#abusive harringrove

[theshippirate22]

listen i finished chapter 5 of ROARING and I’m just waiting for ao3 to come back up but i think i’ll post it here in the meantime to help with the drought. stay strong in these trying times y’all 😂

quick note: you don’t really need any background information for this chapter; it’s just a bunch of steddie fluff so even if you haven’t read the first couple chapters give this a shot anyway!! if you do happen to have questions, feel free to message me or comment and i’m happy to explain. i’d you’ve been with me this whole time, congrats you guys! we finally made it to the steddie part. i love you all <33 tw: implied abusive spouse (not between steve and eddie)

taglist: @chaosdawg15 @alideities @stairsthe33rd

ROARING: Chapter 5- We Were In Screaming Color (are we out of the woods yet?)

When Robin returned to West Eggo, she felt giddy with excitement, practically skipping in from the taxi. She could still taste Miss Wheeler’s lip gloss, and it felt like her hands were still pressing firmly to her hips and the small of her back impassionedly. 

As she passed under a section of particularly dense trees and found herself momentarily blinded by the darkness; the ever-glowing flame of Eddie’s house completely extinguished and plunging her entire yard into shadow. It was strange to see it that way, like the place was entirely unreal and removed. 

She stumbled along toward the path, and it was then that she saw the figure coming across the garden towards her. She was frightened only a moment until her sight adjusted, and she picked out the unruly curls of her neighbor. 

“Hey, sweetheart,” he murmured softly. “I wanted to apologize for darting off at lunch without saying goodbye.”

She couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the anxious apprehension in his voice, the feigned nonchalance to mask unease.

Ignoring his comment, eager to restore his assured aura, she blurted, “I’m going to call Steve tomorrow. Invite him to tea.”

Eddie let out a tense breath. “Oh. Alright.” He swallowed thickly. “I... I don’t mean to put you to any trouble.”

“I’m sure I’d see him regardless; the location is the only difference. What day would suit you?”

“Any time that would suit you,” he corrected quickly, breathlessly. “As little trouble as it’ll be for you, you see.”

“Mm, how about the day after tomorrow?”

“Yes!” He cried, then composed himself and added softer, “Yes, perfect.” He glanced around a moment; however, he undoubtedly couldn’t see more than a few vague silhouettes, slowly reinflating to his normal confidence and stepping into the only slice of moonlight in the garden. “Did you have a gay time with Nancy?”

Robin rolled her eyes. “Good Lord. Yes, actually, I did.”

“I’m glad,” he chuckled. “She called me a bit ago. She likes you.”

“I should hope so.” Robin positively swelled at the confirmation that her feelings were requited. 

“Oh yes, I’m sure she’ll phone you tomorrow, twirling the chord around her finger and giggling. Never seen her so fond of someone.”

Robin grinned. She didn’t know what to say, for once in her life rendered absolutely speechless. 

“Goodnight, sweetheart. Call me up about the plans or just come over and we’ll go out to Coney Island.” He kissed her forehead in parting, before trotting off into the darkness. She watched after him a moment, the way his feet picked up into a gleeful dance to his yard not escaping her and giving her no choice but to smirk after him before returning to her own house. 

She felt light-headed and exuberant as she disappeared within the confines of her own walls until she had to open the window to let out a bit of her joy, so it didn’t burst the frame. There was a single light on in Eddie’s house- his, she supposed- and she leaned against the window frame, humming to herself, and watched it like the moon, which she couldn’t see through the foliage. 

In the morning, she called up Steve from the office and invited him to tea the next day. He agreed most adamantly, already going on about a sweater he’d seen that was so horrendous he had to buy it just to laugh at it, and that she would love it. 

At the end of their discussion, Robin warned softly, “When you come tomorrow… don’t bring Billy.”

He paused a moment. “What?”

“Don’t bring Billy with you tomorrow.”

He clicked his tongue and murmured out a playfully innocent “Who?”

The arranged day came, and Robin opened the curtains to steaming rain sizzling along the hot sidewalks, giving the air a sort of strange, condensed fog. She went out in the haze to fetch things for the appointment- teabags, cakes, strawberries- and when she returned, Eddie was pacing across her yard in a black silk suit. He looked frantic and restless, evident darkness of sleeplessness on his face. 

“Oh thank God!” he cried at the sight of her. “Listen, I bought flowers. I need to know if there’s enough or if I need to send them back to get more.”

It was then that she caught the greenhouse lorry in her drive. The pair walked over to it, and Robin peered curiously into the bed. It was entirely full, to the point that another single rose might break the axles of the poor vehicle and she cried out laughing. “My God, Eddie, I think it’s alright. You’ve more flowers here than I’ve got house.”

He alternated between gnawing at his fingernails and pulling at his hair as she pushed him towards her porch and out of the rain. “Listen to me, you’re fretting over nothing at all, but if we empty the truck, it’ll look like we robbed a funeral home. Go pick four arrangements- one for either side of the mantel, the end table, and the dining table. Go on now.” 

Eddie seemed in dire need of clear instruction, and the next moment, a pair of gardeners came sweeping in the door after Robin with the chosen bouquets. They were placed accordingly, and Eddie kicked off his muddy shoes on the mat- swept delicately to the side, however hasty and absentminded the action was- and threw himself despairingly on the couch. 

Robin put the kettle on. 

The rain continued steadily for a good while- at least an hour and a half- as Eddie tossed and turned on Robin’s couch like he’d been struck suddenly with Scarlett Fever, before leaping to his feet and pacing back and forth between the dining room and the sitting room. 

Robin said patiently in her favorite armchair and babbled on and on softly about nothing imparticular (mostly Steve) as white noise to his wild nerves. The clock banged out the start of the 4 o’clock hour and Eddie properly flung himself off the ground in surprise, and stared at it unnaturally for much too long, as if it was actively tearing him apart from within.

Finally, he tore his sight away, interrupting Robin entirely, however little she minded, to loudly report, “I’m going home.”

“What?!” She cried. “Why?!”

“Nobody’s coming to tea. It’s too late,” he shook his head exasperatedly. “He’s not coming.”

“Don’t be irrational, Eddie. It’s hardly five past four.”

He threw himself down on the couch again miserably, pulling a particular curl of his hair across his face for no reason other than to hide behind it.

It was barely another minute until the sound of a motor rumbled up from the end of the drive and both of them jumped up in apprehension. Eddie murmured something reminiscent of a prayer before letting out a relieved, somewhat hysterical laugh, and lightly pushing Robin towards the door. 

She went willingly; however, she paused a moment to adjust herself in the mirror in the entryway and wipe away a smudge in her makeup, before stepping out onto the porch.

The rain, which up until this point had been a steady downpour, let up until it was nothing more than a few haphazard drops as if had been waiting for the arrival of this guest, and Steve stepped out of the car without so much as a splash to impact him. He ran up the soaked pathway nonetheless, however, this was to fling himself into Robin’s arms and kiss the side of her face affectionately. 

“Robbie,” he murmured, voice low and rippling with mirth. “Are you in love with me? Is that why I had to come alone?”

She laughed around the armful of him, playing along (What was it Max had said? They’re both swinging the wrong way to be hitting each other?) and whispering back conspiratorially, “Absolutely. That’s the secret, darling.”

He waved off his driver and accompanied her inside. Robin swore the moment the door was closed behind them, the rain picked right back up again.

Delighted was the wrong word to describe the way Steve looked over her home. He was positively thrilled, soaking in every inch of it like it might disappear from in front of his very eyes like a particularly magnificent but fickle dream. 

“I feel as if I’ve stepped inside your ribs, Robbie,” he cried. “Show me the heart, will you?”

She laughed, pushing him lightly toward the sitting room as she remembered this visit was not for them. However, as they passed over the threshold, they found the room empty.

“What?” Robin said stupidly.

“I didn’t say anything,” Steve murmured, attention already directed toward whatever trinkets or décor he could lay his hands on.

Then there was a knock at the door, controlled and light. Robin opened it. There was Eddie, practically soaked through his coat, smiling at her as if he hadn’t done the strangest thing she’d ever witnessed. 

He paused only a moment, to remove the sopping jacket and hang it on the newel post, before letting her lead him right back into the room where she’d left him. 

Robin’s palms were hot and sweaty with anxiety, her heart beating faster with every step toward Steve that she took. It was at this moment that they would know whether or not their efforts had succeeded.

Steve was examining one of the flower arrangements- had plucked out a single carnation and was twirling it between two fingers. “Robbie, I think we ought to-” He looked over to her, but it was Eddie his eyes landed on. “Oh!” He properly startled, the carnation falling from his hands and onto the couch. He took a step back.

“This is my neighbor,” Robin cleared her throat. “He’s just stopping by for tea as well.”

Eddie crossed over to him slowly, like he might startle again and dart away into the kitchen without a word, until they were standing no more than a foot apart. 

“Hi.”

Steve stared fixedly at the fallen flower, cheeks flushing almost the same shade of pink. 

“Hi.”

Eddie picked up the flower and pressed it softly into his hands, so Steve had no choice but not to look at it any longer. 

Robin started, however vain she knew it was, “This is Eddie-”

“We’ve met,” Steve interrupted quickly, lifting his head to look at her a moment before glancing finally to Eddie. He twisted the stem anxiously between his palms, watching Eddie imploringly, like he had something that Steve would surely suffocate without, adding, “Six years ago.”

“Feels longer,” Eddie mumbled.

Steve nodded haphazardly, as if the sentiment was empty but entirely too true and the only response was to bob about as a necessary accolade.

“I’ll get the tea,” Robin said. 

They hadn’t moved an inch when she returned, still standing uncomfortably close and not saying anything because of the weight of all the unspoken tangles around them. The tea tray clattered against the coffee table, and they sprung apart in surprise at the sound.

Steve sat tensely on the edge of the couch, Eddie took Robin’s favorite armchair, so she settled in on the other side of the couch, trying to acquaint some sort of normalcy to the pair. She started talking dutifully, although her mind was far from anything escaping her. Steve interjected occasionally, however, abnormally infrequently, and Eddie didn’t say a thing, staring ahead as if deep in thought.

Eventually, Robin decided the problem was her presence, that if she was absent, they might be able to speak to each other like functioning members of society, so she got to her feet and offered up some excuse about needing to check her flowerbeds hadn’t flooded with the rain.

Eddie sat up quickly. “I’ve got to speak to you before you go out.”

Steve cast his gaze down, almost shamefully, as Eddie shuffled into the foyer beside Robin. 

“What’s the matter?”

“This was a terrible mistake. Is a terrible mistake. I’m afraid I’ve outdone any of my previous stupidity with this one...”

“It’s not!” Robin cried exasperatedly. “If you both weren’t acting so horribly queer...”

“You think we’re acting queer, sweetheart?” he asked, laughing tensely. “Because I don’t think we’re acting nearly queer enough!”

“My God,” she murmured. “Peculiar. You’re both acting so outrageously peculiar! You’re embarrassed, he’s embarrassed, and you’ve both got to get over yourselves.”

“He’s embarrassed?” Eddie echoed hopefully. 

“Yes, just as much, if not more, as you.”

“Hush! Lower your voice. What am I to do, then?”

“Stop acting like an adolescent,” she pushed him impatiently in Steve’s direction. “You’re being rude! He’s in there all alone and he knows we’re talking about him.”

Eddie looked panicked at that, perhaps even had some decency to appear guilty, before quickly steeling himself with a sharp breath and starting back into the other room. 

Robin, rolling her eyes as she went, stepped out the back door and went across the lawn to hide from the rain under the massive tree that poured over from Eddie’s side of the fence and accounted for a good portion of the shade on the northwest side of the yard. 

The rain carried on for a little more than a half hour, at which point Robin’s shoes were wet and muddy and her hair had gone damp and flat against her neck from the spray of the wind, and then she returned to the house. She came in through the back door, rattling about in the kitchen that she might make her presence known and not walk in on anything she’d rather not see (presumptuous of her, she knew well enough, but rather safe than sorry) but it was as if no sound could reach the pair at all, despite her incessant clamoring.

They were perched on opposite sides of the sofa, knees turned in toward each other, so they found themselves rather far into the other’s space, breathing close and murmuring delicately to each other like the words were too pure to be uttered aloud and couldn’t risk falling upon a porcine audience. Steve was crying silently, twisting the poor carnation between his fingers again, and Eddie reached up softly to wipe his face with the sleeve of his sweater. He muttered something sweet, and a smile Robin had never received overtook Steve instantaneously, disappearing almost as quickly. 

Robin properly kicked the stove now, which bellowed out an irritated metallic moan, and the pair startled at once, leaping away from each other as if they’d been caught in a significantly more compromising position. 

