𐙚 bae!

You find Munson first.

Metalhead damn near levitates when he spots you. Billy can’t hear the words over the music, but he gets the gist from the way Eddie’s face goes slack, then stupidly bright. You spin for him, mock-showy, elbow catching some zombie. Eddie laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen, every inch of him angled towards you like he’s helpless against your gravity.

He’s the person dearest to me. Which is more than you’ll ever be.

Billy’s jaw tightens.

He tells himself it’s nothing. He tells himself he doesn’t care who you came with, what you’re wearing, what you do. Except then Eddie drags you to the living room, and you let him. Let him pull you. Let him put his hands on you. Let him be the one you laugh with, and it all feels like some fucked up joke. 

You disappear into the crush of bodies, and Billy stays where he is, shoulder to the frame, a girl pressed against his side whose name he can’t be bothered to remember but who keeps mentioning how good she is with her mouth. He watches the room instead. Watches for Munson’s ridiculous curls, for the flicker of your jacket, for the way your body moves.

He catches glimpses. You spinning under Eddie’s arm. Your head thrown back in a laugh, eyes closed like you forgot the ceiling exists. Munson acting like a fucking cartoon, all flailing limbs and no rhythm, and somehow you’re smiling at him like that’s enough, like it’s the happiest you’ve ever been. 

Something sour sits under Billy’s tongue. He crushes his cigarette out in a half-empty beer can, fishing for another without looking. He’s been restless all day, all week. Since the game. Since the way you stood up to him in that hallway to defend a girl you didn’t even know, and that cold night after the game when you told him you’re not good for me.

He takes a swallow of warm beer and reminds himself of what he is. What you think he is. What he’s proven himself to be, over and over. So when he feels that prickle along the back of his neck—someone looking, really looking with weight that haunts him into his goddamn dreams—it’s already halfway to anger before he turns.

You’re alone when you push back into the kitchen. Munson must’ve gotten distracted by Madonna or some other shiny thing. Sweat shines on your skin, your hair is a little messy, and your lips rest parted on a breath. You go for the cooler like you’re on a mission, crack a beer against the counter like you’ve done it a hundred times, and the casual confidence in the move goes straight to his dick. You look looser. Softer at the edges. Drunk, maybe. Reckless, definitely.

Billy doesn’t decide to move. His body just does it for him, unable to ignore the pull.

The crowd parts for him without him having to ask. It always does. People step aside when they see the leather, when they see the look on his face. He keeps his gait easy, loose, like he’s not already strung tight as a wire. He stops just in front of you, close enough that your scent and smoke and sweat hit him over the stink of the room. Your eyes flick up at him, annoyed first, then sharp in that particular way he craves.

“Mechanic,” he says, like the party’s just gone from tolerable to interesting. His voice cuts through the noise without him needing to raise it.

“Hargrove.” Flat. Guard up.

“Didn’t think parties were your scene.” He lets his gaze run over you slowly, deliberate, because he wants to see you feel it. Wants to watch what it does to you, if he can boil your blood the way you boil his.

“They’re not.”

He tips his head. “So what are you doing here?” 

You snap back something sharp about not needing his permission. He expects the bite. What he doesn’t expect is the way his own mouth quirks, like he’s enjoying this more than he should.

“New look,” he says. Because it is. Because it rattles him, and the only way to keep a hold of himself is to turn it around on you.

“What about it?” you fire back.

He shrugs, trying for casual. “Nothing. Just makes me wonder what you’re trying to prove.”

He doesn’t mean it to come out like that. Doesn’t mean to sound like Neil with his “who are you trying to impress, boy?” bullshit. But the second the words are out, he hears it; feels how it lands wrong between you.

Your pulse jumps in your neck. “I’m not trying to prove anything.”

“Liar.” Automatic. Everyone in this town’s trying to prove something. Trying to prove they’re not scared. They’re not poor. They’re not stuck. He’s just saying what nobody else does.

You step in, right up into his space, eyes locked on his, and it’s stupid how much he loves this. The defiance. The heat in it, the way it coils around his bones every time, fuelling him. The fact that you don’t back down from him, not really. You’re throwing “you’re in my space” at him like that’s not exactly where he wants to be. If he could, he would plant himself somewhere you would never be able to ignore him. It’s such a childish want, but who can stop him from feeling it?

“Yeah?” Billy says, leaning closer, chasing the fight. “What are you gonna do about it?”

He thinks you’ll shove him. Or storm off. Or start listing all the ways he’s a piece of shit because that’s how this usually goes between you. What Billy doesn’t expect is for your hand to shoot up, fast as a snake, and hook into the chain around his neck.

The medallion catches the kitchen light as you drag him in. His breath stutters.

The whole world contracts to the cool press of metal against the base of his throat and the warmth of your fingers on it. The way your knuckles brush his collarbone. The way your eyes go dark and focused, lashes low as you turn St. Christopher over like you own the right to it, to him.

“What are you doing?” he manages, and his voice is rougher than he intends. It’s been a long time since anyone’s touched the damn thing without yanking it, using it to haul him around. This is different. Careful, almost. Gentle in a way he has no idea what to do with. 

“Examining your jewellery,” you answer, breath ghosting the space between you.

You study it like it’s a problem to solve. Your thumb brushes the little dent on the side from where Neil slammed him into a wall two summers ago, chain snapping and charm bouncing off tile before he scrambled to grab it. Billy watches that thumb trace the mark like you can read the history in it, and a weird, cold-hot feeling slides down his spine.

“Where did you get this?” you ask.

Billy’s jaw locks up. He could lie. Could say some girl gave it to him, could say he stole it or that he got one for himself. Every answer feels like handing you something sharp enough to gut him with because they’re all untrue, and the medallion means too much to lie about.

“Why do you care?” he counters.

“Answer the question.”

He flicks his eyes over your face. You’re not letting this go. He can see it. That stubborn choke-hold you get when you’ve decided something matters. Fuck, he wishes you would let it go. But he also knows, deep down, that you would be just another face if you didn’t demand, if you weren’t just like him, dogged in the worst goddamn way when you want something. 

“California,” he grits out finally. “Surf shop in San Diego. My mom gave it to me before—” Before she left. Before she walked out and didn’t look back. Before she handed him this saint of travellers, as if it were going to keep him safe, and then left him stranded with Neil, with his cruelty and fists. “Why?”

“Because my dad had one, too,” you reply, quieter.

The floor drops out from under him for a second. His eyes snap to yours. Your pupils flare, catching the light, and there’s an intensity there he’s never let himself look at head-on. Dad had one, too. Before he left.

Of course.

Something ugly and tender twists inside Billy’s chest. For a second, he sees it: two kids on opposite sides of the country, each with a parent who gave them a little silver promise and then vanished. He clamps down on the feeling prickling in his chest hard because showing it would be pathetic. 

“So what, you’re feeling nostalgic?” he sneers, because the alternative is letting that hurt show. “Wanna bond over daddy issues?”

You don’t flinch. “No. I want to dance.”

Billy blinks. For a moment, he thinks he misheard you. The room noise roars back in—the music, people yelling over each other, some idiot laughing too loud—and you’re still there, still holding his chain, eyes steady on his, saying I want to dance like it’s a goddamn fact.

“You want to dance,” he repeats, voice flat with disbelief. “With me. After spending the last few months acting like I’m contaminated.”

“I’m feeling generous.”

“Are you drunk?”

“I’m feeling reckless,” you say, and your fingers skim his collarbone as you let go of the chain. The trail of touch burns all the way down his body. “Got some moves for me, California? Or are you all talk?”

His brain is a knot of suspicion and raw want. You’ve never offered him anything that wasn’t edged. This feels like a trap. But you’re looking at him like that, like you’re daring him, and he’s been thinking about you, standing in the ocean of his mind, telling him not yet. And how you’re offering the chance to touch you without a fight, without anger. 

Reckless. Yeah. Billy knows a thing or two about that. 

Without looking away, he flicks his cigarette into some freshman’s cup, hears the abortive protest die the second the kid sees his face. He offers you his hand, not a gentlemanly gesture—he’s never been that—but a challenge.

You don’t take it. 

You shrug out of your jacket, toss it somewhere, shoulder clipping his bare chest as you push past. The contact is like being touched by electricity. He inhales sharply, the smell of you sticking in his head, and then he laughs under his breath because of course. Of fucking course you do it your way.

He follows.

The living room is a furnace. Bodies pressed tight, lights low, Bowie posters curling on the walls. The song shifts just as you step in, some track people scream for—Heroes, he realises a beat later, the whole room yelling along to we could be heroes like any of these assholes know what that means. You move first, and it’s small at the start. Hips catching the beat, shoulders loosening as you let music sweep you up. He circles you like he’s testing the fence. Doesn’t touch, not yet. Just lingers close enough to feel the heat radiating off you like an addict prolonging the anticipation of the first hit.

“You dance like you fight,” he leans in to murmur, mouth almost at your ear.

You don’t look at him. “And you fight like you dance. All show.”

Billy laughs. Can’t even help himself. It comes out real and rough at the edges, some startled bark of amusement he doesn’t recognise. He hasn’t laughed like that in so long he’s forgotten he could even produce a sound like that, one that doesn’t end mean. It irritates him that you can pull it out of him, and you don’t even seem to be trying to. Plenty of girls have tried in the past and never once gotten anywhere close. 

The music drives you both forward. He reads your body without meaning to, like a part of him already knows every move you’ll make before you commit to doing it. The way you’re holding back, even now. The subtle tension in your neck, the way the beer has loosened you but not enough to wipe out caution.

He closes the distance.

One hand lands on your waist when you stumble, the other hovering near your shoulder. He’s ready for you to jerk away, to tell him to fuck off. You freeze, just for a heartbeat, eyes snapping up to his, searching. He sees it then—something like surprise, because his grip isn’t hurting. He’s not digging in. He’s just… holding you.

“See?” he says, low, letting pride curl around the words. “I have moves after all, huh?”

You glare, but your mouth twitches, and fuck, it looks good on you, and feels even better to know that he’s the reason for it. “Don’t get cocky, Hargrove.”

“Too late.”

He pulls you back into the beat. He doesn’t drag; he guides. It’s instinct. He knows how to lead when people let him. On the court, in the car. Here. He’s not good at many simple things, but Billy’s body knows music, knows motion and its rules, and you follow. That’s the part that drives him crazy. For once, you simply follow and the rush of it, of that sliver of trust, tangles a complicated knot inside his chest. 

It shouldn’t feel like anything; it’s just a stupid dance, but it feels like everything. 

He spins you, slower this time, your hands ghosting, your hair brushing his arm, and then you’re back against his chest. His palms find your hips like they were always meant to, like his hands are this exact shape and size because they were meant to brace your hips exactly like this. Billy breathes you in, nose near the curve of your neck, and fuck, you smell like cheap beer and soap and something that’s just you, and he wants to breathe you in forever. 

If Billy could freeze reality and stay in a single moment of his life forever, it would be this one. Just eternity of this, of you. 

