#harringrove musings

[weird-an]

The truth is: Steve Harrington fell for Billy Hargrove dick first, heart second.

[bigdumbbambieyes]

"Do you ever think of me?"

The question is mumbled into the skin of his neck, where Steve's mouth is pressed.

Billy had thought Steve had fallen asleep, but. Surprise, surprise.

And it's honestly such a stupid question that he considers not answering it at all.

But, he knows better.

"Always," he murmurs, turning his head to press a sweet little kiss to Steve's forehead.

"You promise?" Steve whispers, his voice quiet and small, insecure. He gets like that, sometimes. Not as much as Billy, though.

"Cross my heart," he replies just as quietly, pressing another kiss to the bridge of Steve's nose, soothing him.

It works, if the soft little happy noise his boyfriend makes speaks for anything.

"Love doing this with you," Steve murmurs as he lifts his head, his face finally peering out from its hiding place and Billy can see that pretty face in the dark of their room.

He would know Steve's soul in the dark, just like this.

"You love doing nothing?" Billy smirks.

Steve nods, "With you."

It's so disgustingly sweet, it could almost make Billy sick.

What makes him feel worse is that he's been thinking the same thing for a while now.

Just laying here, in their bed, cuddled up and breathing has Billy beyond happy. It's peace. It's love. It's his.

It's theirs.

"Yeah," Billy whispers, turning onto his side to cup Steve's face in the dark, his lips finding that wide Cupid's bow far too easily, their noses gently bumping as he murmurs into his boyfriend's mouth, "Love doing nothing with you, too."

[giggle-at-the]

Just an observation:) Was looking at s2Steve gifs and honestly I so get why Billy was going feral about him. 

Not only season 2 was imo Steve's peak Look and Character season, but also. Him and Billy ended up being ultimate pulling-pigtails, hard-to-get scenario with gut punch ending - but not for obvious reasons. 

By schoolyard drama standarts Steve should have responded to Billy upstaging him as alpha dog, they could have hot-blooded rivarly and maybe allyship after. Yet Steve wasn't playing by the rules bc a) he already denounced his circle in s1 b) he's involved in supernatural horrors beyond comprehension plot.

So it gets almost (rom)comical in the beginning, Billy showing off all he’s got so Steve would aknowledge and challenge him while Steve isn’t interested, occupied with Upside Down past (different coping mechanisms lead to breackup with Nancy) and present issues. 

It gets much heavier in 2.9, after we see abuse Billy gets subjected to. Inter-dimensional creatures are not the only monsters that can mess you up, but Steve doesn’t know this about Billy. But even before Billy threatened Lucas, by the way, Steve wasn’t going to clue him in on monster stuff.

[fizzigigsimmer]

Listening to the platters’ only you and thinking about 50s era harringrove 👌👌👌

Honestly same Anon! Ever since i found that dance video I can’t help but picture steve x billy, at the only diner in Hawkins, splitting a basket of fries and a milkshake. Whenever people ask they say it’s because Billy doesn’t like to “waste” his money on fast food & bullshit, he’s saving up to go to California after graduation, but he doesn’t mind stealing Steve’s food. It’s a game now, how quickly Billy can steal the first sip of Steve’s milkshake before he can stop him. All their friends just roll their eyes. Used to their rivalry and the way they always have to be in competition with each other. It’s calmed down a lot since Billy first moved to town - at least nobody seriously thinks they hate each other. They just have to occasionally remind the other who’s the top dog and neither has noticed that they’ve accidentally become best friends and everyone treats them like a unit anyway. Which is exactly how they like it, because they’ve been secretly boyfriends for months and Steve has the day they’re planning on running away to California circled in his calendar.

‘

[grey-sides]

When Jane reaches out to make some kind of contact with Billy, Steve sees it.

It's apparently the kind of contact that makes men into heroes. Or at least makes Billy think of someone other than himself.

It's simple. Steve doesn't know what Jane says, he just sees her mouth moving through his own good eye and sees whatever it is that's been living in Billy leave him for good.

It's. A touch. To his cheek. The same one Steve had hit months, maybe years, a millennia ago. When Billy was asking about Max and threatening Lucas.

But this one is soft.

Steve can't take his eyes away when he sees Billy stand up to the monster, shouting, losing to it. Protecting Jane so she can do what she needs to do.

He's transfixed, but the touch. He wonders if Jane's hands are warm or if she's the kind of girl who always has cold fingers. If her touch reminded Billy of someone like an old girlfriend or his mom.

Steve's hands tighten on the banister of the balcony and Robin has a hand twisted into the back of his dumb uniform shirt.

The touch replays in his mind when the paramedics show up. It replays when he's released to go home. When he walks inside quietly and takes a hot shower.

He touches his own cheek in the mirror and looks into his own bloodshot and swollen eyes.

A touch.

That was what it took to get through to Billy.

Steve wonders if his touch would have done the same.

[adelacreations]

More Starfire!Billy and Nightwing!Steve musing (I have given myself and @thediktatortot brainrot)

Steve heading back to his apartment after a night of patrolling only for a rogue alien prince to crash land on his balcony. Kisses him immediately to learn English and then passing out. Cue Steve having to nurse a 7 foot alien back to health

(Starfire is canonical 6'4 BUT Billy deserves to be BIG THANK YOU VERY MUCH)

Billy being clueless about human things and its adorable to think about and Steve having to teach him.

People in the superhero community that are close with Steve start to wonder what's going on. There are bets he's dating again after two years of just not. Robin just bursting into his apartment onto to see Steve being followed by a floating alien in his apartment XD

Robin: Steve...what-

Steve: um...I can explain?

Robin: you found an alien and didn't tell me!

Billy: this is the girl named after the bird right, Stevie?

Idk how to include Max in this but the idea with that Neil remarried on Tamarian (Starfire's home planet). Let's say that Billy's mom died from being poisoned by Neil's supporters in the palace and while he wants Max to be the heir over Billy. Max had an illness as a child robbing her of the ability to fly. Which is like a huge thing on their planet.

But what better way to get rid of Billy than to sell him off to a trade that keeping threatening war? Billy gets experimented on and that gives him his abilities. Course he escapes and kinda holds a bit of a grudge.

Anyways yeah, this au is probably gonna happen cause I got ideas XD

But also probably gonna write a fic about this and Billy and Steve end up alien married because of some loophole in Tamarian laws. Robin gets introduced to Billy's best friend and personal guard Heather cause they both deserve it

Robin 🤝 Steve

Having hot aliens as significant others

[billyharringson]

I found a weird bruise on my finger that I don't remember getting and then this happened.

