#hewrites

Then he started to reach for his food only to find it pillaged of more than just a couple of pieces of tasty meat. Firmly tucked inside of the blond’s cheek as he chewed. If Steve didn’t know better he would have said that Billy had been doing it on purpose to fuck with him. Just like the good ol’ days.

He was going to bring it up when he had dinner at the Hargrove-Mayfield house for the first - and final - time. There under the guise of being Billy’s project partner (which was not entirely untrue. They should have been figuring out what the hell the paper was going to be about).

It was so frequently quiet that there was nothing to really pay attention to except…well, everything. From the way that no one seemed to start eating their meal until Neil did to the way that Billy’s plate was noticeably less than everyone else’s. Especially his as Neil himself divvied out the food and gave the guest an extra good helping of meatloaf.

Now Steve wasn’t the smartest guy. His grades had been shit his entire life and he always had trouble understanding subtle nuances, even when handed to him on a silver platter.

But as time went on and Steve took bite after bite of meatloaf and kept light conversation going with Max and her mom - it was hard to ignore the fact that Billy had finished his plate already and made no attempts for seconds.

Which - when he thought about it - wasn’t exactly unusual. He had never seen Billy take seconds before. Ever. Something that he attributed to the blond’s vanity before that meal.

What had been unusual though was the fact that Billy hadn’t been stealing off his plate. He even hadn’t made any glances towards it that Steve had identified as the precursor to some food abduction, and even though Steve had “accidentally” bumped his plate a little bit more towards Billy there was nothing more than a cursory glance over before those blue eyes trained back on something in the distance. Way beyond whatever was going on at that dinner table.

Again: Steve wasn’t the smartest guy. Sometimes he needed the metaphorical punch to the face for him to understand those damned nuances that he couldn’t grasp. As he watched Billy sit there - obviously still hungry - that night while he himself politely finished the meal, he felt that punch. Right across his face and more violent than anything that Billy could ever swing.

And Billy had the audacity to act billy-brand-embarrassed after the whole meal. Telling him in hushed tones that he had said that dinner at his place was a bad idea and why couldn’t Steve just listen to him? Like Steve didn’t just witness a perfect study into why his boyfriend’s brain works the way it does.

Steve may be dumb, but he wasn’t a fucking idiot.

Billy steals from Steve’s plate all the time. Steve encourages this by sliding things he knows Billy will like towards his side of the plate and pretends he doesn’t notice them missing.

It doesn’t get him down. He was still in love with them and remembers them fondly and can recount all the little things that made him fall in love in the first place, but they were not physically in his life anymore. Those customers grab their bite and leave after they’ve sated their fill and those surfer boys move cause their dad was a fuckin’ dick. It was all a part of that great narrative that no one will ever understand - that was the beauty of it.

The best problem he could have ever hoped to happen to him was in the form of his new amigo though.

Dude didn’t think too highly of himself and took life way too serious at first. That was the first thing he noticed and set about trying to rectify with genuine friendship (which he apparently desperately needed if the way that Jonathan accepted it like a man dying of thirst was any indicator) and weed. It only took about two weeks before Argyle knew he was in love again and - damn - was it amazing.

Byer’s is pretty after all. Like - way pretty. In a way that makes him look as fragile as it does strong. He’s also talented as hell at pretty much everything he set his mind to, and that included while he was under the influence of some of the best shit that Argyle could get ahold of. He’s also loyal. Insanely goddamn loyal. To his mother, to his brother and sister, to his girlfriend - it’s so hot that sometimes Argyle found himself with a blush to his cheeks and a dopey grin of an idiot in love.

Problems gotta problem though, and Jonathan brought a ton of problems into Argyle’s life that he had never given thought to before. Guns and mind powers and dead bodies were made for movies and stuff, not meant to be something he had to actually give brain power towards and it was scary man. Scary as hell and there was a point where he wanted to leave them all in the desert and climb into his van and just book it back home.