One hand slides up from your hip to your stomach, fingers spreading, dragging you back flush against him. He doesn’t even think about it; his body simply wants more contact and takes it. And the best part is that you welcome it, lean into it, breathing with him, swaying and humming.

“Fuck,” he breathes, so quiet he almost doesn’t hear it himself.

Because you relax, just a fraction. Let your head tip back against his shoulder for a second. Trust him with the balance, and it punches straight through his ribcage. His grip tightens, and Billy knows, distantly and a touch greedily, that he’s leaving marks. He wants to. Wants evidence. Something to look at later as proof that this wasn’t all in his head. He hates himself a little for thinking it.

You laugh, head tilted, throat bared. The room around you screams we could be heroes, just for one day, and for one insane heartbeat, Billy allows himself to imagine it. You somewhere that isn’t Hawkins. Your hair blowing in California wind, sand between your toes, your head angled towards the sun with ocean salt on your lips, no Neil, no step-brats, no Munson.

Just you, the ocean, and him. Together. 

“You’re not the centre of the universe,” you say suddenly, sharp enough to slice through the fantasy.

He huffs a laugh into your hair because if he doesn’t make a joke, he might say something worse. “Wanna bet?”

You pull away just enough that the air rushes back between you, too cold, so Billy chases. 

You brush his chest with the back of your hand as you turn, and the skin there is hot, slick with sweat. Electricity arcs from your touch straight down his spine. Your fingers climb, curling around the back of his neck, nails scraping lightly into the curls at his nape. Every nerve in him lights up, snapping, impossibly, even more awake.

“You need to—” he starts, because if you keep doing that, he’s going to forget where you are, who’s watching, what he is to you.

“Need to what?” 

Your mouth is too close. Your eyes are wide, pupils blown, challenge and invitation both.

“Stop doing that before I forget we’re in public,” he grinds out.

You do it again.

And Billy snaps. Not in the way he usually does—shouting, throwing punches—but in the smaller, more detrimental way. His gloved hand comes up, wrapping around your jaw like it’s done before, thumb dragging over your bottom lip, that swell of flesh he wants to taste and nip with his teeth until he’s imprinted there forever.

Your lips part for him, breath hot against his skin. You don’t pull away, your gaze steady on him, pinning him in place. Liquid fire rushes through his veins, and Billy leans in eagerly. He’s going to kiss you. Right here, in this ugly living room with fake cobwebs and Tina’s parents’ money paying for their soundtrack. Right where everyone can see you’re not scared of him. That you chose this, chose him.

Someone slams into you from behind.

You jolt, weight tipping from its axis. Billy’s hand shoots out, pure reflex, closing around your upper arm to steady you.

You flinch like he’s electrocuted you, jerking away.

Billy drops his hand like he’s touched a hot stove. A cold feeling flushes through him because he knows this reaction; he’s had it himself a thousand times: instinctive jerk away from pain. His eyes snap to where his fingers just were, to your skin. A finger-shaped bruise blooms on your arm, four darker marks stark in the light. Too ugly and so familiar, Billy forces back bile. 

“What the fuck is that.”

It tears out of him before he can soften it. Not a question so much as a verdict.

You yank your arm in, shield it with your body. “Nothing.”

“Don’t bullshit me.” His hand catches your wrist, not gently this time, not like earlier. He yanks your arm back into the light because now he needs to see, needs to learn exactly what was done. The bruise is worse than he thought at first glance. Too deep, fresh too, because he knows all there is to know about this particular cycle of biology. Exactly like all the times Neil’s fingers got printed on his own skin, but worse, because it’s you.

He can feel his pulse in his teeth, at the back of his skull.

“Some asshole from work,” you say eventually, and your voice sounds wrong to him, too small in a way it never is. “This afternoon. At the shop. He grabbed me. Frank kicked him out. It’s fine.”

It’s not fucking fine. Neil’s hands on his mom flash behind Billy’s eyes like a shitty reel, except this time it’s you overlapping the shape, your head snapping to the side, you crying out.

“It’s not fine.” He can hear his own voice, and it’s frightening even to him. Empty in a way that means violence. “Name. Now.”

You lie. He’d bet his car on it. Claim you don’t know.

“Description, then. Car. Something.” His grip tightens without meaning to as he reaches for details. “Give me something to work with.”

“Billy, it doesn’t matter—”

“It matters.” His eyes won’t leave the bruises. His jaw is clenching so hard there’s a throb in his temple. He’s picturing some fucker’s hand there. Picturing the look on your face when it happened. Picturing his own hand on your jaw, on your throat, all the times he’s crowded you and told himself it was different because it wasn’t fear. “Some piece of shit put his hands on you, and you’re telling me it doesn’t matter?”

You bring up Frank again. Say he handled it.

“Frank should’ve put him in the fucking hospital,” Billy spits, finally tearing his gaze up to your eyes. They’re big, blown wide with anger and something he doesn’t recognise. “Tell me what he looked like.”

Your heart is going a mile a minute. He can see it in the hollow of your throat. “Billy, you can’t—”

“Can’t what?” he snaps. “Find him? Make sure he understands what happens when you touch things that don’t belong to you?”

As soon as it’s out, he hears it: hears Neil in those words, that same controlling bite, the same poison. He hears every asshole in this town talking about their property. Cold slides through your eyes, replacing the warmth he’s finally got to feel directed at him, no matter how briefly.

“Things that don’t belong to you,” you repeat, slow like poison.

Billy realises right then and there that he fucked it. Because he made it about him, about ownership. His own ego. That isn’t what he meant. Or—fuck, maybe it was, a little. He doesn’t know where the line is anymore between wanting you safe and wanting you as his.

He tries to pivot. “You know what I meant.”

“Do I?”

“I meant—” 

He doesn’t even know how to phrase it. That if someone hurts you, he can’t just… do nothing. That the thought of you being scared and him not doing shit about it makes him feel like he’s eight again in the Hargrove kitchen back in San Diego, listening to the sound of his mother’s suitcase scraping the floor as she walks out, leaving him behind in a nightmare.

“I meant someone needs to teach that asshole a lesson.”

“Oh,” you say, and your voice is like broken glass now. “And you think violence is the answer.”

“It’s the only language assholes like that understand,” he bites out.

And he believes it. Neil never listened to nice. Or reason, or pleading, or even begging. He listened only to fear, to broken noses on the playground, to the news that his son was the scariest thing around town, willing to shed blood and be a man. 

He sees the way your face changes at those words. The way something hammers shut behind your eyes.

“Yeah, well, it’s also the language that gets you arrested,” you fire back. “Gets you kicked off the basketball team. Gives your father another reason to—”

You cut yourself off. Don’t say it because you don’t have to. Billy hears it anyway, loud and clear. Another reason to hit you. Another reason to treat you like you’re a mistake. Like you’re weak because he is.  

His skin goes tight and hot. “My father. Right. Because that’s what this is about. You think I’m going to turn into him if I—”

“I think you’re looking for an excuse to hurt someone and using me as justification.”

That hits closer to home than he wants. He laughs instead of admitting it. “That’s such bullshit—”

“Is it?” Your voice rises, and some people nearby turn to look, and Billy wants to bark at them to mind their fucking business, that this, everything, is between you and him, and no one else. “Because it seems like you’re more pissed off about the fact that someone else touched me than you are about the fact that I got hurt.”

He wants to scream that it’s both. That the thought of you hurt makes him sick, that the thought of another man’s hand on you makes him homicidal, but the words tangle with pride and habit.

“Why the hell are you working there at all?” he throws back instead. 

It sounds different in his head, more like concern. Out loud, it sounds like blame, borderline accusation. 

“Because I like eating,” you snap back. “And the power company doesn’t do charity.”

“You shouldn’t be there,” he insists, gesturing sharply. “Not with men like that. You’re putting yourself in their way.”

He means: it’s dangerous. He means: he’s seen how guys talk in garages, has been that guy more times than he cares to admit. He means: he knows what a room full of men will do to a girl they don’t think anyone will protect.

But what you hear is something else entirely.

“You literally just said I shouldn’t work there so some asshole can put his hands on me.”

“I’m saying you shouldn’t give them the chance,” he grinds out, frustration spiking. 

Why can’t you just hear what he means? How come no one alive understands him better, sees him better, and yet misunderstands him more than you? 

Your hands are shaking now, trembling at your sides. Your eyes shine in the low light, not with tears but with rage. He feels the old, ugly instinct rise—tell you he’s not like them, that he’s on your side. He reaches for it and only grabs more anger.

“I’m trying to—” he starts.

“To what?” you snap. “Protect me?”

Billy doesn’t answer, and the silence damns him even more.

You laugh, a sound so brittle in cuts through him. “I didn’t ask you to protect me. I asked you to dance.”

Those words land like a punch to his mouth. Because you did. For once, you came to him without an agenda, without wanting to tell him he’s fucked up, how he could be this or that. You said I want to dance because you had a shitty day, and he still managed to turn it into a fight.

He leans in, because that’s what he does when he feels cornered—closes distance instead of giving it. “If I hear some guy at that shop put his hands on you—”

“You’ll do what?” you throw at him, stepping closer too. “Beat him up? Feel like a big man? Make it about you and your fists instead of the fact I shouldn’t need a man to defend me just to exist?”

Billy’s hands curl into fists at his sides. He wants to shake you and kiss you and drag you out of this house in equal measure. He wants to tell you, then, that he would never let some prick put his hands on you. Not because of his ego, or because—no matter how much he chafes against it—that small, greedy part of him that got left behind considers you his, but because—

“You don’t get it,” he growls.

“I get it perfectly.” Betrayal rings through your words, trembling around the edges, and he wants to put his fist through a wall because how did one of the best moments of his shitty life spiral into this? “I get that for one minute, I thought you were actually different. That I could have fun with you, but this version of me isn’t for you. You’ve made that perfectly clear.”

Something in him flinches. Some stupid soft part he keeps pretending isn’t there anymore, isn’t weak. The you from his ocean dreams stands in front of him for a brief second, those same eyes, piercing and too shrewd, when you told him: This isn’t for you. Not this version of me.

“Yeah?” he says, and his voice comes out colder than he intended. “Well, good.”

He can see the way the word hits you. Can almost see it happen—the way you close off, the way your shoulders go rigid.

“Right,” you say, bright and brittle. “My mistake. I forgot you only do two things: hurt people and pretend it doesn’t matter.”

Not true, his brain wants to snap. I don’t pretend. It matters too fucking much. But you’re already rolling, already ripping into him, and every word is true in ways he doesn’t want to face. You lay it out: he had one chance to say I’m sorry that happened to you and leave it. One chance to just be there, not fix, not control. And he blew it. He tries to defend himself. Says he’s trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Says if you’re too stubborn to accept help, that’s your problem, not his. Even as he’s saying it, Billy hears Neil again, hears all those lectures about how his mom “made him do it,” how she should’ve known better, should’ve been better.

“Help,” you repeat, like the word tastes foul. “Is that what you call it? Because it sounds a lot like you trying to control the situation. Trying to control me.”