--

It was a lie that Billy bruised easily. A lie started by his father and perpetuated by Billy himself as he got older. It actually took quite a lot for bruises to show on Billy's golden skin, most of the punishments that his father gave him didn't show, that didn't mean that he couldn't feel them though. It was like the bruises hid under his skin, the same way that Billy did. Refusing to show themselves for fear of what other people would say.

So it was no surprise that, just like the bruises, it was the hardest and most painful parts of himself that Billy couldn't hide, they were the ones that showed no matter how hard he tried to hide them. The black eye that only came out in its explosion of muddy colours because there was a hairline fracture on his cheekbone to go with it. The deep well of longing for the boy who touched his wound and asked what had happened, visible because he couldn't stop himself from leaning into it.

[billyhargrovestits]

He has nightmares. Really bad ones.

It's not a surprise after everything that he - that they all - have gone through. Sometimes he'll dream of Nancy pointing a gun right at his face, Jonathan the one at her side. Sometimes it'll be a righteous battle against a hoard of demo dogs, his bat swinging wildly against them.

But after the summer of '85, his nightmares have turned almost exclusively to one single event.

Him on the second floor of that fucking mall. Practically throwing himself off the railing as Billy stood against the mindflayer and held it back. Ears ringing with Billy's angry wail and then...

Silence.

Only max screaming as Steve watched Billy get impaled. Unable to do anything from his spot in the stands.

Sometimes the nightmares will embellish. Billy looking over his shoulder to him before standing tall. Or sometimes he actually does fling himself over the railing to help - only to wake up a second before impact.

That barely compares to the worst of them though. The nightmares where Billy survives. Letting Steve hear one last "pretty boy" before he wakes and the reality sets in.

Billy Hargrove was dead.

Steve didn't save him.

[xonceinadream]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington Characters: Billy Hargrove, Steve Harrington Additional Tags: Parents Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Childhood Trauma, Day At The Beach Summary:

Bringing his daughter to the California coast was something Billy had wanted to do for a long time. He just hadn't realized quite how it was going to affect him.

For @billyhargrovebingo. Square B1: Bad memories.

Warning: This does talk about the abuse that Billy faced as a child although it doesn't go into detail. Just so you can prepare yourself.

[shieldofiron]

Pretty Boy Live in Santa Fe, 1977

Part 1/3 Also on Ao3 here

For @harringrove-relay-race. Very happy with how part 1 turned out, and there will be more to come. Thanks to @foxxtastic for the intro and next up will be something stunning from our fearless Relay Race leader @half-oz-eddie

Rated M / 5k words / Part 1/3

Part 1: Into Hades

Rolling Stone Magazine - May 2002

Billy Hargrove arrived after I did, in his lovingly maintained blue Camaro, the subject of his song, “Lady Blue.” “Lady Blue” was recently named #93 on Rolling Stone’s Top Love Songs of the Century.

“I wrote, ‘She’s the wind in my hair, the rumble in my soul.’ I thought it was so obvious,” He laughed, his blue eyes still boyish. “My niece made it her wedding song, I said ‘Really? It’s about a fuckin’ car!’”

He showed me several pictures of his niece, the supermodel Tyler Sinclair. It seems good looks run in the family. He suggested the diner and he ordered waffles, winking when I mentioned that we’ll be here a long time.

The decades have been kind to him, maybe a few more lines. It’s not hard to imagine him stepping right back onto the stage, as if no time has passed at all.

“A little extra glitter on the eyes,” He said with a smile, “to hide my crows feet. That’s all I need.”

I ask what he’s going to wear to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony for Kaleidoscope's induction and his smile dims only for a moment.

“I think I should pull out some old costumes. You know, the butterfly still fits.”

He was referring, of course, to the sheer butterfly cape costume that nearly had him thrown off the stage in Houston Texas in December 1976. He caved to putting on a pair of silvery shorts rather than the nude underwear it was designed with. He later wore it with the nude underwear on the inside cover of Kaleidoscope, the album that will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in just a few short weeks. Kaleidoscope was his last album with the iconic Glam Rock band Pretty Boy, which famously broke up at the height of their career while touring for the album, onstage.

It’s not often that a band is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and there’s a question if all of them will even show up.

“I’ll be there,” Hargrove said, fiddling with the silver band on his middle finger. “I have no problem with seeing him.”

The him is, of course, the lead guitarist and other lead singer of Pretty Boy, Steve Harrington.

Steve Harrington invites me to his oceanfront house in Malibu later that afternoon.

“I haven’t decided if I’m going to go,” He said thoughtfully, his brown eyes darting around the room.

When I mention that Billy is going to go, he seems surprised.

“He didn’t say he was going to punch me, did he?” Harrington smiled, but it doesn’t seem like much of a joke.

For one of the most famous rock stars of the 70s, Harrington is shockingly low key. He wears a t-shirt and slouchy linen pants, and he jokes that he ought to have shaved when I take out my camera. The house is stunning but empty, with miles of blank white walls and overstuffed white furniture.

“I’m looking for a little peace,” He shrugs, “I used to have all these pictures up, all this furniture… It was too much.”

It was hard not to see him as an artist without a muse. He drifted listlessly, picking things up and putting them down as we talked. So it was a surprise to me to hear that he’s been recording.

“I may never release it but… Yeah,” He laughed, “Music. After all this time. Bet you didn’t know.”

He picks up a rare photo from the piano. It’s from the early days of Pretty Boy, before Billy Hargrove. Harrington has his arm around his bandmate, Eddie Munson. Their drummer Chrissy Cunningham is balanced precariously across their shoulders, laughing and cringing at the same time. Bassist Robin Buckley smirks from the corner of the frame, messy bangs in her eyes.

“Who knew, right?” He asked no one, shaking the frame a little.

There are no pictures of Billy Hargrove.

“That’s a… a long story,” He said, when I asked.

But I have time. I tell him Rolling Stone will pay for it. At least that makes him laugh.

It was just by chance that Pretty Boy’s last concert was filmed.

“We were meant to just film in Vegas,” The director, Argyle Molina-Zapata, sat down with me after a private screening of Pretty Boy Live in Santa Fe, 1977, “But there was a freak rainstorm, and I couldn’t get my camera’s out of the back. The crowd was digging it, refused to leave. I remember when Billy hit the high note for ‘Mother Make Me,’ there was this lightning crack… brilliant.”

