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[harrin-king]

the day neil leaves, max wakes up to a note on her nightstand.

it’s the end of august. her brother’s been dead for almost two months.

good riddance, the note says. makes her laugh, and that. it hasn’t happened in a while. max thinks, right on, and draws the covers over her head again. no one’s there to yell her out of bed, anyway.

a week later, she’s sitting on another bed, in another room. smaller and affordable and miserable, which is what you get for being a single mom’s offspring in indiana. her brother’s life is taking over her entire floor, tapes and books and jackets spilling out of the one box it all fits in. even in death, billy refuses to be contained.

you’re dead, max thinks, feeling like she’s being pushed out of her own life. you don’t get to do this anymore.

on the first day of school, she shows up in his jacket. it’s too hot for leather yet. by the end of the day she’s cranky, and sweat-flushed, and her nostrils are cologne-coated. instead of skating back to the trailer, she turns left.

one of them is stone, so this is bound to be pretty one-sided, but. they need to talk.

‘i miss you,’ she tells him. ‘i hate you.’

she doesn’t wait for an answer. she knows better by now.

when she finally makes it back to her room, there’s another note waiting for her, squashed under a tape. side-b, the note instructs, track 3. the colors on the cover are too bright, dissonantly happy against the earthy brown of the room. a kind of magic, the title mocks her. max closes her eyes against it, because she’s long stopped believing in good things.

she presses play. don’t lose your head, freddie sings, and max plays the song again, and again, and thinks, too late.

‘where’d you get this?’ lucas asks her the next day, turning the tape this way and that.

max fights the urge to snatch it away and hide it from everyone she’s ever loved. ‘billy gave it to me,’ she says, before her brain can catch up to her mouth. so much for keeping sane. it’s almost worth it for the horror in dustin’s eyes, and the squeak her stupid, wonderful boyfriend lets out when he throws the tape back at her, panicked.

boys. can’t even handle a teeny haunting.

what max focuses on, though, is the way steve’s eyes go comically big, and then look away. one thing max knows about steve harrington is he’s a shitty liar.

she spends the day wrapped in her brother’s jacket and claims her grief-earned place on the passenger seat of steve’s car the second the bell rings. sorrow is neat, once you get the hang of it. max has been calling shotgun for the last two months, and no one’s said a word.

the moment lucas is out of the car, she turns to steve. ‘what did yours say?’

steve chokes on his own breath, because he’s the dumbest boy in the whole world, and her brother’s taste is terrible. ‘no idea what—’

max pinches his arm, hard. ‘how did lying to my brother work out for you?’

he lets out a sigh, while rolling his eyes, while driving. sure, max is the hazard here. ‘ugh,’ he says, ‘fine,’ and makes a right towards his place.

ten minutes later, max is standing in steve’s kitchen, staring at his notes. steve’s three notes. ‘i’m his sister and i got two.’

‘it’s not a competition.’

max glares him to silence. ‘that the first?’ she asks, pointing to a napkin with the word SLUT covering what max guesses is a girl’s phone number, signed with a kiss.

steve stares at it, visibly annoyed. ‘nope. that one, then the napkin. totally uncalled for, by the way. third one appeared last night.’

thanks for keeping an eye on her, reads the first, scrawled on a post-it next to the phone. according to steve, it appeared before july was over. not even a month of being dead and billy was already bored.

it’s so painfully him. max laughs despite herself, and realizes it happens often lately.

the third note is just a doodle of a skull like the one max spent last spring making fun of her dumb brother for, except this one’s got a mullet, and an earring dangling from the hole where his left ear should be, and the words guess who scribbled on one corner.

max slaps steve’s arm to keep from crying. ‘why didn’t you say anything?’

‘say what? hey, this is crazy, but i think your dead brother is harassing me from the grave? do you know how stupid that sounds?’

‘uh, no worse than usual?’

steve gasps dramatically. ‘how sure are we you’re not just possessed by his spirit? you never used to be so mean.’

max fixes him with a look.

‘fine,’ steve sighs, throwing his stupid hands in the air, ‘you’ve always been mean.’ he nods at the notes on the counter. ‘what’re we gonna do about that?’

‘we obviously need to find him.’

‘oh, yeah? you got a map of the underworld i don’t know about?’

rolling her eyes, ‘he’s alive,’ she points out, and then, ‘wait—’

that piece of paper wasn’t there a second ago, was it? she turns it over to find lines with street names, and a big X in the middle.

‘lemme see that,’ steve says, snatching the paper from her. he bursts out laughing, and max shoves him out of the way to read the writing at the bottom of the page.

you’re both useless, it says, don’t show up without beer.

[harrin-king]

BILLY HARGROVE in STRANGER THINGS 2 ↳ Chapter Three: The Pollywog

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Some people say my love cannot be true Please believe me, my love, and i'll show you I will give you those things you thought unreal The sun, the moon, the stars all bear my seal

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Billy Hargrove deserves to heal (’:

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a local video store

twitter

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i miss you

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STRANGER THINGS | 2x9

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speaking of me being brave for my silence, i am sitting on my hands in attempt to not write for harringrove again...girl help

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the way that i have been physically restraining myself from just posting every stranger things opinion that i have... not even just on the new season, i just have so many opinions on characters and arcs and i am being so brave by remaining silent 

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Literally cannot stop thinking about billy in the Hawkins basketball uniforms and the letterman jacket and whatever that sweatsuit outfit was like… it’s so out of his style that it would’ve been hilarious to see but also him walking around school in his letterman but open buttoned shirts, tits out? Why have I been denied my rights

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Casual affair

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Max and Billy listening to Running Up That Hill together in the car before everything went to shit is so special to me

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imagine Steve and the gang stumbling into the Upside Down only to find the sweatiest and grimiest Billy Hargrove, curls dripping in grease and clothes sloppy in blood and gunk, demo-bat perched on his shoulder, alive and so incredibly pissed off.

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Underappreciated s4 Steve outfit.

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i know this is clown behavior (tom foolery, if you will) but max’s little graveside speech just had me thinking “oh so he’s coming back right :~)” bc her talking about how if he was back they could be friends and how she really hopes he can hear her is just. giving me thoughts.