them earlier, dressed in a white coat as he smiled kindly down at Steve.
After-effect of the drugs, the doctor said.
Coupled with the concussion, the doctor said.
A coping mechanism for dealing with a traumatic event, the doctor said.
The first of the five stages of grief, the doctor said.
We’ll see how he does in the morning, the doctor said.
Dustin would come to wonder in the weeks that followed whether there was anything more he could have done then.
-:-
When Steve Harrington lost his mind, the thing that struck Dustin was how easily it happened.
Because it wasn’t the after-effects of the drugs. It wasn’t the concussion.
It wasn’t grief.
Because the loss needed to have happened for it to be grief. It hadn’t happened for Steve.
Steve was whisked away the following morning by an anxious dark-haired woman and a severe-looking man with glasses in a whirlwind of profuse expressions of gratitude to the doctor as they pretended they understood the first thing about what had happened to their son.
“The boy who died – he was a classmate… They were on the basketball team together at school… It’s just come as such a terrible shock to him… He’s grieving, he’ll be better off at home…”
Better off at home. Better off out of sight. Better off out of the hospital where nobody can see how much of a mess he is.
Dustin watched as John Harrington refused a wheelchair for Steve. He watched as Isabella Harrington took her son’s arm and clutched at him while they fought their way past the sea of reporters towards a waiting car.
Dustin didn’t see Steve for several days after that.
The next time Dustin saw Steve, it was at Billy’s funeral. He stood dressed in a smart suit with enough product in his hair to tame it into a gelled-back style between his stern father and worried mother. While both parents wore solemn expressions, Steve had a bitten-back smile on his lips. The only time the smile slipped from his lips was when Neil Hargrove stood up to deliver a eulogy.
He was taken away immediately after the service by his father, whose face looked like thunder.
Dustin found out later that it had been the latest attempt to force through the reality that Billy was gone.
He found out in the same moment that it hadn’t worked.
-:-
When Steve Harrington lost his mind, the thing that struck Dustin was how much he understood him.
After the funeral, Steve’s parents kept him out of sight for almost three weeks. It was the longest they’d both been home since Steve was fourteen. Out of sight, out of mind, Dustin suspected. More literally than anyone has ever meant that phrase.
However, eventually, a culmination of three things came crashing together. People began to talk around town about Steve’s sudden ‘imprisonment’ in his house after Starcourt, which John Harrington could not stand. It also became less and less viable for John and Isabella Harrington to miss work as the reason of ‘looking after their unwell son’ became less viable as the world wondered whether Steve was getting better. And finally, Isabella Harrington decided that it would be good for him to go outside, to get back into a normal routine, to see his friends and maybe start ‘living normally without this boy’ as opposed to indulging his delusions behind closed doors. When Steve told Dustin this late one evening, Dustin had to wonder how much the last reason was Mrs Harrington’s justification for fixing the former reasons.
So Steve was allowed out again into the world, free from adult supervision, free to get behind the wheel of a car and drive away from his sheltered house, free to drive the Party around Hawkins. Things settled into a new normal. Their summer days were spent flitting between the arcade and various houses. Dustin’s summer evenings were spent on a hilltop talking to Suzie while Steve and Robin relaxed on the hood of the car at the bottom of the hill before Steve, ever the responsible adult, would drive Dustin home. It was comfortable. It was normal. Steve was normal.
A new diner opened up near the arcade as business flooded back to Main Street. Hawkins residents, having had a taste of a state-of-the-art food court, were in the market for something more exotic than Benny’s diner, and a chain swooped in, buying one of the closed-down shops before the property prices went up and converted it into something lavish with a distinctly cookie-cutter feel. Robin had pointed out that there was more nutritional value in a rock in her garden than anything on the menu as they were served piles and piles of sugar as Dustin sat down with Steve, Robin and the rest of the Party.
It was there that an off-hand comment had thrown Dustin off-guard as Steve stuffed his face with pancakes.
“–’ll ‘ave to bring Billy here,” he said through a mouthful of whipped cream.
It was a quiet comment, said more to himself than Dustin, but it was clearly audible to everyone at the table. The only person who didn’t seem to notice was Steve himself as he devoured another huge mouthful. Dustin opened his mouth but caught a glimpse of the warning look Robin shot him across the table before catching sight of the murderous look Max was giving her waffles. Dustin closed his mouth, turning back to his own sundae while Lucas bravely changed the subject.
“I’m so happy Princess Daphne is mine once again,” he said teasingly to Dustin across the table, a forced edge to bely the awkwardness of the remark. “You know, Dustin, in the twenty minutes where you beat my high score before I took it back off you, I really learnt to appreciate her on a whole new level.”
Robin snorted. “I don’t understand why boys are so obsessed with cartoon girls in comics and video games.”
“Oh, that’s easy, Robin,” Steve said. “Impossibly large boobs barely covered by anything.”
And just like that, the conversation breezed back to normal. The awkward moment was swept under a rug as Lucas desperately tried to convince Max that no, that was not why he liked Princess Daphne while the uncomfortable atmosphere settled to the bottom. Not gone, by any means. Just determinedly ignored. A lump under the carpet that you learned to ignore because you didn’t want to deal with what had built up there.
Dustin, however, wasn’t one for ignoring things.
He was a scientist. He was neat. His room was ordered with everything having its proper place. He didn’t let things build up. He found answers. He fixed things. So, when he was finally alone in the car with Steve after dropping Robin, Max and Lucas off, he decided to try to fix Steve’s problem.
“Why do you think Billy’s still alive?” Dustin asked.
He was nervous – it was a touchy subject. He remembered all too clearly how defensive and upset Steve had been at the hospital.