Molina-Zapata shook his head, “But the footage, what I got of it, was awful. Awful! So I begged Murray to let me come with them to Santa Fe.”

Murray was Murray Bauman, famed tour manager, who handled the Boys, later Pretty Boy from their first album Starfire, all the way to Kaleidoscope.

“And I was lucky,” Argyle nodded, “They had that extra tour bus.”

The tour busses are featured in the first few minutes of the film. They roll around the corner, one reading Billy Blue (Billy’s original stage name was  Billy Blue before he dropped the Blue), and the other, Steve’s Six (Named after Steve’s best friends from his hometown.)

“They were nightmares,” Murray Bauman’s voice crackled over the phone, “Nightmares on tour. Separate buses. Separate hotels. Fuck me, I swear to god at one point they wanted separate stages. And the label caved on almost all of it. Fucking nightmare.”

It’s almost impossible to imagine it when you see them on stage together. There’s something electric that passed between Billy Hargrove and Steve Harrington, something that drove crowds wild. They gravitate towards each other on the stage, orbiting like planets until they can share the same mic. They can’t seem to stay apart.

It’s hard to see exactly what happened that night.

“I’ve watched it a million times,” Argyle laughed, “But the only two people who can really say what happened are Billy and Steve.”

What you can see is this: Steve tearing into “Pride & Prejudice”, the lead off Kaleidoscope and the last song of the night.

Billy was trembling, visibly shaking as he sang and Steve harmonized along.

What can I say, if you ask me to walk away?

Baby, there’s no words for you.

Baby. I don’t know what to do.

Billy danced closer, joining Steve, his handheld mic loose at his side.

Can you ever put away your pride?

Is it worth it to not have me at your side?

I guess it must be, because I’m yours,

Regretfully,

Baby.

Billy leans in, sharing Steve’s mic for the bridge.

Is it really a mystery?

What I mean to you, and you mean to me?

Is it really, baby?

Billy shook his head, curls bouncing. He looked into Steve's eyes. He smiled. Steve looks at Billy, and Billy looks at him. It almost looks like Billy mouths something, but bootleg footage also has appeared where it looks like Billy just nodded. Steve goes a little shell shocked, hand freezing on his guitar, falling out of sync.

And then Steve turned away and left the stage, handing his guitar to a stagehand. Billy turned to the crowd, his expression strangely triumphant. He was always magnetic on stage, but this moment transcends that. It somehow feels like he’s getting everything he wants.

So I guess I’m losing you,

You promised me you would and it’s true.

Baby, there’s no words for you.

Baby. I don’t know what to do.

Steve Harrington hasn’t performed in public since 1977.

“None of us knew what was going to happen that night,” Chrissy Cunningham curled up next to her husband, Eddie Munson, on the large white couch of their Seattle home.

They’re a handsome couple still, draped in rock and roll finery. He toyed with the edge of her scarf, and she curled his long hair around her long fingers.

“We had some of our own shit going on at the time so…” Munson shrugged, “Maybe we were distracted.”

Their living room was crowded and verdant, every spare flat surface covered in plants. Their partner, former record executive Jason Carver, puttered in the kitchen in an apron that read Plant Papa.

“Yeah,” Chrissy smiled, “We had some stuff going on at the same time. But still… It seemed like they were getting better. Didn’t it seem like they were getting better?”

Munson shrugged, “The thing about Billy and Steve… they were soulmates. You don’t write music like that and not… it was like they had a second language, just for them. They were soulmates, I really believe that. Everything they did, everything that happened… they could only hurt each other that badly if… yeah.”

When I ask what they did to each other, Eddie and Chrissy just scooted closer together, like teenagers in a slasher, hiding from the killer. She laid a hand over his leg, her two stone diamond ring catching the sunlight.

“Steve never wanted Billy to be in the band,” Eddie shook his head, “but Jim had a soft spot for Billy. And Steve had… I mean Jim was…”

“Jim was like a father. To all of us.” Chrissy’s knee jiggled.

“We were this little tiny band from Nowhere, Indiana,” Eddie nodded, “And Jim believed in us.”

“I was just a junior exec at the time. I was put on the Kaleidoscope tour in case of catastrophic failure, which by the way it was,” Jason Carver is making risotto while we speak, the steam curling the lock of hair that falls over his face. “But it wasn’t my fault although I was high as hell on coke half the time. I guess I deserved to get fired. But Jim was the real deal. Gold records out the ass, best wife in the world, and his daughter, I mean… she was something else.”

They’re referring, of course, to Jim Hopper, producer on Kaleidoscope as well as Billy Blue and The Boys’ records, and the father of pop superstar Eleven aka Jane Hopper.

“Jim was…” Steve Harrington’s eyes always got a little misty talking about Jim, staring out over the ocean. “Yeah, I guess he was a little like my dad. My own parents were always gone. Which is like… I grew up so privileged so like I’m not saying… I just mean I grew up mostly by myself. And we were just so lucky he even agreed to listen to us when we got to LA.”

“I remember that night,” Joyce Hopper’s voice was raspy, cigarette-y in the way only old movie stars are. She’s a gorgeous woman in jeans and a gardening hat, speaking to me while she tends to her garden at her home in Castellammare. “He came home and said, ‘I have the next ones, the next big ones. Fuck, Joyce, they’re brilliant. Unpolished, but brilliant.’”

When I ask about when Jim discovered Billy Hargrove she just laughed.

“If Steve and the rest of The Boys were unpolished, Billy Hargrove was a fucking ten carat diamond,” She said. “But Steve’s band was Jim’s, and he could polish them up how he wanted. And then when he thought they were just right for it… he set the diamond.”

Jim Hopper was a big man, larger than life both in appearance and in personality. His fingerprints are all over some of the best hits of the decade.

Watching him on old interviews, there’s an immediacy to his presence that leaps off the screen.

“My daughter is the one who really found him. She snuck out with her sister and wandered God knows where. And she just… found him. Called me the next morning, saying ‘Dad, you have to hear this guy.’ He was playing in this… terrible club,” Jim said, tapping his cigar on the table of Merv Griffin’s set. “Absolute shithole, pardon my french. And he’s got a great voice, you’ve heard his voice, right?”

“I have,” Merv said.

“I had to get him out of there. He was a star.”

Billy Hargrove was a teenage runaway from San Diego when he came to LA in 1971.