“Oh, hello, sweetheart,” Eddie said. It was as if he had been completely revitalized in their short time apart, as if it had been years since he had laid eyes on her. He glanced back at Steve for a moment, with the fondness of a moon that had spent too long in eclipse, waxing full in the glow of the sun like it never had before. 

“It’s stopped raining,” Robin said.

“Has it?” Steve’s voice was thick with some sort of emotion, wet with tears but high with delight in a way that felt contagious, and Robin promptly grinned at the sound of it. 

“Now, my dear, we were just saying I ought to take you both over to my house,” Eddie explained, echoing the very same tone. “I want to show Steve around.”

“You’re sure you want me to come?” It felt peculiar to be included in such an obviously intimate invitation. 

“Yeah, of course, sweetheart.” He stared at her with the strangest expression, as if the thought of her staying behind had never occurred to him. 

So out Robin went with the pair. Eddie led the charge, three fingers grasping softly at Steve’s wrist- resting there against his pulse like if he couldn’t feel the life in him, he might disappear from the very place he stood- as he directed them toward his wrought iron gates overgrown with ivy. 

There was help here, too. Three great, booming men in idyllically pressed suits with perfect, innocent white gloves, who swept open the gates at Eddie’s call and revealed the cobblestone up the private drive to his garage. 

Eddie’s loose grip on him was lost, and Steve rushed up ahead of them to peer through the cover of the trees and get a glimpse of the house. 

“Can you see it?” Eddie asked, however, looking at Robin with the sort of glee of a child stumbling upon a stash of sweets.

Steve gasped softly, hands flying to cover his mouth as he stepped through the trees and onto the front lawn. “It’s... massive. You... you live there?”

Eddie nodded adamantly. “I do. Do you like it?”

He stared at it for a bit longer, contemplating, before his grin began slipping and he decided faintly, “It looks lonely.”

Robin watched some of the darkness edge back into him in a moment, watched the way the sunlight streaming out of him faltered for an instant. He’d mentioned- once, is all- that he’d spent more of his childhood alone in his parent’s estate than not, and the dreaded prep school he’d been shipped off to was a welcome reprieve from the silence. 

“It isn’t,” Eddie said quickly. “I keep it full of interesting, celebrated people. There’s never a moment I spend alone that I don’t desire it.”

On and on they waltzed in and out through the ornate, opulent rooms of the castle. Sitting rooms, offices, guest bedrooms, kitchens, bathing rooms, ballrooms. The glittering, golden art deco pressed down against them lightly, the crystal glasses, the alabaster chandeliers glowing all around them.

Steve’s footsteps echoed out as he dashed across the wide expanse of the main ballroom, bouncing around in the air with his laughter and Eddie’s. “My God, it’s splendid! It’s simply splendid. Do you see it, Robbie?”

Eddie murmured to her, “Do you know how long I’ve dreamed of this? See how he glows?”

And he was right. The sun inside Steve- no matter how much his husband had managed to extinguish it- was once again lit up enough to provide warm, hazy light to every inch of the galaxy. 

Eddie showed off his built-in organ and its eccentric player, the inventions in his kitchens, the records in his personal sitting room. They tripped out to his beach and swam out the few yards to the floating dock tethered off the shore, laughing and gleaming the whole while. 

The affair was no expense spared- one of the butlers adjusted a massive sail over the top of the posts to build a shade, and just off the edge of the dock sat another of the butlers in a little rowboat full of anything anyone could dream of eating. There were baguettes smeared with butter and strawberry preserves, trays of Prosciutto, Gouda, Havarti, and Salami, cold grapes, apricots, raspberries the color of roses. Champagne passed around while Steve tried to drive an unblemished golf ball into the bay and instead knocked the head off the club, which sent both he and Eddie into hysterics. Robin was at one instant handed a camera and surely used up a few rolls of film as she documented the occasion.

It seemed, floating there against the sapphire ocean, that time had abruptly forgotten to attend its profession, and the three would remain young as they were that very morning for the rest of eternity. 

It came to a soft end as Steve remarked that Eddie was hot to the touch and starting to spike red in complexion, and promptly decided they must return to the shelter of the house, lest he get a nasty sunburn. Steve himself looked golden; the sun had kissed gently along his brow, the way a mother favors a child, water drops beading along his skin as he pulled himself from the water and onto the sand. 

It was quickly realized between them that Eddie had not revealed his own bedroom, and Steve asked politely if they might see it. Robin watched the exchange cheerily, for she was sure Eddie would send his right hand through an orange juicer if Steve so much as sighed the right way. 

In they danced through the billowing curtains and cool air. Robin asked impertinently how Eddie found the time to purchase the furnishes of his castle, and Eddie properly laughed. 

“I don’t buy them myself. I’ve got people hired out to do it, and I send out my signature where it’s needed. Anything I desire is less than a phone call away at any moment.” He swept open the doors to his own suite. The room was massive- rather expected at this point- with at least three-story ceilings stretching up forever and ever to reach an incredible chandelier. At about where the second floor should be, there was a great closet, built into the wall with seventy or more shelves from the lip of the balcony overhanging where they stood to as high as a man could reach, all full of fabrics and clothing of every color. 

“Why,” Eddie cried, dashing toward the black spiral staircase leading to this second half-level. “I’ve got a man in England who buys my clothes for me.”

He reached for a shelf, grasping at a handful of colored handkerchiefs, and flung one down over the balcony so that it tumbled down like a dejected leaf in late October. Steve reached to grab it before it hit the floor, and when he looked up again, there was another twirling down toward him, and another and another, and he cried out in laughter, trying frantically to retrieve them all. 

Eddie, however, had tired of the handkerchiefs and turned his attention to the neatly folded shirts all in a row. He flung them out next, one after the other, and Steve laughed and laughed over the sound of his explanations. “These are satin... flannel!... Indian cotton...”

As the shelves began to grow empty, and the armful of cloth Steve had acquired grew too heavy, Eddie paused and watched as he threw himself down on his bed, tumbling in around the clothes, shoulders shaking. Robin watched the way one watches a ticker tape parade, and she called something nonsensical to Steve’s trembling figure, the deepness of his laughter muffled by the surrounding mess of shirts. 

Eddie held tightly to the railing of the balcony for only a moment longer, before turning suddenly and racing down the stairs two at a time to meet him. 

“What is it?” He cried miserably, sinking to his knees next to him. 

Steve lifted himself, hands fisted around a particular light pink button-up, hot tears pouring from the wells in his eyes. 

“What is it?” Eddie murmured again, patiently and softly this time. He smoothed gently at his hair, wiping vainly the individual tears that trailed down his cheeks. “Tell me, sweet boy. I’ll fix it this instant.”

This only served to make Steve cry harder, until Robin was nearly sick with concern, before he mumbled out, “It makes me sad... it makes me so sad...”

Eddie looked at Robin a moment in confusion before refocusing his attention. “What does, darling?”

Steve shuddered, letting him pry the shirt from his hands and replace it with his own hands. He seemed to want to say something, to spill out some great secret upon them, and Robin watched the sudden change when Eddie’s tracing finger stumbled over the lip of Steve’s wedding ring, and whatever words found themselves on the edge of his lips died there.

Instead, he whispered wetly, “They’re just such beautiful shirts.”

Robin went to fetch someone to bring back water for the lot of them, mostly Steve, and when she returned, Eddie had crossed to the other side of the bed and relaxed against the headboard so that Steve might rest his head on his stomach. Eddie held him there with the utmost delicacy, hands running gently through Steve’s hair, to quell whatever torment Steve had chained inside himself. 

When a butler arrived with the water, he drank obediently and returned to his place against Eddie. He reached out for Robin, now perched at the foot of the bed, and took her hand weakly into his. 

She looked up to Eddie, who nodded despite the silence, and in that moment, it was decided between them that everything that afflicted Steve would be done away with at the soonest possible opportunity. 

Finally, after nearly an hour in silence, as the sun sunk slowly back into the horizon until it started to disappear entirely, and Steve’s glow leveled out into a soft haze, he murmured, “What time is it, Robbie?”

“Just after 9...” She consulted her watch.

“I’ve got to go home.” He pressed it into the air lethargically, making no effort to remove himself from Eddie’s arms. 

“Stay here tonight,” Eddie murmured into the top of his head. “Call up Nancy, tell her you’re staying.”

Steve hummed contentedly, rubbing softly up Eddie’s forearms as he entertained the thought, but ultimately decided, “I mustn’t. Billy will be so dreadfully angry with me. It was hard enough to get him to agree to this appointment with Robin.”

“Why’s that, sweet boy?” Eddie returned the significant look Robin shot him instantly, keeping perfect nonchalance in his voice. 

“Hmm...” Steve mumbled, eyes blinking in and out of sleep slowly. “I suppose he prefers to have me nearby. Perhaps he misses me.”

It was said in the way one expresses a dream, a sort of vague fantasy. A half-truth. Eddie’s eyes turned dark in the confirmation, and the look between him and Robin grew hard and determined. 

Eddie kissed the top of his head gently, then his forehead, then each temple before he began to extract them. 

He walked them all the way back to Robin’s house, folding out in the dusk- returning to his own domain- with a hand on Steve’s wrist again. It was softer this time, less to lead him and more to tie them securely together and ensure that Steve would understand they would not be separated again. 

Once Steve and Robin had been deposited on the back porch of Robin’s house, he pulled their connected hands to his lips and pressed a kiss to Steve’s hand in parting. Telling Robin he’d call her up later- once again forcing a sort of calmness that was not enforced by the look in his eyes- he started back off down the lawn. 

Steve’s driver arrived within a few minutes, and he started off towards it without a word but stopped suddenly to turn back and look at Robin on the stoop. 

“If... if he asks about today... you’ll tell him it was just us?”

Robin knew exactly which “he” he meant- not Eddie- and she nodded solemnly. 

He sighed exhaustedly and added, “It’s all so... conflicting. Difficult.” He laughed absurdly. “I needn’t explain it to you; you know just what I mean, don’t you?”

“Of course, darling,” Robin said.

He nodded with finality and disappeared within the darkness of the car.

[weird-an]

Billy doesn't remember how he got here. He stares at Harrington's big ass house, perfectly cut rose bushes and freshly mowed lawn.

It's nearly midnight. His arm throbs, each one of Neil's finger leaving a violet shadow behind. Why did he come here?

Harrington and him only met two times, shared hungry kisses and touches no one can ever know about. The vague sense of relief, of not being alone, made Billy ache a little less for that moment.

He's probably looking for that. To ease the pain, because Harrington is better than an advil.

Ridiculous. He should go, lick his wounds somewhere else. Harrington is a rich brat, once he sees the ugly truth behind Billy's smiles he's gonna toss him away.

The door opens. Billy halfway expects the stern looking man he has seen on a photo in the hallway to yell at him, to chase him away.

"Billy?"

But it's just Steve. Steve whose face turns from confused to something softer, something warm, something Billy wants to curl up in if he only was allowed to.

"What's goin' on?" Steve steps aside. Billy can't move. He doesn't belong here, because this place is golden and bright and shines on all his scars.

"Come in," Steve says.

Billy knows that he must have walked, because suddenly he's sitting on the couch and Steve puts a blanket around him.

"What are you doin'?" Billy asks. He's staring at some weird ass marble sculpture of an otter and it all doesn't make sense.

"You're hurt." Steve chews on his bottom lip, somehow unsure. They've already crossed a line tonight, Billy knows that. "How can I help?"

"I don't need help," Billy says and it's not even a lie. Neil gets angry, Billy hides, that's just how it goes. He wants to get away, but he's never going to make it. He knows it. Neil knows it, too.

Steve tilts his head. The otter stares at Billy.

"Hot chocolate," Steve declares.

"I'm not a kid," Billy snorts. He's a son, but he's not a child. Never allowed to be.

Steve ignores him. The otter seems to laugh at Billy when he listens Steve rummage in the kitchen.

There's a hot cup getting pushed into his hand. There's a gigantic pile of marshmallows on top of it. Billy looks from the chocolate to Steve, to the otter and back.

"Do you want more marshmallows?" Steve asks - he sounds nervous. He sips from his cup and Billy watches him lick away the stain of chocolate from his lips.

"It's fine," Billy says. The chocolate tastes rich and sweet and there's tears in his eyes, tears he has cried before when he was a kid and still had a mom.

"Thanks," he manages, hoping Steve doesn't see him cry like a little bitch - or so his dad would say.

"Anytime." It sounds like a promise.

Billy can't feel Neil's hand on his arm. He only feels warm.