Steve also clearly remembered how angry everyone at the hospital had been at him. Dustin suspected he’d had similar conversations to this one with his parents, who, based on the little Dustin knew about them, were not the most understanding people. Dustin was determined to come at it with an open mind – at least, to present an open mind. After all, Steve didn’t have many people around him who actually listened to him, who listened to what he had to say. Perhaps if Dustin listened, he could work out where Steve was coming from, and maybe find a way to lead him to the truth.
Steve tensed, his hands visibly tightening on the steering wheel.
“Dustin…” Steve sighed. “I just – I just do, okay?”
Dustin watched him warily, giving Steve a small nod. “Is it – like – something you can’t tell us? Like… like how I can’t tell my mom about the Upside Down?”
Steve frowned as he turned his head slightly towards Dustin, his eyes still mostly focused on the road as he shook his head. “What – what? No – no, not like that-”
“Then what is it like?”
Steve twisted his bottom lip between his teeth as he drummed his fingers against the steering wheel in frustration.
“It’s like – it’s like with Will,” Steve finally said. “When he went missing – you and Mike and Lucas – you found El – you knew he wasn’t dead. Even though it sounded crazy, you just – you just knew. You listened to El, you listened to your gut – you did whatever it took to find him. It was crazy – what you believed sounded crazy, and I think you knew it – but you just – you knew, didn’t you? You knew you were right.”
“Steve, that’s different,” Dustin said softly. “We saw Billy die-”
“Did we?” Steve asked. “We saw him get hit by that thing. We saw him pass out on the floor of the mall. We didn’t see him die.”
Dustin’s heart sank. “Steve…”
“We don’t know what we saw, Dustin,” Steve snapped. “We’re not medical professionals – we don’t know that he died. You hear it all the time – people coming back to life after paramedics get to them. I know you’re, like, crazy smart and all, but that can happen. And we don’t – we don’t know anything about how this Upside Down stuff works – not really. We’ve had a load of lucky guesses and theories, but I mean – what did we see? Really? Billy got hit. Billy collapsed. Billy lost consciousness.”
Dustin let out a defeated sigh. “Well, have you seen Billy since Starcourt?”
Steve’s mouth twisted into an uncomfortable grimace as his arms shaking as he adjusted his grip on the steering wheel.
“No,” he said at last. “But he’s alive. I know he is.”
-:-
When Steve Harrington lost his mind, the thing that struck Dustin was how easily it could have been him.
Max was getting increasingly uncomfortable around Steve. Even though, for the most part, Steve was acting normally, capable of holding perfectly normal conversations with no outward sign of anything wrong, the occasional slip of the tongue like in the diner, or where Steve would talk about Billy in the present tense, were enough to denote that Steve still thought Billy was alive. Max stayed tense around him, dreading it coming up.
Steve had picked up on this. He made an effort not to mention Billy in front of Max. It wasn’t enough though – the spectre was still there. It was there in every too-bright smile Steve would fix on his face. It was there in every laugh that told the world that he hadn’t lost Billy. He was too happy.
It was late one night when he was in Mike’s basement after they’d wrapped up a Dungeons and Dragons campaign Will had put together when the idea of doing something finally crossed Dustin’s mind after Will suggested a day at the arcade, asking Dustin to check if Steve was free to take them.
“What the hell is even wrong with Steve these days?” Mike huffed at the mention of his name.
Dustin felt all the energy drain out of him as a sadness overtook him. His eyes left Mike and found a spot on the table, staring at it as he sagged back in his chair, letting the conversation wash over him.
“It’s grief,” Will said sagely. “It affects people in different ways. And – I mean – he and Billy were close-”
Mike gave an inelegant snort. “Close?” he said derisively. “They hated each other-”
“Yeah, but they spent a lot of time together,” Will said. “Like – you know – in basketball – and pissing each other off when they were picking us up… It’s weird, I know, but even though they hated each other, they still spent a lot of time close to each other. And – I mean – Billy was younger than he was. My mom says it’s weird outliving someone who’s younger than you are. And he’s probably feeling guilty, too – like you say, they hated each other… There’s a lot going on there.”
“He didn’t lose it like this after Barb, though, did he?” Mike pointed out. “He was a dick to Barb, he was older than she was, and he didn’t start deluding himself that she was alive-”
“Jesus, Mike, shut up,” Dustin sighed. He didn’t have the energy for this argument.
“Dustin, I know he’s your friend, but you’ve got to admit he’s gone off the rails-”
“Well, the same thing could have happened to any one of us, Mike,” Dustin snapped. “It could have been you, or me, or Lucas. We all convinced ourselves of the same thing when Will went missing. Even though we had a body, we were convinced he was alive. In the face of overwhelming evidence that Will was gone, we convinced ourselves that he was still out there in another world based on a distorted radio signal and the word of someone who, if we were thinking rationally, would have sounded crazy – who should have sounded crazy to us – no offence, El,” he turned to El, who was looking slightly perplexed at his outburst. “The only difference between us and Steve right now is that we happened to be right.”
“But we saw El’s powers-”
“Yeah, and Steve saw a giant monster made of melted people get taken out by fireworks,” Dustin said. “The line between what’s possible and what isn’t has gotten a lot blurrier.”
“You don’t seriously believe him, do you, Dustin?” Lucas raised his eyebrows at him, looking slightly worried.
“No, I-” he broke off, biting back the worst of the retort he longed to snap back as his energy disappeared with a sigh. “I just think… we should be helping him, okay? He’s not got many people around who know the score. Like he’s got Robin, but she’s new to this whole thing, so everything sounds crazy to her, he’s not really close to Nancy and Jonathan anymore, we’re… we’re kind of the only people who can.”