“I had a girl’s backpack from my stepsister, eight dollars, and an extra pair of underwear. By the end of the next week? I had two more dollars,” Billy laughed. “But I got lucky. I met Heather.”

Heather Holloway was a showgirl at Wildwoods, a nightly revue. She found Billy at the backdoor, and took him to her apartment.

“She saved me,” He frowned. “Whenever I needed her most.”

Heather Holloway, Billy Hargrove’s first and only wife, died in 1979. 

“I got a job singing at Sugar, this great gay club downtown. It was in the late afternoons, so I had a crowd of about… two. But those two brought two more,” Billy smiled, “Heather would talk me up to all the promoters. He’s a singer, he’s great, you’ll love him, he’s so cute.”

“He was an instant hit,” Sugar’s manager, Bob Newby, tells me by phone as well. “I did have to keep a couple of creeps off him, when he just started he was only nineteen. But even if you closed your eyes… he was a hit.”

“Guys used to think that because I was a part of the entertainment, I was fair game. And let me tell you, the novelty of that wears off mighty quick,” Billy shakes his head.

He shares a diary entry from his late wife of a night in April 1972. He came to her home with blood all over his face.

“Some guy thought because I was a fag…” Billy’s mouth twisted, but he went on, cradling the little marble notebook in his hand. “He could do whatever he wanted to me. When I fought back… he cracked a bottle over my head.”

He’s not just a piece of meat. He’s a person. I don’t understand these people. I just don’t understand, Heather Holloway wrote. I cleaned him up and he’s sleeping now.

The next diary entry is from a day later. April 12. Billy and I drove to Vegas and got married. When we spoke in the morning he said he was afraid for me too, even though I’m careful with the girls. He’s afraid of the cops trying to bust up the Wildwoods and picking me up. At least this way, he says. He and I can come home to each other. Look out for each other. Always. The groom wore band aids and his great velvet pants. The bride wore lavender. It was perfect.

“And lucky too. Because within a month… I met Jim,” Billy smiled. “And my whole life changed.”

Upside Down Records signed Billy Blue, unagented, in1972 and he spent the next year working on his debut album with Jim Hopper.

“I didn’t even realize, when it happened,” Billy shook his head. “A couple of girls came by after a show, wanting to talk to me, wanting to meet me. That wasn’t that unusual. But they were young, far too young to get into the club. And the little one, she was asking all these weird questions. Did I have an agent? Did I know if I had enough songs for an album? Weird fuckin’ questions. And then she said I have to meet someone. To be honest, I thought she was coked out of her mind when she said, ‘You have to meet my dad.’”

“I was not,” Eleven promised me, “coked out of my mind. But that’s just Billy.”

Eleven aka Jane Hopper, meets me backstage at one of her shows. She’s dressed in slouchy leather pants, to match her sister and drummer Kali Hopper.

“I knew he was something special. My dad was always talking about the IT factor. That thing that made a person something special. But I didn’t get it until I saw Billy Blue singing on that tiny stage,” She smiled. “He didn’t just have the IT factor. He was IT.”

It’s odd then, that Billy Blue’s first album had a surprisingly tepid response. His first single, in 1973, “Let Alone,” came in at only 26th for the month of April on the pop charts.

“People liked it,” Billy shrugs, “But I don’t think they knew what to do with it. You have my songs, these like… little pop love songs and ballads. I wasn’t that strong of a writer at the time. It was like half my songs, half covers. And so they’d book me, expecting fucking… Peter Frampton. And here comes this big queer with glitter on his nipples.”

But the lyrics of “Let Alone” would hint at his later songs, a hallmark simplicity that shone off his raw voice and poetry that hinted at a troubled past.

And if you were meant to care for me

You would, and that’s how it has to be

You said I couldn’t go on without you

Ha, look at me, looking brand new

At the same time, The Boys’ song “Paper Girl,” penned by Harrington, was number one.

She’s my paper girl

She’s my paper girl

Wakes me up every morning, right on time

She got me smiling, got my head in a whirl

Picture perfect, paper girl

“Billy didn’t have much commercial appeal. Sex appeal, yes,” Jason laughed, toying with Chrissy’s hair. “But for sales? That’s where The Boys came in.”

“I hated that name,” Eddie said, “To start with we were half girls.”

The Boys had already had a somewhat successful tour under their belt by the time Jim suggested a collaboration with Billy Hargrove.

“It was a nice, short tour,” Steve Harrington glances away when I ask about the first tour.

“It was a nightmare. Balls to the wall nightmare,” Robin Buckley’s voice is a warm crackle over the phone. “Steve went on like thirty overlapping benders at once.”

Her partner, soap actress Vickie Carmichael cackles behind her, at their home in Salt Lake City.

“The thing about Steve is… well… he’s never found a good way of coping with himself,” Robin huffs. “Music was about as close as he ever got. But in those early days, he just kept looking for more and more.”

“You don’t think it was about-” Vickie asked, just barely into the phone.

“No.”

“It was about Nancy,” Eddie said confidently when I mentioned their first tour. “Nancy, Nancy, Nancy.”

The Boys got their start in the late sixties, beginning with Eddie and Steve. Eddie gave Steve guitar lessons, which turned into some talent show performances. They used to practice at Eddie’s Uncle’s trailer.

“That’s where we got the name,” Eddie nodded, “My uncle used to just call us that, and it stuck.”

“I don’t even remember,” Chrissy said.

“That’s not how we got the name,” Steve shook his head, when I mention Eddie. “It was our first gig, after we got Chrissy and Robin. Robin put it down after the headliner kept asking when ‘you boys’ would go on, and kept addressing it to Chrissy’s chest. She blew him out of the fucking water.”

Nancy Wheeler was there that night, writing about local bands for a tiny column in the school paper.

“She was beautiful. Smart. So smart. Could hear her talk forever,” Steve said, eyes falling.

Steve Harrington and Nancy Wheeler were married in 1972 after they graduated high school.

“Steve made his own choices,” Chrissy shook her head.

That summer, the Boys plus one drove to LA and Nancy Wheeler took a job at Women’s Day Magazine and later, Rolling Stone. Steve Harrington and The Boys got a “steady gig” at La Bonita Rosa on the strip, playing for drunks every night from seven to eight.

“I really liked playing at La Bonita,” Steve said. “The audience, right there. You could smell the sweat. You could see on their faces if you were bombing. And we used to bomb. A lot. But it was a great place to try things. Experiment. We played there for about a year but… it felt too short.”