[manwrre]

headcanon steve is super ultra mega overprotective of his boyfriend, billy. this, i know for a fact because he told me so literally today.

i feel like he’s one of the few people who truly acknowledges and remembers that billy’s actually younger than him?? and younger than he looks in general. outwardly, he kinda gets it— billy’s a bit above average height and has honed his body into something solid and firm. his voice carries and his attitude is reinforced by his ability to pack a freaking punch, so yea, he knows what it looks like. he knows what it feels like.

but even when billy’s all wound up and angry, all steve sees is a boy who’s had to be anything but himself for as long as he’s been alive. he sees a boy who hasn’t had anyone in his corner ever since his mom died and has been forced to fight all of his battles alone; without the comfort of support or solace.

and this remains true, even after starcourt, when billy is admittedly more vulnerable; even when he’s back on his own two feet and his sonofabitch father intends on making his life a living hell. and steve remembers the hell that billy had been put through that night—how cold he had been in his arms and logically, threatens the beat the shit out of neil hargrove.

okay, he doesn’t but he does remind him, rather pointedly, that he knows “hopper, the chief?” just to watch the smug expression bleed off of the older man’s face. he takes advantage of neil hargrove’s terse silence and helps billy pack most of his things evenly into the camaro and beemer.

and living away from neil does wonders to billy. he’s a little bit shyer, a little softer but it’s much like a child who’s been gifted this wonder and is waiting for the other boot to drop.

everyone still anticipates the blonde’s sneering and spitting but he’s the only one looking for the barely perceptible shake of his hands. he’s the only one who knows, privately, that billy’s only storming out because he’s staving off hot tears.

so when the party comes over to steve’s house for game night and billy makes himself scarce, steve knows it’s because he’d rather disappear, than possibly face their rejection or be the root of their discomfort.

he understands that billy knows how important time with the kids is for him; how much he adores them. and as the night goes on, steve realizes just how much he’s missed having them around at his. he’s glittering, gleaming— happy.

that is, until their game runs a little too late and eventually, steve hears footsteps padding downstairs.

he’s not the only one that does, though and there’s a pause in their shouting, as everyone’s heads swivel in the direction of the noise.

and there he is, halfway down the stairs and rubbing at his eyes.

billy’s pretty and groggy and steve can just barely make out how sleep-swollen his cheeks are; how soft and sweet he looks. god, he’s so in love with him. he wants to kiss him so badly— “what’s he doing here?”

and that’s all it takes for the smile to get wiped off of steve’s face. his expression shutters and he can feel it happen, knows he must look furious. “you—“ he points a finger at mike and hikes it over his shoulder. “kitchen, now.”

there’s a different kind of silence now in the room and steve doesn’t even look at billy to see exactly what his face is doing in response right now, not when he’s too busy staring mike down. and poor mike, he’s still indignant and defensive about it all as he splutters out a, “but we were all thinking it,” which just makes things worse.

and so, right then and there, he’s all, “you don’t get to come in here— into our home and make him feel less than. things are different now and you don’t have to be his biggest fan but that, you won’t do that,” clearly speaking to everyone in the room. anyway, billy’s touched, it’s all so very sweet because steve’s in his corner and they live happily ever after like all the gays should.

[intothedysphoria]

Max didn’t actually seem to dislike her brother that much.

From what Steve had seen the first week they’d moved, all the arguing and long frosty silences and all out fights, Billy would still sneak a note into her pocket every day of school. He’d argue with her classmates, teachers, even the cops if they ever gave her shit.

Billy had dropped her off at the Christmas dance, ruffling her hair a little before noticing Steve. All Steve really got was a grunt of acknowledgment. Which he supposed was better than a punch in the face.

Whenever Mike would make comments about Billy being insane or evil, Max would practically push him off his chair. Steve, not fancying a thirteen year olds left hook decided to put the subject of Billy off the table.

There was only a small amount of facts about Billy Hargrove that Steve knew to be accurate. He was about half a year younger than Steve, the only person he’d really bonded with was Eddie Munson and his dad was a real piece of work. As bad as Lonnie Byers, from what Steve had heard from Max.

Steves parents were Italian-Glaswegian and despite the fact that he bitched about them constantly, Steve loved his parents to bits. His nonna, his granny, his seven billion cousins, all of them were the friendliest people on earth.

The only person James had really disliked had been Lonnie. Until Neil. When his dad had a bad feeling about someone, he was always right.

Steve had been given a mission to befriend Billy. “That wee bairn isn’t being treated right”, that’s what his dad had said. So Steve, laden with spaghetti bolognaise and tablet, knocked on The Hargrove’s door when he knew Neil wasn’t home.

Billy answered, obviously post workout and stared wide eyed at the food. Looking closer at his tank top, Steve could see a pin of the Irish flag settled above his chest.

Steve, not known for his eloquence, mumbled that the food was for Billy and fled for the car. Anything to get out of an awkward conversation.

There were two washed Tupperware containers tucked under Steve’s gym locker the following Monday, accompanied by a note with surprisingly neat handwriting.

“My thanks to the Harringtons. Max loved the tablet.

Uilliam Hargrove”

Steve made a mental note of the way Billy spelled his first name. He had cousins in County Cork and had met a fair few Uilliam’s in his time. Evidently, Neil was the culprit for the anglicised spelling.

Steve’s granny was ecstatic that her cooking had been appreciated and invited him over for dinner pretty much immediately. Steve found himself delivering that message too. This time however, he didn’t run for the car.

Billy studied him, considering, then said he’d be delighted to join. His voice was both surprisingly polite and formed vowels in a manner that was unmistakably West Belfast.

He was charming. Utterly charming. Not the put on way Steve had seen him talk to Karen Wheeler (good god that woman was creepy) but in a way that seemed to just come naturally. Steves house was a blending of Scottish and Italian and Jewish and Irish and Polish and Billy genuinely seemed to love it all.

James sat them together at the table. Probably in an attempt to play Cupid, the meddling old man. Billy used it as an excuse seemingly to scandalise Steve. He was no prude but the way Billy slipped in innuendo after innuendo had Steves face burning.

Dinner turned into staying the night. Steve on an air mattress and Billy on Steve’s bed. Neil wouldn’t notice if he wasn’t there. He probably wouldn’t even notice if Billy disappeared forever.

Steve had never felt himself feeling such a burning sadness for someone and reached out so that they were clutching hands. Billy didn’t shove him away or call him a homo. Instead he clutched Steve’s hand even tighter.

The closer Billy and Steve got and the more Billy slept the night at the Harringtons, the more Billy’s relationship with Neil deteriorated. It got to the point where Billy was showing up with cracked ribs and broken toes, sometimes with Max hovering nervously behind him. Hell, they’d officially started dating with blood spurting out of Billy’s nose.

Until one day when Billy showed up looking the worst Steve had ever seen him. Max was having to support him in standing upright. He was clutching a note in his fist.

“Keep him.”

Out of everyone Steve had expected to go and give Neil a piece of their mind, it hadn’t been his granny. So while Steve was holding Billy’s hand, kissing him and being a bit useless, Maureen had apparently punched Neil Hargrove in the nose.

Funnily enough, Neil never really returned after that. He was somewhere in Alabama. Or Florida. Steve hadn’t bothered to learn where. All he knew was that Billy was a lot happier without him.

They could finally kiss in public. Go on sort of dates. Book nights of passion in sketchy motels.

Know that Max was ok and safe.

And never have his parents involved in his love life again.

For @shieldofiron and @dragonflylady77

Scottish Steve inspired by @ratbastardbilly

[shieldofiron]

Billy used to remember calling his mom at work. She worked nights, which was the worst because it was when he was home with his dad. He knew that was when she made money. That he was creating a problem.

And maybe he was just crying wolf. It was just a few scratches after all. A split lip here, black eye there. And his mom was a nurse, she could patch him up when she got home.

“Mom. He’s real… no, I know. I know. I’m sorry mom. I’ll apologize to him. I… yeah. Sorry.”

After she left, he got the picture. Don’t call for help. Don’t create a problem. And then people won’t leave.

“Why didn’t you call me?” Steve was standing over him. The blue winter sky beamed down on Billy, Christmas lights still clutched between his numbing fingers. He was still too stunned from the fall to get up.

“Don��t need help, Pretty Boy, it’s fine.”

Steve offered his hand and… it would be rude not to take it. “I’d prefer if you call me for help.”

Billy blinked.

“You ok?”

Billy nodded.

“Just call. Anytime, ok?” Steve cracked a smile. “I live to help you.”

It’s something they’re working on.

[harringroveera]

Cue Steve getting even more worried and panicked about Billy’s wellbeing

[bentnotbroken1fanfiction]

The first time Billy Hargrove felt a thunderstorm shake Hawkins, he thought his rage must have borne it to life. 

He'd been driving toward the quarry, fresh blood on his teeth and a throb in his left eye when the skies ahead unleashed their fury. The wind picked up and the rain fell so heavily that he had to pull over because he couldn't see the road anymore. And instead of waiting out the danger in the safety of the driver's seat like a normal person…

Billy had gotten out to meet it. 

The rain had stung the wounds on his bare skin but he didn't care. No. It made him feel clean… .like the storm was washing away all his shame…all his sins. 

He screamed at the darkened sky and let his ire be known. He was done with this town. Done with his dad. Done with his pain. 

Done with this fucking life that he didn't even fucking ask for. 

He didn't ask to be born . 

So he'd screamed his grievances into the wind until his anger faded, until his body no longer shook with it. He'd screamed until his voice was raw, until the lightning stopped flashing. He's stood on the side of that sad gravel road until the rain became a drizzle and the tears no longer flowed. 

That first time he let the wet clothes cling to his body until his skin chilled and he shook with cold, because they didn't get thunderstorms like this in Cali. They didn't get storms that made him feel so…. alive .  So when that storm rolled away from him, disappearing into the distance, Billy decided that there was maybe one good thing about this shit town after all. 

Well, one thing other than Steve Harrington. 

***

Steve has never liked rain. When he was little, if he ever stepped in a puddle his mother would throw a fit about him trekking mud through the house, and when the thunder scared him in the middle of the night he'd try to find comfort in her arms, but his father put a stop to that when he was four. He'd lay awake all night hiding under his covers, under his bed, waiting for the booming to stop. 

Now, it isn't scary. He's not afraid . It just makes his house feel even more empty, the dull sky painting everything gray.  

Lonely.

Cold. 

Plus, he spends an hour on his hair. If it gets wet, it's game over. So rain is no bueno in his book.

Or it used to be. 

Until he'd seen Billy Hargrove, head thrown back and hair dripping in the middle of a downpour, laughing and screaming into the rain.

And look, he'd never given boys much of a thought before…but when he saw Billy…clothes clinging to his body and rain droplets running down his throat….it did something in him. 

Did something to him. 

He felt …moved . Or some shit.

Like it felt…poetic in a way…made Steve want to stick around. To see what may happen. 

But he didn't approach him. He never could bring himself too. He couldn't handle the weird feeling inside of him, so he just watched silently from the safety of his car as the thunder boomed as loud as his heartbeat, drowning out the sound of Billy's captivating insanity. 

***

Billy isn't sure when someone joined in on his little trips. One day, he just realized that he was being followed. And what had started out as anger and irritation at being watched in such a vulnerable moment had ended up becoming somewhat of a game to him once he'd figured out who his shadow was. 

Because it was the King of Hawkins High himself. 

Steve fucking Harrington. 

And it's not like Harrington was being subtle either. Billy would always spot his beamer slowing down, or if he ended up in the junkyard, he'd always hear a car's tires crackling on gravel not far away. 

He could feel those brown eyes on his face, following his movements as he paced back and forth in front of the Camaro, or when he'd take a bat to some beat up rust buckets. He just knew he was watching him closely and he wouldn't leave until Billy did. 

But since Harrington never bothered to get out or approach him, he just let it slide. Who cared if the other boy saw his deranged little act? If he told anyone, it would just give Billy more of a reputation as being someone these country bumpkins shouldn't fuck with. 

So, he let him watch. He let him see and hear the fury that lived inside him. And if he cried, how would Harrington even know ? It was fucking raining . 

Then winter came and he didn't see hide nor hair of the other boy. He may catch a look or two in the hall, but that was it. He wouldn't turn a corner and see the beamer waiting for him. He'd been so used to seeing him that it was almost…strange to not have him in his rearview mirror. 

By New Years Day he realized he kind of misses his little stalker.  So when the cold left and spring showers replaced the chill of February, Billy finally decided to do something about it. 

Because he needs to know why. Why Harrington is following him around whenever it rains? What he is even getting out of it. Because when Billy is looking that closely at someone….it's because he likes them. He's interested in them. In the Biblical way. 

Which is 100% good with Billy. 

In fact, If Harrington is anything like him, then he's going to need answers pronto. No matter what. Because he hasn't found anyone else like him in this town. He can't let this chance slip away. 