-:-
When Steve Harrington lost his mind, the thing that struck Dustin was how little he could do to help.
It was Mrs Byers who suggested sitting down and talking to Steve. She had talked Max into it, despite the resistance she had encountered. It was understandable – she was trying to move on, to accept it herself, she didn’t want to have to drag Steve into the harsh reality of it all, to face the harsh reality of what had happened herself when she was desperately trying not to think about it.
So Dustin and Robin were charged with getting Steve to Mrs Byers’ place, to sit him down and listen as the collective group of people who knew the truth about what had truly happened forced him to listen to reason.
The premise was simple – Mrs Byers had invited them all over for a nice meal, something happy to celebrate her putting the house on the market. Like leaving Hawkins was something to celebrate.
(Perhaps it was, Dustin reasoned. But then again, he was being left behind, so it was only natural that he was upset.)
As they stepped inside the house, it was a flurry of activity, with the dinner, which wasn’t a complete lie, being prepared by Jonathan and Mrs Byers, while Nancy had been relegated to peeling and only very occasionally being allowed near the oven under strict supervision from Jonathan. Steve, none the wiser of the true purpose of the dinner thanks to a monumental feat of constant rambling from the back seat by Dustin to try and hide the painfully awkward atmosphere in the car by distracting Steve with everything he had ever learnt from camp, simply waved cheerily around the room.
Mrs Byers made a valiant effort at acting normal, like this was just any other dinner, smiling as she swept out of the kitchen to pull Steve into a quick hug before doing the same to Dustin and Robin, but her efforts were completely negated by the company she shared. To be fair to Jonathan, his sullen upward glance and nod before turning back and cutting carrots with a vengeance wasn’t completely out of character. Nancy, however, gave Steve a slight smile and a wave before doing much the same. Mike tried for a genuine smile, however, which was so out of character for him that Steve would have smelled a rat even without everyone else. However, there was, in fact, everyone else, and Will and El continued to add nails to the coffin with painfully obvious smiles that had Steve’s face falling at the discomfort in their eyes. And then, as though the coffin hadn’t just been nailed firmly shut, Max tossed it into the grave as she took one look at Steve before turning pale and sweeping out of the room, and Lucas decided to start piling the dirt on when he followed her into Will’s room, her name dying on his lips.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, Steve was not stupid, and the smile fell from his face as he took in the reactions and connected it with the fact that he seemed to be the only person surprised by them to realise that he was the reason for such a bizarre assortment of reactions.
“What’s going on?” he asked nervously.
“Nothing,” Jonathan said a little too quickly from the kitchen while Dustin heaved a sigh.
“We just…” Mrs Byers didn’t bother trying to lie or otherwise hide the truth. “We just wanted to talk to you, that’s all. As a group.”
Steve blinked and Dustin felt his stomach twist as horrified resignation crystallised in Steve’s eyes. He looked almost pleading, like he knew what was coming but was silently begging for anyone to tell him otherwise. He had been expecting it.
He had been dreading it.
Max emerged from Will’s room with Lucas, her eyes looking sullenly at the floor. Mrs Byers guided Steve into the living room, who still looked nervous as he was pointed towards a comfortable armchair.
“We wanted to talk to you about Billy, Steve,” Mrs Byers says softly, kindly – her voice so gentle it was like she was breaking the news all over again.
Perhaps she was.
The look in Steve’s eyes becomes almost wild. His eyes dart around the room, between them all, to the exits, to the rooms, to the windows, as though he’s looking for a way out – any way out.
“Look, sweetie, we just want to understand, to get where you’re coming from,” Mrs Byers continued as Steve continued to look like a caged animal trapped in the chair. She stood up and settled back into the other armchair as the group slowly came together. Jonathan abandoned his carrots as he and Nancy came over, while Max settled on the last available space on the couch, Lucas perching on the armrest next to her. Robin stayed close to Steve, lingering like a shadow against the wall. Dustin didn’t really know what to do with himself. He didn’t want to crowd Steve – not when he looked as anxious as that – as scared as that – but everyone else seemed to be doing an excellent job of caging him, the standing figures of Jonathan, Nancy and Robin like sentinels around him, bars of a cage that Steve couldn’t escape.
Steve gave a slightly hysterical snort of laughter, but there was no humour to be found in the sound.
“Seriously?” Steve laughed, sounding more hysterical with every moment.
He was met with a ring of steel looks, giving him nothing.
“Look, I – I know you all think I’m crazy,” Steve stammered, his eyes darting not towards the people surrounding him but to the gaps between them. “You guys – my mom and dad – I know to think I’ve gone insane or something – but – after everything we’ve seen, after interdimensional Gates and Russian invasions and monsters made out of melted people… is it really so crazy to think that he’s still alive?”
“Yes,” Max ground out, a low, quiet sound as she stared at the floor, not even looking over at Steve.
“Why?” Steve implored, his voice cracking. “Why is it so crazy?”
“Because we saw him die, Steve,” Mike said harshly. “We all saw the same thing.”
“What – we saw him possessed by an interdimensional shadow monster get stabbed by a tentacle made of melted human flesh? How is him surviving the craziest thing in that sentence?”
“Because it didn’t happen, Steve,” Mike continued, his voice getting more animated. “And pretending like it did is hurting the rest of us.”
“We didn’t see him die-”
“Yes, we did!” Mike ploughed on. “We saw him get stabbed – we saw it come out the other side of his chest – we saw it pull out and leave him dying on the ground and we saw him die – right under Max’s hands!”