He throws up his hands. “I’m not—”

“You are,” you cut in. “You grabbed me in the past, too, remember? Your hand on my jaw. That was you trying to control me, too.”

He swallows. He remembers every time. Remembers the unease in your eyes that first night in your drive, beneath the engine rumble and the cool breeze. Remembers the way it thrilled and disgusted him that he could do that, that he could make someone like you freeze.

“That was different—”

“Was it?” you ask, and your voice is shaking with how much you’re holding back. “Because right now it feels pretty fucking similar.”

He hasn’t forgotten. Billy never forgets anything he’s ashamed of. He just shoves it under new sins until the stack is too high to see over. Because if he doesn’t, he’ll have to face it, live with it, and that would eat him alive. 

“The problem isn’t my job, Billy. The problem is men who think they have the right. And apparently you’re one of them.”

That one goes straight through him. For a heartbeat, all the sound drops out from around him. It’s just the two of you, your words hanging between you like smoke. One of them. Like Neil. Like every bastard he swore he wouldn’t be, and yet is.

“Fuck you,” he says, because there’s nothing else left that doesn’t sound like begging.

It comes out quieter than he wanted, almost hoarse. But you only stare at him, breath heaving. Whatever fragile truce you had during your dance, the stupid, brief moment of being just a boy and a girl moving to Bowie, is gone.

You turn. Billy doesn’t stop you.

He watches you shoulder your way through the crowd, ignoring Munson’s worried call, ignoring everyone. The front door sucks you out, and the cold night pours in for a second, raising goosebumps on his arms. Then you’re gone, and the heat rushes back, and the party swallows the space you left like you were never there.

He realises his hands are still shaking. That he’s still half hard, and that’s, for once, low on his list of problems.

Someone calls out his name. Tina, maybe, tugging at his sleeve. Asking if he wants another drink, if everything’s okay, if he’s coming back to the fun. He shrugs her off without looking. His eyes are still on the door because, for maybe twenty minutes, he had something that didn’t feel like punishment. You laughed with him, touched him like you wanted to, trusted him enough to lean back, to let him hold you up.

And then he did what he always does.

He ruined it.

The party vomits him out into the freezing Indiana night in a blur of beer breath and cheap costumes, and he’s got half a mind to go back in and find somebody willing and mindless to burn this feeling out of him. It would be so fucking easy. There were at least three girls eyeing him like a dare all night. He knows how to play that game with his eyes closed.

But his body’s wired wrong.

It’s not their hands he remembers when the door slams behind him, and the bass dulls to a heartbeat through the walls.

It’s yours.

Your palm on his shoulder when he spun you too fast, nails biting through leather. The heat of your waist under his hand, the way your body fit against his for one treacherous second when you stopped fighting the beat and started moving with it. The flash of your laugh—real, cracked open, not barbed at all—before you remembered who you were supposed to be and it all went to shit.

He leans against the Camaro, breath ghosting in the cold, trying to get a grip.

His heart’s pounding like he just went three rounds with some asshole behind the gym—not because of a fight, but because of a dance. That thought alone makes him want to punch something.

Billy can still see the exact moment it turned—his fingers closing around your arm, your flinch like a gunshot, the bruise blooming under your sleeve. The way his brain went red with murder, then tangled into that ugly, familiar script about whose fault it is that men are monsters.

He watched your face close up like a door.

Just for a minute there, he had you. Really had you. Not under him, not conquered—with him. Moving, laughing, letting yourself exist near him without spitting fire.

And he fucked it in record time.

“Idiot,” he mutters to himself, grinding his teeth.

Billy gets behind the wheel and peels out faster than he needs to, engine snarling down the road like it’s equally as pissed off. Trees blur around him, headlights cutting through pockets of fog. The world outside the car is black and muddy, all the colour bled out of it.

Inside, it’s just him and the ghost of your body pressed close, the phantom heat of your laugh under his ribs.

Billy hates it.

He hates that wanting someone feels so much like losing control.

. . .

The next afternoon, the gym is loud enough to drown out most thoughts.

Squeak of sneakers, thud of balls on hardwood, the echo of the coach’s whistle. The easy, dumb laughter of boys who’ve never had to think about anything more complicated than the next game, the next girl, the next six-pack.

Billy leans against the bank of lockers, towel slung around his neck, hair damp and curling at the ends. He’s riding the high of practice—the good kind of ache in his legs, the burn in his lungs, the way the team follows his lead without needing it spelled out. On the court, the rules are simple: be fast, be brutal, be better.

Off the court, the rules are the same, just messier.

Tommy slaps him on the shoulder as he drops onto the bench opposite. “Man, you were insane out there,” he says. “Think you scared half the other team just by looking at them.”

Billy smirks. “Half?”

A few of the guys laugh. They’re towelling off, changing, talking shit. Someone brings up the party. Someone else mentions the way some sophomore puked in the punch bowl and how some girl they know lost her virginity, which launches a whole debate about virginity vs experience that Billy only half listens to. 

“Dude,” one of the juniors says, pulling his shirt on with a wiggle. “Serious question. What’s your type, Hargrove?”

There’s a chorus of agreement. “Yeah, man, what does it for you?”

Billy doesn’t even pause. Performance is muscle memory. “Hot,” he drawls, dragging the towel over his chest. “Breathing. Not picky.”

Laughter bounces off the metal.

Tommy snorts. “That older chick last week looked like she wanted to eat you alive,” he jokes, wiggling his brows. “That one with the red nails? Bet you got a thing for the moms.”

Billy rolls his eyes, playing it up. “Single moms are dedicated, man. They got… stamina.”

More howls. A couple of them make “wooow” noises, and someone tosses a balled-up sock at him. It’s easy to smirk. Easy to lean back and spread his legs and act like the king he’s worked himself into being. He tosses a few more lines—something about cheerleaders, about girls who know how to shut up, about the difference between good girls and boring girls.

The whole time, somewhere under the practised filth, his brain tries to answer the question for real.

What’s your type?

He tries to summon the usual fantasies: the laughing mouths, the eager eyes, the girls whose names he forgets before he’s even zipped his jeans back up. They come, hazy and repetitive, like Xeroxed images in a neat stack.

Then something else muscles in.

Not a type.

A face.

You, shoving him in the chest, teeth bared. You, hands blackened with grease, sliding across the engine of his Camaro that very first time he met you. You, head tipped back in laughter against his chest, eyes bright before they hardened again. Billy remembers the weight of your hip under his palm when he dragged you closer on the dance floor, the way you didn’t collapse into him, didn’t melt. You resisted and chose to move anyway.

The rush that came with that—the feeling of being matched—makes his skin prickle even now. He swallows it down because it makes him think of the bruise again, of the way the moment curdled like spoiled milk. If he lingers, his face will give him away.

“Come on, man,” someone presses. “Blondes? Brunettes? Cheerleaders? Band chicks?”

Billy smirks again because smirking is easy, because it’s convincing when he does it, or used to be when this really was all he knew or cared about. “Seriously, don’t care,” he shoots back, bored and dismissive. “Long as they know how to use their mouth.”

More groans, more laughter, loud and hooting. It’s disgusting. It’s expected. It’s safe.

Tommy leans in, conspiratorial this time, a glimmer in his eyes. “How about the mechanic? Looked like you two got real cosy last night, man. I felt like blushing just watching.”

Billy’s body goes tight before he can stop it. He forces himself to shrug because he would rather avoid another repeat of the hallway fight, instead choosing safer waters, something that won’t make him snarl and slam Tommy’s big head into a locker and tell him you’re not his to look at in the first place. “She’s not my type.”

He can feel the truth sitting under his tongue like a live wire. His type, apparently, is cold fire and stubbornness and a mouth that won’t quit. Someone who looks at him like she sees the cracks and doesn’t run. Someone who makes him feel like the version of himself in his own head isn’t inevitable.

He hates that.

So Billy laughs, tosses a towel at Tommy, and lets the conversation skid back to safer targets.

He can’t afford to give you that kind of space in his brain anymore.

You’ve already taken too much as it is. 

. . .

Billy times getting home like a military operation.

Lights off in the drive? Good sign. TV glow in the living room? Bad sign. The particular way the house seems to hold its breath, too many lights on? Worst sign. 

Tonight, there’s a line of yellow seeping out under the curtains and the blue flicker of the television painting the front window. 

Billy’s stomach tightens. He kills the engine and sits in the dark for a moment, letting the Camaro tick as it cools. His heart pounds in that rapid, small way—nothing like the adrenaline rush of a fight or a game, but a pathetic little rabbit hoping to outrun his fate even when he knows he’ll never escape the jaws around his neck. This is the rabbit heartbeat, the one he hates most, the one he’s never quite managed to beat out of himself.

He tells himself he’s not afraid. He’s just… prepared.

He walks up the front path with his shoulders relaxed, keys jingling a little too loud in his hand. The night air is sharp in his lungs. He can hear the TV before he opens the door—commentary from some sports game, crowd noise, Neil’s low rumble of disapproval at whatever the players are doing wrong.

Billy steps inside.

The living room smells like beer and aftershave. Neil is in his chair, socked feet up, a half-empty bottle on the side table. His eyes cut to Billy the second the door clicks shut.

“You’re late.”

Billy shrugs out of his jacket, keeping his movements loose. “Practice ran over,” he lies easily. “Coach wanted to talk plays.”

Neil snorts. “Coach wants to keep his job,” he rumbles. “You win, he looks good. You lose, he finds someone else to blame.”

Billy doesn’t answer. There’s no right answer anyway. Though silences can be just as tricky to navigate, he can never give Neil the impression that he’s ignoring him or hurrying him along. It’s a tightrope Billy learned to walk over the years. Just enough, never too little, and certainly never too much. 

“Shower,” Neil adds, wrinkling his nose as if sweat itself is a moral failing. “You smell like a locker room.”

Billy nods obediently, keeps it casual. “Yes, sir.”

He can feel Neil’s gaze on the back of his neck as he moves down the hallway, and has to resist the urge to hunch his shoulders. Hunching reads like guilt, guilt reads like weakness, and weakness is an invitation. He gets into the bathroom and closes the door quietly, gaze cutting briefly to Max’s closed doors. Not a sound or a whisper. 

Only then, enclosed in another space, does Billy let his jaw unclench.

The shower is quick, too hot, scalding his skin. Soap that smells like generic pine and cheap cologne, scrubbed over bruised knuckles and the faint marks on his arms from where you slapped his hand away. He stands under the spray until the hot water begins to cool. He doesn’t think about you in there. He refuses to. He focuses on the rhythm of breath, the sound of water on tile, the familiar catalogue of aches and pains in his own body.

When Billy emerges, towel slung low on his hips, the house is quieter. TV volume down. Neil moving around in the kitchen, the clink of a bottle against glass, the scrape of a chair. Billy darts past the doorway before Neil can call him in.

“Bed,” he throws over his shoulder, not waiting for confirmation.

