Chapter Text
There’s something seriously wrong with this rat.
Steve taps the cage with a finger, and the rat inside goes ballistic, throwing itself against the bars and shrieking. Steve flinches away from its wet, open muzzle and rubs his hand on his jeans.
“Are you alright, dear?” the kindly old lady calls down the stairs, and Steve hastily covers up the cage. For a moment, he’d been skeptical when Nancy had called him with a tip. Rats? Probably not their thing. He’d pinned it all down to rabies until he’d seen the rat lurking in Mrs Porter’s basement.
“Fine!” he calls, trying to keep his voice even. He doesn’t want to frighten her, but thank God she doesn’t come down here all that often. What would happen if this thing bit her?
Steve jogs back up the stairs, keeping a tight grip on the cage. He’d thrown a towel over the top, but it doesn’t stop the rat pounding against the confines of the cage. Patricia gives it a worried look, a glass of lemonade in her hand.
“That doesn’t sound right,” she says, shaking her head, her delicate grey up-do trembling with the movement. “I did tell that nice girl when she called…you know, she was the only one at that paper to reach out to me? You’d think people would be more bothered about a plague or infestation like this. That rat’s not normal.”
“Well,” Steve says, choosing to keep the truth to himself. She wouldn’t believe him even if he did, because they never do. Let her think that it’s super-rabies or something. “Thank goodness you did. We always need concerned citizens like you. I’ll…take this back to the lab. See what’s going on. There might be a new strain.”
“I thought so,” she says, nodding furiously. “I have half a mind to write a letter to that paper. I bet they’re only interested in sex and politics, they always are. Lemonade?”
Steve eyes the glass. The rat screams in protest.
“I shouldn’t,” he says, hesitantly. “I really should be getting back…” But she pushes the glass into his hand, and it does feel crisp and cold against his palm. It was hot down there, trying to chase out this damn rat, and he doesn’t like the idea of the drive back through downtown traffic.
“You must,” she says firmly. “I make it myself. The least I can do, I’d never get down there myself. Bit too old for those steps…my son thinks I should move, but I’ve lived in this house since before he was born! The cheek of it!”
Steve nods and sips. The lemonade is actually very good, fizzy and tart. Too many of his leads often do not end with refreshments.
“Are you local, honey?” Patricia asks, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “You look like a Hawkins boy.”
“I am,” Steve says, licking his lips. He was thirstier than he’d thought. “I grew up in the suburbs though. Loch Nora. But I moved into the city a few years ago.”
“Loch Nora, that’s a nice place,” Patricia says, and Steve focuses on chugging the lemonade as quickly as he can. He’s well aware that he’s holding a bomb in his hand and he needs to get back to the office. He has no idea where they’re meant to keep this thing, or how they can even keep it alive. “Why did you move? Girlfriend?”
“Uh, no,” Steve says, wondering how many lies he’s going to have to tell this nice woman. “Work. I live with a friend now.”
“Still, I’m sure there’s lots of nice young women who’d like you to take them out on a date,” Patricia says, with a very familiar glint in her eye. Steve has started to recognise it out of sheer necessity. He quickly drains the rest of the glass, even though it gives him a headache. “I have a niece…”
“I’d better go,” Steve says, abruptly handing her back the glass. “I’ll need to stop by the lab for this little guy and you know what the traffic is like at this time of day! Thanks for the lemonade.”
“Of course, dear,” she says, blinking at him from behind her wide glasses. “If it is rabies, I expect you’ll release it to the press? Maybe have that nice girl write it.”
“I will,” Steve says, knowing that there is no rabies and there will be no article. He digs one handed in his pocket for his keys, wanting more than ever to get out of here. “We’ll call you for a quote. But in the meantime I’d write Tom Holloway that letter. Concerned citizens should be taken seriously.”
He should feel bad for lying to a kind old lady like that, he reflects, once he’s back in the car, the rat secured in the backseat. Nancy will never be able to write an article about it, because they can never tell people the truth without sounding insane. Steve knew all of this when he started the business, just him and Robin in an apartment building that he’d bought with his inheritance. One floor for him, one for her, and the first floor for clients.