Dustin looked over at Max, whose fists were clenching tighter with every one of Mike’s words. Lucas had a hand on her shoulder as she clenched her eyes shut as Mike relived every single horrific detail of her brother’s death. Dustin was ready for her to bolt – she didn’t want to be here, she had made that abundantly clear – but the muscle in her jaw tensed, and she finally released her fist as a painful silence settled.
“I know…” Steve breathed. “I know we saw that… but there’s a million ways he could have survived that – it could have just killed the Mind Flayer inside him-”
“We saw his body,” Max finally lifted her head. “Me – Mom – Neil… they showed us his body afterwards.”
“And they showed Jonathan and Mrs Byers Will’s body!” Steve pointed out vehemently. “And – and he’s alive-”
“I can’t do this,” Max’s voice cracked as she turned away from Steve, pulling herself up off the couch with tears in her eyes. “I can’t do this – I’m sorry-”
“Look, Max-” Steve’s voice softened. “I’m – I’m sorry-”
He made to get up to follow her as she pushed past Lucas towards the back door, but Nancy surged forwards and put a hand on Steve’s shoulder, pushing him back into his seat as she left the room. Just like that, the ring around Steve was broken, as Lucas followed her. They heard the door bang shut behind Lucas and a muffled sob cracked through them. Steve was left in the chair, the expression on his face broken, lost, and more than a little guilty.
“This is… this is a little too much for me, too,” Will suddenly broke the silence.
Dustin’s head snapped over to Will. For all that it had been painfully obvious that Max had been simply waiting for an excuse to leave the conversation, Dustin had never considered how Will must feel – Steve dragging up everything that had happened to him – that had happened in his absence in his desperate attempt to cling on to the possibility that Billy was still out there somewhere…
Dustin was ashamed to say that he’d never even considered the effect it might have had on Will.
Will stood up and brushed past Mike and his mom, past Jonathan, but his departure was far less dramatic than Max’s. Steve didn’t try to say anything, simply blinking owlishly after Will as Nancy kept a hand on his shoulder, a physical barrier to doing anything to make amends. Will didn’t look upset, exactly, but he gave his mom a small upturn of the lips as he went into his room. Mrs Byers looked after him, visibly torn between her goal of helping Steve and her need to help Will.
Fortunately, Jonathan noticed her dilemma.
“It’s okay, Mom, I’ve got it,” he muttered softly as he went after Will.
Joyce looked after Jonathan as he vanished from the room into Will’s bedroom, leaving a far smaller selection of people in the room as Steve’s face settled into an expression of confused guilt. Joyce looked at her lap as she took a deep breath and looked up at Steve.
“Sweetie,” Joyce said softly. “Is it like – he’s around? Are you seeing him in the street or something-”
Steve’s eyes widened as his eyebrows knitted together, looking hurt. “No,” he said slowly. “No – I’m not – like – seeing things-”
“Steve, the fact that you jumped straight to hallucinations-” Nancy cut in.
“Look, I know you don’t believe me,” Steve cut across her. “I know none of you do – I’ve been getting all that shit from my mom and dad, too. I’m not that much of an idiot. But – guys – are you seriously telling me that with everything we’ve seen, this is the line where crazy is? We’ve seen monsters, and other worlds, and superpowered girls, and fucking – fucking Russians invading Hawkins – and Billy not being dead is the craziest thing here?”
“I’m not saying it’s crazy,” Joyce said, keeping her voice measured. “I’m just asking – is there something you know? Have you – I don’t know – seen Billy in hospital or something?”
Steve’s mouth twisted into an uncomfortable expression. “No,” he muttered finally. “He’s not at the hospital.”
“Okay,” Joyce continued. “Then where is he?”
Steve shrugged. “I don’t know. Owens probably has him somewhere.”
Joyce sighed, clenching her teeth together.
“Steve,” Joyce sounded more serious than Dustin had ever heard her. “I need to know the honest answer to this, because it could be really important. Have you actually seen Billy since you were taken out of the mall that night?”
“No, but-” Steve broke off, sounding hurt. “But he’s alive. Owens has him. I know it – I know it – I know it.”
Dustin looked at Steve, taking in the way his arms shook slightly as he twisted his hands together. Mike opened his mouth to say something, but Joyce held up a hand to stop him. Steve’s eyes landed on his hands, twisting in and out of themselves. Dustin could see tears welling up in his eyes as Steve’s breath became more ragged, he started breathing in and out through his mouth. Joyce watched him patiently, scrutinising his every expression as Steve grappled with the possibility. Steve took a deep shuddering breath, closing his eyes before lifting his head and looking up at Joyce.
“Billy’s alive,” Steve said simply, his voice more certain than Dustin had ever heard it. “I know he is.”
Joyce’s eyes fell closed sadly as her posture seemed to crack slightly at Steve’s words, defeat finally permeating every bone in her body as she sighed.
“Okay,” she breathed as Steve unfolded himself from the armchair, brushing past a heartbroken-looking Robin and Nancy, whose mouth opened as he passed. The words, however, died on her lips as the front door swung open and slammed shut, and they heard an engine start outside and the soft purr of the car drive away.
-:-
When Steve Harrington lost his mind, the thing that struck Dustin was how easily it could have been avoided.
