#and some poor forest ranger had to relay Billy's message to Hopper

[bombshellbois]

Killer Summer

@harringroveweekoflove

Harringrove Week of Love Day 5: Summer Camp AU

Rating: T

Warnings/Triggers: Dark humor, brief description of a corpse

Words: 2122

Summary: Billy’s big summer plans for him and Steve get derailed by the common annoyances of summer camps, such as children and serial killers.

The rain hits the cabin windows in heavy splatters, smacking into the glass in a way that makes Steve vaguely wonder how old the window are. And if heavy enough rain might break them. It certainly doesn’t feel like that’s impossible when those windows are the only thing between him and a downpour that’s quite literally tearing the forest apart. He sighs and decides not to think about that. Instead, he picks up the handheld mic for the ham radio and pushes the button on the side.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Steve Harrington, radioing in from Camp Know Where. The storm has knocked out our power and there is debris blocking the road out. Two of our counselors are unaccounted for. We have children out here. I repeat, we have no power and no way out of the woods.” 

He releases the button and watches the mic like it might do something. Then the radio. Silence. He throws the mic on the desk, scrubbing a hand over his face as it clatters into the body of the radio and falls off the desk.

The cabin door swings open and the wind carries it right into the wall. The rain outside is just a wall of noise, making Steve cover his ears. Billy scrambles into the cabin, the rain splattering in more than halfway across the room when the wind picks up, until he slams the door behind him. 

“—Mother Nature, fucking PMS bitch!” Billy is saying, which Steve can only hear once he’s safely shut the door. Billy’s camp shirt is saturated, the green fabric dark with water and looking almost black in the dim light from the oil lamp. He slams a thermos down on the desk and shakes his head rapidly, sending a spray of water everywhere. 

“Dude!” Steve raises his arms to try and shield himself from it. “Come on, I just barely got dry!” 

“Hey, I risked life and limb to bring you coffee. Deal with it.” Billy grabs a handful of Steve’s collar, the water on his hand immediately soaking into Steve’s shirt. Steve groans in irritation, but turns his head up and gives Billy the kiss he’s waiting for. Water drips from Billy’s curls onto his face and and neck. 

“That’s more like it,” Billy sighs, releasing his shirt. He jerks his chin at the mic from the ham radio, swinging gently from its cord where it’s fallen off the desk. “Don’t suppose you were roughing that thing up because you were so happy to get an answer.”

“I don’t even know if this thing is working,” Steve sighs. “Nothing on it does anything. For all I know, I could be talking to a dead battery.”

“Don’t your nerd children know how to use it?” Billy asks, stripping off his sopping shirt. 

“Yeah, but I’m not dragging them out of the storm shelter to come work the radio.” Steve picks up the mic so he can pretend he wasn’t staring at Billy’s chest, setting it on top of the radio. “I mean, honestly? What are we even calling for?”

“You know what.” Billy wrings his shirt out by the door, since the floor is hopelessly soaked there already. The water dribbles into a puddle on the floor, and when he snaps the shirt back open, it still drips from the corners. “Hopper said you had to keep him in the loop.”

“Yeah, I know. I know he’s freaked out by the weird shit that’s been going on, especially with El’s battery still being dead.” Honestly, if the storm hadn’t come on so suddenly and buried them under sheets of water, Hopper probably would have come and picked El up as soon as he heard about the very lived-in tent they found in the woods while hiking. The one with a compost pile suggesting someone has been living there at least the whole summer. “But a fucking Demogorgon could come and knock on the window right now and what is the forest service gonna do about it?” Steve gestures wildly at the radio that might not even fucking work for all he knows. “Fire up a helicopter in the middle of a deluge?”

“I mean, knowing Hopper he’d probably pull on a raincoat and come shoot it. It’d take him hours to get here and we’d all be dead by then, of course,” Billy says sensibly, leaning his hip on the desk. 

Steve snorts out a laugh. It’s morbid but the image of Hopper in a yellow rain slicker, slogging his way through a mudslide and holding his gun over his head like some kind of small-town Rambo... it’s a pretty fucking funny image. Especially when combined with the severe stress they’ve been under, with finding the tent and then the broken locks in the boat house and now the storm that basically just fell on top of them.

“Not to mention that Demogorgons are pretty bullet-proof,” he adds.

“Ah. Can’t forget that part,” Billy agrees, leaning down and kissing Steve again. “So, y’know... once he ran out of bullets, he’d have to pistol-whip it into submission.”

Steve snickers and wraps a hand around the back of Billy’s neck. “You made me laugh. I’m gonna share my coffee with you for that.” He reaches for the thermos, but Billy nudges it just out of reach. 

“I can think of way better ways for you to thank me, pretty boy,” he says, lowering his voice to a husky whisper. 

“I know you can. You’ve been hinting at that all summer.” Not terribly subtly either, because when was Billy ever subtle? More like leaving condoms hidden everywhere in Steve’s bed like some fucked-up cousin of the tooth fairy.

“And this might be our only chance to not have anyone else around.”

Steve rolls his eyes and leans further over the desk, snatching the thermos. “The kids aren’t around because we’re in an emergency weather situation. And Tommy and Carol aren’t around because they’re off fucking. Again.”

“Sounds like they’re the only ones having fun this summer.” Billy picks up the radio mic and pushes the button. “Mayday, mayday, mayday... this is Billy Hargrove, calling from Camp Know Where. We’ve lost power and the road is blocked and there’s about to be twenty minutes of unmanned radio waves while I take my boyfriend into the back room and bend him over a kayak.”