So, when he finally sees the beamer pull up just down the lane from where he's currently kicking rocks, he decides to make his move. 

***

Steve was surprised that Billy never approached him. He had to know that he was there. The guy wasn't dumb. But he never said anything, so maybe he doesn't care.

Maybe he is fine with Steven following him. 

So he just keeps doing it. 

He only takes a break when it's too cold for rain and chasing him around school would be too obvious. 

But it's warm again now. And it's storming. The thunder is so loud, in fact, that he is more focused on the crashing overhead and doesn't notice that Billy has spotted him and is walking right up to his passenger side window until he knocks on it. 

And like an idiot, Steve rolls it down. "Can I help you?" He asks, voice slightly shaky. The words sound haughty but he knows he's in the wrong here. He's been caught red handed this time. 

"I don't know, Harrington, you tell me."  He replies, and Steve can see the smirk on his face as the sky lights up once more. "You're the stalker." 

Heat flares up his neck and covers his face. "I'm not…" He starts and then stops himself. The jig is up. "OK, OK. Maybe what I'm doing could be considered…stalking…maybe but I'm not…I'm not trying to be…" 

"Creepy?" Billy finishes, and Steve nods. They both just stare at each other for a few seconds before Billy wiggles the handle and sighs loudly when it doesn't budge. "Well, are you gonna let me in or not?" 

Steve should probably hesitate and think about this a little more, but he doesn't. Instead, he just unlocks it and let's Billy slide into the seat beside him. 

They are both quiet for a moment, the only sounds being the rain against the roof of the car and his heart beating in his ears. He doesn't know what to say. 'Sorry' just doesn't seem sincere, because he's not sorry.  

He is simply curious. 

He just wants to know why Billy is always out here, letting himself drown in the rain. What can he possibly get out of it? It can't feel nice. Right? 

"So, you gonna tell me why you’re fucking following me or-?" 

Steve groans and runs a hand down his face. "Fuck. I don't…I don't know man. I just got…curious or whatever. I kept seeing you out at the quarry and I just…I couldn't stop watching you." 

"Sounds like you got the hots for me." 

Again his whole body heats up because…"What?! Nuh- no, what the fuck ?" 

Billy laughs and it sounds pretty nice to be honest. "It's fine, Harrington. I don't particularly mind." 

Well, that's… unexpected.

It's quiet again so he finally takes the time to actually look over at him and now that he's this close, he can see the fresh blood on Billy's lip. He can see the discoloration around his left eye. Things start coming together in his brain. This isn't the first time 

"You're bleeding." 

He pulls out a cigarette and cringes when he sees that the pack is wet. "No, shit." 

Steve pulls one out of his own pack and hands it to him. "You get in a lot of fights?" 

Billy shrugs and lights it up, taking a big hit before looking out the window. 

It makes Steve uncomfortable. Like he's stumbling onto something he shouldn't…but he can't stop himself from asking. "Why do you scream when it rains, Billy?" 

The blonde takes two more drags of his cigarette before replying, "You really wanna know?" Steve can only nod. "It's the only time I can cry without repercussions and no body cares how loud or angry I am." 

Steve thinks about that for a second. He could literally scream himself to death at home and not bother a soul. There wasn't anyone at home to bother. But obviously this isn't the case for Billy. 

"I'm sorry," he says, and he means it. 

Again Billy shrugs. "It's not a big deal. So I piss my old man off sometimes. It doesn't matter." 

Before he can think better of it he blurts out, "Yes, it does. No one should hit their kid." 

Suddenly the door is open and Billy is escaping out onto the rain.

He has no choice but to follow him. "Wait! Stop!" 

Billy whirls around, lightning crashing behind him. His eyes are angry, and Steve thinks he hasn't seen anything more beautiful. "Fuck you! I didn't fucking say that-" 

Steve steps forward, unphased by Billy's anger. He can handle it. At least it's an emotion directed at him.  "You didn't have to, but it doesn't matter." He tells him, speaking slowly, palms up, rain dripping down his face. "I can read between the lines just fine. And I won't say anything. Just like how I never said anything about, " he fans his arms out, motioning to everything, " this ."

But Billy looks skeptical. "Harrington." 

"I can help." He insists because this is something even someone like him can do. "Or like…let me stand here by you. You don't have to do all of it alone."  

The rain slows to a drizzle and he can clearly see a tiny sliver of hope flash across Billy's face. "Are you sure you can handle me? You've seen what I do out here." 

Steve takes another step forward and this time Billy doesn't move away. "I don't think I'll have a problem with that." 

A smirk from that mouth and a chuckle make Steve melt. "Well, alright then, pretty boy. Let's see what you can do." 

[toobusybeingdelulu]

I just know bro was having flashbacks

[messierthanthou]

Untitled - Bottom!Billy - Rated E - 2.5k Words - Written in Honour of @aggressiveviking !! Enjoy, everyone!

If it wasn’t for Neil, Billy could and would love more. But it has all been beat out of him, scared to ever even think of the things he wants to. Daily life is a masquerade, him in a lion’s mask, the rest surrounding him those of lambs.

It was a long way to the top of the food chain, but even greater would the fall be, if it was that anyone dared threaten his role at the top of the school’s hierarchy. 

Which - perhaps unintentionally - one Steve Harrington attempts purely by existing. Those deep brown eyes that sees past the mask of the still freshly crowned king disturbs Billy on such a ground-shaking level that it is do or die, whether either of them wants to or not, a battle is brewing between the two, and Billy, no matter his pains in life, is not ready to give up.

So he finds himself in the pouring rain, standing just a few feet away from the Harrington mansion, soaked to the bone but it doesn’t cool off his heated temper nor does it calm down his pounding heart.

Billy doesn’t know exactly what he wants, but he can’t let it keep bubbling up inside him at school, because what if he loses it? Exactly what it is he could lose, he doesn’t know, but he does know that he needs to release some of the pressure burning inside him.

Without forethought as to what he’ll say or do once Steve is there, he knocks on the door and rings the bell. He’s angry, he’s nervous, he’s unsure; everything floods his senses all at once, and as soon as the door opens even an inch, he pushes it all the way and stomps inside, past a startled Harrington.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Steve erupts immediately.

“You alone?”

“Why?”

“No reason.” Billy shrugs, hands in the pockets of his jacket.

“You can’t just barge in like this, Hargrove. What are you even doing here? Get out!”

The door is still wide open.

“You’d really send me out into the rain? Cold.”

Harrington groans out in displeasure, then closes the door. Billy figured he’d be a good sport. He’s too kind, even to his nemesis, and it makes the fury in Billy boil worse.

“I’ll get you a towel.”

While Steve vanishes to go find that towel, Billy stomps around the place, dripping on the floor as he goes. He knew they were rich, Steve’s parents, but this is ridiculously fancy for Hawkins. Hell, even their family portrait in the living room is an actual painting, and not just an oversized photograph.

Harrington catches up to Billy when he’s neck deep in the fridge, looking for the cold beers that he finds.

“You can’t just-” Steve starts off with, but Billy is quick to crack open the bottle against the marble countertops. 

Then Billy yanks the towel from the brunette’s grasp and throws it over his shoulder before taking a large gulp of the beer, which tastes far better than what comes out of a keg.

“Nice castle you got here, princess.”

Steve avoids eye contact at that, looking to the side and shifting in place. “What do you want?” he asks skittishly.

Billy doesn’t answer right away as the bottle occupies his lips, and soon there’s not a drop left. “I don’t know.”

“You… you don’t know?” Steve scoffs. “You barge into my house, and you don’t know why?”

The blonde shrugs and shakes his expressionless head.

“You’re unbelievable, you know that?”

As a matter of fact, he does.

Steve then looks down at the floor. “You’re dripping everywhere, dry up for Christ's sake!”

Then Billy smirks a little, teasingly so. “Make me.”

He watches as Harrington clenches his fists before they come near his face, and Billy accepts it; the inevitable punch coming his way. It’s possibly what he deserves, he’s unsure of actually what, but a hit might be it. And yet, he doesn’t hurt, instead he feels softness caress his face, going through his hair, as Steve dries him off with the towel.

“Take off your jacket.”

“What?”

“I said take off your jacket,” Steve repeats.

“Why?”

“Because if we don’t get you dried off and warm, you’ll get sick.”

“And why do you care?”

The pretty boy takes a step back, towel still in hand. This time he’s the one to shrug, and doesn’t offer another word, lowering silence onto the two of them.

For a moment too long and quiet, Billy considers why Steve wants him out of his clothes, but perhaps the reason is simply more innocent than what Billy imagines. So he does as suggested, taking off his jacket.

“You can borrow some dry clothes, but once the rain is done you’re out, understood?” Steve sounds so certain of that.

“Sure thing, princess.”

Steve exhales hard enough for Billy to hear it, and is that a slight blush to his cheeks? Or anger at the pet name?

“Come on.”

Harrington’s bedroom is surprisingly barren in comparison to the rest of the house; nothing on the walls besides that shit ass ugly wallpaper, a few pieces of furniture around the room, curtains, and lamps. Billy’s room is a cluttered mess in comparison, but at least his got personality, and this is more like a showroom at a furniture store.

“I’m sure I got something that will fit you…” Steve starts rummaging through the dresser, and as his back is turned to Billy, the blonde starts undressing.

All of it.

And when Harrington turns around, there’s just a gentle gasp from open lips as his eyes seem to be guided like a magnet down to Billy’s limp dick. For whatever reason, Billy gets a kick out of the stare, feeling heat shoot through him to his groin.

“Billy…”

“What?” He grins wickedly. “See something you like?”

Steve looks away, but being naked in the pretty boy's bedroom, it excites Billy beyond belief, beyond understanding. Beyond common sense.

So he takes a step forward, just a small one to test the sudden tension between them. Steve tries to take a step back, but bumps against the dresser behind him.

As much as his heart is beating him into a weak pulp, Billy can’t stop walking closer after that initial tentative step. And he plans to continue till Steve says or does something to stop him. But he doesn’t, so the blonde winds up with his feet next to the other’s, too close perhaps, as he can smell Steve’s body soap and hear his elevated breathing.

They’ve been quiet for too long, so Billy says, “Steve, look at me.”

Without blinking Steve turns his head to look straight into ocean blue eyes, and their noses early touch. He looks concerned.

“What’s wrong, pretty boy, huh?” Billy whispers in a teasing way, almost sensual without intending to be, but the nearness makes it seem like something it might not be. “You wanna punch me, don’t you? Start a fight?” Billy gazes down at Steve’s plump lips, then back up to meet his stare. “Come on then, do it. Hit me. Show me with your fists how much you hate me.”

And for a second time tonight, Steve touches Billy in an unexpected way, as his mouth gently and experimentally presses a kiss against Billy’s.

Who’s stunned. Such a tender act, he doesn’t know what to do with himself, and two thoughts cause war in his head.

Kiss him back, or punch him.

The kiss wins.

But his hands don't stay idle either, as they grab the collar of Steve’s polo shirt and pull him into a far more ravenous kiss than what the brunette offered before. And it does things to Billy that he’s unsure of why it does. He’s confused, angry, furious in fact, but also undoubtedly and impossibly turned on. Never before has he gotten so hard so fast.

And when Steve grabs him by the hips he moans into their brutish kisses. It’s almost as if he can’t think any further past this moment, and yet his hands act by pulling at Harrington’s shirt till Steve takes it off. While his hands are off Billy, they go down to undo his belt and loosen the button on his jeans before the zipper runs free.

With his hands back on tan skin, he softly pushes as he guides Billy backwards and onto the bed, where they both fall together and bounce around a little with slight chuckles.

Billy can’t remember when he last laughed in earnest.

But he doesn’t linger in that moment, instead he crawls back till he meets the headboard and a couple of pillows. Then he spreads his legs for Steve, who places himself between Billy’s thighs and leans down to kiss and nibble across his waxed clean chest. The blonde moans when a tongue finds its way to a nipple, and the tip plays with the sensitive bud, hardening it before lips close around it to suck, and Billy’s sounds grow even more elated.

There are no real words uttered past hoarse curses and yes’s, yet Steve seems to understand what Billy wants as he reaches for a drawer in the side table, and brings out a bottle of lube.

The lid comes off with a clear pop, and the clear fluid pours over three of Steve’s digits. But he pauses, both of them out of breath and silent as the cold lube runs down Steve’s hand and drips onto Billy’s chest. Their eyes then meet, and he can tell that Harrington is searching for approval.

Billy’s heart is in overdrive, but so is his lusty need to feel the other inside of him, so he nods just the once, which proves to be enough for Steve to bring his hand down between them, between Billy’s thighs, between his buttocks and into his hole.