Nobody followed Steve as he drove away from the Byers’ house that fateful night. Everyone was too busy with their own hurts. Max, Dustin could understand – he could sympathise with how repeatedly needing to insist that Billy was dead was making her relive the trauma of feeling Billy die under her fingertips, to assure Steve that yes, it had happened, that he had, in fact, died, when all she wanted to do was scream denial, to wish that it had never happened. Will, too, had been latched onto by Steve, the miracle that allowed Steve to buy into the delusions that Billy was still out there, proof that people died and were buried and came back to life because of government conspiracies and otherworldly powers. So when Steve brushed past, Joyce admitted defeat, and went to check on her sons. Max finally emerged at the slamming of the front door, red eyes burning with fire as she asked, angry and upset with her voice raw, whether Steve had gone, whether she would have to listen to it anymore, and El went over to her, and Mike followed because El had followed, and Nancy went to sort out the forgotten dinner and Robin had hovered awkwardly, because for all that she and Steve had gotten close, the few weeks of being close did not mean that she knew him well enough to know whether to go after him, or whether to leave him alone.
Dustin stayed for dinner. Like Robin, he didn’t know whether Steve needed to be alone or not, and in the face of so many others who needed their friends, he decided to leave it for the moment.
That didn’t stop him from declining Jonathan’s offer to drive him home at the end of the night, though.
His plan was simple. Go check on Steve, and if he needed a pretence, it was to ask Steve to drive him home. Steve’s house wasn’t far from the Byers’ place, it just involved cutting through Mirkwood.
At night.
Alone.
Well, nobody had ever accused Dustin of making good decisions.
Still, luck was on his side, and clearly their eight-to-eleven-month grace period between Upside Down incidents was still in effect as he finally came up to the back of Steve’s house, and immediately wished he hadn’t.
The door to the living room was open in the summer heat and angry, raised voices were clearly audible. The light in the living room was on, and Dustin could clearly make out Isabella Harrington on the couch, crying. She was trying to stifle her sobs, wiping away tears on a handkerchief, while Steve and John Harrington were on their feet, yelling at each other, words carrying through the open door over the pool to Dustin.
“Haven’t you had enough, Steven? You’ve upset your mother, you’re embarrassing us – you’re embarrassing yourself! This has gotten completely out of hand!”
“Oh, screw you, dad! What – you think I’m doing this for attention or something?”
“Well, it’s not like it would be the first time!”
“Holy shit, dad, why is this so hard to get?”
“Steven, that boy is dead!” John Harrington’s voice finally cut through Steve’s yelling, causing a pause in the barely stifled sobs of Isabella Harrington. “We took you to his funeral to show you that, because we thought it might finally snap you out of these delusions! But no, you’re carrying on with this ridiculousness, you’ve broken your poor mother’s heart-”
“Oh, like you’ve never done that-”
“Is that what this is about?” John Harrington sounded completely incredulous. “Is this some… acting out over some old spat between your mother and me? Because let me tell you, it’s hurting her far more than I ever did-”
What little retort Steve had to offer was lost in a complete breakdown of any composure Isabella Harrington had left, as her body collapsed in a heap and she hunched over her knees, sobbing uncontrollably. John Harrington offered a token amount of sympathy to his wife, crouching down beside her and muttering a few soft words to her that Dustin couldn’t hear. It was enough that she stood up shakily and left the room, Steve and his father watching her go. John Harrington’s face was set in a hard, angry mask while Steve had that look of confused guilt that he’d had at the Byers’ house. Dustin barely heard the small, cracked “Mom” that Steve offered her as she passed, her hand reaching out to pat vaguely at Steve’s shoulder between shaky, stifled sobs as she left the room and vanished beyond Dustin’s sight.
“Just look at what you’ve done, Steven,” John Harrington was no longer yelling, but his hard, authoritative voice still carried out to Dustin. “Look at how much you’re upsetting the people around you – we’re the laughing stock of the town because of you-”
“You think I give a shit about that, dad? You think I give a shit about what the goddamn town thinks of me?”
If Dustin didn’t know Steve as well as he did, he would have missed the way Steve’s voice shook slightly.
“Billy’s alive, dad,” Steve continued to implore vehemently. “I’m the only one who can see that he is – I’m going to bring him back-”
“ENOUGH!” John Harrington’s roar shattered the night, and finally, finally silenced Steve, whose face fell into a heartbroken expression, his lips parted slightly as the breath left his body. “This ends now! He’s gone, Steven. No amount of this absurd pretending will bring him back.”
Dustin’s eyes fell closed as all he could think about was the devastated, hurt look on Steve’s face. Dustin regretted staying as long as he had, listening to as much as he had. He couldn’t go and face Steve now, to check in on him, not without admitting that he had heard as much as he had, not without John Harrington’s words ringing in his ears; words that, by design or accident, Dustin knew would cut Steve deeper than a Demogorgon’s claws ever could.
So Dustin walked away. And in the coming days, he would question whether he had made the biggest mistake of his life by leaving Steve alone that night.
Nobody had ever accused Dustin of making good decisions.
-:-
When Steve Harrington lost his mind, the thing that struck Dustin was how little he knew about him.
Steve didn’t speak to the others after that night. He was going out of his way to avoid them. But Dustin had enough abandonment issues after his dad to not let that happen, so when the walkie talkie that Dustin had given him at Christmas miraculously resurfaced on his doorstep the next morning, remnants of the sticker Dustin had made proclaiming ‘if found, please return to Steve Harrington’ poorly peeled off, Dustin did not let simply have it in him to let it go.
Thus, a few ambushes at a certain BMW whenever Dustin saw it parked later, Dustin had well and truly worn Steve down, and forced him to re-accept their friendship.
Steve looked exhausted after that night. Every time Dustin saw him, Steve had a world-weary look in his eye, drained from being the only person still holding out any hope for Billy still being out there, from constantly having to fight for this belief, from constantly trying and failing to navigate how not to hurt the people around him any more than he had.
(The distance from the others made more sense when Dustin reminded himself of that fact.)
