Rat Bastard Redemption Enthusiast.

The kid is tall as a fucking tree and dopey-faced and has this long, silky waterfall of hair that almost reaches his ass. The first time Billy hassles the guy, trying to size him up, Molina just wraps his arms around Billy all tight and rattles him like you would a temperamental teddy bear. “I respect the fire, little dude.”

Billy is pretty much smitten after that. Begrudgingly so. Of course, as with everything in his Goddamn life, it doesn’t work out.

Sure, he and Aggy dominate the boardwalk and menace the skatepark and fall asleep together on the beach. Aggy soaks their hair in coconut oil and they get into all-out smack-down feuds over their absent moms’ homelands and whether or not Brazilian pastéis are better than Mexican empanadas. Billy steals beer for them from the local shops and gets an impassioned, earnest lecture from Papi Molina that ends with Argyle and Billy on laundry duty indefinitely.

But when they get high for the first time, fourteen and mistaking Aggy’s uncle’s blunts for cigarettes, Billy fucks up. His brain goes all funny, and he’s happy and safe and Argyle is snorting that ugly laugh he knows Billy hates and looking like a damn dream in patterned socks and pooka shells galore. So Billy lets his body fall, gravitating towards what he’s been wanting for so long, and he plants his own soft smile over Aggy’s.

Gently, firmly, Billy feels Argyle get a grip on his shoulders and ease him an arm’s length away. Billy’s head feels like a balloon, floating absently and filled with nothing but air, but he registers the pinched, confused smile on Argyle’s face like—dude? Billy doesn’t wait for whatever might come next. He closes his eyes and wills himself to just fucking pass out, Argyle rattling Billy’s ragdoll body and brainless fucking head until Billy feels himself being wrapped in scratchy blankets and lain on the couch.

They’re still joined at the hip after that—until high school and the Move splits them apart. But they don’t talk about it, and Billy doesn’t try again.

And the funniest part? As soon as Neil has shipped Billy away from the beach and Ma and Aggy and everything good and beautiful that his heart is breaking to pieces for, he spots Harrington. Tall. Dopey-faced. With soft Bambi eyes and this stupid, hair-sprayed bouffant that screams Pampered Trust Fund Pretty Boy.

Fuck.

TL;DR

Billy: *being a little shit*

These Heartbreakers:

🍺 - What’s the story you have behind his first alcoholic drink, or his first time getting drunk?

(See above. Argyle and Billy in their little rascals era captains my soul.

Also, obviously underage drinking and smoking is wrong! Keep away from these substances, children! But unfortunately, when you’re poor and hurt and have nothing better to do, it happens. A lot. Take my word for it.)

🚑 - Has he ever rode in an ambulance?

TW: Domestic abuse, child abuse

The first time Billy rides in an ambulance, he’s seven and he’s not the one being fussed over by the paramedics. It’s Ma.

Her eyes are swollen like grapefruits and her right arm is bent like a broken wing. The med team tries their best to soothe and reason and bully her little Sunshine out of the car, but it’s no use. He worms his way in like the pest he is and chats to his Ma the entire way down to St. Lucia’s Medical, earning a smile through the angry tears and cursing and calls for a cigarette.

Billy Hargrove Ask Game

My 1st Ask: Mom, Dress-Up, Christmas, and Basketball

A chubby truck here, a ludicrous race car there. He doesn’t stop to psychoanalyze that shit. Barely even registers that he’s doing it as he slips a scrappy Palm Beach Motor Home into his jacket pocket while Susan grabs cheese a few aisles over and Max wanders the store.

It’s not like Billy even plays with them. Which is exactly why he doesn’t understand the sinking feeling in his gut when Susan convinces Neil to decorate for the holidays this year. He doesn’t understand why his heart is in his ass when Neil pulls out the dusty old ornament box, where all two dozen of Billy’s stupid fucking trinkets are stashed…. only for there to be nothing but little wreaths and ribbons inside.

And he really doesn’t fucking compute any of this shit when he opens his Camaro’s center console the next day, ready to chauffeur Max to the arcade, and all his cars are just sitting there. Zipped up into a plastic freezer baggie.

On the side, signed in permanent marker on the bag, is a scribble of familiar chicken-scratch:

you owe me, dipstick. cough up your change this week

-MdMx

His wallet’s a little lighter that afternoon. He doesn’t bitch about it.

Then comes his birthday. Billy doesn’t get jack shit, obviously. Unless you count a clap on the back, bloody gums, and an extra pancake from Sue. Big whoop. Except… he does get a tiny surprise at the very end of the day: a pink Camaro. It’s on his nightstand, ugly as sin but there. Real and rolling between his palms.

It must be some Upside Down-adjacent infection. Must be some remnant of an inter-dimensional STD that's been swimming around in Steve's balls since he stormed the tunnels last November with the kids. It must be, because that is the closest explanation that Steve has for why Billy claws out of his pine box grave not a week later, with little in the way of injuries apart from a few broken nails and the loss of his perfect tan.

“Stevie, why’da you keep lookin at me like that?”

All in all, it’s a fucking unforgiving week, and that's well before Billy's undeath.

A day after Billy is interred in the Earth, a million miles away from his real home and the ocean that he’d wanted to be scattered in, Keith pencils Steve in for four consecutive double shifts at Family Video. Steve weakly protests, but apparently the mall collapse has rattled the entire town, Hair-rington, and somebody’s got to help keep the FV ship afloat.

That shuts Steve right up because, well, how the hell is he supposed to swing special grief leave if he doesn't have the stones to admit that his gay lover was the massacre’s star victim? Call him a realist—Steve doesn't want that shit getting around if Billy's already kicked it. So he sucks it up, bitterness bubbling all the way up to his throat, and smiles.

"Welcome to Family Video. Stick 'em up, cause these deals are highway robbery."

Steve makes it all the way through the final Friday midnight countdown, coasting on nothing but pure, numb sarcasm and ten different kinds of soda from the employee machine out back.

It's only at 12:02 am, when Keith has pulled out of the lot and Robin pops a gumball from their candy counter into her cheek, that he finally loses it completely.

"I gotta say, all those dorky one-liners tonight really left an impression. Truly the king of the dinguses. Want another Coke for the road? I'm buying, King Steve."

Robin ends up having to shove his head between his knees and cheerlead him through breathing, her leftover sack lunch re-purposed as a respirator.

It smells like snickerdoodles and potato chips. Billy was a sucker for junk, too. It's probably why he went after Steve in the first place. His nails are still just shy of healing back from how they’d chipped when he was clawing at the steel support beam that had crushed Billy’s chest.

"In... 'n'out. Good. Really good. Just like that. You've got it... alright, now without breaking your rhythm, I'd like you to kindly, calmly explain to me what in the fuck that was about."

And the thing is… Robin's really gay, and technically one of the coolest people Steve knows, and he's poked full of tiny holes and leaking all over the place, so. It's about as good a chance as any to let off a little steam to keep from imploding while grocery shopping or watching the kids.

He cuts the fluff, because his heart has been rotting for the past week. Sticks to the facts: They fought. They fucked. They shared a few too many cigarettes and weekend sleepovers to be strictly dick buddies. They finally slowed things down, started to sort out this messy thing between them, and then the universe sped everything back up with an unstable building and an electrical fire that had Billy spending his last moments as a bloody, choking mess on the foodcourt floor. It's stupid.

All the same, Steve is more than a little shocked to see a shine build up in Robin's eyes. She smiles, its edge thankfully still in tact. She punches Steve's arm, not unkindly.

"He was your Juliette, dingus. Enough with the bullshit. Go ahead and have your cry."

And he fucking. He.

He does, ass planted in the corner where they kick all the crumbs that the broom can never pick up. He's sweating and spitting and there's snot running down his upper lip. Robin endures his blubbering for its full hour duration and then takes them through MaryMac's to destroy their insides with double MacBurgers and MacAnimal Fries.

They get fat and wasted on grease and pass out at her place. She lulls him to sleep with dumb anecdotes about her shitty little cousins from Indianapolis and her favorite uncle that moonlights as a drag queen, and Steve pathetically sneaks out at seven am with his eyes so swollen it looks like he's been in another fistfight. Except, there's no one left to blame for this one. No one but himself.

He walks to Family Video in his shittiest sneakers to pick up his car and then drives back to the house that hasn’t felt like home since the Fourth of July.

Robin covers his ass for the shifts he misses that afternoon, and he rewards her sacrificed time by wasting the entire day in front of the tv. He’s wearing the only thing that Billy ever left behind on all those mornings after: a butt-ugly green and yellow sweatshirt that declares "GO TIGERS!" and "HARGROVE: #04." Steve turns the a/c up, with only the old state champs hoodie and a pair of tiddie widdies to maintain his dignity from sun up to moon rise.

He snorts awake at three am to a violent pounding at the door.

It sounds like it would be scary. It’s too bright inside and so deafeningly black outside. Sweat’s peeling down his bare legs from the summer heat. Really, Steve should be pissing his valentine undies between the deathly silence of the vast, lonely house and the bellowing booms coming from the foyer. He should be yelling, grabbing the bat, running for the phone.

But he’s tired. He's so Goddamn tired. So he inches towards that strange sound at three in the fucking morning like the air-headed first victim of a horror flick. Oh well.

Bang! Bang Bang Bang!

His fingers hesitate on the knob. "... h'llo?" The pounding stops, the wood frame rattling under Steve's palm for a second, until... nothing.

"H'llo?..."

He feels like he's dreaming as his hand manages the pressure to turn the handle. The door yawns open. And, it's.

It's fucking,

darkness,

And screeching crickets, and old oaks with their limbs curling like claws through the peels of lamplight on the main road. But none of that theatrical gothic bullshit holds a candle to whose face is not five inches from Steve's nose.

"B’lly?”

Of course it’s Billy. This is Hawkins, for Christ's sake. If hell is a furnace burning at the center of the Earth, Hawkins is the pipe mouth. It’s honestly a little unfair of him to be so shocked, to have his eyes start watering without his permission and his breath go all thin all over again.

"Billy. Billy. Is it—is that really you?”

His boyfriend is covered head to toe in dirt. Good old Hawkins grave soil. His hair’s a little out of sorts, too—lumpy and uneven. But other than that, he looks just like he did when they'd lowered him into the ground.

He's got on a cheap hand-me-down suit, the only one he'd ever owned, and that set of old black boots that look kinda like Oxford's when you hide 'em under the hem of some dress pants. Steve had helped Max to pick the outfit after Neil and Susan had proposed a hideous blue and white Easter suit that Billy would have fucking hated.

He’s even still got on that shitty airbrush spray tan and rouge paint that the mortician had given him. It makes him look like a collectible doll, all out of sorts and looking for a professional clean up.

Billy’s voice is little more than a sleepy croak, his blue eyes half-lidded and glittering.

“Harrington…” He blinks. Once. Twice. “… Ya got any topical cream? My ass hurts.”

Steve can’t wait another second. He leaps from the doorway and wraps his arms tight around the boy’s middle.

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Oh my God. It’s y-you. It’s you, it’s you, it’s you.”

He kisses at Billy’s painted face, mwah mwah mwah. He buries his nose in the boy’s hair and smells nothing but dust and moldy wood and rotten earth. It’s gross. Steve can’t stop the sobs from bubbling up.

“I c-can’t believe it. You’re here. You fucking asshole. You’re here.”

“Course I’m here. ‘s date night, isn’t it?”

They’re stuck like that for a while: Billy wriggling fussily under his arms, scratching at his left buttock. And Steve choking on his tears, hacking into Billy’s muddy neck with the force of them.

Thirty minutes later, he’s got Billy on the couch, freshly washed and naked under four downy towels. It hadn’t been difficult to herd him into the shower. He’d preened under the hot spray, dirt and dust and spray paint sloughing off to reveal smooth, radiant, pale skin.

“Too warm?,” Steve had asked, a niggling fear in the back of his mind that Billy might not be Billy at all. Had he been claimed by that spidery, apocalyptic motherfucker that had infected Will last Halloween? Steve swallowed, playing down his rising anxiety. “Would you like it better cold?”

Billy languidly shook his head. He placed his hand over Steve’s hand on the faucet and turned up the heat. Steve’s panic evaporated in his guts.

His next worry was far more manageable: Billy’s ass.

The pimples on his left cheek stood stark against his new, powdery complexion. The rash had spread, a constellation of pinked welts now cropping from his mid-thigh all the way to the tip of his tailbone. Steve cradled the boy’s lower back with a worried palm, not giving a damn that his sleeve was getting soaked.

“Are you sure that nothing else hurts?”

Billy had just turned. Shaken his head all slow. Smiled dully, as if still in the dreamy headspace of dying. Steve remembers that look all too well. It’s haunted his dreams since the day he’d tried and failed to pry out that steel that had broken Billy’s heart.

He’s all better now, though. There’s not a nick or bruise on him, save for the chipped nails and the hives on his ass. The blond crooks a finger at him, tongue poking out between a toothy smile.

“Now c’mere. Can’t you see I’m lonely?”

They’d both ended up under the spray in no time at all.

Steve had taken the lead, easing his drowsy sweetheart into the rhythm of their kisses. Billy’s a quick study, though—it only took a few moments of Steve sucking on the boy’s neck and lips for him to nick playfully at Steve’s tongue. He chased the tiny bubble of blood that welled up, licking into Steve’s mouth.

Steve didn’t resist. He’d been far too happy having Billy back to nitpick any of his weird, new tastes.

It sounds a little tacky, considering they’d only been dating for a few months. Oh well.

By the time Steve bundles the boy up and plops him on the couch with some of Mom’s hot tea and a bandaged swath of rash ointment slathered over his butt, Billy seems more awake. Or at least, not delirious and corpse-like.

He’s content to flip through TV channels and nibble at his thumb until Steve kneels down in front of him and sticks a thermometer in his mouth and a wet rag on his forehead.

Steve’s mostly centered himself by now, compartmentalized this wacky sci-fi bullshit. He clears the frog from his throat.

“Alright. Take it from the top. What happened?”

Billy barely glances at him. He’s looking further back, entranced at some afterhours re-run of The Exorcist. He shrugs, chews around the plastic stick in his mouth.

“Dunno.”

Billy’s eyes widen as Reagan projectile vomits into the face of the priest come to save her. All green pea soup and white eyes. His lips part with wonder.

“Woah…”

He whines as Steve grabs the remote and flips off the monitor. The older boy claps—

“Focus. Now is the time for focusing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m over the moon that you’re back, rashes and all. But, like, what the fuck?”

Billy shakes his head again, annoyed. “I dunno!” The thermometer beeps, and he spits it out onto the carpet. “We were getting ready to watch the fireworks at the quarry, and then we snuck into the Goddamn mall cause your spoiled ass said the view was so much better from the top, and then…”

All at once, Billy’s expressions goes foggy again. His brows knit, and Steve feels him slipping away even when he squeezes the boy’s knee to ground him. “Babe?”

“… There was a fire. All the late night workers were stuck inside. We were stuck. Everything started falling apart.”

He chokes, pawing a little at his heart. “There was something, something on my chest. I couldn’t breathe. It hurt, worse than anything I can remember. It took so long. Why wouldn’t I just fucking die?” His eyes have started glimmering, welling with angry tears. “‘n you. You were there, right next to me…”

And fuck. Steve’s calm has shattered like a sheet of ice over warm water. “Yeah, I was. I-I tried to help you. I tried, I swear. I’m so sorry.”

He’s started reaching out to smother Billy in another hug when the boy suddenly snaps out of his trance. The tears dissipate from his eyes, and he’s smirking again and shrugging his shoulders like nothing had happened at all. It’s jarring, like watching an animatronic snap between different commands in its programming.

“And then I woke up in a hole in the ground and I had dry mouth and my ass was itchy and I thought ‘Harrington could probably fix that.’ So I popped myself out and here I am.”

He nabs the remote from Steve and clicks on the TV again. Reagan is cackling and taunting the rattled Father, furniture levitating around the room against a demonic light show like some sort of fucked-up carnival. Billy brings his thumb back to his lips and continues his teething. His eyes are round, doe-like, and sweet when he flicks them over to Steve’s.

“D’you have any snacks?”

Steve sighs. He feels strung out with all these Goddamn emotions. His patience is starting to wear thin. “If I do, will you pay attention?”

Billy nods absently “Mm-hm.”

That’s good enough for now, Steve supposes. All this Frankenstein drama has left him with an appetite, too. “Alright, we’ll pick this up in a half an hour, tops.”

He brushes off his pants and plucks up the fallen thermometer, hands trembling. It reads “72.5 F.” Room temperature. Figures. He’ll have to try again later.

As he’s digging through the fridge, he turns towards Billy and calls out to that golden head of wet curls. One last, burning question bubbles up to his lips.

“Hey, Bills? Do you remember… do you remember seeing another… world? Like Hawkins, but dark and full of ash, and, and vines? Like a mirror, but wrong? Did you see any monsters? Anything at all? Take your time. This is really, really important.”

Billy barely misses a beat. He hums low, nonchalant. Licks at his thumb. “Nope.”

Something about the childishness of it, of Billy’s attitude, rankles Steve a little. It pulls out that same worry that he’d had in the shower. People have died over this shit. Barb and Bob and who the fuck else knows? Billy just doesn’t understand. Still stuck in that fantasy world where flower-faced monsters don’t nip at your heels in the night and resurrection is holy. Steve needs to make him understand.

He sets a pack of bacon on the counter and marches over to Billy with a box of waffle mix in one hand. With the other, he squeezes Billy’s shoulder, firm. His tone is frightened, almost motherly when he nags the distracted blond.

“Look, I know you’re still trying to get your head on straight and you really deserve more than, like, an hour to adjust from being fucking brought back from the dead. But this is serious. Think about it for a second. Did you see anything, after the mall?”

Billy stays quiet and still, mesmerized by the horror of the images flashing before his eyes. Steve shakes him a bit, insistent.

“You don’t have to be afraid. I know people who can help us. You’re not alone. The Byers, the Wheelers, the Chief of police—they’re wise to this kind of stuff. I’ll call them in the morning, and we can figure this out together.”

Slowly, Billy turns around. His eyes have regained that half-lidded, glittery look from when he’d first climbed up to Steve’s doorstep. He’s staring off into space, focused intensely on absolutely nothing. In the background, the demented screams of Pazuzu grind out from the speakers.

The hair on Steve’s arms begin to stand on end. A small, animalistic part of his brain is shrieking at him to run and hide.

Steve tries to listen, tries to take a step back and lift his hand from Billy’s shoulder, but the blond grabs his wrist in one fluid movement with an iron grip. Ever so gently, he begins to nip at Steve’s fingers with his teeth. Steve jerks back, but his wrist is trapped between those strong, pale hands.

“Billy, please let go. You’re hurting me.”

Steve feels his heart galloping in his chest, fit to burst as Billy momentarily stops his soft licking. Then the blond meets his eyes, his pupils blown huge, and suddenly Steve feels nothing but contentment. His heart settles, and his frantic, lizard brain warms in dumb pleasure.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart.”

He won’t.

“Everything’s fine.”

Of course it is. He’s got the kids and Robin and this big ass house and Billy, here, again, to share it with. What more could he ask for?

“I already told you what I saw: nothing. There are no monsters here. ‘n there’s no reason to bring the cops into this.” Billy flutters his lashes. He looks wounded. “You believe me, don’t you?”

“… course I do. Course…” He feels something tickling his mind, giddily fuzzing the edges of reality and picking past his defenses. Doesn’t matter. Everything’s fine.

Billy smiles, and it bowls Steve over how fucking stupid beautiful he is. Even pale as paper and humming at the sounds of a haunted little girl torturing her entire family. His smirk is cute, playful, even. It’s the best, softest part of Billy on full display—the part that Steve loves most. The part that the hand reaching into his brain is circling around, drawing energy from.

Billy pats the cushion next to him. The domesticity of it all rocks Steve to his core. He takes a seat, Billy’s eyes soften, and all at once the grip eases off of his mind.

“Great. Now whadda you wanna do, sweetheart? It’s our night, and I’m pretty sure I picked last time.”

And, look, the filter between Steve’s brain and his mouth is a thin fucking gate, alright?

“I wanna nail you on the kitchen floor in that dress you like.”

Billy’s expression has Steve snorting out a hysterical laugh, those blue eyes stretched wide, ludicrously long lashes brushing his cheeks. He sobers up after his death-slowed brain has a second to fully process the request, grinning at Steve’s giggles.

“So Pretty Boy wants to get kinky. Alright. You’ve got me sold. Which one ‘re you talking about?”

Steve wipes the spittle from his lips, still fighting down the little laughs he can’t control.

“Mm hmhm, u-hum. The, ha, the one that Nancy left behind. The pink, stretchy sundress?”

Billy cackles, throwing his head back with a relish. For the first time the entire night, the ghost of a blush shades the tip of his nose. Steve’s fingers are smeared a little with the tiny pinpricks of blood Billy had drawn out.

“Harrington, don’t take this the wrong way, but I dunno if you can fit in that tiny thing. You’re just a lil too tall—it’ll barely round out over your asshole. Not the kind of look I think you’re angling for.”

“No, I. I want you to wear it.”

The blush creeps up to his cheeks.

Turns out, the dress fits nicely. The elastic fibers hug Billy warmly, the sunny pink frock complimenting the small flush of color that’s returned to his body. His lips are the reddest part of him, sucking at Steve neck in that same devious way that Steve has shown him in the shower. “Show me where you want me, King Steve.”

The kitchen tiles are cold and slick and smooth, but they suck up the heat of their bodies rolling and sliding over the stones.

“Love you.” Pathetically, this is the first time Steve’s ever said it. He hadn’t gathered the nerve, before Billy’d been snuffed out like a bug, pinned in place and sobbing. He’s not going to waste another second. “I love you, B.”

Billy buries his head in Steve’s neck, shaking as the older boy empties himself out beneath that pretty pink skirt. “Took your time with that one, didn’t you?” Steve can hear the smirk in that velvety whisper. The smug satisfaction covering up his vulnerable gratitude.

Steve twists into him so sweetly that Billy goes momentarily blind, throwing his head back against the floor with a moan. Steve’s neck is wet, and Billy’s lips are redder than ever as they widen around a euphoric oh.

Inevitability, they end up back on the couch. Steve carries Billy back to the cushions with the teen sniggering and teasing him all the way.

“So all I had to do was drag it up for a night and all of a sudden you’re Mr. Chivalry? Sexist bastard.”

The both of them curl under the huge California King-sized blankets stocked in the Harrington’s linen closet, naked and cooling. The Exorcist has long since finished. They watch Raiders of the Lost Ark, Billy ribbing him for how lucky he is that the next movie on the channel’s Blockbuster Marathon wasn’t another scary one. But Billy goes back to playing nice real quickly after Steve licks over his ear and whispers all the sweet things he’ll get if he shuts the fuck up.

The illusion of normalcy doesn’t last very long.

Half an hour into Indie’s adventure, Steve takes notice of how Billy begins nibbling at his own thumb. He hadn’t gotten a good look before, but now, spying on him with careful sideways glances, he can see how violently Billy picks at the skin. His teeth clamp down, mindlessly digging in as he stares at the screen, utterly entranced.

It’s almost cute, the way his tongue laps at his finger with tiny licks. Except, it’s probing at open wounds that aren’t bringing up anything at all. He rips open the skin and his tongue pokes at blood that just isn’t bubbling up.

Steve is totally unprepared for when Billy turns to him, eyes bright but drooping. Like he’s coming down from a good high, keyed up yet fading fast. He tilts his head, huffs out a curious laugh.

“Stevie, why’da you keep lookin at me like that?”

Under layers of heavy cotton and black sugar, a voice in the back of Steve’s mind reminds him of Hop and the Party. Shouldn’t he call them? Get help? Let them know that another dead boy, Max’s brother, has clawed his way back? The echo of a honeyed voice nags those considerations back down, distracting him with the blue of Billy’s eyes and the slope of his nose and the adorable way he’s smiling at Steve in confusion.

Steve’s voice comes out thin. His smile is nothing but nervous teeth. “No reason. Let’s just relax, okay?”

Billy falls asleep before Steve, his cool body pressed into the older boy’s side. Steve just stares at the pale, pretty body in his arms until six am, tracing the soft edges of his jaw and those fanning lashes.

Everything’s fine, he tells himself, quelling his rising anxiety. He squeezes Billy tight against himself and breathes. The blond is boneless and pliant in his arms, dead to the world as the sun floats over the horizon. Everything’s going to be okay.

He’s wrong, of course.

—

This is kind of a thin sister-piece to the Steve-accidentally-kills-Billy-and-he’s-resurrected-as-an-Incubus comedy/horror thing I’ve been tampering with. Think of it as a loose practice round!

Dad and Susan leave on Saturday morning, and Tina’s annual Halloween bash is that night. It’s been a year to the day since Billy went chest-to-chest with Harrington that first time, tugging him into the upstairs bathroom and getting railed facedown on the shag bathmat. It’s been a whole Goddamn year of fucking and fighting and falling stupidly in love, and the two boys celebrate the anniversary with matching costumes.

Ken and Goddamn California Barbie.

Shut the fuck up. Buckley had dared them, and Billy looks heavenly in the siren red one-piece they’d dug out of Melvald’s bargain bin.

They don’t hit up Tina’s place, obviously. Cause what the fuck are all the other assholes from Hawkins High supposed to think if they see the two boys dolled up as a matching set, gayer than a fucking box of crayons?

They get all their partying out the week before, then crash at Harrington’s place for Halloween night with Robin and the fucking kids. It’s a hard blow to Billy’s style, sipping on apple cider and making popcorn for those tiny dipshits as they count their candy at the kitchen island.

But it’s worth it, when ten o’clock rolls around and Steve tucks him close. Kisses him deeper even as the dweebs squeal ewww and Robin shuts the door behind them to cart them off to the Wheeler’s. Suddenly they’re all alone, Steve in one of his preppy polos with his hair slicked back. And Billy, in a woman’s swimsuit and board shorts and an entire face of waterproof make-up that Nancy had painted through her snickering.

Steve pulls off the trunks, meant to protect the kids’ innocent eyes, and they take long, slow pulls into each others’ mouths before finishing in a clash or teeth and scraped tongues on the living room carpet. Billy comes apart glimmering with sweat, but the makeup still comes as advertised—not a smudge.

Steve smiles down at him, all cheesy and bright. “Did I make your DreamHouse come true, Babs?”

Billy huffs into his hair, grinning through pink lips and squinted, blue-framed eyes. “You fucking dweeb. Mm. Do that again and I won’t tell Buckley to add another tally to your running shitlist.” The swimsuit was a good choice. It helps manage the mess Steve makes of him not a minute later.

Steve drops him off sometime after midnight. They’d both wanted Billy to spend the night, melt into the covers together and scrub off his rouge with warm washcloths. But his folks are coming back at God-knows-when at the ass crack of dawn, and he’s gotta get the house together and cleaned before they start inspecting the state of the place. Steve parks a block away and plants a kiss in his curls before Billy makes the rest of the short trip home.

He’s tipsy on caramel vodka and cider, high with the memory of Steve’s tongue on his back. He can’t stop giggling, all stupid and fucked-out, right up until the second that he walks into the living room and comes face-to-face with Neil.

The resort had ended a little early. An outbreak of bed bugs in their linens.

Susan stands in the doorway to the hall, gasping in slow, silent mouthfuls like a dying carp at the sight of him. His Dad’s glowing smile fades as he takes in Billy’s figure, rakes his eyes murderously over the trunks and the woman’s suit and the eyeshadow and the borrowed denim jacket that smells like cologne too expensive for them to afford.

“Dad.” Billy’s eyes are watering. He shakes his head, feeling his stomach drop out as the man’s jaw catches. Billy’s got no steel tonight, all pulled apart and soft and sweet around the edges. Fucking Harrington. “Dad, please.”

Neil’s boots clap against the hardwood as he darts forward. He catches Billy by the hair as Susan flinches out of the doorway. “Neil, wait—!”

Somewhere in the mess of nails and spittle, Billy’s temple meets the edge of the coffee table. He blinks out, thinking that this is it. I’m gonna fucking die in this shitty house in a shitty hand-me-down swimsuit with nobody to mop up my blood but Susan Goddamn Mayfield.

The bathroom tiles are cold, when he wakes up.

His skull is throbbing. His scalp is itchy.

He’s strewn out, naked, against the toilet lid. A towel’s been thrown over his waist. It’s cute, flowery embroidery is spotted with red streaks. Susie is gonna be real put out—it had taken her hours to sew those roses in.

Billy pulls himself up on trembling arms, fumbling for the sink. He falls on his knees, soap and watery blood trickling through the tiled grout. He’s wheezing, utterly unstable, by the time he’s heaved himself up in front of the mirror.

Neil was never a good stylist. Even as a kid, Billy remembers his old man struggling to shave his own face, flipping out the old army knife he’s carried with him since Billy was old enough to toddle.

He’s done a hack job on Billy’s head. The blond’s head is a mess of short, uneven curls. They’re wet with blood and sweat, and the ends have been split and sheared unevenly by the fistful. There are a few spots, like at his temple and at the nape of his neck and right above his left ear, where Neil’s blade must have caught and cut into his scalp.

It’s hard to describe the moment that he breaks. One second he’s confused, curiously poking at the tight, choppy curls plastered to his forehead with purpled fingers and swollen eyes. And then he’s weeping, breath whistling and spitting and dry heaving into the sink as he twists his fingers through the stack of ruined curls piled over the drain.

He’s always taken after his Ma—in his eyes, and his hair, and his faggy disposition. What’s left of her slips between his fingers in silky, split ribbons.

The knife is still on the counter. The sharp, mean little one that Neil fiddles with between long car rides where the air is tense and Billy’s cheek throbs with bruises as thick as the fingers that caused them.

Billy’s mania isn’t graceful. It’s not dramatic or particularly poetic or fit for the big screen. He can’t even feel his body, his rage, as the spirit comes upon him.

He takes the knife.

He stalks to the bedroom on unsteady feet, wavering against the wall. His Dad is sleeping, exhausted from the beating with his bruised knuckles lotioned and taped. Billy aims for the chest first.

Once. Twice. Fifteen times. He loses count, and his rhythm is an unsteady, rabbit-quick thing as the metal dives in and out and in and out. Neil struggles, of course. But he’s already poked through with a dozen holes in his sweetbreads by the time he’s even gathered his wits enough to try and sit up.

In and out and in and out and in and out and in—

Susan is the one who finds him, eventually. Wavering in the doorway like a ghost. A first aid kit under her armpit and rubber gloves pulled on both hands and a pair of Billy’s pajamas hanging over her arm.

Billy’s sobbing again before he sees her, all salt and choked screaming. Her hands shake as she grabs hold of his wrists. She sets the blade on the bedside table, tugging him away from the body. The gloves feel cold, wrapped around his bare back as she drawls the teen into a hug. Her voice is airy against his ear.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

She has the heart to tuck him into bed before calling the police. She guides him to the bathroom by his wrist. Scrubs the splits and nicks and bruises with a warm, wet towel. Softly massages Neosporin into the cracks and slips a t-shirt and shorts over his limbs as he sits, listless, on the edge of the tub.

She breaks down a few times, sobbing in stops and starts for a minute or so before sobering and combing through his bloody hair with kind fingers. Billy is too numb to do anything but stare down at his own feet. They’re bruised to all hell, and he can still make out blood between his toes even after Susan has finished cleaning him up.

She makes him a glass of warm milk that tastes like chalk. He sips it down between bites of leftover cookies from the PTA bake sale, and it takes no time at all for his vision to go fuzzy and for Susan to lead him gently back to bed, vibrating out of her skin.

He wakes up strapped to a hospital bed. He can hear Chief Hopper in the hallway, bitching against a hoarse, panicked voice that he knows all too well.

Doesn’t matter, much. His mind’s still a million miles away, fingers tickling and brain pulsing even as Steve manages to shoulder his way into the room, cradling his face and carding his fingers through ruined curls.

“Babe? Baby. Baby, come on.”

But all he hears is the dive of the blade. In. And out. In. And out. Over and over, as Steve noses wetly into the scabs on his scalp. “It’s okay. Don’t worry—I’m gonna make this okay.”

He leans into the feeling, humming under soft strokes and wet sniffling. “I’ll fix this. Just fucking hold on. Hold on.”

He remembers Max squeezing his shoulder so hard he thought she was gonna dislocate it all over again. He remembers the Leaving Hawkins sign, remembers blowing raspberries and flipping it the bird while Harrington blared fucking Hall & Oats over the radio.

He remembers a clip show of Middle America finally giving way to San Diego and, not a week later, the first time Steve kicked down the door into the dumpy apartment where they’ve spent the past year making each other wonderfully fucking miserable.

They’ve settled into a greasy, nauseating kind of domesticity. Not the suburban daydream, picket fence, feet-up-by-the-fire kind. Like, the fucking—ass-scratching, knock-out-on-the-couch, burping-in-front-of-each-other kind.

They subsist off of Steve’s flaming instant ramen and easy mac dinners on the first half of every week. Then, from Wednesday to Saturday, Billy fires up their whiny gas stove for improvised grilled lemon chicken and beer-battered fish and the other fancy pickings straight from the cookbook Steve had bought during their first month of living together.

Of course, Billy’s no prodigal chef, but he’s a quick study and his best memories were of Ma raging and smoking over a pan of hot cakes and I’m not growing a fucking beard and a beer belly just cause you don’t know how to crack a Goddamn egg, Stevie.

Ironically, Steve works at a restaurant. As a waiter, mind you. It’s this painfully cosmopolitan Italian place with a one-wall art gallery and mason jars that runneth over with more mimosas than Steve can keep track of. Steve brings home leftovers every once in a while, plus a couple baggies of weed from one of the busboys.

California grass burns real nice, and Steve and Billy have started to clear out every Sunday schedule to smoke together and watch shitty cartoons on the couch.

Steve’s also gained ten pounds, a fraction of which is body hair alone. He’s made a game out of hedging his facial hair into different styles every month. Last month was handlebars— gives you something to hold on tight, Blondie. Now it’s April, and he’s growing out a sheer beard that leaves Billy’s inner thighs all fucking raw and scratched up.

Meanwhile, Billy works as a part-time jack of all trades and a part-time stay-at-home boyfriend. He fixes cars. He paints houses. He slings weed—which half the time he ends up smoking with Steve. He boxes. He even does small modeling gigs from time to time, still as dazzling as he was dunking hoops over Steve’s head at 17.

All in all, their life in the West spirals into a hazy, senseless daydream of fucking nonsense. Day in and day out, they cycle through jobs they don’t care about to come home to their half-decorated, musty shitbox to get high and fuck all sweet and messy and sleepy.

Rinse and repeat. It’s brainless and weightless and stupid. It’s not built to last, but it’s everything they never had as teenagers.

The proposal happens when they’re at an arcade—the little one right by the beach, all decked out in neon and attached to this pirate-themed putt-putt course. It’s 7 pm on a Sunday, so naturally they’re high out of their Goddamn skulls. They’re idling by the gumball and prize machines in the back, waiting until they feel centered enough to call a cab home.

Billy is sitting on the carpeted floor—head thrown back, curls smooshed into the sticky wooden back panels of the wall, smiling all syrupy and looking like a taste of sunshine. He’s humming some Blue Oyster Cult song, tongue pinched between his teeth in this delightfully obnoxious way.

It’s too much for Steve to fucking compute, honestly. He blinks at Billy all slow, feeling sticky and dumb and utterly fucking enchanted as he slips coin after coin into the prize machines to try and get the little glow-in-the-dark action figure that had caught Billy’s eye.

Instead, on coin number six, a plastic egg tumbles out, cracking open in Steve’s hands to reveal a child-sized ring. It’s made of glittery pink plastic and chipped to the touch.

Billy’s still got his eyes closed, humming something about how our time has come in this raspy and sweet little voice Steve’s never heard before. He’s somewhere far, far away, lost to a point behind his eyelids, when Steve gets down on one knee. Billy feels the shift. He cracks his eyes open ever so slightly.

“Be mine?” And Jesus, the words eek ever so slowly from Harrington’s brain to his lips. He smiles, numb in the best kind of way. Stupidly brave. Stupid, period. And the longer Steve stays there, wobbly on one knee and waving the ring right in front of Billy’s nose, Billy’s smile grows wider and toothier and messier.

His laugh is fucking contagious.

Ultimately, they fuck on the couch as per usual, dozing off to the tune of Tom and Jerry while palming discount kettle corn into each others’ mouths.

The ring accidentally gets thrown out with the trash. It’s alright, though—nothing really matters anymore.

—

It’s about Neil. The argument, that is. It’s always about fucking Neil. And how he hurts Billy, and how Billy takes it out on the world (how Billy takes it out on Steve), and how it apparently breaks Harrington’s heart in two completely different but equal ways when he sees a new black eye or a hickey and lip stick stains on Billy’s neck, and how “I always knew you were a mean son of a bitch but I never you were such a fucking slut, Hargrove.”

Billy’s flushed down to his toes he’s so pissed. It makes the new scar on his eyebrow and the pretty bruising under his jaw stand out like warning lights. Steve doesn’t take the hint.

Billy shoves back at Harrington, refusing to let the asshole’s extra inch and a half of height get the better of him. His smile is all sharp edges. “Didn’t realize you wanted a monopoly on me, Harrington. Not when you can only fucking touch me when you’re fucking drunk. Can only fuck me from behind, right?” Billy tuts, sickly sweet. “Close your eyes, babydoll. You’ve never looked me in the eyes this long before.”

Billy pushes at him again, and Steve slaps his hands away and knocks Billy in the chest and onto his ass. Hargrove’s had one too many drinks, and his balance is shot. They’re both off-kilter.

“C’mon now, big boy. Tell me you want me.” Billy’s laugh is like a junkyard dog’s. “Fuckin’ pussy. Say it without a handle of daddy’s Goddamn whiskey. Oo, tell me you love me, Stevie.”

Things go on like that for an hour, until it finally melts down into a desperate back-and-forth of Steve demanding begging him to move out of his dad’s house and Billy crying laughing in the asshole’s face.

It ends with Steve on one knee. He doesn’t have a ring prepared. Hell, the thought of ever doing this at all has never once crossed his idiot brain, and he’s at a loss for words as he drops to the carpet in front of Billy with his sweaty hands grasping Billy’s own.

There’s a moment of perfect, rapt anticipation. Billy’s head goes quiet. His heart rises in his chest. The soundtrack swells. It’s idiotic, but he’s left shaking in fear at the words he’s been waiting four fucking months to hear—four months of sneaking behind the bleachers and then foggy rendezvous at the Quarry and then ever so gently fucking on Steve’s couch to the tune of whatever cheeseball video rental Harrington has selected for the week.

Steve’s throat clicks for a few seconds. “I’ll take you away from him,” he settles on.

Suffice it to say, it’s not the declaration Billy had been hoping for.

Steve tells the dentist that he lost the tooth by running into a column at the mall. The Party doesn’t believe him, so he tells them that it was actually from falling flat on his face after getting piss drunk at Tina’s Spring Break bash.

Steve mooches off of Tommy’s shitty weed (and then Arcade Keith’s even shittier stash, when Tommy gets sick of his whining) for the rest of April and a good chunk of May. He sobers up and gets his act together when Billy’s graduation comes around. He’s not invited, but he sneaks in anyway on the pretext of supporting Nancy.

Billy grabs his diploma with a split lip and columns of faded bruises stamped across his neck and collarbones like running tallies. Steve catches Billy’s eyes in the crowd. Steve’s smile is watery and tight.

They meet up in the football stadium’s locker rooms, and Steve adds his lips to the records on Billy’s skin. Then they meet up again that Saturday to pick up their top secret bi-weekly movie night ritual. And as Steve leans over and presses his boozy lips onto Billy’s sleepy head, they don’t talk about Neil or the dumb-fuck proposal or anything else in their cornucopia of shared bullshit. They savor the chance to feel like nothing but stupid, fuckhead kids with nothing to worry about but making sure they don’t wake up with cricks in their necks or noticeable limps.

Billy drifts off to sleep right as he’s gently sucking the salt and butter from Steve’s popcorn-dusted fingers. Steve waits until Billy has started to drool and murmur sweet, brainless nothings when he finally, fucking finally, leans over and whispers something into Billy’s hair—firm but terrified. Billy just hums in his sleep, head lolling and lost to the world as Steve’s words float in one ear and out the other.

He wakes up to chapped lips on his scalp, thumbs working slow circles into his pulsing temples, and a soft “‘Morning, lovely. Whaddya think—waffles or oatmeal?” And for now, it’s enough. It has to be.

It is in regards to young Steven that we are most gravely concerned. It is the opinion of this directorial board that your unsavory activities, which have been witnessed and documented by an anonymous neighboring entity, are wholly unbecoming of a young man of such pedigree, especially one so readily swayed by your criminal influence.

Out of respect for the Harrington family, we will not air out the details of these activities to the rest of this upstanding community. However, we politely request that you either halt this behavior immediately or at the very least conduct yourselves in a manner that does not subject the entire block to the sounds of your nightly extracurricular endeavors.

With the utmost concern,

Sir Thomas Holloway

Majority Speaker, LNHOA

(555) 177-2966

—

dear tom,

if you wanna get your ass licked you could've just said so

love,

billy

—

Dear Mr. Holloway,

Please disregard any previous messages you might've received!!

We'll be more discreet going forward. Also please apologize to Mrs. Whitehill for me—we didn't mean to cause such a racket!

Sincerely,

Steve Harrington

PS: Billy says he's sorry too.

—

Thomas,

Send me the paperwork, and I'll write you a check for the noise complaint. Sorry about the boys, and I hope to see you at the charity gala this weekend! Tell Janet I said hello, and please congratulate Heather on her new beaux. She looks like a fine girl, and I'd be happy to have them both over for dinner some time.

Best,