MY ANGEL, ㅤCENTERFOLD

they don't have to sit on the same side of the booth, billy can have some goddamn space without being alone. big wins gotta celebrate when they happen. he's taking every inch on his side of the booth, calls the waitress doll and sugar and says please and thank you. and when he hears the little bell of the door and sees no one other than jonathan byers walking in.

isn't this his lucky day?

billy sorta smiles, it's a weird thing, knowing, coy with it. girly someone would say if the threat of a fist to the face wasn't there. "byers." calls out, nice and easy. forgot where they were for a second. but he meets his eyes, and keeps the smile. looks at him with a baby. he bats his lashes. tilts his head towards the booth, like jonathan would do anything other than sit in front of him.

"fancy seeing you here." casual, smiling still. kinda cute seeing him all eager. real initiative. carving out what he sees in @sordidery under layers and layers and layers. he takes a fry, and licks it as he is putting it in his mouth. force of habit, his eyes on jonathan. "-want some?" he moves the plate closer to the middle of the table. waits a little bit for a response, kinda wants to see him squirm.

then. his day just gets a whole lot better.

sera appears, ignoring jonathan. billy swallows back a protest at refusing complete to sit back on his side, he makes space for her. brow furrowed at her, before looking over at jon. then back at her. okay. "out of my mind? can't i be nice for a change, baby? there's no other booths. throwing byers a lifeline over here." it's teasing. eyes linger on sera's expression, she wears anger nicely. it's a little deadly. staring daggers, if looks could kill...he doesn't get back to the rehearsed play, the bit they both know. no, this is. now this is really something. "-camera?" there's a couple of missing links here from what tommy said and what carol said billy never paid too much mind to that, far too busy on other things, the puzzle pieces are all scrambled up. two and two don't add up. then from what sera said. "no don't think so." eyes look over at jonathan. it's a little sing song, think he's here for something else. and the thought makes him giggle to himself. he's eating another fry, and another. bumping sera with his elbow, again teasing, before he rests his arm over the booth and behind her. relaxing into the seat.

and after a while.

"so. what's with the third degree?" open. for either of them. he's smearing some other fry with ketchup, appearing uninterested.

jonathan's eyeing the fry, his eyebrows flying up at the flash of tongue. billy's always looking for weakness, and tonight, jonathan feels just about ready to roll over, to expose his stomach and let billy sink his teeth into thin skin. it's been a long day.

sera walking out of the bathroom just about does him in. jonathan freezes, a whole body reaction, throat closed up and heart stuttering to a stop. he remembers it perfectly when she wore the same look on her face that day in sixth grade, in the awful minute between when mr. cooper caught them sharing test answers and when jonathan said it was his idea. she's been caught. then, she tampers the look down into nothing, gone as fast a blowing out a flame, and jonathan can breathe again. he glares as she fits on a new expression, something cold and withering, and her voice is so goddamn haughty. jonathan feels something. calls it vindication. he tries to believe that it's easier this way. at least she's honest, now. sera was nice only because she was lying in wait.

jonathan's whole face tenses with how hard he sets his jaw. he’s never going to escape this pervert shit. people just take rumor as fact, regurgitate it, blow things up bigger and bigger. he hates to hear anything about that time where will was gone, the grey haze he stumbled through. jon should go. a second constant: he always overstays his welcome, because jonathan byers is never welcome anywhere. below the table, his hands curl into fists. he should've known better than to accept a bite and expect not to bleed.

baby. billy’s flirting with sera in front of jonathan. billy's flirting with him in front of sera. he’s gone sharp eyed, smarmy, relaxed like he’s in complete control. jonathan’s gaze lingers on the arm so casually thrown over the booth, into sera's space. a tug at the muscle beneath his nose. he's doing a shitty job of hiding the hate burning under his skin. he shouldn't have come here tonight. and billy-- fucking billy-- he shouldn't have called jonathan over when he's on a date. especially not when he's on this date.

though she doesn't find much comfort in looking over at billy either. he's deep in his role, or maybe being a smartass. tommy and carol and tammy and every one else sera can't fucking stand are miles away from their booth: and a part of her wants to drag billy into the kitchen and tell him to cut it out because it's just jonathan. that she knows him well enough that he wouldn't care about them saving face or performing this exhausting dance they put on for everyone else.

but then again, fuck jonathan. sera doesn't think she knows him at all anymore. and she assumes billy is none the wiser. why wouldn't he be?

