toxic yaoi truther

Billie has her trans awakening in the hospital after being flayed. Loses her right arm to just above the elbow due to her arms being inside the mindflayer's mouth, covered in scars, severe muscle wastage, she's missing some organs from the bleach and chemicals she drank. She wakes up after the mind flayer skeletal, disabled, abandoned, and alone. She's lost everything after being flayed, (family, home, body, car, mobility) and it's being stripped down to nothing and no longer having her masculinity and size to depend on that it was a big fucking farce anyway. She's forced to lay there in recovery and think. Without her dad there and without the mindflayer she doesn't have to throw up the most convenient mask anymore. She doesn't have an arm anymore, she's pissing and shitting into a bag, she thinks she's lost her good looks because of her scars, she thinks she's completely unlovable, so she gets access to the incredibly important "fuck it, I'll do what i want" mentality. It's important because it leads to "this is what i actually want" and then, "this is who i actually am". Losing her body the same time as she loses her social shackles helps her to reject this hyper-masculinity she'd always worn as a shield. hours and hours alone in the hospital without visitors, reading magazines, bored. Introflection. It helps her knock over the first domino. But being possessed by the mindflayer also gives her this unique grotesque dysphoria that's triggered by pretending. Being absolutely anything but genuinely herself makes her dysphoric not in a trans way, but in a "i am a person who was possessed and i watched my body get steered by someone who wasn't me and do things i didn't want to do and be a version of me i am not". It causes her to be absolutely lazer focused selfish on what she actually needs. And by this process of elimination she finds herself.

Billie has to learn how to be a person again the same time as she learns how to be a woman. Discovering her femininity helps her with her disabilities and vice versa. They go hand in hand. By the time she's let out of hospital her hair is halfway down her back anyway and her medical bills are like, in the millions. She can't afford a prosthetic arm and she can't afford a car so she hitchhikes back to California. Shoplifts her first dress when she gets there and doesn't have the nerve to wear it for another year. Her curls are bouncy again when she changes into it on the beach. She works in a queer bar for years. Starts to wear dresses to every shift. Starts HRT in '91. The bar fund-raises her a prosthetic arm in '92. She calls Max in '94. She gets a job as a lifesaver on the beach that same year. She gets given a red one piece suit and cries about it. In 1995 Billie drives her Chevy Corvette to Hawkins to visit Max for Christmas. She doesn't expect to see Max in a wheelchair, and Max never told her she was blind. She didn't expect to see Steve, either. So she hides in her hair and tries to ignore him and hopes he doesn't talk to her, shivering as much now as she did her first December in Hawkins.

So when she meets Steve she's both very familiar and very different. Because of course she is, you don't go through what Billie went through with the mind flayer and with transitioning in the early 90s/late 80s without Becoming Different. She doesn't pick fights anymore, but she's also much, much meaner. She is just as concerned with her appearance as she was back then but its in a feminine leaning way now; she's city fashionable, she's a beach babe, she wears false lashes and heavy mascara and beige 90s lipstick and her hair is immaculately taken care of. Big pretty curls halfway down her back. But she's trans and she looks Trans and it's a matter of constant contention for Billie. She hates her wide shoulders and her height and her square jaw. Hates the tattoo on her shoulder and thinks its ugly. Hates the scars you can see everywhere, but also likes them because people stare at the hole in her chest and not her biceps. Billie is a bit of a slave to whats considered feminine. She's not immune to it. She's very sensitive to it. Coming to Hawkins is extremely scary because she's going back to where everything happened, and she's also going back to where everyone knew her Before, and going back is this like. Pilgrimage to let go in a way. She wants to make peace with Hawkins but she's also there to make peace with nobody accepting her. She's there to find a reason to cut everyone out for good. She's basically there to cause a scene and ruin Christmas because she doesn't think anyone is going to be chill with it.

Reagan-raised Mike and Nancy are the only ones who Are Weird About It in an "we're progressive" way. Dustin is too cool about it. Immediately acts like they're old friends. And despite getting her pronouns and shit right immediately Billie is still Billie and she's like gtfa from me weirdo. Lucas is cool because he's a chill dude and max already told him everything by proxy of them being engaged/married/whatever they are. Everyone except max and Lucas are socially weird about her. But they're accepting in That Weird Way people can be. Good hearts, excruciating to be around. but then STEVE--

Steve is a queer man in the 90s who is not as prude as the kids think he is. And either he's met a trans woman before or he's read about trans women but you don't be bisexual/queer for 10 years and never meet a trans person, even in the middle of nowhere. Chicago or Indianapolis etc. He's been to clubs. But what i want is for Steve to see Billie and have a very fast [who is THAT why is she here] > [Oh my god] > [midwest manners activate] > "Hello ma'am my name is Steve, whats your name. Can i take your coat?" > [watching Billie slide her tongue nervously under her teeth. wow. that's so much prettier when she's wearing lipstick. her eyes really pop with brown mascara. wow. was her hair that blonde before? I wonder how long she's in town]

Billie throws her jacket at Steve because she doesn't want to meet his eye and Steve is just like <3___<3 because he loves women with spicy attitudes.

And Billie like

seethes at the lunch table

because yeah these people are cool with her but they're Too Cool, its getting on her nerves, she fucking hates all of them and now they're not even doing her the courtesy of having something she can be pissed off at them for.

The lunch is excruciating.

She can't eat most of it, anyway.