It’s a risk, but Neil’s had enough to drink that the path of least resistance might actually be to let him go. He expects a barked order, a demand, something equally as nasty. Nothing comes. Billy gets to his room and exhales for half a second, like someone cut a string. He locks the door, then checks it. He shouldn’t, really. It’s a provocation if Neil notices. But tonight the thought of that handle turning, of that bulk filling the frame, of that voice dripping dismay over something Billy can’t even predict—it makes his chest tight enough to hurt.

He needs one night without a scene. He drops onto the bed and stares at the ceiling.

The house creaks around him. A familiar orchestra he’s learned to sleep through. He can tell, by the pattern of footsteps and the way the sound of the TV gets abruptly cut off, when Neil finally goes to his and Susan’s room.

Only then does Billy’s body start to relax. Only then does his mind open the door you’ve been pounding on all day. The dance. The way your body moved against his, the way your eyes lit up just before they sharpened again. The sudden, ugly turn when he grabbed you wrong and saw pain flash across your face.

He rolls onto his side, working his tight jaw.

His dick is still half-hard, stupid and stubborn, responding to half-remembered contact. He could take care of it. It would be easy. He’s done it a thousand times with far less stimulus. Close his eyes, picture skin and mouths, get it over with. But every time he tries to drag up a faceless body, it morphs into you. Your eyes looking at him like you’re about to call him on his own bullshit. Your hand at his shoulder, curling there with a hint of possessiveness he recognised in himself. Your mouth a breath away from something that could’ve gone a different way if either of you knew how.

Billy swears under his breath and throws his arm over his eyes.

The house is quiet, but his head is a riot.

Sleep doesn’t feel like surrender tonight. It feels like getting dragged under.

. . .

The ocean greets him like an old friend. 

He’s standing at the edge of it again—Hawkins gone, Indiana gone, the pine trees replaced by a horizon that stretches forever. The sky is colourless, heavy, the clouds abovehead forming a low ceiling. The water glows faintly from within, sick green-blue light pulsing with the tide like a heartbeat. The sand is cool under his bare feet, packed hard from ocean spray. Wind tugs at his hair, curls tickling over his forehead. The air tastes like salt and metal and something sweeter he can’t quite name.

You’re there, exactly where he knew you’d be.

Further down the shore, at that place where the tide reaches up and retreats, letting the foam lick your boots. Hands in your pockets. Shoulders relaxed in a way he’s never seen when you’re awake, except for when you shared your dance. Your hair moves with the wind, not fighting it, and the ocean-light paints your figure in strange, otherworldly colours.

You still look different here, like the version he hoards, but slightly to the left. Like the edges of you have been sharpened and softened all at once by things he hasn’t seen yet. Haunted, yeah, but not hollow, not the way Billy knows he is.

Tonight, something in your expression has shifted. Not much, but enough to feel like an invitation. It pisses him off that that’s what he notices first. He starts walking without meaning to, sand whispering under his steps.

“You again,” he calls, because sarcasm is armour, even here.

You turn your head slightly, profile cutting clean against the dull sky.

“Me again,” you agree, taking him in with such intensity that Billy almost lowers his eyes.

Your voice fits this place, lower, raspier, like the comfort of the ocean crashing in his ears. Or maybe his mind just recognises you, he can’t quite tell in this place, strange as it is. Billy stops a few feet away, where the water just reaches his toes, then pulls back, leaving nothing but a chill behind.

“Am I allowed to touch you yet?” he asks, half a joke, half not. “Or is this still look-but-don’t-touch time?”

You really look at him now, eyes sweeping over his face, his posture, the tension he can’t hide even when he’s dreaming. There’s so much in your gaze he doesn’t want to understand, so much it would freak him out if he weren’t dreaming.

Your answer is simple. “No,” you say lightly. “Not yet.”

He snorts. “Figures.”

Billy wants to reach out anyway. Just to see what happens. Just to test the edges of the rules here. The ocean, the sky, you—it all feels like a system he could maybe crack if he pushed hard enough, it’s his own head afterall. But something in your stance stops him. Not fear or rejection. More like you’re protecting him from what would happen if he tried.

“Stop looking at me like you know something I don’t,” he snaps, because anger is easier than whatever else this is.

You smile faintly. “I do know things you don’t.”

He hates that his pulse jumps at that.  “Like what?” he demands.

You don’t answer the challenge directly. Instead, you tilt your head, sea-light catching in your eyes. You’re searching for words, or maybe something else, and Billy braces because he feels like he will not enjoy whatever you say next.

“You felt it. At the party.”

He tries and fails to keep his voice level. “Felt what?”

“That you’re capable of something other than hurting,” you tell him, matter-of-fact.

The words hit like a punch to the solar plexus. He scoffs, too fast to be convincing. “Yeah? You see a different movie than me, sweetheart? ’Cause last I checked, I did a pretty good job of fucking that up.”

“For her, yes,” you agree, with that same infuriating calmness. Like this you sees clean through his anger, his insults, his patronising tone; sees through it and lets it slide off you like it's nothing. “For you, it was something you haven’t let yourself feel in a long time.”

He feels exposed in a way that makes his skin itch. “You don’t know anything about it.”

You just look at him. It’s infuriating in a way that’s similar and yet completely different from your usual arguments. Billy shifts, unable to keep still, and that’s when his gaze snags on your arm. You’ve got your hands in your pockets, jacket open enough that the wrist of your left arm is bare where the sleeve’s pushed back to your elbows. There, just above the ridge of bone across your forearm, is a scar.

He hadn’t seen it before. It’s not the clean, thin line of a knife or even a work injury he can recognise. It’s ragged, crescent-shaped, uneven in depth, like something tore into flesh and held on. Puckered but healed, all wrong and angry even at a distance. 

His mouth goes dry.

“What the hell is that?” he demands, jerking his chin toward it. 

The question comes out rougher than he would have liked, more bare. You glance down at your arm like you’re surprised it’s noticeable. When you look back up, your smile has tilted. Secretive. Slightly sad around the edges, caught between bitterness and something more complex, a shadow that could be fondness. 

“An old shadow,” you reply, purposely light. “Doesn’t matter now.”

“That’s bullshit,” he snaps, and that old fury from the party rushes back in. “Somebody did that to you.”

“Something,” you correct absently, and the way you say it makes the back of his neck prickle. “Not somebody.”

He steps closer, instinctively seeking you out, until the water is lapping over his ankles and seeping cold into his skin. “Who?”

You shake your head, peering out towards the endless expanse of the ocean like you can see whatever is on the other side. “Wrong question.”

“Then what’s the right one?” Billy throws back, hating how frustrating it feels to stand here and see and feel and— “Why do you keep showing up in my head?”

For once, you seem to consider how to answer.

“Because you’re moving,” you say finally, taking in his appearance like you can read something there he can’t. “For the first time in a long time, you’re not just standing still inside the cage made for you.”

He stares at you. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

A slight smile tugs at your lips, like the fact that this is the second time he’s said those words here amuses you. “You’re heading in a better direction,” you answer simply. “Even if you can’t see it yet.”

Billy lets out a laugh so sharp it hurts his throat; it helps to cover the deep pang he feels slice through him. “Yeah. Sure. Next you’ll tell me I’m going to Heaven.”

“That’s not how this works,” you say, visibly amused despite everything. “And you don’t believe in Heaven.”

“How do you know what I believe?”

“You believe in pain. And speed. And control. You believe if you’re the one doing the hurting, you won’t have to feel your own.”

He goes very still. The wind roars in his ears for a second, louder than the surf. He wants to fold into himself for a moment, strip you out of here, root and stem, and go back to when things were easy, when his only worry was avoiding Neil’s fists and deciding which girl he was gonna bend over and fuck. 

“Fuck you,” he says quietly. There’s no heat in it. Just something raw and too strangled to name.

Your expression doesn’t change much, but something in your eyes softens, just a touch, which is worse because he likes it too much, is too greedy for more of it, and that’s dangerous, that’s weakness, and Billy can’t be weak, never weak or Neil will—

“See?” you murmur, and it’s almost fond, the way you say it. “Better direction already. You didn’t swing.”

He hadn’t realised his hands had curled into fists until you pointed it out. Billy deliberately uncurls them.

“You got a point,” he mutters snidely, staring at the water. The glow moves beneath the surface, like nerves firing through his body. “Or you just here to give more fortune cookie speeches?”

“There is a point,” you say with a sigh. “You just won’t like it.”

Billy snorts and wants to mockingly ask if he’s ever liked much of any honesty you’ve thrown at his face, but instead says, “Try me.”

You draw a slow breath, give him a long, weighted look. “You need to come clean,” you tell him promptly. “About the kids.”

Billy’s head snaps up. “What kids.”

You just do the stare again, head tilting slightly to one side, knowing and glowing with unspoken don’t try this bullshit with me. 

Billy runs through the list automatically: the ones on his team, the ones who stare at him in hallways, the ones who get out of his way when he takes up space. Then his brain lands on a different image—bikes through his windshield, skinny arms, Ghostbuster jackets almost blending into the Indiana grey. Max in the passenger seat, screaming his name as she jerked his arm, music pounding because he was still furious about the party, and she snarked at him.

Something in Billy’s chest goes cold, seizing with something he doesn’t dare to call dread. 

He swallows. “No,” he says immediately. “Nope. Not doing that.”

You don’t press, not yet. You watch the realisation creep over his face like frost.

“You remember,” you say knowingly.

He flashes on tyres skidding, kids swerving, and Max’s terrified silence afterwards. The way he’d laughed it off, because to admit even to himself that he’d scared her that bad would mean admitting something is wrong with him that isn’t fixable by being more of what Neil wants.

“It was a mistake,” he snaps. “They got in the way. They should watch where they’re going.”

You arch a brow. “That what you told yourself?”

He glares at you. “It’s what happened.”

“It isn’t,” you say, not cruel, just an iron-clad fact. “You were pissed. You wanted to scare someone. You picked the easiest target. That’s different.”

His jaw clenches so hard it hurts.

“You don’t know shit. You’re just a voice in my head.”

“I know what Max felt.” 

Billy feels his stomach lurch because of course you do. Max trusts you. He saw it in the way she stood near you, the way she listened when you spoke to her about her stupid board, the way he sometimes catches the tail end of her gushing to Susan about you before he walks into the kitchen, and all goes silent. How great you are, how cool, how you don’t baby her. 

“I know what they felt,” you add, even quieter. “They don’t forget that kind of thing.”

He looks away, out at the horizon. The water’s glow has dimmed, like something’s passed over it.

“Why do I have to come clean?” He doesn’t care if he sounds petulant, shoving his hands into his jeans. “Why can’t everyone just let it go?”

“Because you won’t, if the situation were reversed.”

It’s so simple it pisses him off. Christ, he almost misses the you that sees only the bad, because this version seems to know him bone deep, and it’s a sick fantasy to have, a weapon he’s apparently decided would be fun to wield against himself. 

“What,” he scoffs. “You in my head now?”

“William.” The way you say his name makes him want to punch the ocean flat. It also makes him want to beg you to say it again, just so he doesn’t think of Neil calling him that first, or his mom. How sweet it would be if your face came to mind first every time. “You dream about this for a reason. You came here for a reason.”

“I didn’t come,” he shoots back hotly, expression souring. “You dragged me.”

You actually smile at that. “I don’t have that power.”

“Then what is this, exactly?” He gestures at the beach, the glowing waves, at you, standing there, perfectly in reach and still not his, not even here, where it should be simple. “Some kind of—what—lesson? Haunting? You my conscience now?”

You watch him with that knowing calm that makes him feel both seen and utterly stripped back, like you’re holding a knife to his throat and he wants to squirm away from it.

“Maybe I’m what you wish your conscience sounded like. Someone you can’t push around. Someone who won’t hit you back. Someone who knows you can be better and isn’t scared to say it.”

The word better makes his throat close up. Billy thinks of Neil—of discipline and blood and rules. Better has always meant quieter, meaner, more obedient. A tighter version of the same shape. Better has never meant different, never meant… softer, kinder, something other. 

“This is bullshit,” he says roughly. “I’m not telling you anything. I’m not telling her anything.”

Your shoulders dip, the faintest slump he feels in his own body. Disappointment looks wrong on you. It makes his chest ache worse than if you’d screamed at him. Because screaming, violence, and punches—those all make sense to Billy, but your disappointment hurts so much worse.

“Why not?” you ask quietly. “Why won’t you tell her?”

“Because it’ll just… make it real,” he replies, hating the way the words scrape on the way out. “Because then she’ll look at me like—” He cuts himself off.

“Like what?” you press gently.

“Like I’m him.”

There it is, hanging between you like a dropped weapon. The wind stills for a second, the ocean waves rush in, lapping over you both restlessly.

“You’re not him.”

He laughs, bitter and strangled. “That easy, huh?”

“No.” You shake your head once. “It’s not easy. It’s work. It’s choices. It’s apologies. It’s… stopping before you become the thing you hate most.”

“What if it’s too late?” he whispers, hating how small his voice sounds.

“It isn’t,” you tell him quietly, so certain it makes something in him stutter, cramp with pain, with want. “Not yet.”

Billy wants to believe you. He also wants to shout in your face that you don’t know what it’s like to be shaped like this, bone and bruise and expectation. That you don’t know what it’s like to be told from age six that love is weakness and pain is necessary.

He stares at that scar on your arm again.

“Who hurt you?” he asks, quieter. “Really.”

You follow his gaze. “Someone who thought they owned me.” And there’s something in the way you articulate those words that makes Billy want to reach out again. “They were wrong.”

“How’d you get out?” he pushes, like the answer might be a code he can copy.

You look toward the horizon, face haunted in a way that makes his skin crawl.

“Someone else didn’t,” you say gently. “So I had to.”

He doesn’t understand it, not fully, but something about the shape of the words sits under his ribs like a seed.

“You’re dodging,” he mutters. “You keep doing that.”

“So do you,” you answer.

You take one step back, and the distance between you feels bigger than the literal space.

“You should tell her,” you repeat. “About the kids. About the car. About the road.”

Billy shakes his head, stubborn fear rising. “No.”

And again, “Why?” 

“Because,” he grinds out through clenched teeth, “if I say it out loud, she’ll know exactly what I am.”

You meet his eyes. “She already does,” you say lightly. “And she’s still standing in front of you.”

The logic cuts through him with brutal efficiency.  He looks around, suddenly desperate for something to hit, something to break, some way to assert himself in this place where his fists don’t work. Then the water surges up around his ankles, icy, and he flinches.

“You’re moving in a better direction,” you say again, your voice already sounding further away. “Don’t stop. Don’t pick the easy thing just because it’s what you know.”

“I don’t know anything else,” he spits.

“Yes,” you say, almost lovingly. “You do. You just don’t trust it yet.”

He reaches for you then, impulse too strong to smother. Your fingers brush his wrist for the briefest, shockingly warm second—

And then he’s awake.

. . .

Later, after he’s back from the lake, it keeps looping.

Not the threats. Not the “I’ll go to Hopper” or the slam of the door. Those are easy to file under rage, under fuck you too, then.

It’s the middle part that won’t fucking quit.

The car is parked a block from the house, engine off, keys cold in his hand. Neil’s wandering shadow moves behind the curtains up the street; Billy doesn’t go closer. He sits in the dark with the lake replaying on the inside of his skull.

You don’t want her heart to live in her throat the way yours had to.

He kept his eyes on the water for that one. Because if he looked at you, he might’ve actually shown something, and that’s not allowed. Not in front of you. Not in front of anyone. And it had worked, for about half a second—stare at the dead grey, breathe, let the words bounce off.

Except they didn’t.

Billy can still feel it, that moment where everything inside him went unstable. Where it felt like he might explode. Or crumble. Or both. You standing right in front of him, saying shit nobody’s supposed to say out loud, and him sitting there like some animal staring down a barrel. He remembers the way he stared at you, that long, dangerous stretch of silence where even he didn’t know what he was going to do. Smoke going stale between his fingers, some internal battle raging behind his eyes you could apparently see. 

Then he huffed out that breath.

It might almost have been a laugh if it hadn’t come out so goddamn ragged.

He’d looked past you, out over the water, because that was safer than looking at your face. Safer than looking at someone who sees too much.

“You say ‘team’ like that’s an option,” he’d said, quieter, like the words were sneaking out around his guard. “She hates me.”

And you, without missing a beat: “She’s thirteen.” That pointed look. That little shrug he still feels in his bones. “She’s supposed to hate you. That’s not a law of physics. That’s repairable.”

Repairable.

Like he’s a dented fender you could knock back into shape if you cared enough. Like there’s a version of this where Max doesn’t look at him like he’s the thing she’s scared of in her own house.

He’d snorted then, default setting kicking in, because the alternative was letting that word land.

“You really think saying sorry is gonna fix—”

You’d cut him off. “Not fix. Nothing fixes that. But it starts something different.”

He scoffs out loud now in the empty car, just to drown you out, but his chest is tight in that same stupid, traitorous way. Because that’s the moment he hates the most. Not the threats. Not the accusations. It’s when something small and jagged inside him shifted, like a gear that’s never been used, trying to catch.

He’d felt it, sitting there on the hood of all his bad decisions. The urge to say okay then, what? To say, tell me how. To say, I don’t know how to be anything that doesn’t look like him. Show me.

The words had been right there, crowding his throat, heavy and hot on his tongue. Billy’s fingers had twitched on his knee like he was about to reach for you, like some fucking kid desperate for someone to believe in him.

Instead, his mouth did what it always does. It curved into a sneer and went for the joke.

“What, you want me to go home and be like, ‘hey, remember that time I nearly killed your friends? My bad’?”

He’d heard it as soon as it left his mouth. How thin it sounded. How close it was to the thing underneath it: I don’t even know where to start.

But you’d only given him that look—tired, unblinking, like you were measuring the distance between what he said and what he meant. And he’d felt it, clear as the click of a lock: this is the line. Cross it, and you’re not just playing the part anymore. You’re admitting you want out.

Billy doesn’t get out. He tightens his grip on the steering wheel now until the leather creaks, jaw clenched so hard his teeth creak in his mouth. Anger is easier to hold than the ghost of that almost.

Because the worst part isn’t that you threatened him with Hopper.

It’s that for one fucked-up, suspended second at Lovers Lake, he almost asked you how to be someone who didn’t scare his sister. Someone who didn’t point his car at kids. Someone who didn’t default to his fists and his speed and his sneer.

Someone other than what he is.

And you cut him off before he could. Or maybe he cut himself off. Same fucking difference.

He knows you saw it, too—that flinch in him, that half-step toward something softer. He hates that, too. Hates that you’ll carry that knowledge around now, that somewhere in your head you’ve got a version of Billy Hargrove who might have asked for help and didn’t.

That’s repairable.

He hears it again, in your voice, and something in his chest gives a small, miserable quake that feels too close to hope.

“Yeah, right,” he mutters into the dark, forcing his shoulders back, forcing the snarl into place. “Not this version, sweetheart.”

He jams the key back into the ignition, engine growling awake. He drives home a little slower than usual.

He tells himself it’s only because the cops patrol this road.

He does not think about how close he came to letting you teach him another way to be.

. . .

The days after Lovers Lake taste like rust.

You start disappearing after that. Not all at once. Just… the edges of you get blurrier.

You’re still in some of the same places. Billy still sees the flash of your truck in the lot, the back of your head in a classroom, the hitch of your shoulder when you’re carrying something too heavy and refuse to ask for a hand. But your time in the hallways shortens. You don’t look for him, don’t seek him out, done. Just as you promised. 

You’re busy, apparently.

He hears your name in other people’s mouths. The freaks at school—the boys, that little D&D cult—mention you like you’re some kind of deity. She said. She helped. She fixed it. There’s a reverent edge to it all that makes Billy want to smash their heads into lockers.

Max starts disappearing, too.

That grates even worse.

She’s out more. Skating. Hanging around with boys, sitting with Lucas Sinclair in the courtyard, shoulders tilted toward him in a way she’s never tilted toward Billy, giving him looks that aren’t quite defiance and aren’t quite fear.

Your fight at the lake sits in his skull, replaying at random intervals. Your words about Max—about kids, about responsibility—make him feel like his skin doesn’t fit right anymore.

Billy doubles down where he knows how.

He snarls at Max. He tightens the curfew. He cuts her off mid-sentence. He drives too fast, shoves too hard, and uses his fists and his mouth on people who are stupid enough to test him. But the certainty now has hairline fractures.

When he hears the rumour about the pumpkin patch rotting overnight, about weird smells and weird lights, his first thought is not what the hell, but where was she?

He doesn’t see you at all that day everything goes to shit.

Max has been vibrating with some secret for days, more skittish than usual, more defiant, too. He catches her sneaking glances at the phone, at the window, out at the road.

Neil notices, too. Because Neil notices everything when it comes to control.

Billy’s sprawled on his bed, shoes on for his date later, half-dozing in the exhausted, restless way he’s perfected—one ear open for footsteps, one hand within reach of the bat under his bed—when the door flies open without a knock.

“William,” Neil barks out like it's a dirty word.

He jerks upright, heart lurching. Neil’s in the doorway in his slacks, belt hanging loose from his hand. His face is red with fury, veins standing out at his temple, throbbing.

“Where is she?” he demands.

“Who?” Billy asks, playing dumb, buying himself a second.

Neil takes that second, folds it into the belt, and uses it. The leather cracks across Billy’s shoulder before he can so much as blink. Pain blooms hot and sticky across his skin, exploding outwards.

“You listen when I call you,” Neil snarls. “You look at me when I talk to you.”

Billy swallows his first instinct—which is to say she’s a kid, she gets to leave—because he knows what that earns.

“I don’t know where she is,” he grinds out instead, hating the shakiness he hears, the weakness Neil seeks like a bloodhound. “I thought she was in her room.”