Steve raises his eyebrows. “Twenty whole minutes? How romantic.”

“Ooh. Boyfriend is displeased.” Billy clicks his tongue. “Make that forty unmanned minutes. Forty-five if we cuddle.”

“Oh I expect cuddling.” Steve pries the mic out of Billy’s hand and drops it aside. Standing from the desk, he hooks a finger under Billy’s belt and pulls.

In the time it takes to cross the tiny cabin space, it’s impossible to tell who’s pulling and who’s being pulled. They practically fall into the back room where the lake equipment is stored. There are hard shadows cast by the kayaks leaning on the wall, but the faint light from the oil lamp on the desk in the main cabin doesn’t offer much more detail. Not that that matters. 

When Billy trips over a pile of oars he can’t see on the floor, he just hauls Steve down on top of him, grabbing his hair and pulling him in for a kiss. Steve’s hands grope at him, fingers passing over flesh and scars until they find the metal buckle of his belt. 

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Steve’s method of yanking blindly isn’t doing much on Billy’s belt. Billy laughs breathlessly and reaches down to help him. When the leather tongue finally slips free, Steve makes a triumphant noise into their mouths and throws the belt aside. The metal skitters lightly on the wood and taps gently against a wall somewhere. 

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Billy pushes Steve onto his back on something that feels soft. Steve shifts and tries to get comfortable, but something is jabbing into his back, It feels like he’s laying on the life preservers, but they’re folded in all the wrong ways. “To lumpy,” he complains. Trying to move away doesn’t work either, because something hard and wooden just knocks into his knee, making him hiss. 

“Okay, get the light.” Steve rubs at his knee, trying to ease the throbbing sting of it. Billy makes a frustrated noise but gets off him and goes back into the main cabin. 

Tap. Tap. Tap. 

Steve looks around in the dark. What the hell is that sound anyway? The shadows cast by the kayaks swing wildly as Billy picks up the light source and carries it inside. 

“Here. Hurry up and get comfy,” he says, handing Steve the lamp. “With our luck, the rain’ll clear up and all the kids’ll come charging in when I’m still balls deep in you.”

“You’re so charming.” Steve stands up, side-stepping the oars that he can see now. He holds the light aloft, letting it fall on the window. It swings in the gusty wind outside, rapping against its own frame. The wood under it is dark and glistening from the rain. 

Tap. Tap. Tap. 

“...Why is the window open?” 

Billy groans like the wait might kill him. “It’s open because it blew open,” he says, stepping around the oars and over to the window. 

“Can it even do that?” Steve asks, looking around the room.

“It just did.” Billy yanks the window closed. “There. All fixed. Back to undressing.”

“You’re impossible.” Steve kicks at the pile of life vests, trying to form a more pleasant-looking pile. 

“Impossibly horny because you don’t put out,” Billy huffs, unbuttoning his own pants. 

“We’ve been at a summer camp surrounded by kids!” Steve sets the lamp on the ground and flops down on his pile, unfastening his belt. 

“And now we’re not, for a very limited time. So quit wasting it.” Billy pulls a condom from his back pocket and drops it on Steve’s stomach before shucking his pants off. 

“Asshole.” Steve tips his head up and kisses Billy as he kneels between his legs and then settles his weight on top of him. Something is still jamming into his back once he’s got Billy on top of him. 

“Dammit.” Steve pushes Billy off and twists around to grab the lamp. “What the hell is wrong with these things?” He yanks on one of the vests free from the pile.

The problem is not the vests. The problem is the arm. The pale, naked arm laying limp on the ground under the pile. 

Oh god.

Steve grips the lantern harder to make sure his hand doesn’t shake and slowly lowers the light to follow the arm back, back, back into the dark space under one of the shelving units. 

Tommy’s dead eyes stare back at him. His face is white and his mouth is hanging open, the lamp casting hard shadows in his mouth, turning it into a black maw. His green Camp Know Where t-shirt is matted in something dark, but the body is crammed into a space too small to see it clearly. 

Steve stares at the body. Billy, crouched beside him, stares at the body. He turns to look at Steve, reaching over to take the lamp before Steve drops it.

“Okay. Steve?”

“..Yeah?” 

“I think we should still do it.”

Steve pauses for a long minute, having to run that through his head a few times. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.” 

“Fucking hell, Hargrove!” Steve shoves him aside and scrambles up off the floor. “You’re fucking unbelievable.”

“He’d want us to!” Billy calls after him. “Come on, Steve, honor his memory!”

In the main cabin, he can hear Steve picking up the mic for the radio. “Mayday, mayday, mayday, we have an emergency situation at Camp Know Where...”

Billy groans in frustration and kicks the limp arm hanging out into the room. “Way to fucking cockblock, Hagan,” he sneers, pulling his pants back on. “I hope they let me write your eulogy so I can tell everyone what a sycophantic suck-up you were. And then I’m gonna piss in your open grave.”

“Billy!” Steve yells. “Stop yelling at Tommy’s corpse and come help me figure out what the fuck to do!”

Billy throws his hands up and points at the arm. “Great. Now you got me in trouble,” he hisses. “This is why you got picked off first, because you’re a shitty friend.”  He snatches up his belt and stalks out of the storeroom to go help Steve deal with the stupid serial killer bullshit. 

***

Epilogue: Tommy’s funeral is lovely. Billy is not asked to write the eulogy, and Steve does not allow him to piss into the open grave, despite Billy’s best efforts.