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Max thought she knew what broken men looked like.
The way her dad had looked the day her mum had dragged her out their front door the last time, along with the last of their suitcases, had made her feel so queasy she hadn’t been able to look back. Like a kicked puppy only a hundred times worse.
When she was feeling particularly vindictive towards him on the long uninterrupted nights he promised he’d call, or later when Neil made her almost cry and it reminded her that whatever he was, he was not her father, she thought her dad had been pathetic that day. When she was feeling kinder, she used the word ‘broken’, and made it into a weapon to throw at her mum - who was after all the one who had made him feel that way.
On the rare occasions she saw Hopper cry it made her uncomfortable, like she was seeing something she wasn’t meant to. Seeing a grown man that way seemed wrong, like the opposite of what a man was meant to be - strong, unbroken and unbending. Even seeing the boys cry sometimes made her feel that same pit in her stomach, as if seeing them break down had the power to make her physically hurt.
She could even sometimes see those same cracks in Billy - untouchable, too-cool Billy - when she looked hard enough. With him it wasn’t tears or kicked-puppy expression; it was hollow eyes and sharp sneers that kept everything at arms’ length. It had taken a while to see, but when she did she almost wished she hadn’t.
She knew what his dad did to him to make him look like that, but in her most selfish heart - the one she didn’t acknowledge until later - she was grateful his cracks looked like anger rather than hurt. She didn’t know what to do with tears since everyone had always told her tears made you weak, but she could meet his rage with her own frustration, and she thought they had a good system going where they both used each other to blow off steam.
Only much later did she understand that Billy gripped onto the jagged edges of himself like broken glass, just to feel anything at all.
She thought she knew what a broken man looked like, until she found out that really she had no idea.
Until in the space of one day she had to re-calibrate twice.
Standing by Billy’s grave as the small crowd of mourners ( and gawkers , she thought savagely) wandered listlessly away, she fought through her numbness to look at the person still standing beside her.
Steve was hollow in a way she had never seen, not even in Billy on his worst days. At least Billy still had that flame of defiant anger in him that kept him from just drying up and disappearing.
Steve looked scooped out and concave, breathing like it was a conscious effort. She knew his ribs must still be sore from the beating the Russians had given him, but somehow she didn’t think that’s why he shook on every inhale.
His eyes were blank, and so dead she wasn’t even sure he could see the chrysanthemums he was staring at. His fingers were wrapped tightly around something in his pocket - she could see the fist he was making through the thin fabric. She thought for a second that he might be about to throw whatever it was onto the pile of dirt on her brother’s casket. But then with a shuddering breath he let his fist loosen and she heard a clink of metal as the item slipped from his fingers back into the depth of his suit pocket.
She wanted to reach out to him then, even if she didn’t understand why he looked like he’d just buried his heart with the plain pine coffin in the hole at their feet. She did understand that she was watching him break apart though, and she had no idea how to start going about putting him back together again, so she stayed silent and let her own numbness dull the pain.
Later that evening after the wake she stood frozen on the threshold of Billy’s bedroom, gazing at the thing she thought she’d been seeing all her life.
All she’d wanted after the funeral was to throw herself onto Billy’s bed and pretend that she didn’t have all afternoon to lie there, that he was just about to grab her and drag her out if she wasn’t careful. Careful .
Instead she’d rushed around the corner and had seen a figure through the haze in her eyes that looked familiar enough to make her chest constrict. One blink though, and she realised it was the father she was seeing, not the son.
Neil stood in Billy’s room, right in the middle of the floor with his back to the door.
He must have had the same thought as her when he got home after skipping the wake, because he hadn’t yet taken off his funeral blacks.
He just stood, shoulders slumped and head craning forwards like his neck could hardly keep it up anymore.
A wave of rage swept through her and she wanted to run forwards and shove him until he stopped looking so broken, pull at him until he left Billy’s room. This was the man who had hurt Billy so much he had fractured into a million jagged pieces, the one person Billy - who feared nothing at all - was afraid of. He shouldn’t get to look this way standing in his dead son’s room. Not when he couldn’t even go to his wake and stand through all the sad smiles and averted eyes like her mother - who had Billy for a son for all of two years - had had to.
Then Neil moved his hand, the gesture hesitant and almost aborted halfway, and laid it on the back of the desk chair. The soft brown leather of Billy’s favourite jacket shifted under his fingers, and his head slipped a few more inches towards his chest as his neck gave out.
Max remembered something someone had said in a show once, something about kids and families that had been burned into her brain because she had hated it when she heard it - so far from the idyllic version of what she thought parenthood should be like.
“Even if you hate them it still fucks you up completely when they’re gone.”
She looked for another long moment at the broken man in front of her, standing alone in the dark because he hadn’t even thought to turn on the light, then she turned away soundlessly.
She walked back to the kitchen slowly, feet carrying her along the familiar boards. When she was stood in front of the bookshelf by the doorway where her mum kept the recipe books, she looked up and saw the keys to the camaro, scorpion keyring still attached despite everything.
With shaky fingers she unhooked the keyring and held it tight in her hand, pressing the hand to her chest. Finally, in the new quietness of the house, she allowed the sobs she had swallowed down all day to shake her apart.