“She’s not,” Neil answers, practically spitting the words out. “Her bed is empty, her window’s open, and her skateboard sure as hell isn’t on the porch.”

Billy’s stomach drops. He pictures Max, stubborn little idiot, sneaking out with her board, with her boys, with… with you, maybe. He pictures you in your truck, engine high, taking the curve in the road like the world needs you on the other side.

He pictures himself, in dreams and at the lake, being told to come clean.

Neil’s hand snaps around his jaw, fingers digging into the bruises already there.

“You had one job,” Neil hisses, raising his finger. “You keep an eye on her. You keep this house in order. You make sure we don’t look like trash in front of this town. And you can’t even do that. We talked about this. Respect and responsibility.”

Spit flecks Billy’s cheek.

“I don’t control her when she’s not here,” Billy mutters through clenched teeth. “She’s not—”

The slap comes backhanded, sharp enough to white out his vision for a second. His head hits the bed board behind him, and something in Billy’s neck screams. Neil’s on him before he can shake it off, hand fisting in his shirt, twisting, hauling him up off the bed like he weighs nothing.

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” Neil whispers, terrifyingly calm. “You think you get to decide who’s family? You think you get to decide what’s your responsibility and what’s not?”

Billy’s breath comes fast, quick rabbit gulps he can’t quite control.

“You’re not a man,” Neil spits out, and the word cuts deeper than the belt. “You’re a little punk. You’re a disappointment. You’re a waste of my goddamn time.”

The belt cracks again, somewhere lower. Billy grunts, swallowing the sound, refusing to make the noises Neil wants. You’re in his head suddenly, ocean-calm: You believe if you’re the one doing the hurting, you won’t have to feel your own.

He hates that you’re here, in this room, in his head, witnessing this.

He hates that you were right.

“Get in the car,” Neil orders, shoving him, making him stumble into the dresser. “You go find your sister. You bring her back like a good brother would. And you apologise to me for making me look like a fool.”

Rage boils up, thick and choking, all-consuming.

Apologise.

To him.

For Max.

For this.

For existing.

Billy catches his reflection in the dresser mirror—cheek already swelling, eyes dark, murderous. Neil, behind him, looming, belt in hand. He sees what you saw when you said if you don’t want me talking about him, stop becoming him.

Billy straightens slowly.

“Yes, sir,” he says, voice devoid of emotion.

He grabs his jacket and his keys and walks out before Neil can swing again. The night air hits his face like a slap of its own, cold and clean. He sucks it in like someone who’s been underwater too long. His whole body thrums with pain and fury and something that feels like shame.

He hates that one the most.

He slides into the Camaro, grips the wheel, and for a second, your ocean self is sitting in the passenger seat, watching him with those knowing, disappointed eyes.

You’re moving in a better direction. Don’t pick the easy thing just because it’s what you know.

Billy turns the key, the engine roaring awake.

He picks the easy thing anyway.

. . .

By the time Billy’s knuckles hit the Byers’ front door, his hands are already shaking.

Not from fear. He tells himself that. Not from the belt marks burning under his shirt, or the throbbing bruise on his jaw where Neil’s ring caught bone. Adrenaline. Rage. He knows those well. This is just more of the same.

He pounds on the door again, harder, the crack of skin on wood sending a satisfying jolt up his arm.

“Open the damn door!”

The porch light throws everything into harsh yellow—peeling paint, a porch swing hanging by one chain, dead plants in cracked pots. The house looks like it’s been through a war. He feels weirdly at home because of it.

The lock clicks.

The door cracks open a sliver, and Steve Harrington’s face appears in the gap: hair wrecked, eyes wide, a smear of something—dirt, blood—on his cheek.

Billy smiles like this is all hilarious.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Billy drawls, all teeth and malice. “You miss me, Harrington?”

Steve’s hand tightens on the edge of the door. “Now’s not a good time, man,” he says, voice low and earnest. “You need to leave.”

Billy shoves the door wider with one palm, forcing Steve back a step. He swaggers into the stale, tense air of the house like he owns it. He takes in the bizarre, messy house with a quick sweep, eyes locking onto the living room chair. A jacket is draped there. Your jacket. The same, worn black leather that hugs your shoulders just right. Either you’re here, or were here, and Billy’s pulse leaps at the thought. But no, if you were here, you would be the one staring him down right now, not Harrington.

“I’ll decide when it’s a good time,” Billy shoots back flatly, dragging his eyes away from the jacket. “Where is she?”

“Huh?” Steve plays dumb badly. “Who?”

“Don’t,” Billy snaps, patience thinning to a thread. His temple throbs in time with his heartbeat. “Max. My stepsister. Red hair, bad attitude, skateboard. Ringing any bells, Harrington?”

Steve’s jaw twitches. That’s a yes.

“She’s fine,” Steve says smoothly, clearly judging that by the threatening way Billy is edging closer, it’s better to fess up. “She’s with her friends.”

“Yeah.” Billy lets his gaze slide toward the hallway, toward the sound of feet—light, nervous—somewhere further inside the house. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

He hears it, then: the scuff of sneakers on linoleum, the faint whisper of frantic voices. Every muscle in his back tightens. He thinks of your voice at Lover’s Lake, low and furious: You could’ve killed them. 

Neil’s voice rides in on top of it: You had one job.

His hand twitches toward Steve, the urge to grab, shove, hit something a physical itch. Steve plants himself in front of the hall when he realises Billy is looking elsewhere, shoulders squared. There’s a bat in his hand—full-on spiked metal, because apparently, golden boy’s into cosplay now. Billy almost laughs. 

“You need to leave,” Steve says again, and this time there’s steel under it. “Max doesn’t want to see you.”

Something in Billy’s chest jolts. He smirks to cover it. “That so?” he asks. “Or is that what you want?”

A shape appears at the end of the hallway—small, skinny, determined. Lucas Sinclair. The little shit freezes when he spots Billy, then sets his jaw like he’s not scared, and Billy can almost see a shade of your stubbornness there, reflected in a smaller, frowning face. Behind him, Dustin and Mike hover in the shadows, eyes big, ready to bolt.

Billy’s grin widens. It feels wrong on his face.

“Well, well, would you look at that,” he says softly. “I thought I told you to stay away from her, pal.”

Lucas lifts his chin. “We’re not doing this with you again.” His voice shakes, but the words come out clear and purposeful. If it weren’t for the rage ripping like wildfire through him, Billy might even respect the little shit for having the sheer nerve. “You don’t get to tell me who I can hang out with.”

Billy’s blood spikes. Words are all tangled in his head. From you, from his dreams, from Neil, from his mom over the phone, informing him that this is it. No way back now. They all boil down to one defiant line that fits his mouth like a hook.

“No one tells me what to do.”

He’s buzzing now. The fight is already in his blood; he can feel it, shimmering under his skin like poison seeping in. The ache from Neil’s hits, the humiliation of Max’s empty bed, the echo of your disappointed William in his head—all of it needs somewhere to go.

Harrington will do.

Steve lifts the bat, holding it between them like a warning, not a threat. That’s how Billy knows he’s still soft in places. Soft in ways Billy was never allowed to be soft. 

“I’m only gonna say this one more time,” Steve tells him. “You need to leave. Walk away, Hargrove. That’s it. That’s your choice.”

Choice.

The word twists inside his ribs, tearing a path. You, sitting in the water, had said it like it meant something. It’s work. It’s choices. Neil always said it like a test Billy was supposed to fail every time.

Billy grins wider this time, feeling the split in his lip threaten to tear. “What is this, a self-help seminar?” he sneers. “You gonna give me a lesson about free will, Harrington?”

Steve’s eyes flick to the kids, to the hallway where Max is nowhere in sight.

“I’m serious,” he insists, even more solemn now. “This isn’t about you. This isn’t about me. Just go home.”

Billy snorts derisively and pushes forward. Steve hits him first, and it’s a good punch. Knuckles connect squarely with Billy’s cheekbone, snapping his head to the side. Pain sparks white behind his eye, his teeth clicking together hard enough to hurt. For a blink, Billy sees the ocean again—California, somewhere else, both, overlapping—then the Byers’ living room snaps back into place.

Billy laughs, a loud, terrible cackle. It spills out of him sharp and wild, half delirious, half delighted.

“There it is,” he coos, turning back to Steve, blood already warm on his tongue. He taps his own jaw mockingly. “Looks like you got some fire after all, huh, pretty boy?”

Steve’s breathing hard already. “That all you got?” he shoots back.

Billy’s grin stretches. “I was gonna ask you the same thing.”

Then he stops playing. Billy drives his fist into Steve’s stomach, hard enough to knock all the air out of his lungs. The oxygen woofs out of Steve like someone punctured him. He doubles over, and Billy brings his knee up into his chest, sending him sprawling back over the coffee table.

The kids break into panicked yells. Furniture scrapes and splinters under the assault all around them.

Billy follows, unhurriedly, blood humming in his veins, violence finally releasing the pressure building up inside his skull, and grabs Steve by the shirt, hauling him up and slamming him into the wall. The picture frames rattle, a crayon map crumpling under Steve’s shoulder, fluttering to the floor.

“You think you can tell me what to do?” Billy snarls into his face, spittle flying. “You? Her? Him?” Neil, you, all tangled in the word.

Steve swings again, a desperate hook that catches Billy’s chin this time. He laughs again, high and cracked.

“You hit like you care, Harrington,” he taunts, breathless. “That’s your problem. You care too much.”

He rams Steve’s head into the wall. Once. Twice. Blood blooms at Steve’s hairline, a weak groan escaping him.

“Stop!” Mike yells. “Please, stop!”

Dustin’s voice cracks. “Steve!”

Lucas lunges forward, shoving at Billy’s arm. He might as well be a fly. Billy shoulders him away, barely breaking rhythm.

“You listen to me, Sinclair,” he growls, turning his head just enough to pin the boy with a glare while his fist twists in Steve’s shirt. “You stay away from Max. You stay away from my house.”

Lucas’s eyes flash. “She’s not yours,” he says stubbornly.

It’s a purposeful slap. Steve shoves at him again, catching Billy off-guard with a solid hit to the ribs. Pain flares along the fresh belt marks. Billy sucks in a breath and rides it. He swings back, harder this time. His knuckles split on Steve’s cheek. Steve hits the floor, dazed, trying to push himself up on shaky arms. Billy stands over him, chest heaving, knuckles bleeding, laughter bubbling up under his breath because this feels good—simple, clean. Hit, be hit. Hurt, be hurt. No choices, no moral lectures, just physics of motion, the release that comes with giving in.

You’re yelling in his head anyway.

Stop being him.

He stomps down on the thought like a cigarette. He gears up for another kick—

—and something slams into his back.

It’s small and fast and furious.

Max.

She claws at his shoulders, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt, scratching at his neck. “Get off him!” she screams from the top of her lungs. “Leave him alone!”

Billy staggers, more from surprise than force. His balance slips on the scattered paper and broken glass.

“Max!” he roars. “Get off me!”