" ..hm. no, no third degree. i told you about jon, though. didn't i, baby? " her voice turns honeyed. sickly sweet, rotting through her teeth. sera hasn't spoken about jonathan to anyone. no one knows of the endless playdates, or the movies they made that only exist in what's left of their memories. sera bags it all up, tying the knot thick with blistered hands. she grows into this vicious and vapid bitch with big, empty eyes that look like her mother's and her brother would hate. " always showing up. expecting things. people to play with him. " sera hooks her finger into the plastic tray, tugging it away from jonathan. she takes a fry, dragging it through ketchup " kinda like, weird. right? "

You know what I figure? If I can do laundry, there’s nothing I can’t do.

he's looking at her from the mirror. let's go of a breath he didn't know he was holding when she's grinning at him. says he looks great. he feels flustered then. genuinely, makes his heart but that little bit faster. no longer is it a reminder that billy will never be that, soft, glamorous, the right fit. it's wrong, along with the rest of him. but sera's trying. and most importantly she isn't lying, he feels it.

she touches him gently, softer, like he could break if she's too rough. and something settles in him, pinpricks at his skin, a sentimentality well guarded and held behind walls, upon walls. sitting nicely. his eyes get a little watery. billy wasn't put in this world to be a soft thing, he's been ripped and torn, put back together wrong and brought back into this cruel world. and yet her touch is light and precise. there's this burning sensation, a voice in the back of his head. he doesn't deserve this, he doesn't deserve her kindness. "thanks." it's quiet, a little rough and wobbly and it doesn't sound like how billy hargrove should sound. he is just meeting angel eyes and seeing something there that breaks him into tiny little pieces. he swallows and shudders a breath and he is keeping it together. just that little bit long enough to weather the need to cry. he simply breathes.

"you're good." at this, at being nice to me, at being yourself finally. "-you're really really good." he nods, his gaze shifting back to their reflection. emotional. tucking his hair back on his ear, smiling then. framed by the dark lipstick. he doesn't feel like he usually would feel. ridiculous. no this is an unfamiliar sensation. warm, and soft. can't quite put a finger on it.

there's no answer. seraphina has never had an answer to something like that. they ask her all the time on stage: a mother. a wife. maybe, for grinning-points, she dare says a movie star. the question doesn't sit funny when billy says it because that's the difference. it doesn't matter that sera isn't there yet, ready to decide. he's telling her whatever it is, it's hers. her hand slides along the broad line of his back, reaching his opposite shoulder as she leans the fat of her cheek against the side of his head. her other hand catches the ball of his closer shoulder. everything is gentle. everything is warm. she thinks she can see the glassy shine that billy blinks over his eyes through his reflection. this time she doesn't reach to fix his appearance, to fix him. her mother used to chase her down with a tissue, bending her at the hip, telling her to cry over the event space's carpet if she's going to be fussy so it doesn't ruin her face. " ..you're being a suck. " sera coos. she makes him look at their reflect for a moment longer, just in case he thinks he could ever forget how he looks like this.

cherub palm pats his shoulder before she retreats to her bathroom to.. do nothing, really. she shuffles around her sink drawers aimlessly because it gives billy another minute to examine himself. one without her. because at the end of the day sera knows she can watch how she talks to people but they will always want a moment of their own to examine their gums in the mirror and figure out what it is someone said to them meant. when she returns, a tissue box occupies her hands. she tugs at the thin ply blossoming out of the box and folds it once over. " blot. you know? " she does the act, staining the tissue with a soft pink ring. he might have seen her done it a thousand times, but has he ever done it himself? sera folds the tissue over again to give him a blank space, handing it to him. " ..hey. and for the record. i'm like sooo jealous of you 'cause any colour will look nice on those. " pads her finger against his blotched lip, smiling softly. she means any partner too. anyone. anyone that'll be nice to him. but sera leaves it at the lipstick.

