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passivenovember · 1 year ago

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Night Shift (for @catharrington )

The first thing he sees when he comes to is Max.

She’s crying in her sleep, the liquid timbre of it slipping loosely in time with a heart monitor, somewhere to the left, fading in and out of view as the steady drip of morphine fights to drag Billy under.

He realizes, that. The heart monitor is his. He’s plugged into it and he hurts. More than Neil. More than anything.

What’s left of his mind is liquified, sloshing around in a body strapped to a bed. It turns the memory of Maxine over in his hands like a rubber duck in an ocean of guilt.

She’s alive. Billy made sure of it, so. She’s alright. She’s okay–

It aches to breathe, burns so bad that his vision blacks out and Billy thinks, eyes glued to the grounding shock of red hair on his sister’s head, that he’s too young to die.

–

The first time Billy’s strong enough to crash awake and stay there, he wishes for death.

Fuck being too young.

Everything burns, and then he’s gasping around a pain unlike any he’s ever felt as warm amber light filters through his eyelashes. He’s bleeding, from the very center of his chest, watercolor seeping through a cloth. He watches red bloom, bloom, bloom over white gauze and thinks. He should call for help.

But then someone snuffles, deep in sleep and Billy flinches toward the sound, teeth on edge.

Maxine looks like she hasn’t moved or showered or eaten in days, and Billy grunts. Her angry, cave-man big brother even knocking on death’s door. He tries to sit but something else escapes him, a fucking. Whine.

More blood.

He’s crying. He doesn't know when he starts crying, but he’s fighting to get to Max, he’s wading through shit and fire and and then someone says, “Don’t move, Hargrove, you’ll rip yourself open again.”

Steve Harrington looks like he went three rounds with a meat grinder. Like someone tried to kill him. Like Billy–

“Shh, it’s alright,” Steve’s fingers are soft, through the searing pain, gentle as butterfly wings on the caps of Billy’s shoulders. “Lay back,” Steve tells him, blue and black and purple, like spilled paint, “Lay down, okay?”

Billy gets lost in the fat bulge of Steve’s bottom lip. Thinks.

He probably did that to Steve. Everything’s fuzzy, he doesn’t remember anything but he remembers wanting. Steve. Everyone dead. Everyone and then himself.

He didn’t think everyone included Steve Harrington.

“It’s alright,” Steve cards those soft, sweet fingers through Billy’s hair. “Lay down,” He says, “Rest.”

Billy does.

–

The next time he wakes it’s because Maxine is throwing a temper tantrum.

Billy would know the sound of her voice in death. The shrill, ear-splitting soprano of Max’s screams could yank him out of hell and catapult his body through the lid of his coffin, startled lips gathering earth between his gums until he’s awake, again.

Alive.

A man in a white lab coat tells Max to calm down.

She spits, instead, phlegmy and gross and just like Billy taught her, in the Doc’s face, “You’re not moving him.”

It’s half-way unintelligible. Billy squints, like there’s sunlight streaming bright and relentless from his sister’s throat and he’ll go blind if he doesn’t protect himself.

“Kid,” The Doctor says, “He’s not awake. He’s not getting any better–”

“If you take him to Chicago I’ll kill myself,” Maxine declares. Stubborn bitch. “If you take him, I’ll. I’ll chain myself to the bottom of the helicopter. I’ll stop eating. I’ll starve myself–”

She will. She’s a man of her word, the fuckin’ loser.

“A hunger strike?” The Doc frowns, regretful. “You can try, kid. Won’t bring your brother back.”

Billy smirks. Almost. It hurts and his head splits open and across the room, on his feet and ready to restrain Billy’s very own red-headed tornado from punching a hole through the Doctor’s sternum, Steve Harrington watches Billy.

His face looks normal now.

Almost.

He’s yellowing, sort of, like an old photograph, but. He’s beautiful.

Billy’s chest aches.

“--His entire life is here,” Maxine says, voice wobbling dangerously. Billy knows she’s about two seconds from decapitating this Doctor with her bare hands, “His family. I’m his family, you’re not just going to take him away from–”

“--Kid–”

“--Don’t call me kid, you fucking asshole,” Max says, “Don’t–”

“--If we can’t get him somewhere he’ll wake up, he’ll die.” The Doctor says. Not a teensy bit regretful.

Billy doesn’t exactly blame him.

But you’d think a bomb has gone off. You’d think society’s on the brink of collapse, by the way Maxine goes shocked still, and then.

She moves.