Within the year they had met Jim Hopper, who got them into the recording studio and sold their demo nearly on the spot to Upside Down Records.

“They had a great sound. They had got this way of playing. Smooth like a polished stone. Everything sounds good sitting in a frame like that,” Jim said in an interview with Rolling Stone in 1981. “Their songs were… catchy, but basic. But they had the sound.”

Upside Down records set the Boys on a US tour after “Paper Girl,” and “Joy to Love You,” both charted.

“It was like… overnight. One day we’re in a studio, messing around. Kid stuff. I was nineteen,” Steve Harrington shookhis head. “But…”

“That tour,” Chrissy trails off, playing with her ring again.

“I…” Steve Harrington scratched his nose. “I was losing it. Majorly losing it. It felt like we had just moved to LA and we were already neck deep. I mean, I had a number one fucking song. And for some reason I got it in my head to call my mom. She told the maid she wasn’t home. And I could hear her over the phone. My mom. So yeah. I lost it. Lost about half my damn mind on that tour. And people will say it was because of Nancy, because we got married just out of high school, and she wasn’t supportive… but that wasn’t true. Nancy saved me.”

“Nancy never wanted him to be in the band. But… she also didn’t seem to care that much either,” Eddie shook his head, “It’s… complicated. Love is supposed to be. Simple. Like the chords of a song. 1-3-5.”

Jason Carver rolled his eyes at that, “Then what are we?”

Eddie grinned, “We’re a band.”

Nancy Wheeler met me on a Thursday in New York City, slim sunglasses dominating her small porcelain face. We get lunch at her favorite deli shop, and she perches at the counter, loafers dangling. She’s an editor at The New Yorker now, but she still has a soft spot for rock and roll, as evidenced by the Grateful Dead t-shirt under her blazer.

“That tour. I didn’t even know anything was wrong. He just came home with a funny look on his face, saying, ‘We’re headlining.’ So I said, ‘That’s great, Steve.’ He just kept… saying it. It was starting to piss me off, if I’m being honest,” She shook her head. “I should have known something was wrong.”

“I wish she had stopped me. But how could you know right? Hindsight is always 2020,” Steve Harrington said. “I mean, she was my wife. How could she not want me home? But that’s just… sorry. That’s not fair to put on her. I chose to go.”

“I flew out to meet them when they were in Indianapolis, visited my family, and I came a day early to see him,” She smiled warmly, and then it fell. “He was… Well, first, Eddie Munson tried to intercept me at the hotel, so I wouldn’t see him. I told him, ‘I’m here to see my fucking husband.’”

Steve Harrington didn’t add any more details about the tour, just shrugged when I asked.

“He was coked up like you wouldn’t believe,” Robin scoffed. “She walked in on him with two girls and coke all over his… well.”

“I just asked him. Do you want to come home? Do you want to get help? Or not?” She purses her lips. “And so he came home and we found a rehab place near Hawkins.”

“The tour kind of… fell apart. Obviously. We had lost our lead singer and guitarist to fucking… Hawkins, Indiana,” 

Everything stopped for the Boys. Upside Down offered to let them out of their two album contract, but Steve couldn’t afford to pay it down.

“Rehab,” He shrugged. “Is expensive.”

Right as it seemed that everything would be over for the Boys, things were looking up for Billy Blue.

“Jim was always saying, ‘the record is selling alright, the songs are getting there but he needs a… push,’” Joyce said. “‘He’s so close. So close. He’s a star.’”

“He always believed in me,” Billy smiled, toying with his ring again. “Always. Even when I threw a jug of milk at his head.”

Joyce laughed when I asked about that moment, “He came home saying, ‘He milked me, Joyce. But he’ll fix the song tonight.’”

“And I did,” Billy said. “And the album was going alright. I did a little tour, socal and the southwest. And then one night, Jim brings me this song. He said, ‘I want you to tell me what’s missing from this.’”

The song was, of course, the Boys’ biggest hit, “Hades.” Steve Harrington’s first version was called, “To Orpheus” and the chorus goes:

Don’t turn back don’t look behind you baby

I’m close, I’m right behind

The future's so bright, and I want you to take me

Wanna be holding your hand when I make it across the line.

“It was fine, but just kind of… nothing. It was supposed to be about Eurydice, but it was so… nothing. She just loved Orpheus and that was it. There were no insides to her. She was going to follow him to her doom,” Billy shook his head. “That’s not right.”

This was not the version that made it to the recording booth, of course. The Boys’ single, “Hades featuring Billy Blue,” came out in 1975. The actual chorus goes: 

Turn back on me and I won’t forgive you baby

Don’t want you to see me like this

Up ahead is bright, and I want you to take me

If you’re strong enough to cross that finish line

“‘Hades,’ was a real step forward for the Boys. Gone were the teenybopper tunes,” Steve Harrington’s biographer and personal friend Dustin Henderson wrote in his book The Pretty Boy. “Their first album got the kids dancing. But the second proved that they actually had something to say.”

“Still hate it,” Steve Harrington said. “I wrote that song in rehab. It was deeply, deeply personal to me.”

“He came out, all ready. He wanted to start recording right away,” Robin sighed. “Like I mean the next day. All these songs, just pouring out of him. But the label had lost faith in us. And they certainly weren’t going to let us start recording with a guy who had only just earned his thirty day sober chip.”

“The song wasn’t ready,” Billy shook his head. “But I guess he was. Jim said he needed this. So Jim asked if I would come and like… pitch some stuff as a personal favor. Songwriting credit, that’s all it was supposed to be. Get the songs moving, get them going.”

Steve Harrington takes a long time to continue speaking about it. 

“I felt it, writing for that album. I felt proud of those songs. They didn’t belong to anyone else but me,” He toyed with some piano keys while we talked, and then finally sat down and began to play something tuneless and half formed.

“That album was all about Nancy,” Chrissy said. “I mean. I know it. You know it. Nancy knew it. And she kind of hated it. But-”

“You can’t leave your husband right as he gets out of rehab,” Nancy said to me, toying with her wedding ring. “When he writes all these songs about how you’re the only thing… Steve was always like that. Heart wide open. That’s why when he met Billy. I almost thought… it would all be okay. That sounds fucked up but. I thought they could save each other. That the music could save him.”

“It was just a songwriting credit,” Billy raised his hands. “Jim swore up and down. I was just gonna come in there and sit down with this guy Steve. But when I walk into the studio, there’s two mics set up.”