They don’t advertise, obviously. Not in that way anyway. It’d be a lot easier to stick an ad in the paper - ‘HARRINGTON AND BUCKLEY, PARANORMAL INVESTIGATORS’ - but they’d just get the crazies. Instead, they have to rely on word of mouth, search through the news for tips and wait for Nancy or Hopper to send people their way. And so far, they’ve managed. They don’t always have enough to keep the lights on or afford anything other than ramen but they get by. Some months are better than others.
They couldn’t exactly charge the old lady for taking away the rat, Steve thinks, turning the key in the ignition. Nancy had picked up the message down at the paper, and bumped it over to Steve, thinking that it was probably their kind of job. And it looks as though she’d been right, even though Steve’s not wild about the kind of jobs that don’t have a fee attached.
The drive back to the office is hot and long. He doesn’t always miss the suburbs, the little collection of houses and farms where he’d grown up but the slow moving traffic sometimes makes up for it. The rat screams the whole way, and Steve eventually turns on the radio to drown it out.
The building Steve had bought four years ago is a three storey townhouse. It sometimes has questionable electrics, a garden that has mostly been taken over by weeds and wildlife, and the window on the third floor bathroom sometimes sticks but it’s home. Left with an unexpected inheritance and an urgent need for privacy, Steve had used a large chunk of it to buy the building outright. His parents hated it, which had only made it more appealing.
“Well?” Robin asks, slamming the drawer shut on a filing cabinet, one of many that fills up their main office area. “Was Nancy right?”
Steve drops the cage down onto his desk and whips the towel away. Robin stares at the foul little creature within and takes a slow, deep breath.
“Okay,” she says, cautiously circling the desk and the rat. “I guess Nancy gets to keep her reputation of always being right.”
“She’s not always right,” Steve mutters and throws himself into a chair. He’s tired and sticky, and he still has to figure out what to do with this fucking thing before he calls it quits for the night. He’s going to have to lock it down securely - he really doesn’t fancy this thing being loose in the building where he sleeps.
“She usually is about this,” Robin says and bends over to stare the rat head on. It looks horrible and from first glance, Steve had known that what they were dealing with wasn’t a normal rat. Even with the worst rabies in the world, it would never look like this.
“Shit,” Robin says finally. She perches herself on the edge of Steve’s desk, the tiny chunk of it not covered by files, elastic bands or gum wrappers. “That thing’s fucked.”
Steve just nods. The rat looks like an oil slick, fur wet and grimy, with an unnatural texture. And Steve’s never minded rats before, but there’s something awful about the foam around the unnaturally sharp teeth, the strange pale eyes.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with it,” he says, slumping back. “I think this is definitely not normal, but I’ve never seen anything like it before. Animals aren’t affected by the Hollow.”
“That we know of,” Robin says practically. She winces and throws the towel back over the cage. “I suppose everything can happen at least once.”
“Guess I should be glad that it’s just a rat,” Steve mutters. He glances at the clock, but it only serves to remind him that he still has a lot to do before he checks out for the day. Their opening hours are pretty flexible - it’s not like they’re overbooked - but they try to keep someone in the office so they look vaguely professional. As far as Steve knows, they’re the only ones that do what they do, and word of mouth is picking up steam.
It’s good for them. Bad for the world.
“What do we do with it in the meantime?” Robin asks, still leaning against his desk. Steve shrugs. He’d wondered that himself.
“I was thinking I’d ask Mrs Stein if we can borrow her dog cage,” he says. The small cage they had is really only temporary, something left over from when Robin kept hamsters. He wouldn’t put it past that thing to bite through the bars. “Cage inside a cage, locked in the cupboard.”
“What are we going to feed it?” Robin asks worriedly. She’s biting her nails, a habit that she’s never been able to shake. Today, Steve doesn’t have it in him to chide her.
“Souls of naughty children?” he says and tips his head back. He’d been hoping that Nancy was wrong for once. “Stale cheese…fuck knows. I suppose we have to chuck some stuff at it and see what it takes.”
“Excellent,” Robin says dryly. The cage has gone quiet for the moment, which is somehow even more concerning. “Just what we need - a rat who eats better than we do.”