Or, She tries to move, screaming and screaming as Steve holds her back, never once taking his eyes off of Billy. “Max,” Steve says. His lip’s not bulging anymore.

Maxine wails against the Doctor, anyway, her tiny fists not packing much force because the fucker just looks sad, about it. For her. Max will break her thumb, doing that.

Billy tries to call her a dumb fucker and fails.

Tries to sit up and fails.

“Max,” Steve tells her, putting himself in front of the Doc, “Look.”

Her eyes are blue, like his.

Somehow Billy forgot about that while he was treading water in the sea of everything else. Billy and Max stare at each other for ten long, breathless seconds.

And.

All Billy can think is that he should’ve stayed dead. He should’ve followed his mother’s voice into the pits of hell, like she wanted him to, he should’ve stopped fighting and in that stretch of breathless anticipation, he knows.

Maxine is going to open her mouth and tell him that he fucked it up. Again. Die, she’s thinking. If you’re not going to do it, I’ll kill you myself.

Max blinks and then she opens her mouth. Makes a terrible noise. It’s the worst fuckin’ thing Billy’s ever heard, and turns out he was right, her fists don’t pack much force but she knocks him one across the jaw, anyway. Maybe an accident, but then again. Maybe not.

“You fucking asshole,” She says, scratching and clawing until Steve Harrinton grabs her around the chest in a barrel hug, lifting her off the hospital bed like she weighs nothing.

It’s alright, Billy wants to say, I deserve it. It’s the least of what I deserve. And besides. It’s the only place on Billy’s entire body that isn’t screaming in pain, so.

Small victories.

“Let me go,” Max shouts, but Steve doesn’t. He holds her tight, watching Billy.

The Doctor stares, too, like he’s witnessing a miracle. Like he isn’t sure what to make of all this. Like he’s going to run screaming into the halls and take all the credit even though he was ready to ship a corpse off to Chicago this morning.

Immediately, Billy hates him.

Max elbows Steve Harrington in the gut. He drops to the floor, groaning, and Billy has the nerve to feel proud as his sister climbs over the lip of the bed with a fire in her eyes, unlike anything Billy’s ever seen, and.

He was standing at the mouth of hell, once.

Billy notes, distantly, that he shouldn’t have worried so much about her. Shouldn’t have risen from the dead to make sure she’d be, not. Alright, but. Something. Maxine can take care of herself and Billy never should’e doubted it. She’s gearing up to take care of him, now, let the trash out to roost, but.

But.

Maxine collapses on top of him, instead. Billy thinks, distantly, that she might be trying to suffocate him because she’s laying flat across his oxygen tube.

But.

She’s crying. Her body shakes hard enough to rumble the bed and the linoleum floor and the entire building beneath that. It hurts. Billy wants to lift his arms and hold her to him, but he can’t. He can’t feel his arms, he can’t–

“I’m sorry,” Maxine says, clutching at his neck, “I’m so sorry, Billy.”

Steve Harrington and the Doctor are gone before Billy thinks to ask about the hole in his chest. When the door slams shut behind them, Maxine sits up and O2 hisses through the plastic around his nose.

Billy can breathe, again.

–

“What did it feel like?”

Billy’s grateful that his room has a window. The trees have been good to him.

Maxine knocks her sneaker into the hospital bed, shooting pain up Billy’s left side. He ignores it, biting against the fleshy patch of his cheek until blood drips on his tongue. “Billy.”

Billy shakes his head.

Steve Harrington stands watching, backlit with bright September skies. He’s been perched under the window for hours with his arms across his chest, holding vitriol in the birdcage of his ribs, just. Watching. Billy and Max together.

“Dipshit,” Max says, “I know you can hear me. You’re mute, not deaf,” Max kicks him, ignoring his wince of pain, “What the fuck happened to you while you were–”

“Max,” Steve tells her, coming to life, “He can’t talk.”

Or think, Or move.

“I know.”

“You’re stressing him out.”

“How the fuck do you know, Harrington?”

Billy smirks, a little, watching the roll of Steve’s neck muscles. Irritated, like Billy. Like a brother. “Look at him,” Steve says, “He’s begging me with those big blue eyes, Harrington, she’s stressing me out, make her stop.”

Billy wants to smile. He tries to, but.

“I can’t stress him out,” Maxine says, kicking at him again. “He’s not even doing anything.”

It’s lighthearted. As bright as things can be when Billy’s still on a respirator, but he knows she’s pissed. Out of everything, he knows that. The shape of Maxine’s rage.