“I was the Boys’ only singer,” Steve Harrington shook his head. “And to be absolutely honest, I was kind of a jackass about it. So to have some guy come in and say he’s gonna sing me my song… well…”

“Steve was the only one who would ever argue with Jim, And he let him have it that day,” Eddie laughed. “He called him the most low down, dirty, rat bitten bastard in California, and that he would die rather than give up his band to someone else.”

“I did not want his band. I did not know his band. And I did not care. And his song sucked. And I told him so. And then I sang it. Better.” Billy smiled.

“Billy was…” Chrissy shook her head. “Incredible.”

I ask Steve what Billy was like that first day in the studio.

“He was,” Something passed over his face. “Alright. He has a great voice, alright.”

“I was good. Better. Best.” Billy smiled.

“But he didn’t understand the song. He wanted Eurydice to… doubt. To think she wasn’t going to get out,” Steve slammed his hands on the keys. “It’s been… almost twenty years. I still don’t understand it.”

I asked why he let Billy stay. But Steve doesn’t have an answer.

“They were like oil and water, right away,” Chrissy said.

“Yeah, but oil on the water can catch fire,” Eddie shrugged.

“Jim asked me to stay,” Billy looked away from me, down at his waffles. “It was a favor to the label.”

“If Billy said louder, Steve said mute,” Robin snickered. “It was kind of great, actually. Finally someone called King Steve on his shit. One day I came in and they were arguing over how close the microphone should be to your throat. Almost got in a physical fight over a fucking microphone. I mean, I love Steve. But he always thinks he’s like… the babysitter. It’s his job to do everything for everybody.”

“Like who was this guy? Really? He came into my studio with no shirt on, most of the time still half smashed from the night before, and he thinks he can make all these changes. But Jim keeps telling me it’s just business, the label thinks it’s good business.” Steve frowned, and then smiled, and then frowned again.

“Yeah, I never wore shirts back then. Or underwear,” Billy said with a grin. “I was a rockstar!”

“Steve fought for every song on that album,” Nancy Wheeler patted her lips primly with a napkin. “He only lost on one.”

“Billy Hargove has songwriting credit and lead vocals on “Hades.” Dustin Henderson wrote.

“Billy was all over that album. He’d make some minor suggestion, maybe this chord instead of that, this word is better. And Steve would flip out, yell at him, yell at Jim, threaten to storm out… and then two days later quietly tell me to change the chord, he’d start singing the new words. Billy was there with us about every single day,” Eddie said.

“Of course, it was our biggest hit,” Chrissy laughed. “Everything but that song, Steve did what he wanted. Oh we had Billy in the studio, making suggestions. But Steve did what he wanted except for ‘Hades.’ Jim said that song is the album, and he wouldn’t cut it.”

“Jim was always right,” Steve closed the piano. “The bastard.”

Hades exploded onto the radio in late 1975. They didn’t have the same distribution as their first record, but the Boys had another hit.

“Billy had this way of singing it. Still does. He broke four mics when we recorded it. Singing so loud I had to keep an eye on the cymbals to stop them from shaking. You can feel him, right in your chest.” Chrissy giggled. “Like he was trying to wake all the dead from Hades. If anyone could, he could.”

“It’s a really, really great song,” Robin said.

This song belongs to Billy Blue, Rolling Stone wrote in 1976. The only question now is, what will The Boys do next?

“I remember that article. Fucking… Harrington said that he basically wrote the whole song. But he said, ‘the label thought bringing Billy in was a good idea,’” Billy gets tense for the first time. “I’m not saying I was like… I just mean. It would have been nice. To treat me like an equal. I’m more than just a singer. I’m not just… a piece of meat.”

“Billy was really pissed about that article. I remember, the day after the article came out, we were getting breakfast at this tiny place off La Cienega. Steve had this car back then, a big maroon BMW, and Eddie had got him a vanity plate when he bought it. Stupid thing it said, ‘BIGBOY.’ Anyway, We’re having breakfast, and we hear this screech outside, like an accident,” Robin Buckley gets uncharacteristically quiet as she goes on through this story. “Billy’s car is parked halfway out of the parking lot, and he comes in like a bull in a charge. Billy… he wasn’t some wimpy guy. He was small, but he was strong as hell… He came right over and grabbed Steve by his collar and lifted him right off the counter. And he said, I’ll never forget it because Steve used to recite it from memory, yell it at me, ‘Tell me I’m not dreaming. Is that Steve fucking Harrington? The lead singer of the Boys. Hey man, I love your song ‘Hades.’ How’d you get your voice to sound halfway decent for once?’”

“I don’t remember that,” Steve Harrington said flatly when I asked.

“And Steve used to be a fucking dick in high school. So he starts getting real bitchy, shoving Billy off him, asking what his problem is, why he’s such a dick all the fucking time, when it’s not even his band. And Billy said something like, ‘No one wants your shit band. Not with you in it,’” Robin paused for a moment. “And they just. Stare at each other. Like… daring each other to do something.”

Billy just shrugs when I ask, “I was pissed. I gave this guy a number one hit, and he still wanted to treat me like some… airhead singer the label brought in as a stunt. I’m not just a singer. I’m not a piece of meat. I’m a person.”

When I ask Steve about that day he’s pretty quiet, deflated at his piano. He only wants to talk about the song. The music. Can’t seem to talk about Billy any other way.

“He sang it like he not only knows Orpheus can’t save him, but that he won’t. It was supposed to be hopeful. A happy ending.” Steve said.

“So you still hate the song?” I asked.

“No, I don’t. It’s brilliant. And that’s the whole problem.”

To be continued...

Next up is Half-Oz-Eddie's piece at 7:00 pm. GET HYPE!

[robthegoodfellow]

May I Find You One December RENAMED Here I Go Again

1: Don't Know Where I'm Going, Sure Know Where I've Been

for @fizzigigsimmer

(caligator, referenced past harringrove, age difference, referenced character death, references to neofascism/evangelicalism)

.

Billy’d been warned against stopping in Stark County, but when you had to go, you had to go—and anyway, he was running low on gas. And snacks. 

And, since he wasn’t a spring chicken anymore, it’d be wise to get out, work the rust from his joints a bit. 

Glancing around as he filled the tank, the town looked normal enough; your average main drag in Middle of Nowhere, North Dakota. Couple sleepy shops, general store, dinky diner—one of those blue lives matter flags hanging limp by the door, vivid polyester garish against all the beige. 