Since Steve wouldn’t entertain the possibility of coming into close proximity with the others, his usual ‘nerd taxi service’ was off the table. (Dustin again tried not to think about how long it had been since Steve had been himself enough to call it that.) What that translated into was no more rides to and from the arcade, diners, game nights and dinners at Mike’s and Will’s houses. Steve would have quite happily foregone seeing Dustin altogether, which led to increasingly manufactured situations where Steve ‘needed to drive Dustin, he couldn’t possibly expect to do this on his own.’
A personal favourite of Dustin’s was grocery shopping.
With his mom working, Dustin could call Steve up almost any time of the week and say that he needed to go to the shops, and that it wasn’t practical for Dustin to take his bike, because of just how much stuff there was, how was he supposed to get it home if not in the trunk of Steve’s car? Steve would inevitably pout, try to pick holes in Dustin’s argument, and eventually relent in the face of Dustin’s unwavering determination.
However, it didn’t take long before their luck ran out, and when it finally did, it ran out in the worst possible way.
Dustin was lagging behind, trying to prolong their shopping trip (read: time together) by extensively overanalysing kitchen roll.
“I just want to make sure I’m getting the best one for mom, Steve, last time I ended up getting the cheapest and it was some shitty one-ply crap that couldn’t even clean up one of your late-night sessions-”
“Don’t even think about finishing that sentence, Henderson-”
“Cooking sessions, Steve, I’ve seen the carnage after the last time you tried to cook us pasta, there was tomato sauce all over the kitchen-”
“Well I’m sorry that you’ve never heard of boiling down a sauce. I suppose if you like eating pasta with weird red water as opposed to rich flavourful-”
“Steve, shut up, nobody cares about your cooking. What I care about is the air pocket to ply ratio-”
“Dustin, it’s kitchen roll. They’re literally all the same.”
“But more air pockets mean better absorption-”
“No, that’s just marketing, all kitchen roll is basically the same, so get this one and we can finally go. I have shit to do today-”
Steve broke off at the sound of a familiar name, growled low and menacing by the register.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Maxine, why are we here?”
Dustin stiffened at the sound of the name, his eyes immediately locking onto Steve. Steve’s whole body had gone rigid, head turned towards the voice.
“I just… thought it’d be nice,” Max’s voice was quiet, defeated.
“You think he gave a shit, Maxine?” Neil Hargrove’s voice was rising. “You think Billy gave a shit about some faggy flowers? That he’d fucking want them-”
“Hey, asshole!”
Dustin realised a second too late that Steve had moved, the kitchen roll replaced carelessly on the shelves. Dustin made it to the end of the aisle just in time to see Steve slam his fist against Neil Hargrove’s surprised, outraged expression. Max jumped back, crashing into the flower display, while Susan Hargrove pressed herself back against the wall with a yelp as Neil staggered, only saved from falling by Steve himself grabbing the front of his shirt and hauling him upright to face him.
“Steve, what the hell is wrong with you?” Max all but screamed.
“You hurt him,” Steve growled low in his throat, his voice only audible because of the absolute silence that had fallen over Melvald’s. “Every single day you hurt him, and you think you have any right to say what he fucking wants?”
Dustin looked desperately over at the cash register, praying that Joyce was working that day, that she might be able to talk some sense into Steve, but it was only Donald Melvald, frantically dialling the phone.
“The hell do you think you’re doing?” Neil spat back at Steve.
“You’ve never cared about him!” Steve snarled. “You’re the reason he won’t come home-”
That proved too much for Neil. A sudden burst of fight sent Neil shoving Steve back, grabbing the front of his polo and pushing him backwards.
It wasn’t often that Dustin felt small these days. Fighting interdimensional monsters and discovering other worlds and having a beautiful, perfect girlfriend (albeit in Utah) was a wonderful antidote to the repeated dents to his confidence from middle school bullies, but as he watched Neil and Steve square up to each other, every indication that it was going to get out of hand, Dustin knew he stood as much chance of getting between the two of them without getting hurt as he did of winning against a Demogorgon with his bare hands.
“Oh yeah?” Neil snarled back. “Who the fuck do you think you are, blaming me for my son’s death-”
“Shut up!”
Weeks of suppressed anger, hurt, guilt and confusion burst out of Steve in a violent roar as he shoved at Neil, but Neil was ready, catching the move and all but throwing Steve into one of the shelving units. The wind visibly knocked out of Steve, he stumbled trying to regain his footing while Neil closed the gap between them. As he looked down at Steve, an inferno burning in Steve’s eyes and suddenly comprehension crossed his face. Neil’s eyes widened, and he suddenly started laughing, a cold, humourless sound.
“So you’re the one?” Neil looked at Steve. “God, he really knew how to pick them…”
Max’s eyes suddenly went very wide as a soft ‘oh’ fell from her lips. Dustin looked at Steve, who looked wrong-footed for the first time since punching Neil Hargrove in the face.
“You dare to come here, come and attack me, when you’ve been out there fucking up my son, ruining him, and now that he’s dead-”
Steve shot forwards at those words, a guttural noise wrenching itself from his throat, but Neil was ready, grabbing him and throwing Steve to the floor and landing a kick in Steve’s stomach. Steve curled around himself as Neil dropped down, slamming his fist over and over again into Steve’s face.
“You fucking faggot!” Neil screamed, any thread of composure finally lost. “You ruined my son! You fucked him up! You ruined him and now he’s dead, you dare try to destroy my reputation? Fuck you!”
Dustin felt completely powerless as people finally interfered, trying to pull Neil off Steve. He looked over at Max for confirmation, for some guidance of what to do. Max gave him nothing, but as the police arrived, hauling a still-struggling Neil Hargrove out of the store, Dustin stared at Steve’s bruised, battered face as the weight of the revelation slammed Dustin in the gut.