“Jesus Christ, Mayfield,” Steve exhales, exhausted, and every tree branch outside the window moves with him. “You have to give him time.”

Maxine kicks the bed again, hard and insistent until Billy has to look at her otherwise his lungs will explode with the pain. He doesn’t want to. He manages, anyway, and. Maxine deflates. A wilted red balloon.

She’s crying. Suddenly.

He frowns at her, like. What, shitbird?

Max seems to hear him. “What happened to you?”

Blue eyes, blue like his. Their anger falls the same way, like a sledgehammer against tempered glass. Pain spiderwebs out from him, varicose veins devouring all the light and warmth from the room with guilt.

Max’s face wrinkles, a raisin in the September glow, and Billy forces air through his lips. I’m sorry, he wants to say, I’m sorry I can’t put words to it right now. I’m sorry I can’t make sense of it for you. I’m sorry you have to carry it on your shoulders like a backpack full of algebra homework. I’m sorry–

Her fingers are cold when they curl into the palm of Billy’s hand. He’s sorry this is happening to them. To her, so.

“See,” Harrington says, “You stop flapping your gums for five seconds and he’ll give you what you want.”

Billy rolls his eyes and holds her fingers tightly, trying to press every syllable into Max’s thundering pulse. Billy hopes she understands, knows she does, and when he turns back to the window Steve Harrington is there.

Watching Billy with pink cheeks, a pink nose. Not sepia at all anymore.

Healed.

–

“We have to change your linens,” The nurse says.

Billy doesn’t know what a fucking linen is. He wrinkles his nose, waiting for Maxine or Steve Harrington to jump in and gather context clues, but they’re useless. Basically wallpaper, anytime the nurses come in.

He’s never seen two storybook heroes more squeamish at the sight of blood or the sound of discomfort.

The nurse raises her eyebrows at them, already pissed off. “Bedsheets,” She says. “We need to change them so he doesn’t get sores.”

“Sores?” Maxine says, finally serving as Billy’s voice box.

“Yes, he hasn’t learned to walk yet–”

“--What if he never learns to walk again?” Max wonders, “Will he get sores from laying around all the time–”

“--He’ll learn,” The nurse says, done deal. She’s a bitch. Billy’s favorite, so.

He knows right away that it’s going to hurt. Makes a noise like a fork caught in a garbage disposal, completely involuntary, and his backup helper snaps out of it. “How do we change his bedsheets?” Steve asks. Which.

Douses Billy in cold water.

He would rather die than let Steve see that. And he has. He almost stayed dead, too, and now–

“Little girl,” The nurse says to Maxine, “Wait in the hall.”

“No way,” Max says, crossing her arms, “No fucking way I’m leaving you in here with my brother, alone–”

“--I’m here–” Steve says.

“--Little girl, do you want to watch your brother thrash in agony and wet himself?”

The nurse waits, her eyebrows disappearing into her hairline while Max comes to terms with losing the bitch-off in a hospital room, of all places.

“No ma’am,” Maxine says finally.

“Perfect. do as I say.”

Max nods, pinning Billy with a flat stare. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

He nods.

The second the door shuts behind her, the nurse tears the blanket from Billy’s legs, “You hold him still while I jimmy the sheet out from under him.”

Steve Harrington looks nervous. Comical. “Isn’t there another nurse who can help–”

Billy’s torso lights on fire when the nurse yanks on his bed sheet and one of the elastic corners snaps around his foot like a claw. She’s not gentle but she’s fast. The linen drags him into a sea of pain, Billy’s arms move independent of the rest of his body, yanking the I.V. out of his arm, and he’s embarrassed but he can’t stop.

Humiliated when the nurse says, “Lay still, sweetheart,” Like his chest isn’t a gaping wound. “You’ll just make it worse for yourself.”

Billy screams as best he can. Thrashes. Tries to center himself in the reality that Steve Harrington is watching him, nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Billy’s asshole nurse shouts, “Come hold him down, alright?”

Harrington has the nerve to look terrified.

“Alright,” Steve says. “Okay. Yeah.” His jaw squares with determination and then he’s leaning over Billy, palms white-hot and stubborn against Billy’s shoulder caps.

He smells good, like pine needles.

“Hey,” Steve says, smiling softly, “You’re alright–”

Billy’s nurse yanks the sheets out from under him, jostling Billy up and back down again on the lumpy fucking horrible mattress.

He must scream.