“Well, there’s no one to charge for this case,” Steve says, swinging himself around. The files he’d abandoned this morning are all still there, and he’d been hoping that Robin might take pity on him. “Did you send an invoice to Mr and Mrs Bennett?”
“I did,” Robin says. Thank God he has her - she’s got a better head for their accounts and admin than he does, and he’d forget to ever charge anyone if she didn’t have a memory like a steel trap. “Although, if she doesn’t pay, we can always take this little guy along and leave him on her doorstep.”
“We might have to,” Steve says. “Paying our water bill entirely hinges on her check coming through. But maybe first we should remind her that we did remove that poltergeist from her house?”
“Always a good idea,” Robin says, swinging herself off the desk. “We can pretend like we’ll put it back otherwise.”
“An effective sales tactic,” Steve quips, and Robin comes up behind him, affectionately petting his hair.
“Is something wrong?” she asks, and when Steve tips his head right back, he gets the full view of her concerned face. “You’re not yourself today.”
“Just tired,” Steve fibs and closes his eyes. She obliges, carefully running her hands through his hair, rubbing her thumbs over his temples.
Maybe it’s the constant money troubles. Maybe it’s the fucking rat. Maybe it’s the reminder of the fact that he should have moved somewhere with more miles between him and the past.
“You should file all of those away before we close up,” Robin says, just as she’s rubbing all of the knots from the base of his neck. Which she probably planned, because Steve isn’t able to argue with anyone when they’re doing that.
“Ugh,” Steve just says instead. He hates filing. “God, I wish we could hire someone for this.”
Robin just neatly rolls her eyes. “We could always take more ordinary cases,” she points out. “Instead of just the weird, fucked up stuff. I’m sure you and I can take pictures of cheating spouses as well as anybody.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Steve says despondently. “I just always thought…I don’t know.”
They started out with a purpose, offering a service that no one else did. And Steve likes it, feels useful and driven for the first time in his life. If that gets taken away…
He doesn’t want to be a regular investigator. It might make bills easier, might allow them to properly advertise in the Hawkins Post, but it will take away that small chunk of self-respect that Steve is holding onto.
When he looks up, he finds Robin giving him a piercing stare.
“What?” he says defensively, and she just shrugs.
“Nothing,” she says and then gives him a small, uncertain smile. “I don’t really want to either.”
Steve lets the tension go out of his shoulders. Sometimes he’s so glad that he found her. Robin is just always his person. Even as shitty as things can be, with Steve’s guilt and worry and regrets, she’s always there, saying exactly what he’s thinking and letting him know it’s all going to be okay.
He’d been completely okay with setting up this agency by himself. It was something he needed to do - like Nancy needing to change the world and break stories - and he didn’t care if he had to do it alone. Nancy and Jonathan had supported him, but they both already had dreams and no intent on giving them up for a half-baked scheme. But then someone had told him the local video place was haunted by more than the grumpy girl at the cash register. One exorcism later and they were a team.
Someone presses on the doorbell, startling them both. Robin holds up a hand, shaking her head at Steve’s pile of files.
“You deal with that,” she says, with a brief glance up at the clock. It’s getting late but they’re not closed up for the day yet. “I’ll get the door. It might just be Mrs Bennett with our fee.”
Steve scowls at his desk as she walks out of the room. Probably it won’t be Mrs Bennett at all, probably just a salesman trying their luck on their front stoop. Something feels wrong in the air today, just one of those days where everything feels a little bit misaligned.
He starts to shuffle through the files, trying to cluster them together, when he hears Robin’s startled exclamation at the door.
His hand immediately goes to the top drawer, the ones they keep locked when they aren’t sitting at their desks. They’re both pretty capable with an assortment of weapons - they have to be, in their line of work - and keep a variety of hidden armaments around their office, just in case.
“Ro?” he calls suspiciously.
He can hear Robin’s voice rising just a little out in the front hall, proving that their guest is neither wanted nor being particularly pleasant about it. So Steve jolts to his feet, reaching for the key that keeps his gun drawer locked. But he never actually gets that far because someone comes storming in through the door, pushing it open with such force that it slams back into the wall. Robin comes hurrying up behind, looking flustered.