It’s not something he’s used to past a few trial runs with his own thick fingers, but Steve’s are thinner and longer, reaching deeper than Billy expected to, and it takes a moment to get used to the sensation.

And what an amazing sensation it is; Billy gets worried that the pure anticipation of getting fucked by Harrington’s cock might undo him too soon, but he resist the urge to touch himself and finish it all so quickly.

After a few thrusts he dares beg, “More.”

The thrill of a second finger makes him louder, more keen on expressing his incoherent thoughts, and when Steve continues to thrust ever so gently, Billy leaks onto his own stomach whilst gripping at the sheets.

Harrington simply stares starry eyed at the expressiveness of the blonde’s expressions of elation.

It doesn’t take long for Billy to need another finger. “Fuck, pretty boy, more…”

The stretch of the third hurts just a little bit, a slight burning sensation of his rim, but on the inside he feels like melting butter, easy and pliable in the brunette’s hands, a moaning, leaking mess of spectacular nerves coming looser and looser, til those three fingers aren’t enough anymore.

“Come on then, princess, give it all to me. Fuck me.”

It’s more uncomfortable being empty of Steve than it was getting fingered by him, but it gives Billy a moment to breathe without gasping and moaning as he watches Steve lather up his cock and guide it up to Billy’s expectant hole.

Slowly, inch by inch, he glides inside with the most tender of movements, and if Billy thought that Harrington’s fingers were long, reaching where he couldn’t himself, his prick goes past that, pushing in till Billy’s convinced it’ll fill him up completely.

It is breathtaking. 

“You okay?” Steve asks him softly once he’s completely inside of Billy.

He nods. “Yeah, I’m fine, princess.”

“Good… Good. I’m gonna start moving, just tell me if you want to stop.”

The blonde understands now why all those girls want Steve. He’s nice. Too nice maybe. Billy can’t stand looking at him, turns his head to the side and nods.

So Harrington starts, pulling out carefully before pushing in again, and Billy swears he’ll meet a swift end to this experience if he doesn’t hold back, for the feeling of getting fucked so gently is beyond excellent. Every motion, every inch, it consumes him with blinding and deafening lust, all of which he gives clear sound to by the way of moaning and gasping. 

Then Steve leans in to kiss his neck, somehow finding soft spots Billy didn’t know he had, and it helps in the worst way. 

Minutes pass this way, slow thrusts and kind kisses, so tender it might just ruin the war between the two for good, make Billy fall head first into growing a crush on Harrington, something he’s sure he doesn’t want, but doubt comes in with every near loving touch.

“Billy…” Steve mumbles and it sounds perfect coming from him.

So the blonde turns his head to meet those brown eyes gazing dearly down at him.

“Please, keep looking at me.”

Oh it brings forth buried feelings like it’s golden treasure that Billy has been trying to find for so long. Something he didn’t know he even could find within himself. So he looks at Steve as they go through this gentle time together. Billy didn’t think it possible that he and the brunette could be like this. Normally he’s so calculative, thoroughly thinking every word before saying them, practicing in the mirror for hours, but this all came so naturally once he was naked in Steve’s bedroom.

This is easier than hating and fighting him. This is it. Completeness.

“Faster,” he pleads.

And Steve complies, increasing the pace of his thrusts, and every time he bottoms out inside of Billy, the blonde calls out louder and louder, the heat in his gut building up till it engulfs him with fiery passion that can undoubtedly be heard all throughout the woods surrounding the mansion. 

“Billy, fuck!” Harrington hasn’t been completely quiet throughout, but now he’s becoming wilder with his voice, calling out the blonde’s name, telling him how amazing he feels, how incredible this is.

All the praise is what brings him to climax, his dick untouched by hands but rubbed between their stomachs proves to be enough friction, making him moan as his body tenses up and his cock empties out in the space between them.

“Don’t stop!” he calls out, riding the wave of ecstasy for a while longer than what masturbation brings him to. 

“I-I- ah!” Steve tries to speak, but is cut off as he too reaches the peak, which Billy can tell from the way his thrusts become erratic and his whole body shivers and trembles, then it stills, then collapses onto the blonde with his entire weight.

And Billy releases his grip on the sheets that he’s been choking out this entire time. Everything is peaceful and soft and he doesn’t want this moment to end, ever. 

Steve breathes out from exhaustion, and says, “How about a shower?”

Billy hopes that Steve can’t see the little secret smile he has when he responds with, “Sounds great.”

[suspiciouslackofclowns]

Maybe instead of getting better after Starcourt, instead of healing and mending that which has been broken, Billy just gets worse.

There’s no more playful grins behind cigarettes or keg stands held in good fun. No more speeding down empty backroads or engines revving in parking lots. He gets quiet, and that’s the scary part.

Because as soon as someone presses him to talk, he gets mean.

He outright says no when he’s asked to keep an eye on Max, because there are no repercussions anymore — his wounds from the “fire” haven’t healed just yet, and if he shows up in the hospital with new bruises over freshly cracked ribs, the doctors will suspect something.

So the most he gets is a glare from Neil and a stern do it or else.

And Billy, a believer of malicious compliance, picks himself up a walkie-talkie. Does whatever the fuck he wants while the thing sits on his dresser.

If any voices come through, he shuts it off, or at the very least tunes it to a channel that only he and Max use.

She knows better than to use it.

Things between them aren’t any less tense than before, but it’s different now. Now he knows.

So the playing field is even.

He doesn’t meddle in Max’s business, who she hangs around, and Max doesn’t burden him with asking for rides and things alike. Not that he could really do much with his car sitting in the junkyard — Harrington has taken over the task of chauffeur anyway.

Harrington, who apparently also picked himself up a walkie-talkie.

And who somehow managed to learn about Billy and Max’s private channel.

“Hargrove? You there?”

The voice is staticky over the radio, but not out of range. After the brief moment of shock passes, Billy rolls his eyes at the thought of Harrington parked down the block, sitting behind the wheel of his Beamer listening intently for a response.

Rather than reach over to his nightstand, Billy rolls over to face the wall.

His sheets have become more of a nest as of late. Gathered around him in piles because he prefers the chill on his skin to sweating beneath scratchy blankets.

He hasn’t changed the bedding in weeks. Hasn’t opened the blinds or really even left his room at all this summer — the pool has likely already filled his position. Not that he’d be going back any sooner than a year or two from now.

If he ever feels comfortable taking his shirt off again.

“Billy? Look, I know you’re there, man. Max said that this was the channel to reach you on, and—“

Billy snatches the walkie-talkie and holds the button down.

“Go fuck yourself. Over.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then static pours through. Likely the air conditioning in Harrington’s car.

“Touchy,” he tuts. Exhales a heavy sigh and blows a raspberry. “Don’t always have to be such a dick, y’know.”

“Being a dick isn’t something all of us have to try at, rich boy, so put your shit in gear and get off my block.”

There’s another brief pause.

“How’d you know I was in your neighborhood?”

“Walkies don’t work out-of-range, fuckhead.”

“Damn, okay,” Harrington huffs. “Sue me for wondering how you were doing.”

Wondering how I’m doing?

“Wondering how I’m doing?” Billy repeats.

He stares up at the ceiling, brows pinched together.

“Yeah? Y’know, like checking up on you?”

“Why?”

For months, Billy has done nothing but rot in his bed. Too sore to move, too short-fused to bother talking about it.

Too guilty to open any of the get-well-soon cards that he’s received.

Among the poorly-addressed ones with crayon scribbles from his former swimming students, he recalls one almost equally as poorly-addressed dawning the signature Steve Harrington at the bottom.

It was the only envelope he’d bothered to open. Practically had to rip it up with his teeth because of the lack of dexterity in his fingers, though, he never worked up the nerve to dial the number scrawled at the bottom.

Harrington scoffs over the channel.

“It’s like you’ve died or something, man. It’s worrying.”

Disregarding the flush spreading across his cheeks, Billy rolls his eyes and spreads out more atop his comforter.

“If you’re so worried, why didn’t you just ask Max?”

“If she answered my questions, do you think I’d be on this channel right now?”

Billy presses his lips into a line.

He knows he hasn’t been the best brother. Quite the opposite, actually.

But it still aches to learn that Max apparently refuses to so much as talk about him. Makes his limbs sink deeper into the mattress like gravity has doubled down on him.

Makes him want to shut his walkie off and never turn it back on.

“Well, you’re a few months too late on your check-up, Harrington,” Billy rasps. He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head at the sound of his own voice coming out so wet and pathetic. “Walking corpse at this point.”

A beat of silence persists. Then the static comes through again.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“I have a therapist that already doesn’t help, thank you.”

“Well, if you change your mind…” Harrington trails off. He holds the talk button down for a long beat, absently tapping his fingers against the door panel in his car. Then, he sighs. “Is it okay if I use this channel again?”

Billy’s vision blurs and he sniffles. Thankful that it can’t be heard by anyone but himself.

“Yeah,” he says, and his voice shakes with it.

And that’s how Billy’s radio goes from being dead silent to constantly filling his room with chatter.

It helps and it hinders all at once.

Billy smiles for what feels like the first time in over a year, and laughs, even. But each time Harrington tells a little joke or giggles over the channel, Billy’s heart starts to ache more deeply.

It opens up old wounds.

He feels like Neil knows, somehow, when they’re both in the kitchen together. Accompanied by nothing but silence.

Neil asks if he can babysit for the weekend, and Billy drops the mug that was in his hand with a shaky wrist, fearing an entirely different question that doesn’t even get asked.

When Neil would normally berate him, he simply watches the way that Billy flexes his fingers. The way that he makes a weak fist, unable to straighten his fingers completely once he relaxes them, and his brows pinch in mild worry.

“Still havin’ trouble?” Neil asks.

His voice is gentle enough that Billy’s eyes well with tears as he nods. Bites his lip to keep it from wobbling.

Neil pulls him into a hug and Billy sobs into his shoulder. Not because of the pain or disability, but because he thinks he’s let a hint of love creep back into his life after all this time.

Which should be a good thing.

For once, Billy agrees to watching Max, if only because he doesn’t have the energy to snark back right now. Neil pats his shoulder and gives it a squeeze. Asks if he’s sure, like it’d be no issue at all for him and Susan to cancel their weekend plans.

Billy can’t help that he huffs a laugh. Can’t help that it comes out sounding closer to a scoff.

Why be accommodating now, after a lifetime of neglect and maltreatment? He shakes his head to himself, and his expression must give his thoughts away.

Neil digs his thumb hard into his shoulder, earning a stifled whimper and another influx of tears.

Billy cleans up the broken mug and wipes the liquid away from the floor by himself, knelt on his achy knees while he’s watched like a hawk from the doorway. Like he might shove the glass under the counter if he’s left unsupervised for even a second.

Over the weekend while their folks are away, Billy takes Max out to pick up a couple of movies and get a few snacks with Susan’s car.

Since he so scarcely leaves the house, he turns a few heads when people recognize him.

None so much as Harrington, who gawks at him from behind the fucking desk at Family Video. Billy glares hard at Max when she smirks at him before disappearing to the horror section.

The brunet is a bit more rugged than Billy recalls. Has a stronger jawline and more hair. Lots more hair.

It makes Billy feel especially pathetic, draped in a t-shirt that used to fit his figure well, but now swallows him more than anything.

That heavy feeling droops his shoulders down. He shoves his hands into his pockets and looks away nonchalantly when Harrington abandons his station, leaving Buckley behind the counter floundering at the register.

“Look who’s out ‘n about,” Harrington chuckles. He has no issue reaching out and setting his hands on Billy’s biceps, moving close as if to inspect him. “Have I always been this much taller than you?”

Billy flushes red and straightens his posture. Brings himself back up to eye-level, which spurs a dull pain in his spine. He must not do well in terms of hiding it, because the brunet’s brows furrow.

“Do you wanna sit down?”

Rather than respond right away, Billy huffs and waves Harrington off of him. Shoots Max another glare when he spies her watching the exchange from behind a shelf.

“All I fuckin’ do is sit,” Billy grumbles. “If I knew I was gonna get a pity parade I would’a just sent the shitbird in.”

Harrington nods to himself. Takes half a step back and smiles.

“Alright with standing, then. Got it.” He tilts his head to the side. Eyes never leaving Billy for even a second. “Your hair’s grown out a lot.”

His gaze is a fond one. Like they aren’t in public right now. Like Billy is his damn girlfriend on prom night, and he’s seeing the gown for the first time.

Billy shrugs. Absently toys with one of the curls that dangles over his collar bone.

That weird pit is back in his stomach. The one that leaves him crying in the dark when Harrington signs off after hours of chatting about everything and nothing at once.

Billy wonders where he parks his car when they talk for that long. If he’s right outside or in the deep quiet of the woods, where the stars can really be seen and the train shakes the ground.