Basic shit. 

No obvious signs of a place under the iron thumb of a white nationalist evangelical militia, and he was just about to roll the dice on that diner, maybe snag a coffee and a slice of pie, when a police cruiser ambled into view, pulled into the fueling station opposite.

Just his fucking luck.

Billy studied the pump, face schooled a pleasant bland. Marveled at how, even after all these years, his days of tussling with fascist pigs long behind him, the same wolves were stirring in his head. One baring its teeth on a low growl, ready and willing to tear the fucker to shreds, the other poised, still as stone, itching to turn tail and run at the first sign of trouble.

At fifty years old—fifty plus, but who was counting—he preferred neither option. The meter clicked off, and he watched his hands replace the nozzle, screw on the gas cap.

Even his hands were fucking old. Thicker—blocky knuckles. Veins starting to bulge. Grandpa hands. 

Sense memory flashed, suppressed so quick and smooth it left barely a ripple. Wouldn’t do to indulge in fond longing for those gay glory days, for the hands he still missed like phantom limbs, some nights, this aching absence. Not within spitting distance of a patrol car. 

Because why test the thought police, right? He could reminisce on youthful love lost when he was back on the highway, heading west.

Good boy, he heard, like Billy had a tin can cupped to his ear, the string trailing off into the fog of time. 

So strange what stayed sharp, he mused, rounding the hood, gripping his keys. Behind him, the cruiser door swung open with a creak. Like—despite the photos, it was hard to really conjure the face, hold it steady in his mind. A face through a window in the rain, and more so as the years slid by. But that voice still whispered clear as day—sometimes a Jiminy Cricket, keeping Billy out of trouble, sometimes a little prankster demon, pure trickster. 

And the hands. The feel of those hands had never left him, touch embedded in the skin.

He sniffed, ducking his chin, scolding himself. So much for smothering his inner queer.

The door was open, sanctuary of the driver’s seat calling his name, when something drew his attention across the way—some movement, maybe, or shift in the air. Pulling his gaze, against his better judgment, to meet the bored stare of the emerging cop.

His chest—seized, breath caught in tight lungs by a tighter throat. Distantly wondered if this was what a heart attack felt like—crushed in a cold fist.

Because the eyes staring back at him were Steve’s. The furrowed brow above lips pinched in a frown. The lines of his jaw, his nose. Like the rain had stopped and he could see him clear through the pane. Then the lips twisted, a sudden sneer, straight out of senior year.

“Got a problem, pal?” 

Billy blinked rapid, took in the flak jacket and badge announcing him as the Sheriff’s stooge, the douchey camo hoodie layered underneath, dark hair slicked back, sides shaved like he’d stepped off the cover of Nazi Vogue.

What the fuck.

“Asked you a question, old man.”

Billy coughed, half a laugh, half choke, and shook his head. Same voice—his voice. Steve’s. Only the tone was all wrong—mean and self-important—more like… like Billy, once upon a time.

Like if his old bratty attitude and Steve’s voice had a baby. That’s what he was hearing right now. Like—

Wrenching his brain back on track, Billy rebooted. Cut him off before the brat could launch another volley.

“Sorry, officer,” he said, and couldn’t help it—the amusement thrumming beneath the words, or more accurately, the unhinged hysteria. “Must be going senile.”

The eyes narrowed—assuming that if he wasn’t in on the joke, he must be the butt of it.

“In fact,” Billy went on, blindly following some instinct, he knew not where. “Think I might be having some heart trouble.”

The cop did not spring to the aid of a needy citizen, but eyed him skeptically. “You smell burnt toast?”

“That’s for a stroke,” Billy corrected, and he’d gone and done it again—only this time a fondness threading the wry mockery. “Heart attack is pain in your arm and whatnot.”

The brat didn’t shoot him dead for perceived disrespect, which was something. Really he just seemed—confused. Baffled. And boy, Billy was right there with him.

This wasn’t Steve, he reminded himself. Wasn’t him. Just a random dead ringer in Middle of Nowhere, North Dakota, a likely foot soldier in the brutal local militia.

And Billy should just leave him to it, obviously. Because this wasn’t Steve.

So—bid the doppelganger adieu, get the hell out of dodge. Billy cleared his throat.

“Don’t suppose protect and serve extends to helping some geezer find a place to eat while he rests awhile?”

Now the perplexed indignation was out in force, head tilted so far to the side it was liable to roll off his neck.

Hand to God, Billy thought he’d kicked the death wish long ago—his Y2K resolution—and yet here he was. Still talking, coaxing the neofascist to come closer, chucking all caution to the wind for a pair of pretty, over-familiar eyes.

“C’mon,” he said, and made the smirk self-deprecating. “I make it across the street without keeling over, I’ll buy ya a coffee.”

The brat straightened, something like tolerant intrigue settled in the quirk of his brow. “All right, then, old timer.” As they stepped off the sidewalk: “Don’t expect me to hold your elbow or nothing.”

“Oh, nah,” Billy replied, waving him off. “Dignity won’t allow it.” And then—he winked. Winked at the boogaloo boy. He’d lost his mind. Farewell, sanity.  “Name’s Billy.”

No response from the boy in blue until they reached the diner steps. “I’m Gator,” he said, hauling the door open, gruffness at odds with the tinkling bell.

To his credit, Billy didn’t break down into gibbering laughter.

Gator. This asshat wearing Steve’s face, this Duck Dynasty heir apparent—was named Gator.

Way off in Indiana, Steve must’ve been rolling in his grave.

Next

[weird-an]

Billy wants sand between his toes, the ocean all around him and the sun kissing his skin.

Instead he is staring at the sky in Indiana and wondering how many shades of gray there are.

Only when Steve comes along, a smile on his lips, pulling him into a tight hug, he feels warm again.

[bigdumbbambieyes]

Winter comes, blowing frigid air through Hawkins, covering the ground with a thick layer of snow and the roads in slick ice.

And the air is so cold it hurts Billy’s face.

He frowns, nearly glowers, at the way his breath and cigarette smoke seem to dance in the air in front of him, visible for a second or two before floating away.

His leather jacket becomes stiff and cold when he stands outside the school this early in the morning, stuffing his glove-less hands into his pockets, feeling the cold scrape of the metal zipper against his nearly frozen skin.

It fucking sucks.

Even the tips of his ears are cold.