She hangs on. The kids are all shouting now. Dustin’s trying to pry her off. Lucas is between Steve and Billy, arms spread like he can shield him. Mike is yelling something Billy doesn’t fully catch, his voice climbing higher with panic.

Billy twists, trying to shake Max loose. She’s light, too light. Her fingers dig into his shoulders like tiny, merciless hooks. He remembers her on the passenger seat, blue light on her face, eyes huge. He remembers your voice: You’re the man in the house who raises his voice and makes her small.

He slams his body into a wall, shouldering the flare of pain that follows. The motion is enough that Max’s grip loosens, and she gasps, winded, slipping. He catches her arm before she falls, fingers wrapping all the way around the skinny upper limb. Her eyes are wide and blazing, tears and rage mixed together.

“This is your fault,” he snarls, pulling her closer. “You don’t get to disappear, you don’t get to sneak out, you don’t get to—”

Something sharp pricks the side of his neck. It’s tiny, barely a sting. Billy jerks back, startled, releasing Max just enough for her to slip out of his grip and stagger back.

“The hell—”

He slaps a hand to his neck and feels plastic. A syringe. A plunger already depressed. Billy stares at it, uncomprehending. Max stands in front of him now, chest heaving, triumphant in a way that almost makes Billy smile.

“Where’d you get that?” he manages, voice slurring at the edges.

“From my new friend,” she bites out. “He says it’ll put down a big animal in one hit.”

The room lurches around him.

“Oh,” Billy says, because his brain is suddenly mushy and that’s all he can manage. “Oh, you screwed up, shitbird.”

He takes a step toward her. His legs ignore the memo. They feel… wrong. Heavy and hollow at the same time, like someone filled his bones with wet cement. His heart starts doing a weird stuttery thing in his chest, fast then slow then too fast again. Billy reaches out, and the wall isn’t where he thought it was.

He hits the floor on his knees.

The kids recoil, eyes wide and gaping. He tries to push up. His arms don’t cooperate.

“Max,” he grinds out, or thinks he does. It comes out more like “Mahh.” His tongue is thick in his mouth, his brain overflowing, foggy around the edges. He hears laughter—his own, from a minute ago—and realises how fucked it sounds now, echoing in this quiet.

You’re there again, in the corner of his vision, sitting in water that isn’t here, hair damp, eyes disappointed.

You’re not him yet, you’d said.

Max steps closer, bat in her hands now. He blinks up at her. The bat lowers between his legs and slams into the floorboards an inch from his balls.

The crack of wood is loud, sharp, final.

Billy’s eyes water from the shock. He tries to jerk back, and his muscles give him nothing.

“You listen to me,” Max begins, voice shaking but loud in the suddenly still room. “Because this is what’s gonna happen if you don’t.” She leans over him, face inches from his, bat pressing into the floor, her knuckles white where she grips it. “You’re gonna stop. You’re gonna stop trying to control me. You’re gonna stop scaring my friends. You’re gonna stop coming after us.”

Her voice hitches, then sharpens again.

“You’re gonna leave me alone,” she insists. “Leave them alone. You hear me?”

The kids are clustered behind her now—Lucas with his jaw clenched, Dustin with his mouth hanging open, Mike pale and trembling. Steve is slumped against the wall, face swollen, watching through one eye. Billy’s chest burns. He wants to say something cutting. Wants to tell her she doesn’t get to make demands. Wants to spit out the line that’s been his shield for months: You’re not my real sister.

It dies in his throat. Your voice overlays Max’s in his head: She’s your sister, Billy.

Max isn’t done.

“And you’re gonna leave her alone, too,” she adds, breathing hard.

Billy’s stomach drops, even as the drug pulls at him. “Who?” he slurs, though he already knows.

Max’s eyes flash. “You know who,” she says, deadly calm. “She’s on our side, not yours. She doesn’t need you screwing up her life.”

Your face flares behind his eyes—the garage lights, the dance, the ocean, every version of you looking at him like he’s a choice you’re hoping to regret a little less each time.

He laughs. It comes out broken.

“You think I…” he starts, then loses the thread completely.

The room swims. He’s dimly aware of his own body dissapearing, flaking away like sandcastles he used to build on the beach, only to watch them disappear in the lapping waves. He smells dust, old smoke, and blood.

Max’s voice is the last thing that really cuts through.

“If you even look at them again,” she says, bat still wedged in the floor, “if you hurt them, if you hurt her—” She swallows. “I will stop you. I don’t care that you’re bigger. I don’t care that you’re my brother.”

Stepbrother, his reflexive brain supplies, but his mouth can’t make the correction, a tiny nugget deep down doesn’t want to.

“You’re not a monster,” she goes on, and somehow that sounds worse than if she’d called him one. “You don’t get to pretend you can’t help it.”

Billy wants to argue that. He can’t.

The sedative drags him under with heavy, inexorable hands. His limbs go numb, then distant, then gone. His heartbeat becomes a slow, muffled drum in his ears. 

Somewhere, the ocean roars against rock, beckoning.

You sit in it, soaked to the waist, not looking at him.

He tries, with the last shred of his will, to lift a hand. To reach. To do something other than fall. His fingers twitch against the Byers’ floor. No one sees. Darkness closes in, thick and complete.

The last thought that gets through before it takes him is not about Neil, or Max, or Harrington.

It’s your voice, impatient and stubborn and unbearably gentle:

Better direction. Don’t stop.

Billy blackouts with a laugh catching in his throat, unsure if he’s moving toward it or running the other way as fast as he can.

. . .

Billy dream-wakes to the sound of water hitting rock.

Not sand this time. Not the endless flat strip of California coast burned into his childhood. This is sharper, rougher. The sound is different—less shush, more impact, waves throwing themselves against stone and breaking apart.

He knows it’s the Pacific anyway. Some part of him could find that ocean blind and drunk and half-dead. The air has that same salt ache, that same weight of distance. It lives under his ribs like a tattoo.

He opens his eyes.

The sky is a low lid of cloud, colour washed out to grey-blue. The water is darker than in his other dreams, almost black in places, shot through with that sick light from below. Not the gulf of blue he remembers from California; this is colder, moodier. The horizon is all teeth—jagged rocks jutting up out of the waves like something trying to break through from underneath. He’s standing on stone, not sand. Dark, wet rock, slick with seaweed and spray. Behind him, the land rises fast—pine trees, a cliff that feels too high and too close, the air full of resin and brine.

He’s never been here before. He recognises it anyway, in that way you recognise faces you’ve never seen and places you’ve never been to.

You’re here, of course. You’re always here, inside him.

You’re sitting in the water this time.

The surf only comes up to your waist, but it’s rough, surging around you, foaming at your sides. Your jeans are soaked. Your boots are half-buried under the undertow. You’ve got your hands back on the rock, leaning, letting the waves hit you and pass through, eyes fixed somewhere out beyond the jagged horizon.

You don’t look at him.

That’s new.

Billy stands there for a second, blinking, trying to shake the fog out of his head. The last thing he remembers is Max’s face above him, a needle in his neck, the floor rushing up. His neck still tingles where she stuck him, phantom burn under the dream.

His body feels heavy, but he’s upright. No bruises here. No belt marks. Just sea air and cold and you.

“Not California,” he mutters.

His voice gets eaten by the wind. He walks toward you, boots skidding on wet rock. A wave surges up and soaks his shins, icy even in the dream. He grits his teeth and keeps going.

You don’t move.

By the time he’s close enough to see the fine lines around your eyes, the hollows in your cheeks, the way your hair sticks to your neck with sea spray, he’s breathless in a way that has nothing to do with the climb. He hates that. He drops down beside you without asking, awkward on the slick stone, letting the water crash against his knees. The cold bites, seeps in. It helps, anchors him.

For a moment, you just exist next to each other. You still don’t look at him. The disappointment rolls off you like a second tide. So heavy, Billy almost chokes on it. It digs under his skin worse than yelling ever could.

He clears his throat. “I’m guessing hugging’s still off the table, then.”

Your head turns slowly. The glare you give him could cut glass. His chest does a stupid little flip.

“You’re kidding,” you say, voice flat.

Billy shrugs, settling his elbows on his knees. “What? Thought maybe third time’s the charm.”

“Your actions are too loud.”

It’s not sharp, not yelled—just a verdict, brutally damning.

Billy snorts loudly, but it breaks halfway and comes out jagged. “What did you expect?” he demands, staring out at the rocks so he doesn’t have to see your face. “That you’d give me a pep talk and I’d be a good little boy?”

The words good little boy taste like bile. Like Neil. You exhale through your nose. It’s not amusement. It’s tired.

“No,” you breathe out warily. “I never expected it to be easy.”

He glances sidelong at you. You look older again. More than last time. Not in the obvious ways—no gray, no stoop—but in the way your eyes sit deeper, like they’ve held more nights.

“What then?” he asks. “You expect me to just… what. Flip a switch?”

“No,” you repeat. “I expect you to do the work.” You pause, sighing from deep in your chest. “I’m not giving up on you.”

Something in Billy’s chest jerks. He laughs bitterly. “You should. Everyone else has.”

You finally look at him properly, eyes catching his. “William.”

It hits harder than the glare, and his stomach squirms. Nobody calls him that unless they’re about to hurt him or apologise for hurting him. Neil uses it like a whip. His mother used it like a promise, long before she left, but hearing it in your mouth is becoming a new kind of ache.

“Don’t call me that,” he says automatically. It comes out smaller than he wants.

Your gaze softens, just a fraction. “You hate it,” you say. “I know.”

“Then don’t,” he snaps again.

“I’m not using it like he does,” you say quietly.

He looks away. Another wave crashes, cold spray peppering his face. He doesn’t bother wiping it off. The sting in his eyes could be salt. It could be something else.

“You hate me,” he mutters.

It’s half challenge, half confession.

“No.”

He barks out another laugh. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“I hated what you did,” you tell him patiently. “Not who you are.”

Billy scoffs in response, louder this time. “That sounds like the kind of bullshit they put on church pamphlets.”

“It’s the truth,” you say, a little sharper. “You know how many times I wanted to put a wrench through your skull? Plenty. You know how many times I actually believed you were incapable of better? Fewer than that.”

“Comforting,” he drawls, the word dripping sarcasm.

“It wasn’t supposed to be comforting,” you answer curtly. “I’m not here to coddle you.”

He clenches his jaw so hard it aches. The anger boils up before he can stop it. Anger’s easier. Anger’s familiar. Anger keeps the ache from spilling over.

“You dragged me here to what, exactly?” he snarls. “Repeat the same moral lecture? Tell me I’m disappointing you? Get in line. My old man’s got that covered.”

You flinch a little at that—barely—but you don’t look away.

“I didn’t drag you anywhere,” you say. “You keep washing up here because you don’t have anywhere else to put this.”

He bristles. “Put what?”

“All of it,” you say simply. “The rage. The shame. The fact that your kid sister had to drug you to get you to listen.”