It must be awful, because Steve rubs his palms up and down, up and down, trying to soothe him, “There we go, Malibu, doing so fuckin’ fantastic,” He says, “Just a little bit longer, right nurse?”

Malibu.

Malibumalibumalibu–

“We still have to sit him up to put the new sheet on the bed,” Billy’s nurse says, just to spite him.

He won’t survive it. He’s being torn apart. Billy thrashes in Steve’s hold. Can’t take it. Won’t–

“Hey. Look at me, Hargrove.”

Billy. Gets lost in the expression on Steve’s face. It reminds him of the court, of a time when Billy wasn’t this pathetic, whimpering mess of torn skin and bones.

Steve rubs his thumbs, gently, over Billy’s jawline, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here with you, yeah?”

Billy nods, blinking against tears.

“Good,” Steve says. He turns to the nurse, “Alright, when do we–”

Billy bends at the waist, sitting heavily in Steve’s arms.

And.

Death smells like pine. Feels like warm hands, rubbing circles into his back.

–

He lives.

–

It’s like the flood gates open. Steve touches Billy whenever he wants, after that, and when Billy goes into surgery to replace the tattered skin on his ribcage, Steve’s there.

Holding Billy’s hand when he falls asleep. Holding Billy’s hand when he wakes up.

–

Eventually, Steve starts talking.

He brings up high school, which has disappeared into the rear-view of where they are now. Rivalries and broken plates and bloody knuckles don’t matter, anymore, in retro-spect.

Maybe they never did.

Steve helps him learn to use his vocal cords, again. He waits with patient, sparkling brown eyes, stubbornly insisting Billy can answer small questions.

When it finally happens, Steve calls him a hero.

They share stories, dreams, pudding cups and cold lasagna from the hospital cafeteria.

Steve Harrington is funny.

Billy never gave the possibility much thought. Steve’s earnest and loyal and beautiful, but Billy never considered that Steve would say and do things that make Billy laugh so hard his stitches nearly pop.

The hospital staff hate Steve as much as they adore him, and when Billy learns to sit again, Steve Harrington is right there, holding Billy’s hand. Rubbing circles into his wrist that Billy senses like lightning in the heartland.

Steve. Has tears clinging to his lashes, looks like he’s never been more proud of anything in all his life, and Billy thinks. He could be worth something, again. Someday.

Worth Steve.

–

“I’m so fucking proud of you,” Steve says that night, when they’re alone, in the dark. “You’re not what I thought you’d be, you’re. Billy; you’re amazing.”

Billy can talk, again. He thinks he should say something, but the words won’t come.

–

Maxine has to go home at the end of the day. That’s the deal.

The hospital Billy’s staying in may know about monsters and dimensional tears but they still make preteens go home to sleep in their own bed once their brothers are out of the woods. It’s the worst part of Billy’s recovery. The dark.

Max fights it, tooth and nail. They both do.

Round and round she goes with the Doc. She’s his sister. She can’t leave him alone because she doesn’t want to leave him alone, blah-blah-blah, and.

Maxine screams and cries so much that, eventually, Owens and his goons make an exception. Steve Harrington volunteers to serve as Billy’s discount little sister because he doesn’t have school or a job or a girlfriend. No one to miss his body like Billy does, so.

He's always at the hospital.

Not much changes, in retrospect, because Steve was there on that first afternoon and he’s there always, day and night and back again, Billy blinks and then suddenly he can’t remember a time when Steve Harrington wasn’t two feet away from him, complaining about whatever cassette tape Max brings from home that week.

Steve’s only ever gone for an hour at a time. He disappears in the early morning to go home and shower, change his clothes, and then he’s back, again, to keep Max’s cot warm for her while she’s playing Only Child.

Neil never comes to the hospital. Like Billy said. Small victories.

–

Will Byers is the first to notice that Billy’s a faggot.

Well.

He’s not the first but he’s definitely the most gentle.

Billy clocks that about him the first time someone knocks on his hospital door and he has to do a double take because Maxine is doing her calculus homework on the cot next to him, and Steve’s the one that pulls himself away from Billy’s dinner long enough to swallow a hunk of cold lasagna to open the door.

Everyone in the entire world who cares about him is already here, but Will Byers leads a group of doe-eyed, worried looking people behind him, all bundled up in winter coats because it’s February. Somehow.

Billy slept through most of 1985 so he’s shocked when Little Boy Byers is tall enough that his mom looks like a munchkin when she bullies her way into the room. Joyce, Billy thinks she’s called.