So this was why Steve hadn’t accepted Billy’s death. This was why it was so important to Steve that someone – anyone – believed that Billy was alive. Why Steve had been so determined to find him. Steve hadn’t hated Billy at all.
Steve might have even loved him.
-:-
When Steve Harrington lost his mind, the thing that struck Dustin was, when the avalanche started, how quickly Steve’s world came crashing down.
He stayed with Steve as he was taken to hospital. Held his hand as it was cuffed to the bed, Callahan supervising Steve, listening to words said about Steve, but never to him. Overheard snippets of conversations between Callahan and his doctor that were supposedly out of earshot on an open ward, words that made Dustin feel sick.
Volatile mental state.
Uncontrolled delusions and violent outbursts.
A danger to himself and others.
Steve looked terrible. The assault that Neil Hargrove had launched upon Steve left his nose broken (yet again, Dustin thought with a nauseating twist in his stomach,) and his face was swollen, patches slowly darkening into a similar artwork that Billy had done on his face less than a year earlier.
Billy, who Steve had been in a… relationship with.
The exact extent of the relationship was still completely unknown. Dustin had only had it in him to ask Steve in the ambulance one question.
“What Neil was saying… is it true?”
Steve had only responded with a defeated nod, his eyes drifting shut, and Dustin had been trying and failing to process that information ever since.
Steve stirred slightly next to Dustin in the hospital bed, his eyes opening as he looked around warily. Dustin watched his eyes drift over the hospital ward, finally coming to rest on his hand, locked to the bedframe with silver handcuffs. Dustin squeezed his hand slightly – if Steve was expected to deal with the discomfort of being handcuffed, Dustin was at least going to make sure he wasn’t alone.
Dustin had unsuccessfully argued that Steve didn’t need handcuffing at all, but he’d known as soon as he’d opened his mouth that it was going to be unsuccessful. Steve had attacked someone completely unprovoked. No amount of pleading changed that fact.
“Hey, buddy,” Dustin tried to hitch a smile onto his face, but he knew it just looked pained, even without a mirror. “How are you feeling?”
Steve looked away from his arm, staring at the ceiling. “Shit,” he grumbled.
“Yeah,” Dustin felt the smile slip from his face. “He, uh… got you pretty good…”
Steve gave a soft humph of agreement.
“Steve,” Dustin began, his eyes wide as he looked at him. “W-why did you… you know?”
Steve looked over at him, his eyes impossibly sad.
“He always hurts Billy,” Steve murmured. “Ever since he was a kid. I just… wanted him to know… I won’t let him anymore.”
Dustin’s eyes saddened as he felt his stomach drop. He took a deep breath,
“Steve,” he said softly. “Billy’s gone.”
“No,” Steve muttered defiantly, shaking his head. “No, he’s not. He’s still out there somewhere, I know it-”
Steve broke off, looking around the room as though seeing it in a whole new light.
“Hang on,” Steve suddenly sat up. “He’s probably here-”
“Ah, Mr Harrington!”
Dustin jumped as the doctor approached, finally noticing Steve’s lucidity, but Steve gave no sign he’d heard the doctor.
“He’s probably in the ICU – I need to see him-”
“Steve,” Dustin began –
“I need to see him – get this off me-”
Steve started tugging at the handcuffs, rattling them against the bedframe.
“Mr Harrington, if you’d just calm down-” the doctor began.
“Get this off of me!” Steve snarled at the doctor. “I need to see Billy – Billy Hargrove – he’s in the ICU-”
“Mr Harrington, please calm down,” the doctor said firmly.
“Dustin,” Steve ignored the doctor, rounding on Dustin. “Dustin, you need to go to the ICU – to find him – please-”
“Steve, Billy’s not here,” Dustin implored, sick to the stomach at the desperation in Steve’s eyes.
“Don’t lie to me!” Steve sounded hysterical, tears springing into his eyes. “I know he’s here, I know it-”
“Mr Harrington, if you don’t calm down, I’m going to have to sedate you-”
“Where the hell is Billy?” Steve screamed; at Dustin or the doctor, Dustin couldn’t tell. “Don’t try and keep him from me – I’m going to find him – DUSTIN!”
Dustin took a step back, frozen in shock. He’d never seen Steve lose control like this, never seen such desperation in Steve’s eyes, never seen him reduced to tears as he struggled away from the doctor, never heard such anguish in his voice as he thrashed against the handcuffs holding him to the bed. Dustin had never seen Steve turn his anger and desperation and panic onto him, and he had no idea what to do.
He had never felt so powerless.
The doctor pinned Steve’s handcuffed arm to the bed as a nurse approached.
“You need to leave,” the nurse said firmly to Dustin, gesturing away from the bed as she handed the needle to the doctor before helping the doctor hold Steve’s thrashing arm to the bed.
“Dustin – please – I have to find Billy – I have to find Billy – PLEASE!”
“This is for your own good!”
“No – PLEASE!”
Dustin closed his eyes, fighting back his own tears as he watched his friend brought so low, Steve’s desperate sobs and screams as the needle slid into his arm, and Steve finally went limp. Dustin couldn’t stay, couldn’t bear to watch anymore, couldn’t face his fear that Steve would wake up and round on him once again, turn his anger and desperation onto him, couldn’t face the fear that when Steve woke up, he would have lost a little bit more of himself.
So he left the ward, but he couldn’t leave the hospital. Instead, he sat in the waiting room, and asked the receptionist to let him know when Steve woke up, and whether it would be safe to see him when he did. So he was there when John and Isabella Harrington arrived. He was there when the doctor took them to one side, quietly repeating the words that had been uttered to Callahan.