His mouth snaps shut like you’ve backhanded him. He flashes on Max’s face, eyes wide and wet but unyielding. The feel of the syringe in his neck. The way his body went weak while hers stayed steady.

“Get lost,” he snaps, voice low and ugly. “I don’t need this. I don’t need you. I sure as hell don’t need some… figment of you telling me what a piece of shit I am.”

“I never said you were a piece of shit,” you reply calmly.

“You don’t have to,” he spits out, bobbing his knee restlessly. “You got that look. Like you’re—” He gestures sharply, searching for the word. “Like you’re disappointed your project didn’t turn out right.”

Your mouth tightens, but your tone doesn’t rise. “You think that’s what this is? You think I’m doing… what, some charity case? Trying to fix you so I feel better?”

“Isn’t that what you do?” he throws back. “You fix things. Cars. Kids. Strays. Whatever. I’m just another busted engine to you.”

You breathe in, slow and deep, like it’s taking effort not to bite back. Your gaze goes towards the restless ocean, stay on it. “I’m tired too, you know.” There’s something fragile in your voice that makes his breath hitch. “This isn’t fun for me.”

“Then stop,” he snaps. “Go. Leave. I don’t want you here. I don’t want your fucking—your pep talks, your ‘better direction’ crap, your—”

His voice cracks on the last word. He hates that you can hear it. “I don’t need you,” he finishes, forcing it through.

The wind whips his words away. The waves keep hitting the rock, indifferent to his struggle, to the way he hates himself more than anything. Your chin angles towards him. Your eyes are wet at the corners, but you blink it away.

“I know you don’t think you do. You’ve had to not need anyone for a long time, William. It kept you alive.”

“Spare me the psychoanalysis,” he snarls. “You reading my mind now? Or you pick that up from a fortune cookie, too?”

Silence stretches, suffocating between you. But you don’t snap, you don’t leave, either. You just… take it. Weather it. Like you did the waves. That, somehow, infuriates Billy more. He wants you to scream at him. To crack. To prove you’re breakable, so he doesn’t feel so exposed alone.

Instead, you do something far worse.

You move your hand. Slow and cautious, fingers outstretched, like you’re approaching a wild animal with its leg in a trap. Your fingers lift off the rock between you. You reach across, palm open, until you’re an inch from his knee. Billy feels the heat of you in that tiny bit of air. It’s nothing, not real, but also everything all at once. His nerve endings fire like you’ve already touched him.

He stops breathing.

Then, just before your hand makes contact, you let it drop. Back to the rock. Back to the water. The gesture guts him, but he doesn’t show it. He clamps his teeth down on the sound that wants to tear its way out of his throat. He stares out at the horizon so hard his eyes blur.

He hears his own voice, smaller, hoarser than he wants. “Would it have mattered?”

You turn your head slightly. “What?”

“If I’d told you,” he bites out, breath caught in his throat, his fists clenched painfully. “About the kids. The car. If I’d said it first, before they did.” He swallows, and each word tastes like glass. “Would it have made a difference?”

You go very still.

The waves fill the space between you—crash, hiss, retreat, crash.

He pushes, needing it to hurt, needing something solid to fight. “That day at the lake,” he says. “Or before. Or whenever you started looking at me like I was a loaded gun around them. If I’d come to you and said, ‘Hey, I fucked up, I nearly hit your boys, I scared Max, I was a coward’—” His jaw jumps. “Would it have changed anything?”

You’re quiet for a long time; long enough that he starts to think you’re not going to answer. Finally, you let out a deep, weary breath. 

“I don’t know,” you admit softly.

The honesty in it cuts cleaner than any lie could have. Billy lets out a humourless laugh. “What, that’s it?”

“I’m not God, William. I don’t get to rewrite that night just because you wish you’d made a different choice. Maybe it would have changed something. Maybe you would’ve scared me a little less. Maybe Max would’ve felt like someone was on her side for once. Maybe you’d have started moving sooner.”

He keeps his eyes on the rocks. “Maybe.”

“Or maybe not,” you continue. “Maybe I’d have told you exactly what I did at the lake. That you were heading somewhere you didn’t want to be. That I was furious and scared and tired of watching kids clean up adult messes.”

He flinches.

“Then what’s the fucking point?” he snaps, voice cracking again. “If it doesn’t matter. If it doesn’t fix anything, if I still—”

—lose you.

“You’re not asking if it would have fixed it,” you note, too perceptive. “You’re asking if it would have hurt less.”

Billy drags a hand over his face, his fingers wet and salty. “Would it have?” 

“For me?” You shrug once. “Maybe. For you?” You shake your head. “It was always going to hurt. That’s the price.”

He wants to scream. He wants to throw himself into the water and see if it lets him sink this time. He wants to grab you by the shoulders and shake you and demand a clean answer, a yes or no, a saint or monster verdict so he can stop living in this fucked up grey.

His hand reaches forward; it’s instinctive, raw need to feel you, to have you, just for a second. His hand moves toward you before he can stop it, fingers splayed, reaching for your wrist, your sleeve, anything.

For a second, it looks like you might let him. Your eyes widen just a fraction. Your body tilts.

Then the world pulls the floor out from underneath him. The rock drops away. The water surges up, cold and heavy, over his head and into his mouth. 

He wakes choking.

. . .

Billy comes back up hard enough that his skull bounces on wood.

“Fuck—”

The word scrapes out of his throat like he hasn’t used it in hours. Days. His tongue is thick and dry. His mouth tastes like he’s guzzled down something chemical. The first thing he registers is pain. His face hurts. His ribs hurt. His neck stings where the needle went in. His muscles ache like he got hit by a truck, and then the truck backed up for good measure.

The second thing he registers is that he’s on the floor.

Hard boards under his back. One arm pinned awkwardly under him, the other flung out. There’s a damp spot under his cheek—drool or blood or both. He doesn’t want to know which.

He blinks blearily.

The living room ceiling of the Byers house swims into focus. Water stains, spiderweb in one corner, light bulb hanging limp from a frayed cord. Billy groans and rolls onto his side, fighting a wave of nausea. The room tilts. He pushes himself up onto his hands and knees, limbs trembling like he’s lost all strength in them. The world lags behind his movements like a bad TV broadcast.

“Max,” he croaks.

No answer. The house is quiet, too quiet. The last time he was here, it was full of yelling. His own, the kids’, the sound of his fist on Harrington’s face, the crack of the bat, the shrill protest of his own voice as the sedative hit his bloodstream.

Now, nothing.

Billy drags himself up to his feet using the back of the couch. His legs wobble beneath him, his vision tunnelling. He forces his eyes to sweep the room. The couch is crooked, cushions half on the floor. The coffee table’s at an angle, one leg bent. There are scuff marks on the floor where he and Steve slammed into furniture. There’s a smear of dried blood on the tile. Could be his, could be Harrington’s.

Your jacket is gone.

So are the boys.

So is Max.

His heart lurches. Billy staggers to the window, each step sending a pulse of pain up his side. He yanks the curtain back. His Camaro is not in the yard. For a second, his brain refuses the information. Then it hits all at once, like an avalanche.

They took his car.

Max. The little shits. Maybe Harrington, if he woke up enough to drive. Maybe you—your hands on his wheel, this time with his sister and those kids strapped in the back, heading God knows where.

Billy sways.

A bitter laugh bubbles up and dies in his chest. He presses his forehead to the cool glass, breathing fog onto it.

“Motherfuckers,” he whispers, not sure if he means them or himself.

Your voice is still there, under the pounding in his skull.

You’re heading in a better direction. Don’t stop.

“You picked the wrong idiot,” he mutters, slurring the words.

Billy pushes away from the window and nearly goes down again. The sedative hasn’t fully worn off; his body feels half a second behind his thoughts. His heart is racing, then tripping, then racing again. He staggers toward the door, half on instinct, half on the hope that sheer motion will fix this. He makes it as far as the front porch.

The air outside is colder than in the dream. No salt. Just damp leaves and the ghost of smoke from some neighbour’s chimney. The sky is still that same oppressive Indiana slate, like the world hasn’t moved in however long he’s been out. He stares at the empty space where his car should be.

For the first time since he was a kid, he feels truly, utterly… left.

Not just alone.

Left.

Max did this.

Max, who flinched from him and still climbed on his back to stop him. Max, who stuck a needle in his neck and refused to apologise for it. Max, who chose those kids and—if you’re involved—chose you over him.

Neil’s going to kill him. That thought stumbles in, half-formed and petrifying.

Neil’s going to see him come home without Max, without his car, with his face beaten and his body wrecked, and he’s going to win. Not just in the usual way. He’s going to have proof now. Proof Billy’s useless. Proof Billy’s a disappointment. Proof his son can’t even keep track of his own piece of shit Camaro.

Another thought edges in beside it.

You got yourself hit for this, your ocean-voice says. You took the hit instead of letting it land on her.

He wants to reject that. Pretend it wasn’t a choice. Pretend he didn’t know what would happen if he walked out the door when Neil had the belt in his hand.

But he did know. He chose anyway.

The knowledge sits heavy and strange in his chest, like a stone that might be a seed. He grips the porch railing, knuckles whitening, fighting off another wave of dizziness. The ragged coastline springs up behind his eyes for a second—the rocks, the waves, your hand hovering above his knee, and then dropping. The way you said I don’t know, and how it was the worst and best thing you could have said.

He doesn’t have an answer either.

All he has is the echo of Max’s voice: You’re going to leave me and my friends alone. You’re going to leave her alone, too. Because she’s on our side.

Your side.

Their side.

Not his. Never his.

Billy squeezes his eyes shut and sees you sitting in the water, shoulders squared against the pull of the tide, refusing to let it drag you under.

“I don’t need you,” he told you.

His chest twists. He straightens slowly, using the railing like a crutch. His legs tremble but hold.

He doesn’t know where Max is. He doesn’t know where you are. He doesn’t know why the sky feels like it’s waiting to crack open. He just knows this: when he walks back into his house, he’s going to get hit again. Badly. 

And this time, for the first time, there’s a tiny, treacherous part of him that’s starting to believe you were right.

He’s not Neil yet.

But the road’s still there. He has to decide whether to keep walking it.

The thought makes him want to puke.

Billy steps off the porch anyway, into the cold, onto the gravel where his car should be, every nerve screaming, every bruise singing, your disappointment and your stubborn faith twined together in his head like a single light in the endless dark of his life.

Better direction.

Don’t stop.

Billy takes a stumbling step forward, then another. 

He moves. 

an: I think the main thing I wanted to explore with this chapter, is how difficult it is to break free from abusive cycles. Why and how Billy keeps taking a step forward and five back, how terrible actions can become a comfort blanket because it's all you know, closing down any other avenues for change. How a child hurt over and over won't immediately have the tools to overhaul his life and do the right thing. I tried to stay respectful of the type of abuse he's suffered/is suffering without excusing his actions, while also pulling from my own personal experiences, so I hope all this made sense.

This was Billy's personal low point, and from here on out... well, he's moving. It might not be quick, clean or easy, from here on out but he's moving.