Mrs. Byers introduces herself while she drapes a blanket over the foot of Billy’s hospital bed and scolds Steve Harrington for picking at Billy’s dinner. Freak Byers stands next to his brother looking high and uncomfortable.

Mostly high.

“Waa?” Steve demands, Bambi through and through with a roll sticking out of his mouth, “But. Joyce, Billy said–”

“It’s alright, Mrs. Byers,” Billy tells her, wary when the Chief of Police lumbers over to clap a huge, concerned paw onto Max’s shoulder, “I don’t like the hospital food, anyway–”

“You have to eat, honey,” Joyce says.

Honey.

Honey feels like Malibu but tastes so, so different.

When Bill doesn’t say anything, Mrs. Byers nods. “I’ll bring you something. And. It’s Joyce.”

“No, that’s alright,” Billy tries to sit, wincing when his chest bandage tugs at the tender, curling pieces of raw across his pecks. Steve leans forward with the lip of a putting cup in his mouth and helps him settle against the pillows, hands warm where they stay, sleeping against his stomach.

Like he’s worried Billy might stand up and run away.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mrs. Byers says, piling another blanket onto the foot of Billy’s bed, “If you’re going to get out of here, you need your strength. You need your food,” Mrs. Byers says, yanking the pudding cup from Steve’s teeth.

She tosses it to him and Steve grabs it from the air.

“Alright, open up, hero,” Steve tears it pop tab loose with his teeth and feeds it to Billy, one spoon full at a time. A little gets on Billy’s nose and Steve uses his thumb to wipe it away, lingering.

“Your nose,” Steve says quietly, voice thick with vanilla, “You’ve got a cute nose. Like a goddamn rabbit.”

Billy smiles. They smile at each other, big and dumb like always, only.

Across the room, Little Boy Byers watches them.

Billy thinks he might catch on fire.

–

“I want to take you out of here,” Steve says in the dark.

It’s late. So late the sky has started to turn silver.

Steve’s thumb rubs circles into Billy’s wrist, where they’re stuck like paper dolls. It’s the only way Billy can sleep, but. He’s awake, streaming with consciousness when Steve says, “You have to get strong. You have to get better, for me.”

Billy. Feels the press of lips against his hand. Thinks.

He’d crawl if he had to.

Wherever Steve wanted to go, he’d crawl.

–

He learns to walk. Has to get out of here, someday.

—

Steve Harrington asks what Billy’s going to do when he gets out of here.

Doesn’t know that Billy was awake, that night.

Doesn’t realize–

Billy just got the clear to ditch his oxygen tube and it’s got them both giddy. Smiling at each other and the Doc when he says, “Almost home free, son.”

It’s the closest Billy’s felt to joy in longer than he can remember. Steve’s laugh soothes a part of Billy that’s been aching since before the monster made a home inside of him, and the question fills him with an unfamiliar kind of hope.

Steve’s eyes sparkle when he says it. “What are you doing after this?” Like they’re finishing up an afternoon of basketball practice and Steve’s been trying to work up the nerve to ask Billy. Not on a date, but. Something.

Billy feels naked without his oxygen tube. Exposed. “What do you mean?”

“When you’re strong enough to go home,” Steve says, sinking lower onto Maxine’s cot. She’s at school, and they’re both graduated, so. Steve takes up residence in the daytime, eating Billy’s hospital food and listening to him read whatever books Max leaves behind.

Usually, they sit close together, thighs pressed close together, but.

Not today.

Billy without an oxygen tube is unstoppable. Free. He almost misses it. Thinks. Can’t be worth it if Steve’s not holding him together.

“I dunno. Maybe I’ll go back to California.”

“Can’t do that,” Steve says, like. Done deal.

“Why not?”

“Because,” Steve says, searching for the words. His nose scrunches like it does when he’s deep in thought and Billy fills in the blanks for him. You can’t leave because we’re friends now, Ghost Steve says, even though they’ll never admit it. You can’t leave because I want to play basketball with you, again, even though Billy’s still about an inch from blowing a fuse when his legs pick up speed. You can’t leave because.

I love you.

Steve hums, still searching for the words. Billy sits on his hospital bed and waits for him to sort through, heart pounding, until Steve grins at him. “You can’t leave because I need a roommate, Malibu.” Steve decides.

It’s a relief and it’s not. It’s death.

Billy’s dying. “What?”

“My parents never use the house,” Steve tells him, sitting forward so his elbows leave little indents on his thighs. