Quack, Quack
🦆Harringrove
🦆Fluff
🦆G
🦆1.8K
***
“Quack, quack”
Billy does his best to ignore the sound and focus all his attention on the group of Salamanders, the kids aged 4-5 that he’s currently trying to teach to swim, fighting the urge to turn around and look. It’s for the best anyway. He can’t imagine getting the news that your kid drowned in 3 and a half feet of water would make for a very good Mother’s Day present.
“Quack, quack”
God, how Billy both wishes that he was wearing more than a tank top right now, and that the swim lessons in the outdoor pool started before June. More coverage might help hide the blush he can feel creeping down his cheeks onto his chest, and being outside might help tamp down the heat of the flush, but instead, he’s stuck in the indoor pool as he tries to ignore the incessant quacking coming from one Steve Harrington, even as his upper body is painted with evidence of how poor a job he’s doing at it.
See, Billy’s supposed to be the cool one, the mysterious outsider. And from the time he and Max and Susan moved to Hawkins last fall, until recently, he was. Rumours swirled all around about why they moved here from California, ranging from witness protection to Billy having been kicked out of every high school in the sunshine state (which he still can’t understand, because why, even if that was the case, would they move to Indiana, and not like Arizona or Nevada?).
In reality, they’d just moved so Susan and Max could be closer to Max’s grandparents as they got older. And Billy had had no choice but to follow. He’s an asshole sometimes, but he wasn’t about to repay Susan’s kindness at letting him stay after his dad died last summer by putting up a fight about staying in California.
Now, though, the secret’s out. He teaches swim lessons to little kids. He wears reading glasses, which would have remained a secret if Heather hadn’t caught him with them on while studying for his history final and texted everyone a picture less than a minute later. He says please and thank you, helps little old ladies across the street, and shelves books at the public library to rack up the volunteer hours he needs to graduate next spring.
He guessed he doesn’t really have that much of an image to maintain anymore, after all. Steve can do his weird flirting, or whatever the quacking is supposed to be, and Billy will teach his lessons, and then work will be done and he and Harrington can go back to shyly circling each other until one of them finally cracks and asks the other out or they died of old age first. He’s betting on the old person death thing at this point.
He and Steve have been in a weird push and pull since Billy first pulled into town. Steve’s glance up and down Billy’s body at Tina’s Halloween party lasting a little too long. Billy getting a little too close to Steve in the locker room showers. Steve buying Billy a hundred candy cane grams at Christmas, all just signed S. Billy going into Scoops Ahoy! and asking for a sample of each and every flavour, just to make prolonged eye contact with Harrington while he licked the tiny spoon.
It seemed like it was all in good fun, just something to pass the time until Steve went away to college in Chicago in the fall, but now, it seems that pretty boy might be upping his game. In his own, weird, inexplicable way.
“Quack, quack”
Billy finally gives into temptation and looks behind him, only to find Steve sprawled out on a deck chair in the shortest dark green swim trunks Billy’s ever seen, pretending to be engrossed in his phone, laughing overzealously at something on the screen. Billy watches him for a minute, imploring him to look up, but he doesn’t, and eventually, Billy has to turn his attention back to his students.
He focuses back in on them just in time to catch one of them trying to splash another. He blows his whistle loudly enough that he almost drowns out the next “Quack, quack”, but not quite. He turns back to Harrington just in time to see Heather coming out of the back office, headed right for the idiot.
“Harrington!” she shouts, and Steve turns, almost falling out his chair. Billy tries and probably fails to hide his grin. “We’ve had complaints from some of the parents about some quacking coming from your general vicinity. If it’s you, I’m going to have to ask you to stop distracting the students or leave.”
“But Heather, you know I’m… I told you…” Steve starts and stops and starts again.
Heather cuts him off. “Stop or leave. Last warning.”
Steve grabs his phone and towel and walks out the door with one last parting quack.
“That’s it!” Heather calls after him. “I want you off the property, not just out of the building, Steve!”
“That man’s weird,” One of the students floating closest to Billy says as they watch Steve’s retreating form and Billy can’t help but snort out a laugh and nod in agreement. The kid’s right. Harrington is weird. But as it turns out, weird guys are kind of Billy’s thing.
The rest of the class is a lot quieter, and once all his students have been claimed by a parent, Billy dries off and heads out to his car to read and have a snack before the next class. As he exits the building, he notices Harrington standing on the other side of the chain link fence surrounding the property. He doesn’t know whether to approach him or ignore him, but Steve calling out his name makes the decision for him.
“So,” he says, when he’s only a couple of feet from Harrington, “want to tell me what was with the quacking back there?”
Steve unleashes the megawatt grin that definitely does not make Billy go weak in the knees. “You’re a like a mother duck with her ducklings in there,” he replies, as if that makes the situation any clearer.
“Shut up, I am not,” Billy mumbles, trying to fight the blush that’s rapidly spreading back over his upper body. Steve’s right, the kids do follow him around like they were ducklings and he was their mother, but he isn’t going to admit that to Harrington. “And even if it were true, that doesn’t explain why you were in there quacking up a storm, disrupting my class.”
“What day is it today?” Steve asks, expectantly.
“Sunday?” Billy replies, more confused than ever.
“And?” Steve prompts.
Oh, right, it’s Mother’s Day. He and Max made Susan bacon and French toast before Billy left for the pool. Despite lacking his own mother since she’d died when he as nine, it’s kind of a hard day to forget. “Ok, yeah, it’s Mother’s Day. You’re still not making any sense!” And he’s wasting Billy’s break.
Steve is seemingly undeterred by the growing frustration lacing Billy’s tone. “Mothers deserve to be celebrated today. You’re a mother to all those ducklings. Therefore, I was thinking, I could take you out for lunch. Someone should appreciate what a caring mother you are, Hargrove.”
Oh god, this is all a horrible, convoluted attempt to ask Billy out. Jesus Christ, this is bad. He really should have grown the balls to ask Steve out first, to save them both from this misery. “Can’t do lunch, Harrington,” Billy replies, “I took Heather’s afternoon class so she could have lunch with her mom. Some weird high tea thing. She was only in this morning to do paperwork and yell at you.”
Steve’s smile falls for a minute before Billy realizes how his response sounded. “I can do dinner,” he rushed to continue, “if you’re free this evening?”
Harrington’s grin returns, bigger than ever. “Cool, uh, that’s cool. Awesome. Give me your number and I’ll text you the details?” He slides his phone through the fence and Billy grabs it, entering his number and a duck emoji as his contact name, then texts himself a “Quack” so he’ll have Steve’s number too.
He hands the phone back to Steve, who says he’d see Billy later and tells him to have a good shift. Just as Billy’s about to resume the walk to his car, Steve calls out “Wait, do you have any food aversions or allergies?”
“Just no duck!” Billy calls back, unleashing a grin of his own.
***
Later that afternoon, Billy will get ready in front of his vanity mirror, his mom’s old cassettes playing on his giant, outdated boombox, as Max and Heather sit on the bed, eating peanut M&Ms and giving their opinions about his wardrobe selections, Heather having agreed to Drive Max to her friend El’s later in place of Billy, who’d offered to do it before he knew he’d have a date tonight, so Susan can go on a date of her own, with Max’s weird science teacher, Mr. Clarke. He seems weird, but if Susan’s happy, so is Billy.
Steve will ring the doorbell with flowers for Billy in hand, and he’ll open Billy’s car door for him, like a gentleman. Both of them will fidget with nerves until Billy grabs Steve’s hand over the center console as Steve drives.
They’ll talk and laugh as they eat at the fanciest restaurant Billy’s ever gone on a date at before. They’ll have a great time, and Billy will kick himself for not having gone out with Harrington before now.
They’ll linger over dessert, and linger in the car outside Billy’s house, and linger on the front doorstep, until Steve finally says he has to go, they have school in the morning. Billy wants to say fuck school, get back in the car, tell Steve to drive to the quarry, and spend the night talking more.
But he won’t, because he knows they have all summer to be irresponsible teenagers. Their time will come soon, in just a few weeks. Instead, he’ll settle for a kiss that makes him swoon and go a little speechless.
Steve will promise to text and he actually will, and he’ll meet Billy in the school parking lot in the morning and walk him to class. It’ll be perfect, wonderful, better than all of Billy’s dorky daydreams.
But for now, it’ll be just that, a dorky daydream, as Billy sits in the car, ignoring his book in favour of imaging what can be, what will be, for this mother duck and his ridiculous golden goose.