“Steve, I’m sorry,” she babbles, little spots of color rising in her cheeks. She shoots an annoyed little glare at their guest, who pays her absolutely no mind. “I tried to stop her, but she insisted on coming in to speak to you. She wouldn’t talk to me, even though I said that this is a joint agency.”
“Yeah,” Steve says quietly, his hand falling away from the drawer, key still clutched loosely in his fingers. He can’t stop staring at the person he thought he’d never see again. “She does stuff like that.”
There’s no mistaking the woman in front of him, even though it’s been nearly a decade since he saw her last. She’s nearly as tall as Robin, striking red hair pulled back into a ponytail down her back. She’s wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, clutching a large rucksack to her chest.
But her expression is the same, from the set of her jaw to the piercing blue of her eyes.
“Hi, Max,” Steve says, because someone has to speak first.
“Hi, Steve,” Max says, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. She at least has the grace to look a little embarrassed after so long. “Long time no see.”
“Yeah,” Steve says shortly, lowering himself back into his desk chair. Something uneasy stirs in Steve’s gut. This isn’t just a social call, and she wouldn’t come to Steve unless she was truly desperate. He’s not even sure how she found him - their address and phone number are both unlisted, and only given out to people who might need it. Aside from Dustin, he’s not seen much of the kids much over the years…and he’s not heard from Max at all.
And Steve can see it in her eyes when she brings her gaze up to meet his. She wouldn’t be here unless she had no other choice.
“You know her?” Robin asks, sounding in disbelief. She closes the inner door behind them, still looking rankled.
“Used to,” Steve says, because he had known Max. But that was when she wore pigtails and carried a skateboard, liked Wonder Woman comics and Kate Bush. The grown woman in front of him now is a stranger.
“Way, way back,” Max says, tugging out the chair reserved for clients. “Took me a while to find you.”
“How did you find me?” Steve asks suspiciously. Max just shrugs, setting her rucksack down on the floor beside her.
“I was looking,” she says pointedly. “Admittedly, it wasn't the easiest but we still know some of the same people, Steve.”
“Who was it?” Steve asks suspiciously, folding his arms in front of him. “Was it Will? Dustin? Jon?”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Max says, deflecting in a way that makes Steve think that he was right and one of them ratted him out. He’d honestly bet on Dustin. The kid’s always been easy to bribe.
“What’s this about, Max?” Steve asks. Max’s eyes flick curiously around their office, which takes up most of the first floor of the building. Aside from the foyer, they have a bathroom, a small kitchen, a filing room, storage for evidence from old cases and the biggest room for their main space to greet clients. The building was separate apartments before Steve bought it with some of his inheritance, and they only changed the first floor. He and Robin live in the apartments above and the set up works for them. Everything Steve could ever want or need in one convenient location.
Well. Almost everything.
“Nice place,” she says, and Steve snorts. He knows a diversion when he hears one.
“How did you afford it?” she asks, bluntly, because that’s always been how Max is. Steve sits back in his chair.
“My grandfather died a few years back,” he explains. Back then it had been pretty miserable, losing the one person who’d ever really felt like family to him. Coming on the heels of the Byers case, he’d felt pretty much like his whole world had been tipped upside down. No grandfather, no Nancy, and the unwanted added bonus of knowing what’s out there. “He had a stipulation in his will that I would inherit at twenty-one or when I was married. Whichever came first.” Max’s eyes flick curiously to his bare left hand, which he hurriedly jerks out of sight.
“And you’re not married?” she says, and there’s an interested lilt in her voice. Steve scowls and taps his fingers on the desk. Robin is watching everything from her chair, and Steve knows that keeping quiet about this so far must be killing her.
“No,” Steve says shortly. “Why are you here, Maxine?” The smirk falls from Max’s face.
“I need to hire you,” she says, and digs into her bag for a beige file that is all too similar to the ones currently littering Steve’s desk. “I have a case for you.”
“You don’t need us,” Steve retorts, curling his hands into fists. He doesn’t…he can’t take a case for Max. He’s spent eight years trying to close over the gaping wound, and he’s honestly not managed it all that well. He just knows that if he’s around Max, a reminder of what was, he'll never be able to get it back. He doesn’t even have to look in the file, he just knows that allowing Max - and everyone associated with her - back into his life is asking for trouble.
“I do need you,” Max says, jaw set in the same petulant way of hers. “I can’t have just any investigator for this, Steve.”
“No,” Steve insists. “Absolutely not. Not you. Go home, Max.”
“I came all this way,” Max says, with that same petulant set of her jaw that Steve knows so well “I don’t know who else to go to. The police told me to go home and wait. I can’t wait. If I’m right, we might already be too late.”
“We’re not regular PIs,” Steve says, scrambling for excuses. “We don’t just…take on missing persons. There are other people for that.”
“Nobody else will look!” Max bursts out, cheeks growing little furious spots of pink. “But I know you’ll find him, Steve, I know you will…”
“Max,” Steve says suddenly, because there’s only one person she’d be desperate enough to seek him out for. The one person she thinks that he’d be able to find. “Maxine, whose file is this?”
“Steve, please,” she says quietly. And that should be his first clue, because Max usually fights her battles with rage, and bite, and blazing eyes. Not this. “I know I shouldn’t be asking this of you. But I am out of options and I can’t find him. I have looked and looked, and he’s gone, and he’s not himself. He’s going to hurt himself. Or someone else. And you’re the only one who might be able to help him.”
“Who?” Robin asks curiously, and Max wipes at her damp cheeks.
“My brother,” she says, gesturing towards the file. “He started acting strange ten days ago. And then three days ago, he vanished. He’s nowhere, and the police won’t help me. They say given his history that…”
“He’s run away,” Steve finishes, feeling cold all over. Max nods mutely.
“His car’s gone but nothing else,” she says. “And there’s shit I know he’d take. He’d never leave without it. I know it’s been a long time but I thought that…I hoped that maybe you still…”
“What?” Steve asks quietly. He hadn’t been sure until just now that Max had been aware of their relationship - but maybe Billy had told her in the years since. Because otherwise Max could have found anyone else to find him, one of the many investigators who still didn't wear Billy Hargrove as a scar on their heart. “Still loved him?”
“He still loved you,” Max counters, her gaze steady. “Is it so impossible?”
Steve’s fingers tremble as he reaches out for the file, cool and smooth beneath his skin. He pretends to not see Max or Robin’s interested eyes as he pulls it in front of him.
He doesn’t even see the rest of the file: the few scraps that the police put together, a report from Billy’s doctor, a list of symptoms and possible places that he might have gone to supplied by Max. The photograph is the only thing he sees.
“He missed you,” Max says in a whisper, so faint that Steve almost thinks that he didn’t hear her.
He did cut his hair, just enough to have the dark blonde curls gently frame his face. He’s older than the boy Steve had fallen in love with, all strong jaw and sharp cheekbones, but the eyes are the same. It’s a candid shot, Billy half turned away, looking at something out of view. Steve maps every inch of him with his eyes, remembering those hands wrapped in his hair, Billy’s legs wound around Steve’s waist, how the curve of his bottom lip felt.
He’s still so beautiful. Steve stares and stares at the photo as though he can will Billy here by sheer want alone. But he can’t and in the end, it hurts too much to look. Steve hid all his photos of Billy a long time ago.
“He shouldn’t have,” Steve says bitterly and flicks the file shut.
“I know he did,” Max says. “I don’t know the full story of what happened between you two…but I can guess enough that it wasn’t your fault.”
Steve breaths in, despite the sudden band of lead constricting his chest. She’s wrong. All of this is his fault.
“What did the cops say?” he asks instead. “We have a friend at Hawkins PD, he might be able to help…”
“Young man, working two jobs…the officer I spoke to didn’t sound all that concerned,” Max says bitterly. “But Billy wouldn’t just up and leave like that. He had work, he had an apartment, he had me. He wouldn’t have just left.”
“And he really would have told you?” Robin checks, looking sceptical. Max just frowns at this sudden challenge.
“Yes,” she insists. “Look, I know he’s only my stepbrother, but we were all we had. His dad is a piece of shit and my mom…she’s not always been great at the hard part of parenting. We both live in the city and we talked pretty much every day. But three days ago, he just disappeared. He didn’t answer my calls and when I went to his apartment, there was no answer. I let myself in with his key but it was empty. Like no one’s been home in a few days empty.”
“What about his mom?” Robin asks and Steve winces. Of course. She wouldn’t know.
“She disappeared when Billy was six,” Steve says, because someone has to. “Into thin air. Neil always liked to say she was flighty, that she’d run out on her family.”
“But she didn’t?” Robin asks, and Steve closes his eyes. He saw a picture of Abigail Hargrove once. She was like the original that Billy was copied from. That might be hard enough for someone whose wife abandoned them.
It would be even harder when your child looked like the woman you murdered.
“Not likely,” he answers. “The police were often called out for domestic disputes at the Hargroves back in California. Neil deflected every one and Abigail never pressed charges so…” Robin’s jaw is slack.
“So, what?” Robin asks, looking both confused and furious. “No one ever did anything about it? Isn’t it usually the spouse?”
Yeah, maybe. It certainly helps when said spouse has something of a history. But there had never been any proof that Abigail hadn’t just vanished. Some of her clothes were missing, her passport, her purse. Even her car had never been found after all this time. But Steve has always thought that these likely went the same way as their owner, disposed of by Neil for a purpose.
“If the cops dig deep enough, they’ll think he’s just like his mom,” Max insists. “I’ve looked for him but I’ve run out of options. I need someone who knows what they’re doing. I can pay.”
“Look, we do very different kinds of cases,” Steve tries to protest. They only just had this conversation - they do freaky stuff and nothing else.
“I know,” Max says, gritting her teeth. “But I also know that Billy wouldn’t just run away. I think something’s going on. I’ve been to his apartment and it’s weird. Either I’m right and it is your kind of case. Or I’m wrong and you get paid anyway. What does it matter?”
“A lot,” Steve retorts. He’s not sure he trusts her version of ‘weird.’
“Steve,” Robin says, sounding irritated, and great, now that’s two angry women in his office. And he’s terrified of both of them. “It’s a case. We don’t turn down cases. We still need to pay for lights and water and food, in case you forgot. Why are you so sure that it’s our type of case?” She asks this last question to Max, who pulls the file close to her chest.
“His apartment is like an ice box. All of his plants are dead. Like dead dead, not just I’ve not been watered for three days dead. And I told you, he was acting really strange before he went missing,” Max says, turning her head between Robin and Steve. Robin’s mouth purses.
“She’s got a point,” she says, gently. “That might be something.”
It’s not the best proof but it also means that they should take a closer look. If Max’s instincts are on the money, then Billy’s in trouble. A dimensional possession is fucking awful and often ends in a pretty severe case of dead for the victim without intervention. It’s one of the nastier things that Robin and Steve deal with on a day to day basis.
“Can you take it?” Max asks, hopefully. Steve’s not sure if she expects their workload to be full. They get cases, sure, often referred discreetly by word of mouth from people they’ve helped. Trawling the local papers for weird also turns up a few leads, and the local police chief also sends some clients their way, after he and Steve fell into the whole paranormal thing during the same incident six years ago.
So yeah, they get work. Not enough to afford name brand items yet, or to hire someone else to clean their office or sort their files, but they survive. Steve had been all for using the rest of his inheritance to live off, but Robin had refused. They were paranormal detectives and damn it, they were going to suffer on instant ramen and dry toast like other badly paid PIs.
He can’t leave it. He wants to walk away, because anything to do with Billy Hargrove is just going to cause him pain. Either they save Billy and Steve has to leave him again. Or they don’t and Steve has to deal with the fact that the man he was in love with isn’t coming back.
But he can’t leave Billy for dead and not even try. For the sake of Max, and Billy, and even Abigail, who never had anyone to look for her.
But then Max leans forward across the desk, reaching over the file to take his hand.
“Please, Steve,” Max says, her fingers trembling in his. But her making a final pitch is pointless - there’s no going back now. He was lost the moment he looked into Billy’s eyes again, and he can see by Robin’s face that she’s in too. “He still loves you…and I think that you still love him. You didn’t stop, did you? That’s how I know you’re going to find him. You’re his last chance.”