He’d rather Steve just climb through his window.

“I like it,” Steve adds. Nudges Billy’s elbow with his own. “It’s a soft look. Fits you really well.”

“Are you this nice to all the girls that come in here, or just the ones you wanna pork?” Billy teases.

Steve laughs, and it sounds so much better in person. Billy wants nothing more than to bottle it up and keep it forever.

Before the brunet can come back with a snide little joke of his own, Max meanders up to them. Holds up a few tapes for Billy to approve. Without really looking them over, he hands her the cash, and they all move back to the register together.

Steve rings them up. Max pays. Everything is so much slower than it should be going, like he’s trying to prolong the encounter as much as he can.

Billy understands the feeling.

When Steve slides Max the receipt, he’s less smiley. Billy turns to face the door, but doesn’t miss the way that Max nabs a pen and scrawls something on the slip of paper before sliding it back towards Steve.

Billy decides not to pry. Fears that if he asks, he’ll find that it’s some secret nerd shit that he can’t be privy to.

Fears that the heavy feeling will bear down on him again.

He doesn’t have to ask, turns out. The phone rings later that night, and Billy’s blood pressure spikes when Steve’s voice pours over the line.

“You should come out more often,” he says easily. “Really need some sun.”

Billy just tsks. They wind up sitting on the line for a little under half an hour. Billy wishes it lasted longer.

But he’d rather not explain the minutes away when his father shows him the phone bill.

Just before they hang up, after giggling at each other nearly the entire time, Billy barks out, “Don’t call here again.”

Then he hangs up.

Steve, naturally, gets on the radio not a few seconds later. Giggles and says, “Okay, dick. You can call me from now on.”

They stay up for practically the rest of the night talking.

Billy stares up at the ceiling and wonders how long this little thing between them will last.

He starts to question it more when Steve actually, by some miracle, convinces him to come out a handful of times.

The brunet is really touchy. Always has an arm around Billy’s shoulders or a hand on his back, and constantly bumps their knees together when they’re sitting down. Billy feels stupid for wanting more.

Why, he doesn’t know, because he’s fairly certain that he could ask for anything at this point.

Steve never calls again and that’s okay.

Billy prefers hearing whispers over the radio anyway.

It’s one evening in particular that Max is out of the house for the night, away at the Chief’s place for a sleepover, that the pit in Billy’s stomach turns into a black hole.

Steve has been ranting about his manager for the last half hour, only stopping to mention how a movie cover reminded him of Billy. How he couldn’t even wait to get home before he turned his radio on and pressed to talk to him.

The black hole consumes Billy before he can catch the words leaving his mouth.

“Do you like me?” he hears himself ask.

His voice gets choked up, and the second he lifts his finger off of the button, he rolls over and screams into his pillow. Quiet enough that Neil and Susan won’t hear, but hard enough to let a fraction of the tension out.

“Obviously,” Steve says. “Why else would I be friends with you?”

Billy presses his face harder into the pillow.

He can feel the pressure building behind his eyes. Feel the blistering heat of fresh tears and the throb in his temples as he huffs a strangled sigh into the pillow. Before he can even decide between turning the walkie off or fabricating a response, static pours through.

“Jesus Christ, Steve, he means do you have feelings for him,” Max groans.

There’s a beat of silence.

“What? Rea—“

“What the fuck are you doing on this channel?” Billy interrupts.

He can feel the veins in his neck straining from how hard he’s clenching his jaw. Can practically see red when giggles pour through the radio.

A red hot flush of shame paints Billy’s face when he realizes that Eleven is listening in too.

“What are you still doing on this channel? If you didn’t want us to eavesdrop, you should’ve switched forever ago.”

“How long have you been listening to us talk?” There’s a beat of silence. Billy huffs. “Max. How long?”

“How long have you and Steve been talking?” Max asks.

Her rhetorical question is accompanied by giggles that are cut off when she lifts her finger from the button.

There’s nothing but silence for a moment. Then two.

Billy’s vision blurs as he sets his walkie down on his nightstand. The cold fingers of embarrassment wrap around him and drag him down, lower than he’s ever been drug before.

He’s ruined everything.

His sister not only hates him, but she knows about him now, and the only guy he’s ever let himself truly like is going to want nothing more to do with him after this.

Not for the first time since Starcourt, he wishes that monster had killed him.

“Billy?” Steve asks gently. When there’s no response, he sighs. “Look, we can figure out the channel thing some other time, but… was she right? Is that what you were trying to ask me?”

Silence. Then, giggles.

“Oh, I’m pretty sure I’m right,” Max teases.

“Radio silence,” Steve snaps. “Now.”

His tone is stern. Brotherly in a way that should be surprising, but isn’t, really.

“Signing off…” Max says dejectedly.

Astonishingly, the channel falls silent. Billy sniffles as he reaches over to paw at his nightstand, curling his fingers weakly around the radio.

He doesn’t press the button. Tries to swallow his silent sobs in a failed attempt to compose himself first.

“Billy?” Steve coos, voice much softer now. “If you don’t wanna talk over the radio, that’s fine, but—“

“Yes,” Billy rasps.

A beat of silence.

“Yes?”

“She was right.”

Billy winces at how broken his voice sounds. A whistle pours through the radio.

“Oh, man,” Steve chuckles, and Billy’s heart sinks. “The boy of my dreams wants to know if I have feelings for him? Are you dense?”

There’s a crisp millisecond of confusion before Billy presses the button.

“What?”

“Of course I like you, dude.”

Billy inhales like he just resurfaced for air for the first time in years.

“Why?” he breathes.

“You’re funny, smart, surprisingly sweet, and pretty easy on the eyes. Just for starters.”

If his heart was thumping fast before, it’s going light-speed now. All he can do for a few beats is focus on controlling his breathing.

“You don’t like me,” he murmurs. “Trust me, Steve, I’m fucked up.”

“You aren’t the only one who’s a little fucked up.” Steve hums a laugh to himself. “And I do like you. You’re not gonna be changing my mind about it anytime soon.”

“What if I told you to go fuck yourself?”

“I’d tell you that you don’t always have to be such a dick.”

A tiny hint of a smile creeps its way onto Billy’s face when he hears Steve chuckle.

His eyes are dry. The pool of dread in his belly has begun to drain, and he feels the slightest bit hopeful.

“If you’re so sure, then I guess picking me up for dinner and a movie sometime won’t be difficult for you, will it?”

Steve sighs fondly at the notion.

“Are you asking me out?”

“Are you accepting?”

There’s a brief pause. Billy’s unable to keep from smiling giddily to himself.

“Depends,” Steve lilts. “Gonna open your window?”

There’s a light tap on the glass. Billy pushes himself up and draws the blinds, revealing a grinning brunet standing about a foot below, holding his walkie-talkie.

Billy tosses his on the bed before he opens the window and leans his elbows against the ledge.

“Is this the part where you ask me to let down my hair?” he teases.

Steve chuckles, but furrows his brows as he steps closer to the house.

“Were you crying?”

Taken aback by the question, Billy wipes his eyes with the heel of his palm. Shrugs nonchalantly, which doesn’t seem to be the answer that Steve was looking for.

“I was expecting things to go a bit differently,” Billy admits.

Steve frowns, and the expression doesn’t look right on him. He reaches up. Settles his hand on Billy’s forearm, smoothing his thumb back and forth against his skin until Billy shifts to dangle his arm out the window.

The pads of Steve’s fingers are soft where he holds Billy’s hand, clasped and suspended in the air together.

Billy really does feel like Rapunzel for a moment.

“I can be a little thick-skulled sometimes,” Steve says softly. “You’re always talking about yourself like you’re some unsalvageable disaster, so when you asked me if I liked you, my mind instantly went there. I wanted to make you sure you knew for certain that I do.”

He gives a little half smile. Billy squeezes his hand gently. Hopes that Steve doesn’t notice how weak his grip is.

“It’s not like I really gave you any context clues.”

“True. You didn’t.”

“I am a bit of a disaster, though. Feels like I’m only good at messing things up sometimes,” Billy sighs. “Max already hates me, and when I thought for a second that you might too, everything felt so lost.”

Steve makes a face.

“I would never, and I’d like to point out that Max doesn’t either.”

Billy blinks. Huffs amusedly, and as always, it comes out sounding closer to a scoff.

“Pretty sure she does. You’ve said yourself that she wouldn’t even talk when you asked about me.”

After thinking on it for a brief moment, Steve laughs.

“Yeah, man, ‘cause she bites the head off of anyone who asks about you. Definitely told me to mind my fucking business more than once.”

Again, Billy just blinks.

He never considered that maybe it was a protective thing and not a shame thing. The revelation has a surprising amount of weight lifting off of his shoulders.

“Definitely sounds like her,” he says.

They share a chuckle. Billy flattens his other forearm against the windowsill and rests his chin against it.

“Thanks for trying to lift me up earlier?” he muses. “Didn’t really work in the moment, but still.”

Steve softly swings their hands from side to side and sighs.

“I can tell. Your eyes are all puffy.”

“Should’a seen me the other night.”

The brunet cocks his head to the side in mild confusion.

“What happened the other night?” he asks. “Didn’t mention anything while we were talking.”

“It was, ah… after we signed off for the night. It’s no big deal, really. I cry after most of our talks.”

Billy looks away. Steve squeezes his hand.

“I’m sorry.”

“‘S okay,” Billy rasps.

His eyes prick with tears again and Steve steps closer. Drops his walkie-talkie in the grass and reaches up with his free hand to cup Billy’s cheek.

“Oh, you’re just a big crybaby, huh?” he coos. Billy chuckles sadly and leans into his touch. “If I’d known, I would’ve snuck over here sooner.”

“My old man checks in on me sometimes, so it’s probably better that you stay in your car.”

“Well, do you have a curfew? I’d love to steal you away every now and again and kiss your cute, stuffy nose.”

Billy sniffles, and chuckles again. Wipes his eyes with his free hand and shrugs.

“Haven’t really had anywhere to go ‘till now,” he says.

Steve nods.

“You eaten yet?”

A smile cracks across Billy’s face. Steve mirrors the expression.

“You buying?”

“I’ll spend my entire paycheck on burgers and fries if it gets you outta this fuckin’ room. I swear sometimes it’s like pulling teeth.”

They share a chuckle, and Billy sits up. Flushes red when Steve presses a kiss to his knuckles.

“Gimme a sec.”

Again, Steve nods. He’s slow to release the blond when he pulls away, and Billy can’t help that he’s grinning like an idiot as he opens the door and pads out of his room.

He finds Neil and Susan in the living room watching tv. Makes up some lie about a few friends having a kickback. Even goes as far as to apologize for the short notice.

His folks share a look. Susan spreads a big smile and sets her hand on Billy’s bicep.

“No worries, sweetheart. Go ahead,” she says. “Have fun, alright?”

“Will you be coming back tonight?” Neil asks.

Billy stays quiet for a moment. Then two, just processing, and eventually shakes his head.

“It’ll probably be too late,” he says, and clears his throat. “I have somewhere else lined up, though.”

He winces at his own words, regret beading on his skin like a cold sheen of sweat.

Neil nods. Turns his attention back to the tv.

“Just stay outta trouble.”

And that’s it.

Nothing more is said, but Billy still stands there like he’s waiting for something else to happen.

When nothing does, he nods curtly and pads back down the hallway to his room, deciding not to press his luck by letting them think too hard on it. Once he has the door shut behind him, he’s immediately leaning out the window again.

Steve has his walkie back in his hands, rocking back and forth patiently on the balls of his feet while he waits. He smiles when he notices that the blond has reappeared.

“What’d they say?”

“Go get your car, I’ll be ready by the time you pull up.”

Billy leans back. Grabs the window and shuts it just as Steve nods enthusiastically. Turns on his heel and jogs off of the lawn and back towards the street.

Giddy, warm feelings pool and buzz in Billy’s stomach as he digs through his drawers for jeans that he hasn’t worn in forever. Already has a date-worthy outfit in mind as he unfolds a pair.

He nearly jumps out of his skin when static pours through the radio still sitting idly on his bed.

“Update?” Max asks.

Billy rolls his eyes. Moves to grab it when another voice comes through.

“We’re goin’ steady,” Steve informs, out of breath.

“Yes!” Max shouts.

Then, a third voice comes through.

“Finally! Jesus,” Dustin huffs.

There’s a beat of silence, followed by Steve panting when he presses the talk button.

“How many of you dickheads are on this channel?”

“Just two?” Mike says. “Technically, since we’re only using two walkie’s.”

There’s laughter over the radio, and Billy rolls his eyes. Can’t really find it in himself to be mad right now with all of the butterflies swirling in his tummy.