⁽ god, this was supposed to be easier than this. perhaps, it is, that he's losing his touch. ⁾ “ c'mon, babe. you gotta level with me. ” it slips out in muscle memory, gentle and intimate and softened by repetition, but there's a fracture running through it now: a hairline crack that betrays any charm laced within it. “ it's not girls, it's not anything like that. ” in truth, one might have a much easier time swallowing and digesting a dozen explanations like that. like lipstick on collars, late nights, wandering eyes all those petty crimes he could atone for. if only his truth was so conventional. “ there's this whole messed-up world i'm dealin' with right now and i don't .. ” sentence disappears into the void. collapses its own tectonic pressure, consonants grinding against each other. the english language hardly has the right words to describe alternate realities and blood-slicked miracles and that hell is a whole lot closer than once thought to be.

“ i don't know how to say it without soundin' totally crazy. i can't drag you into somethin' if it's gonna blow. ” this explanation, or lack thereof, comes wrapped with a bow with that unmistakable steve harrington cadence: one part uncertainty, one part promise.

it is in his nature these days, unfortunately, to stand in front of the blast radius or perform as buffer or as the sacrificial kind of idiot with wit and worse decision-making habits.

although the invitation is to get him off her roof and spare her shingles one bad slip from a broken neck, sera doesn't reach to greet him like the old choreography once entailed. instead she wobbles backwards, catching the back of her desk chair and swiveling around to sit on it backwards. arms hug the backing, chin rested on the top edge, fingers pluck and play with the upholstery seams. " so, if it's not girls.. " feather-light is her voice. trespassing into a very uncomfortable place of what it is sera is even entitled to. she has lived this far without thinking it's much. everything is earned or rewarded for a small price. " —is it dangerous? " thinks of something awful but also limited to the world she knows of. her baby, stevie, some unlucky drug-runner or middleman for a suit and tie that lives elsewhere. she looks down at his hands and can't help but search for something bloody and bruised. " a-are you safe? is that..? " sera doesn't really give him a chance to answer any of her questions as they come to her. still, she finds footing in something more important than an unguided slew of half-cocked questions.

her tongue— her teeth— flirt with the pad of his thumb. jonathan inhales sharply, feels the cold intake of air all the way down to his toes. it's like he's never seen her so close, despite the fact he has, he knows he has. she's looking up at him from beneath her lashes. the whites of her eyes are pink-tinged, at contrast with the vibrant blue of her iris, and jonathan wishes he could take a picture of her just like this. clean and fresh and painfully touchable. but sera’s the type of beautiful that belongs on a still, a photograph, a movie poster hung high above his bed, not the type of person to be tucked comfortably into his sheets.

jonathan cants his head into her touch, soaks up the attention while its there. sera trails off in the middle of speaking and he's feels a jolt of panic, fear that she might pull away. will this be the moment she tells him that he's finally pushed too far and she wants to go back to indiana. shit-- her eyes are half-lidded, like they're too heavy to keep up, and she's so pretty it hurts in his chest. all day he's been watching out of the corner of his eye, struck by the ways she's changed in the few months he's been gone. in the handful of years since they last talked regularly. the sera visiting him in california is not exactly the sera from his childhood, not the sera flouncing through the halls of their high school. she's something new and familiar all at once. now, though, now he thinks he gets it. he's back to knowing her instinctively, like he knows every creak in the floorboards of his house in hawkins.

there were hot, loud, tantrum nights that sera will have to live with in jonathan's absence. regurgitating a wicked mantra about living fast and hard and free and whatever else sera could think of if it kept her out of the house. whether it be places or people: the queen of summer, she was, darkens in the back of her mind with a question she already knows the answer to. no, it was not worth it. but here, laid gently in jonathan's bed, beneath sheets that plume a rich detergent and the familiar scent of just him, jonathan's hand cradles the very place where those dark thoughts reside and numb them. cherry lips move in tandem, and her curled fingers release his ears to split through the shag of his hair. " jonathan, " she breathes. steady and easy. something she can't help but let slip once lips are parted and repressed against his own.