"Why not? Are you on a diet?" "No. I got possessed by a fucking shadow monster in '85 and chugged 3 gallons of chlorine and now my intestines are missing. Thanks for asking."

She gets up and goes out for a smoke and in that time Lucas and Dustin both apologise for not helping more. She tells them to fuck off and leave her alone (but secretly appreciates it)

She builds a tiny snow man while chain smoking with the most giant set of honkers and feels better about it.

But the whole Christmas trip is like that. She's mean and anti social and the group sort of cop it on the chin because they feel like they deserve it.

she rings up her bestie in California and it's like, "Did you ruin Christmas?" "Ye :,)" "did you make anyone cry" "Not yet" "well then you haven't ruined Christmas have you? chop chop"

ough lays down

Billie goes on a long walk to get the fuck away from everyone. She ends up at the scrap yard and she's suddenly like,

"Hm."

Walks around and around for like an hour until she finds a faded, gutted out, snow-covered Camaro with California plates. She just kinda stands there for a long time and looks at the busted in bumper and the smashed windshield and the t-boned passenger side door and smokes and smokes about it.

Opens the creaky driver side door and there's still all her blood all over the driver seat. Sniffs from the cold and gingerly sits behind the wheel, touches the interior, the gearstick. Hits eject on the old cassette radio and it spits out a mixtape Eddie Munson made her.

She finds that there's still about $90 in cash hidden in all her all hiding places. She even finds an old joint in a baggie. Again, a gift from Eddie Munson.

That joint is 10 years old now, and she tucks it into her bra with a chuckle. Might frame it later, its kind of funny. Might smoke it, see how bad it is.

She finds the Camaro is still a safe haven after all this time. She even finds a pack of reds so old and faded the branding has completely disappeared. Her old zippo is in there, and she rubs it. Still lights up even after a decade. But tucked right in the back of the carton is a Polaroid of Eddie unhinging his mouth to take a big bite of a truckstop burger.

And she does that sort of like. Happy miserable tears thing, remembering him. Because everything before she woke up in hospital is sort of blurry to her. Had been since she woke up in hospital. Her head was full of memories that weren't hers, it was hard to separate. The shadow was so devastating, it was so hard to think about anything that happened, let alone before. But she holds the Polaroid and she remembers the before, with Eddie. She wants to say he made her happy, but she knows what happy feels like now. Maybe he just made her less miserable. She can't remember. Everything is so fuzzy. But she holds the mixtape and the joint and the Polaroid and she remembers her way back to the trailer park and it takes her like. 2 hours to muster the will to leave her old girl in the scrap yard and pay the Munsons a visit.

---

So she makes her way over to the trailer park and the trailer Eddie and Wayne used to live in is gone now. All the trailers around it are gone, too, there's like this big hole in the trailer park now where the Munson trailer used to be. Nobody seems to want to live near it. Her heart kind of sinks because does that mean Wayne passed away?

But there's a trailer on the edge of the park and it has graffiti up the outside wall spelling out 'go to hell' and 'murderer' and 'faggot' and 'queer' and 'aids fucker' in this relentless like. Attack. It's clear the owner has just given up cleaning it all off and that this is a teenage target for fucking around. If that trailer didn't house Eddie Munson, the owner of it would know where to find it.

So Billie lights a cigarette and goes and knocks on the front door. There's music playing and she can smell stale weed. And this voice that sounds like home says to her, "I'm not going to your fucking church service, you bible bashing bitch." And Billie sneers and sniggers and she's so nervous. "Merry Christmas, asshole."

And Eddie freezes. She can see the cogs turning in his brain even with the fly-screen door between them. Eddie clears his throat. "Who's there?" "It, uh. It's me. Billie."

Eddie unlocks the door and slams it open and fucking stares at her with an open mouth. And it's different to the way Nancy and Mike open-mouth stared, this is the stare of someone who thought the other was dead. He takes her in. He starts to cry, which makes Billie start crying, and suddenly he's hugging her so tight her ribs ache. Eddie has stubble and his hair is just as wild, but its chin-length now, and he's still a big bag of bones and it's a moment before she notices Eddie's on double crutches. He apologises for them getting in the way and she whacks him with her fake arm.

Eddie's bringing her inside and throwing a sweater in her direction and asking if she wants coffee or whiskey ("both") and before she knows it they're curled up in front of Eddie's shitty electric fire catching up, talking. She tells Eddie about waking up in hospital and not being able to remember much and losing her arm and transitioning and becoming a lifesaver in California. She's making minimum wage but she's happy. She's also lying to him. But that's okay because Eddie lied to her the same way, pretending he doesn't know why Chrissy Cunningham was dead in his living-room. The public trial, the whole town being angry over the not guilty verdict and never forgiving him for it. Getting a job at the plant with his uncle and never really moving on from there.

"Before you know it here we are. But nah. Nah, I'm doing good. It's just graffiti now. Learned to drive out to Chicago on Halloween, and the death anniversary. Other than that it's cool."

Billie knows Eddie's not telling her everything, but she doesn't know Eddie knows that not only is she withholding things, but Max and Steve told him about the mall. She has no idea Max and Steve are close with Eddie.

Eddie knows Billie was possessed by Vecna.

Billie doesn't know he knows.

It means that Eddie understands easier. why she just left without saying bye.

Seeing her again is like a candle in the dark for Eddie. Best Christmas present he's had in years, and he tells her that.

Billie hates this fucking town, but she's never hated Eddie.

She drives back to Max's house and nothing happens with Eddie but ooohhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH she's thinkin about him the whole time.