“You’re all banned from the front seat of my car,” Steve huffs. “And the wedding, when it happens.”

“No! I wanted to be the flower girl!” Eleven whines.

“I was gonna walk you down the aisle,” Dustin adds.

“Good luck finding another officiant, then, I guess,” Lucas says with a scoff.

More laughter is had. Max and Mike chime in with various jokes about ring-bearers and bridesmaids, but they’re cut off when Steve presses to talk again.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I highly recommend switching channels.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?” Max muses.

Billy can practically hear the smirk in Steve’s voice when he speaks next.

“‘Cause I’m gonna start using this one for sex stuff, and it’s gonna get real weird real fast, so be warned.”

Multiple groans and sounds of disgust pour through the radio.

“Yuck,” Max says. “Switching channels.”

“Ditto,” Dustin adds.

Then silence. True silence.

Billy grabs his walkie.

“We really gonna have phone sex over the radio?” he muses.

Steve laughs. The subtle rumble of the engine is audible from the street as his car pulls up to the curb.

“Not if you hurry up and get your ass out here already.”

The blond bites his lip. Can’t believe for the life of him how light he feels. How, for once, he feels better for having survived car wrecks and slimy monsters in the dark.

Feels like letting someone new into his life won’t cause him grief this time around.

“On my way, pretty boy.”

[imgonnaeditstuff]

Steve + planting his feet

[robthegoodfellow]

A Little Death Do Us Part

VANISHED from fandom to work on this thing. as usual it ballooned 🙃 warnings: necromancy, character death (hence the necromancy), dubcon (on account of the necromancy)

My entry for @bigbangharringrove with art I adore by LucaDoodleDoo who also served as cheerleader when I fell behind and suffered from near fatal narrative maximalism. Here's the first chapter, or read on AO3 💛 (3 chapters up, rest day by day)

Billy had been dead for four days when Steve finally made a breakthrough, muffled cracks as bones restitched and the crushed chest cavity filled, the rasp of rusted lungs expanding with breath. He waited, held his own breath like that would encourage another from the sorry test subject lying inert on the table.

The chest deflated, but only a little—his heart leapt as it rose again, an easier inhale, and Steve would have sobbed, except he had no air, could only manage an anguished choke. It wasn’t anguished, though, just pure exhausted relief, hope, after three nights without sleep, using every trick in the book to keep going, keep trying, not give up.

An ear twitched, then—the tail, the tip curling absent-mindedly.

Within minutes, Mews sat on his haunches, staring at Steve fixedly, even more fixedly than normal, before he’d been hit by that truck, but other than that, he seemed—fine? Fine! Even the sickly-sweet eau de rot was dissipating, ginger fur shedding the greasy dullness of decay.

So it took every ounce of self-control not to go haring off to the basement crypt and work his magic there, on the true intended recipient of his tireless trial and error.

Gods in hell, so many errors. And such a trial. One attempt had backfired so spectacularly that Mews had almost decomposed too far for restoration, crumbling before his eyes as Steve scrambled for the counter spell. Another had awoken the cat but hadn’t healed him, and also imbued him with a ravenous hunger for human flesh. The scratches that crosshatched Steve’s every limb had only just begun to scab under the bandages. He’d had to go for the bat that time, beating at the mangy monster like he was trying to win whack-a-mole at the fair, then gulped down every leftover antidote to zombie infection in the medicine cabinet he could find.

He'd been steadily working his way through the moldy copy of Untethered Netherworld: New Necromancies—several editions out of date, banned in every state but New Jersey—and he was running out of both spells and time. Reanimation for more nefarious purposes—raising undead armies and whatnot—had more wiggle room, but true revivification had to be performed within a week of the victim’s death, and the sooner the better.

He didn’t want a shell of Billy, something better off dead. He wanted Billy. Needed him back.

For that, he had to be patient, thorough; do this right. Follow the checklist. Consulting the items hastily scribbled on the back of a takeout menu, he frowned.

Responds when called.

Well, fuck. Did cats ever respond when called? Mews certainly hadn’t—and Steve still wasn’t sure whether that was due to aloof mulishness or because he maintained some preferred moniker that they weren’t privy to.

Nothing for it but to try, though.

“Mews?”

The cat blinked, swished his tail.

Good enough, Steve figured, checking it off. 

2. Reacts expectedly to stimuli.

Didn’t exactly have a toy mouse handy, but after rooting around in the junk drawer, he dug up one of those keychain laser pointers. Aimed it at the floor in front of the table, and… skittered it around.

Mews launched from his perch, paws extended—pounced on the zigzagging red and kept pouncing.

Another check. 

3. Craves appropriate sustenance.

What did cats even eat, aside from… cat food, which he’d neglected to restock. Tuna? Saucer of milk? Cartoons all seemed to think so.

“Stay here,” he said, though Mews had never been the kind of cat that talked. Locking the workroom behind him, he set off for the kitchen. Pantry had to have at least one can of Chicken of the Sea. 

.💀.

The thing was—Steve should’ve known Billy was possessed. Should’ve been able to tell right away. He’d slept next to that… thing at least two nights and hadn’t noticed. How hadn’t he noticed?

He’d kissed him and really been kissing it—wrote off the delayed response, a pause before the returning press, as simple distraction. Held him but really held it, and attributed the strange stiffness to stress, stroked the broad back until he slept—or seemed to.

Because while Steve slept, Billy had been a marionette wreaking havoc, his hijacker attacking at random, opportunistic, installing its brethren on behalf of its master.

On the third morning, the day before he died, when Steve had been watching coffee drip into the pot, the shatter of ceramic spun him round, disoriented. And Billy, eyes streaming, so blue, burning blue—he’d shoved his waiting mug off the center island, was gripping the counter, teeth gritted with effort.

“Go,” he’d grunted between clenched jaws. “Go.” His hand gripped the other mug—Steve’s—and his voice sharpened, urgent. “Run.”

Steve barely dodged it, the mug cracking into the cabinet by his head with far more force than humanly possible, and his childhood training had kicked in. For once, it paid to have been born to parents whose vigilance bordered on paranoid, always on guard against rival families, enemy estates.

He grabbed a kitchen knife, threw every chair in its way, and bolted for the door, slashing behind him as he fumbled with the locks. And ran. Because he trusted Billy with his life, implicitly, knew when a command was the kind performed without question—the tone, the bluntness, the context. It was how they’d survived as an unaffiliated pair, all these years.

But that also meant precious few allies to turn to in times of need. Billy’s sister wasn’t his first choice, but she lived closest, and fleeing on foot put proximity at a premium. To her credit, she’d tried—Steve didn’t fault her for her role in the outcome—Max had just placed her trust in the wrong people. In people that prioritized killing the thing in Billy, rather than saving Billy himself.

Of course, it didn’t help that Billy had been of the same mind.

Now that he’d found a means to bring him back, Steve could admit another reason he hadn’t closed his eyes longer than a blink since the moment Billy went slack: to avoid the endless replay projected behind his lids—of Billy standing between the girl and the monster, a conglomerate creature of melded prey, raw matter drained of humanity, remade into an ever-growing puppet of destruction.

He'd wrested control once more, like he had in the kitchen, long enough to speak the words to unmake the abomination—words he alone could know, unbeknownst to the puppeteer, as the son of a witch infamous for having contracted with a god of death so powerful none could speak its name and live. None could hear its name and live. And none knew it, save two, for a while. And then one. 

And then none.

Billy spoke it. Steve saw his lips shape unfamiliar words. For the sake of the girl. 

.💀.

A checkmark next to every item on the list—that’s what broke him, finally. Not the most dignified position, kneeling over a litterbox, scooping sandy nuggets into a trash bin while fighting tears of joy, suppressing hysterical, ecstatic laughter, but—Mews was a cat, just a normal cat again, to all appearances, which meant—

He could have Billy back. Had proven wrong every tutor who’d dismissed Steve’s lackluster abilities as beyond the help of instruction. Sufficiently motivated, he’d managed every spell he tried—so it wasn’t his fault he didn’t fully know what each spell would do. This was on his teachers for slouching on the job, handwaving him through his studies to collect a paycheck.

Closing the lid of the bin, Steve stood to wash his hands and swayed, so light-headed he would have toppled were it not for a steadying arm flung to the wall. He breathed slow, eyes closed—opened, and the room had stilled its spinning.

Even so—he needed sleep. If he attempted the most important magics of his life and fucked it up from fatigue, he’d endure the rest of his days tormented by curdling regret.

“Bed, Mews,” he called, out of habit.

They’d held out a week, after Dustin had entrusted them with Mews’ care while he was apprenticing with the bigwigs at Know Where Corporation for the summer. Mewsy prefers sleeping with a buddy, Dustin instructed, among a litany of other highly specific edicts. Well, I prefer fucking my husband without witnesses, Steve had replied, just to see him pull a face, and Billy had chirped, faux-innocent, Unless the price is right. Or unless plied with endless mournful meows and wide, shining, plaintive eyes, apparently, because in no time they had a mound of fur curled at their feet from dusk till dawn.

Despite his exhaustion, despite the comforting warmth of Mews that bled through the covers, despite the meditation exercise to clear his mind, Steve couldn’t drift off for hours, couldn’t stop the steady leak of tears that oozed from the corner of closed lids to his unwashed hair.

Because Billy’s side of the bed was an echoing void at his side, an emptiness cold and loud as an arctic gale. Now and then he nudged Mews with a foot just to hear him snuffle, like an anxious mother checking her silent newborn still breathed. 

Think of a wonderful thought, he heard—Billy’s voice, hushed and fond. And like he always did, Steve huffed, “Okay, Peter,” and finally sank into memories that didn’t stab at him the way they had for days.

Tomorrow, he reminded himself, and relaxed. By this time tomorrow, Billy would be whole and hale and back in his arms. He’d kiss him and hold him. Tell him he loved him.

Tomorrow.

Chapter 2

[weird-an]

tw: child abuse, alcohol. homophobia

Indiana is a wasteland and so is Billy. Neil's teaching him lessons, more than usual and Billy has nowhere to go. He can't afford college, not when Neil takes whatever Billy's got.

Neil calls him faggot and loser and he’s right and Billy has every word carved into him. Fear is with him every day, because Neil watches him constantly. It's like his room gets smaller and smaller.

Billy needs distraction, so he drinks, smokes and gets into fights. If there's only pain, it's drowning out whatever’s going on in his head, he's forgetting that all Neil says it true, that a future is something he can only dream of.

He's halfway through a bottle of whiskey and he's hurting, his left cheek throbbing.

The world is already blurred. Billy prefers it that way. He doesn’t want to see it.

"Jesus, Hargrove, are you alright?"

He has to blink, one, two, three times.

Harrington wears his stupid flawless designer shirt, hair on point and brown eyes big and so fucking beautiful.

"Get lost," Billy spits, because Harrington can't stay here. He's stopping Billy from drowning.

"It's Sunday morning," Harrington says. He sounds worried and Billy's stomach twists. He tries to remember the last time anybody worried about him that way.

He can't think that, because there's a hole inside him the size of his mother. It's his fault she's gone, he's sure. She left without a word, but luckily Neil has lots of words to call his son.

"Amen." Billy just takes another big gulp.

There's a hand on his, touching him lightly where he holds the bottle. Billy flinches, lets go of the whiskey.

He hears glass shattering, but he doesn't look. He's staring in Steve's eyes and he's so fucking scared. He isn't even sure why.

"I can bring you home," Steve offers. "You shouldn't drive, it's too dangerous."

Billy laughs. Home is thousands of miles away.

He stops when Steve's hand, still unbearably warm against his own, squeezes his. Neil is calling him a faggot in his head, the word echoing in his skull.

"Then we're going to mine," Steve decides, an unreadable expression on his pretty face. The whiskey blurs that too. What a shame.

Billy follows Steve. The world around him is blurred. Steve is the only thing Billy can see.

[thissortofsorcery]

Billy wakes up all at once. His first instinct is to control his breathing, pretend he’s still asleep. He’s pretty sure he just heard the door to his room open, and there it is, the sound of it creaking closed again. Something about it is off, but he can’t place it.

There’s someone in his room. He can hear the footsteps nearing the bed, soft, and Billy’s just waiting for it- Any minute now his dad is gonna yank him up by his hair-

“Billy? Did I wake you up?” It’s Steve. It’s Steve’s soft, worried voice beside the bed, because he’s in the bedroom he shares with Steve, in the apartment he shares with Steve, all the way in Santa Monica, and he’s twenty years old, not seventeen anymore.

Billy’s whole body relaxes, sagging on the bed, and he rubs a shaking hand on his face.

“It’s okay,” Billy says.

Steve swears under his breath and climbs on the bed, wrapping both his arms around Billy and burying his nose in Billy’s hair.