they're connected thinly, by a hair of spit that suspends from each lip. sera almost chases him back until he asks if this is okay. she blinks, fluttering bare lashes up at him that isn't to lure or fawn. sera wants to look at him. wants to see every part of him that she's missed from being so far away. wants to know if jonathan is really talking about some kiss, long overdue and much desired, or if he's talking about himself. her hands slide out of his hair, sloping to set her palms against the lines of his jaw instead. she licks her own lips, jonathan still fresh on her tastebuds. " it's ok.. more than ok. " it's hard not to think of how concerned jonathan could become when a game went too far, a joke ran on too long, when the snubbing wasn't funny anymore. it's a swap of hands when he knows he'll lose but will could win. it's a shoulder bump and a quick check of sera's feelings when the walk home from the movies is quieter than usual. so she adjusts herself beneath him, hugging his hips with bent knees, creeping higher up his pillow without straying from his cradling hand. round eyes bob across his features again, and sera realizes she isn't as good at checking in on him as he is with everyone around him. lips crack into a lopsided smile. the stages never see this one.

SABRINA CARPENTER

dialogue prompts from the down days by ilze hugo.

it was so worth it, wasn't it?

i'm not an extrovert like you. i need my space.

always the comedian, aren't you?

are you ready to be a martyr? do the right thing?

denial is practically my middle name.

i got into this to help people.

i promised myself i'd never look back.

i just work here.

i've done my research. i know the law.

find what you're looking for?

you're acting suspicious as fuck.

you think you're invincible, don't you?

you're not crazy. you're grieving.

is this 'fuck with me' friday?

have you started smoking again?

ray of sunshine alert.

your _____ seems like it's really bothering you today. you keep grimacing.

cross your heart and hope to die?

you're in a better mood. what happened?

i've just gained some perspective on a few things, is all.

i have to do everything to keep you safe, even if it seems crazy.

cold feet? if you keep walking, they'll warm up.

i'm turning into my mother.

let's pretend none of this happened and move on, okay?

i can't believe i trusted you.

hear me out. i can explain.

i'm nobody's darling, darling.

i really don't see how you can dig your way out of this one.

if i had to give myself a label, it would be 'hopesmith'.

you don't have to believe in something to be an expert in it.

hope isn't free. it always comes at a cost.

seriously. i can't take you anywhere.

there's no such thing as luck. or fate. or choosing your own reality in seven different colors and sizes with free shipping via amazon, or whatever.

you just can't help yourself, can you?

i'm sorry. i'm being an ass again, aren't i?

you look like you're having a rough week. can i buy you a coffee?

no strings, just caffeine. it's a sin to say no to a free cup of coffee.

spirits for the spirit, as my uncle used to say.

i like solving puzzles. the more difficult, the better.

some weeds can't be pruned, my gran used to say. their roots run too deep.

always the comedian, aren't you?

you keep tapping your nails against the table. i can't concentrate.

i'm guessing this isn't a social call.

i prefer to kick it old school, thank you very much.

you've been hiding from the hurt for too long. it's consuming you.

people lie all the time, for all sorts of reasons.

i do my best thinking on my feet.

i could do with a good caped crusader, right now.

i could do with a good saving. not a knight, though. no shining armor, thanks. and no horses, either.

i don't know anymore where 'now' begins and 'then' ends.

i know who you are. i've seen you.

i've never been good with uncomfortable silences.

this isn't a tv show, it's real life. things just happen.

sometimes you have to look after yourself, too.

aren't you even curious? after everything?

i'm nobody's fucking pinnochio. i'll dangle my own damn strings, thank you.

stop pretending you don't care about anything.

just trust me. and if you can't trust me, trust ______.

don't worry about that. it's all sorted. i phoned a friend.

you can be quite funny, if you try.

you can't fight fire with fire. take it from me.

you don't know what it's like to have no one.

you don't have to pretend anymore.

i've always liked the idea of reincarnation. a fresh start, a chance to try again.