Volatile mental state.
Uncontrolled delusions and violent outbursts.
A danger to himself and others.
Dustin watched from across the room as the doctor handed them a pamphlet. He watched as Isabella Harrington’s eyes fell shut and she burst into tears. He watched as John Harrington wrapped her up in a hug, the pamphlet clutched between his fingers as he breathed reassurances in her ear, an absolutely devastated, defeated look on his face.
“It’ll be the best place for him.”
-:-
When Steve Harrington lost his mind, the thing that struck Dustin was how sane he seemed.
John Harrington had managed to use his influence (and, most people suspected, wealth) to ensure Steve didn’t face criminal charges for assaulting Neil Hargrove by voluntarily checking into Central State Hospital in Indianapolis, a ‘facility that specialised in caring for the mentally ill’. He was surrounded every day by white walls, a too-clean room, and people who treated him like he was crazy.
But, despite everything, Steve still didn’t seem crazy to Dustin.
Dustin visited when he could – when he could get his mom, or Robin, or Nancy to drive him to Indianapolis. Every time he visited, he would always get greeted by the nurses that seemed too kindly to him, too warm and friendly, too much like they spent their days dealing with kindergarteners rather than unwell adults. Like Dustin was a parent to a small child, rather than a friend of an adult undergoing treatment. And every time he visited, he was told the same thing.
“Don’t indulge his delusions, but don’t confront him about it either.”
Which meant everything and nothing to Dustin.
But Steve still seemed normal. He’d greet Dustin with a warm smile every time he walked into the small room, with a bed and an armchair and a window, and white walls and linoleum flooring and beige curtains and a different bunch of flowers on the bedside table every time Dustin visited. Dustin found out that Steve’s mom found the time to pick out a bunch of flowers to be delivered every week, but hardly ever found the time to visit despite working in Indianapolis.
The conversations usually revolved around Dustin, with a cursory acknowledgement to Steve’s situation. (‘How are you? Are they looking after you okay? Is the food even edible in a place like this?’) The conversation would then move to whatever was going on in Dustin’s life – a far more variable topic of conversation, and one infinitely less dangerous than how Steve was.
Still, one day, Dustin couldn’t help but ask the difficult question.
“How are you, though?” he asked, tentatively. “Really, I mean – how are you?”
And Steve gave him a huge, reassuring, genuine smile.
“I’m good, Dustin,” he said. “Really, I’m… I’m great, actually.”
Dustin broke into a smile, a contagious one that he couldn’t stop spreading over his face hearing that. He worried about Steve – worried that, in a place like this, he was putting on a brave face. That he was getting treated awfully – he’d heard stories about how people in mental hospitals were treated. But Steve’s happiness was so infectious, so genuine, that Dustin felt the knot of anxiety in his chest loosen.
“I’m – uh…” Steve looked down at his lap, before looking back up at Dustin, excitement in his eyes. “I’m actually planning a trip. You know… for when I get out of here.”
Dustin felt a little stab of surprise. “Wait – they’re discharging you?”
Steve laughed as he shook his head. “Not yet, but… I’m looking ahead, see? So I’m planning a trip to California. I’ve never… I’ve never seen the sea, and Billy says it’s beautiful, so…”
“So you’re going to California when you get out?”
“Yeah,” Steve nodded earnestly. “And… and when Billy’s better, too.”
The words send Dustin’s smile dropping off his face, his stomach plummeting as his breath hitched in his throat.
“We’re going to go surfing,” Steve continued, misreading the sudden change in Dustin’s face. “It’s going to be crazy, I’ve never surfed before, but Billy said he’d teach me, so I’m going to hold him to it. And we’re going to stay with some of his old friends for a bit, but in the longer term, who knows, right?”
Every word of Steve’s excited explanation about a trip that would never happen felt like a crack in Dustin’s heart. Steve had been cut off from his family, from his friends, and nothing had changed. Weeks – months, even – of ‘treatment’ in this place had achieved nothing. He’d missed the Byers’ departure from Hawkins for nothing. He’d been locked up in this place for nothing. Steve still believed that Billy was alive, and nobody was doing a thing about it. Dustin’s eyes fell shut at the realisation that the main achievement of this place was simply that he was no longer a problem for anyone else. John Harrington paid the bill, and Steve was shut away from the people who loved him, and nothing changed at all. The end of this was only visible to Steve, because Steve was the only one who could see any way out of this, and the way out that he could see was entirely a fiction that only existed in his head.
“He’ll get better, Dustin,” Steve smiled earnestly. “And when he does, he’ll come, and we’ll go to California.”
Dustin’s heart broke at the utter belief in every word from Steve’s mouth. He thought about every decision that had been made that had led Steve to here. He wondered what could have been done differently – whether there were different decisions that could have been made – more that could have been done – more that he could have done.
Maybe if he’d talked to Steve more, if he’d known about Billy, if he and the others had tried talking to Steve sooner, if his parents hadn’t tried to hide how badly Steve had been affected in those early days, if he hadn’t been shut away, if people had talked to him, if people had tried to help him more rather than sweeping the problem under the carpet, if people hadn’t pretended like it wasn’t there, if he’d been given proper treatment rather than simply being shut away in a place like this, then maybe, maybe things would be better.
Maybe Steve would have stood a chance of getting better.
But nobody had done any of those things. And rather than being in a place focusing on curing him, Steve had been shoved to one side, out of sight in a facility like this. And Dustin felt completely powerless to do anything.
When Steve Harrington lost his mind, the thing that struck Dustin above all else was the permanence of it.