“Sorry, baby,” Steve says, and kisses his forehead. “I just went to the bathroom.”

“It’s okay,” Billy says again.

It’s so easy to melt into Steve, to rub his face into Steve’s collarbone and smell his skin, to let the feeling of him wash away every bad feeling, every bad thought in his head. In this bed, in this room, there’s only ever been Billy and Steve, and how much they love each other. How safe Steve makes Billy feel.

Steve runs his fingers up and down Billy’s spine, making his skin tingle. Billy lets out a long groan.

“Think you can go back to sleep?” Steve asks in his ear, pressing impossibly closer. It already feels like they’re fusing together.

“Think so,” Billy mumbles. To be honest, his eyes are already halfway closed, and he’s listening to Steve’s steady heartbeat, and the rhythmic feeling of Steve’s nails on his back is incredibly soothing. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” Steve whispers back. “I’ll be here.”

Billy means to say something back, but whatever it is is lost to sleep. He dreams of Steve.

[intothedysphoria]

Going from a social outcast to seemingly universally desired was a change that Billy found himself sorely lacking the capacity to deal with.

It felt like barely a year ago he was just the fat kid with the asshole dad. The kid who was more comfortable speaking Irish than English. The weird kid who couldn’t sit still in class and had “outbursts” that would leave a classroom completely overturned.

Now he’d lost weight (not by choice), had to speak English if he didn’t want to be uprooted for a third time and was supposedly taking his adderall post ADHD diagnosis. Neil was still an asshole but that would never change.

He was desirable now. A hot commodity. Had the approval of everyone apart from his own fucking dad.

In short, Billy was absolutely miserable.

He missed California a lot. He missed Belfast even more. He missed being fat. He missed his mam and grandad. He missed everything.

Showing any signs of weakness was how it started though. So Billy did what he always did. He adapted.

Harrington was weird. Taking the crown from him was almost too easy. For all the talk he’d been fed about King Steve, what Billy got was a teenager who couldn’t make eye contact, spent an hour reading two pages of a textbook and walked like a penguin when nobody was watching.

Good thing Billy didn’t mind weird.

The usual taunts didn’t really work. All it really achieved was getting Harrington flat on his back on the gym floor and that got Billy thinking about sex which wasn’t helpful.

Harrington just stared up at him with these big startled eyes. Like a damn deer. The pointed star he wore around his neck swayed as Billy let him up. Jewish maybe. Billy felt his hand unconsciously drift down towards his own pendant, the one his granny had given him.

The one that would help him find his way back home.

They fought within a week. Arsehole had Max holed up in a strangers house. It made Billy’s skin crawl just thinking about it. Especially after having to flirt with Karen Wheeler just to get any answers, All he could remember was that he was winning then the world started going black.

When he woke up there was a dead something in the fridge. He probably hadn’t woken up at all then. His body took that hint as a sign to collapse again.

He woke up again. A small woman with mousy brown hair and a nervous tic was cooking. Billy could hear The Clash drifting from another room. Christmas lights were scattered across the wall. It was the first place in Hawkins that had actually felt like home.

The woman’s name was Joyce. The house he’d found Harrington and Max and the nightmare in had been her house. She was dressed practically and smelled like paint and reminded him so much of his own mam that his heart hurt.

She was a good cook. The soup wasn’t like anything he’d ate before, probably Polish but it was fantastic. She asked if he wanted to stay the night. He said no.

Neil would be waiting. He always was.

Neil had burned the damn book. The one Billy had wrote when he was seven, colouring all the words in orange and white and green. It hurt more than any punch every could have.

He was under house arrest again. Only let out when Max needed a fucking taxi to a Christmas dance. Harrington was a couple of cars away, fussing over a boy of about thirteen who could have been his younger brother.

They weren’t biologically brothers. But Henderson was his cousin. So they were in spirit. Those were some of the things Billy learned from a few strained sentences of conversation.

He apologised in a way so Billy reluctantly returned one. Apparently he hadn’t realised how fucking dodgy he’d looked with Max.

Billy was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Neil kicked him out of the house on Christmas Day for hanging an Irish flag on his door. Billy went to the Byers. Joyce’s family didn’t exactly celebrate Christmas but she still gave him a present.

She gave him gorgeous Polish cakes which were fucking delicious and some of Jonathan’s old vinyls which he didn’t listen to anymore.

That day Billy discovered The Specials and tucked the vinyl under his weed stash in the Camaro boot. Somewhere Neil would never think to look.

Harrington was tolerable after Christmas break. Tolerable in an infuriating way because Billy still wanted to fuck him. The queerness wasn’t something he’d told anyone about though apart from Patrick McKinney so he kept those thoughts to himself.

He spent more time at the Byers, learned what Shabbat was, came out to Joyce in a flood of tears, kissed Harrington, wrote a letter back to Ireland for the first time in two years and made a plan to get the hell out of Hawkins Indiana.

Harrington managed to pass high school with a lot of bribery and tutoring and kissing at his place. Jesus but Harringtons house was a bloody mansion. Billy had spent his first eight years in a terraced shared accommodation where his entire extended family had lived. Harrington had five bathrooms and his own television. Not even in black and white.

Billy got his predicted mix of A’s and B’s so he was happy and spent most of the weekend post graduation floating on his back in the Harrington pool, beer in hand. He couldn’t afford to slack off completely though. So he got a summer job.

Working at the community pool was fine. As long as Billy didn’t think about the middle aged women staring at him like a piece of meat. Fucking perverts. Heather was fun though. Funny. The only lesbian he’d met in Hawkins apart from Buckley.

Neil had started acting even weirder than usual after a night Billy had slept over at his boyfriends. He’d taken to ice baths and Billy swore he’d seen the man drinking bleach. Ugh.

Max was pretty obviously freaked out though so Billy slowly phased her into spending most nights at the Byers or the Sinclairs or Steve’s. Susan wouldn’t budge. Something in Billy’s chest felt a bit sick about that.

The Fourth of July they were in the mall, the one Steve worked at. Something even more hellish than the thing in the fridge stood above them. And Neil just stood by with blank, hateful eyes and let it happen.

He died. Billy killed him. Stabbed him in the chest then the monster went away.

Steve was gripping his shoulders as he stood there, Neil’s blood on his jacket and he cried.

Susan left.

Social services took Max. Billy cried a lot that day. She was living with some family in Michigan. They promised to keep in touch.

Billy went to therapy twice a week. A guy from County Mayo who Billy trusted immediately.

There was no point really in Joyce adopting him as he was over eighteen. Besides she didn’t need to. Billy knew who his family were.

A letter came back from Belfast. Inviting both him and Steve back to his grandparents house. Steve had never left the US, had never really left the Midwest actually. Billy wanted to show him everything.

The years went by and Billy regained weight. He stopped speaking English as much and was determined to teach Steve Irish. He still sometimes forgot to take his adderall and had awful nightmares but Steve was there to make it better.

He was alive. And life was pretty ok.

[chrisbitchtree]

A Love Worth Fighting For

My contribution to @harringrovelovefest day 1

Prompt: Love is a battlefield

T - 1.3k

TW: Child abuse

***

Billy groans quietly as his alarm sounds at 5:45am and he rushes to turn it off before it can wake up his husband. He gives himself a moment to roll over and admire Steve’s sleeping form. He looks peaceful in a way he never does when he’s awake, rushing around the bakery they own together, or chasing their little terror of a daughter, Olive. He’s got one hand tucked under the pillow and the other drawn tight to his chest, and he’s snuffling softly, fighting off the last of the cold he’s had for the past week. Billy would give anything to be able to lay there longer, but he’s got plans.

Being up this early isn’t anything new for Billy. He’s the head baker at the bakery, so usually, by this time, he’s already been up and at it for a couple of hours. Today’s different though. It’s Valentine’s Day, and his plan is to give Steve a day of ultimate relaxation. He’s arranged for their second in command at the shop to take care of the morning bake, and he’s bribed Max and Lucas with a month of free cupcakes to watch Olive this evening, after daycare lets out for the day, so he can take Steve out to eat somewhere that doesn’t serve chicken nuggets or have a costumed mascot. It’s a high price to pay, but it’s worth it.

He only has about ten minutes before Olive will be up and barging into their room, jumping on the bed and shouting for daddy to wake up, so acting fast, he throws on a pair of sweats and runs to the bathroom to go for a quick piss before heading to Olive’s room to intercept her.

“Poppa!” she cries, her sweet voice still thick with sleep, making his heart melt as it always does.

“Quiet voice, remember?” Billy whispers, burying his nose in her nest of wild curls, almost identical to his own.

She nods, her voice solemn as she whispers “Don’t wake up daddy” in return. They’d went over this in the days prior, Billy promising that if she stayed quiet and let Steve sleep, they would swing by the bakery for donuts for breakfast before Billy dropped her off at daycare. He’s proud that she’s trying hard to keep up her end of the bargain.

He gets them both ready, and then he quickly writes Steve a note, letting him know what’s going on, and then he and Olive head out. He pulls her in her red wagon, and as she babbles on about the dog they pass and the bird in the neighbours yard, Billy gets lost in thought, thinking about everything that’s led he and Steve here.

It hasn’t been an easy road to walk down, to say the very least. First, it had been their own stupid selves keeping them apart, both too stubborn to admit that what they felt for each other was more than a friendship blossoming in the final months of Steve’s senior year of high school.

When they finally managed to both pull their heads out of their asses and explore their growing feelings, the Mindflayer had come along and turned what should have been a summer of love and lust into a hellish nightmare, Billy fighting for his life in the hospital as Steve sat by his bedside, holding his hand and sobbing quietly, praying to a god that he didn’t even believe in that Billy would be ok.

Billy did pull through, but that didn’t mean he was ok. Barely a month out of the hospital, Billy found himself back there, this time with Steve in the bed next to him, after they were caught kissing on the street corner, careless in their young love, by Neil Hargrove.

Hopper offered to chase Neil out of Hawkins, but instead, Billy and Steve decided that they were going to be the ones to leave, heading out west, to San Diego, as soon as they were well enough to go. It wasn’t all rainbows and roses in the sunshine state though. Their college years were tough, both of them working multiple jobs to put themselves through school. They had little time to spend together, and that combined with Steve’s father near constantly bribing him to return to Indiana and work for him, which caused Billy to worry that Steve was going to pick money and job security over him, put a lot of strain on their relationship.

Steve’s reassurances that he would always choose Billy did little to tamp down Billy’s concerns, and only a year out of college, the strain of everything got to be too much and they split, and Steve did return home to work for his father for a time, a self fulfilling prophecy.

It was devastating for both of them, Billy sick with grief as he watched Steve back the moving van out of the driveway, and Steve almost driving off the road, barely able to see through his tears, but they’d both convinced themselves that this was for the best.

Months went by, and they both tried to rebuild their lives, difficult as it was without their better halves. Steve found therapy, not in an office, but at Hopper and Joyce’s small kitchen table, drinking tea late into the night as he spilled all his fears and regrets, his insecurities, and how deeply his love for Billy still ran, in spite of all the challenges they had.

Billy found his love of baking, working through cakes and muffins, cookies and pies, before trying every kind of bread known to man. He also found a renewed love of surfing, spending every early morning that he wasn’t working in a small bakery downtown out on the ocean.

He talked to the waves, working through the fears and anxiety swirling in his mind. He also talked to the other surfers as they dried off on the shore, let them talk him into going to a party, where he drank too much, as he was known to do when he was nervous.

He found himself in bed that night with a beautiful girl, Kathleen, letting the drinks in his system falsify passion for one night. Just one night and they would part as friends, both of them moving on, her back to LA for her last year of college, and Billy back together with Steve after a lot of heartfelt discussions and promises to do better this time around.

Armed with an investment from Steve’s parents, who ultimately just wanted their son to be happy, Billy and Steve purchased the bakery that Billy was working at when the owner fell ill, and his family decided it was too much to try to keep it going.

All was well for a time, both men falling back into their relationship and into their roles as business owners. They were happier and more in love than ever when they received a call from Kathleen, pregnant with no desire to be a mother, but wanting to give Billy the chance to parent if he wanted it, a chance he might not otherwise get.

He did, both he and Steve did. Wonderful, sweet, loving Steve, who immediately accepted Olive as his own, and vowing that she would grow up feeling nothing but love. He’d made good on that vow, they both had, the three of them the most solid family unit Billy had ever known.

Things weren’t always perfect. They would argue over how to parent Olive, or how to run the business, or have petty squabbles over who’s turn it was to do the dishes or run the laundry. Love is a battlefield, but they would never stop fighting for their love.

Dropping Olive off at daycare, Billy raced home, eager to get back to Steve and start their day together, love and warmth filling his heart.