He smokes only half of his cig before he tosses it against the brick and rushes back inside, grabbing the cold metal handle of the door and rushing inside, his shoulders all the way up to his ears as he shudders.

There, down the hall at his locker, is Steve. Waiting for him.

“Damn,” the pretty boy grins, “Cold enough for you, Hargrove?”

He glowers at Steve the same way he’d done to the air outside moments ago, shoving the brunet back so he can yank his locker door open and fish around for his notebook and pencil.

He feels warm fingers on the tips of his ears, probably red from how cold they are, and he smacks Steve’s hand away as the pretty boy laughs at his misery.

“C’mon, it’s not that bad,” Steve hums, and Billy ignores him as he looks for the right textbook.

A beat of silence passes before Steve’s grabbing at his leather jacket, still stiff from the cold weather, and says, “You’re wearing the worst thing for cold weather, too.”

Billy flicks his gaze over, narrows his eyes at Steve as he mutters, “It’s the only one I got.” Because he’s never needed anything thicker, anything warmer. The sun was enough for him, back home.

Their eyes meet and Billy feels the sun’s warmth as he looks into those dark eyes, watching Steve shrug off his jacket and hand it to Billy.

He would say Steve ‘offered’ it to him, but that would be wrong. There’s no option here — Steve hands him the jacket and so Billy shrugs off his own and shoves it into his locker to thaw. He pulls on the white and red jacket Steve wore under his parka, the warmth of his body still lingering in it, just like his cologne.

Billy can’t help the small sniffle he makes as his nose nearly drips, also thawing from the cold.

“Better?” Steve asks with a small, knowing smile.

“S’alright,” Billy murmurs with a half shrug, finally pulling out his textbook and notebook and slamming his locker shut.

“Looks good, too,” Steve adds quietly, smiling a little wider, making Billy feel fucking stupid for the way his stomach flips.

He clenches his jaw and eyes Steve, imagining how he must look, standing there in the dumb jacket over his black t-shirt and blue jeans, his ears and nose still pink from the cold.

And his eyes, bright blue, don’t look away from the pretty boy until Steve’s leading the way to class.

❄️

The next morning, Billy opens his locker to find a parka left inside. In the pocket, a note:

Stay warm.

Steve

Billy wears the coat all winter long.

[fizzigigsimmer]

The difference between the students and the master is the master flies. This is purely a Mikhail Baryshnikov appreciation post, because the way this man could dance has yet to be rivaled in my opinion. Just chefs kiss.

Also, you can just hear Steve's salty ass muttering "he thinks he's fucking Baryshnikov" whenever Billy slays it in class.

[grey-sides]

What are some good ways to describe what a character goes through when they are in love? I don't want to use the phrase "_ hearts melts" or "and _'s heart begins beating rapidly" all the time

They feel like they're anticipating seeing their paramour. When they're not together, they're looking forward to being together.

Perhaps the character feels settled, they don't know what the future holds exactly, but they do know it will hold this one person in particular.

They feel like they've never smiled so much. Every joke is just that much funnier, they can't stop laughing and it's joyful and not forced. Their palms sweat and their mouth dries up.

Their hands fidget, they run them through their hair, they fiddle with the edge of their shirt. They walk with a spring in their step.

They watch the person they're in love with and they think that person is doing this monotonous thing perfectly. No one has ever made a sandwich so well, told a joke so perfectly on point.

They feel seen, laid bare, belly up to the hot sun but it is warm and it is not hot and it is welcome.

They feel like they've never felt like this before and they may never feel like this again, and they hope it's not fleeting.

And eventually, that feeling goes away, maybe it comes back in waves and spurts, and time. But what they feel above all else is content. They know their person and their person knows them.

I hope this helps! I tend to get poetic about it, abstract because it's difficult to perfectly describe feelings of love.

[half-oz-eddie]

The Body Is A Work Of Art

Bartender Billy strikes up a conversation with a cute patron—an eccentric artist named Steve. He tells Billy his beauty inspires him and that he’d like to paint him, so Steve invites Billy over to his apartment. Billy has no idea that Steve’s "passion project" is a messy, fetish fantasy.

M is for Mess Fetish (Enjoying the mess created by sexual fluids. They may use the fluids as lubes, to drink, to “paint” on their partner’s body.)

This is the 13th fic in my Harringrove Kinktober ABCs

A series of 26 unrelated ficlets about Billy and Steve, each one written for a kink that starts with every letter of the alphabet.

@harringrovekinktober

A young man, likely in his mid 20’s walked in with a smile and energy that could light up the room—even a dimly lit bar like Billy’s.

“Hey there!” He greeted Billy as he sat on a bar stool, swiveling from side to side. “Nice bar you’ve got here.”

“Thanks. What can I get you?” 

“Hm…maybe a whiskey? I just sold a piece that took me a year to finish, so I’m kinda celebrating.”

“Congratulations.” Billy smiled. “You an artist or something?”

“Or something.” The artist laughed. “I’m more of a hobbyist who got into art by accident and learned that this shit kinda works for me. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do, I just didn’t think anyone else would.”

“Got any samples?” Billy curiously asked as he poured his drink.

“Sure.” He took out his phone and showed Billy a photo of his gallery.

“You did all that?” Billy raised his brows, impressed. “You’re damn good.”

“Thank you. I-I really appreciate that.” He sipped his drink. 

“So why’re you celebrating all alone?”

“Ah, my best friend’s away on her honeymoon. Usually we’d go to dinner or something nice after I make a big sale but…I’m all by myself.”

“Not completely. You’ve got me.” Billy winked.

“That certainly counts for something. So what’s your story, Mr. Bartender?”

“It’s Billy. I’m a bartender by night and lifeguard by day.”

“A lifeguard, huh? Makes sense.”

“Does it? Why’s that?”

“Your physique. I was about to ask if you were a model.”

Billy laughed, bashfully turning his head away. “No, I’m not a model. Never considered it, honestly.”

“No? You’re gorgeous, though. I’d love to paint you.”

“Paint me?” Billy echoed in surprise.

“You could be my muse. I’d love for you to be the subject of a passion project of mine.”

Billy had been flattered before, but never admired in such a way that he’d be seen as art. The thought thrilled him. 

Billy shrugged. “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”

“Great!” He handed Billy a card. “Text me when you’re free and you can come by my studio—which is...also my apartment.” He nervously chuckled. “Hope that’s okay.”

Billy grinned. “In this economy? It’s fine…” He read the name on the card. “Steve.”

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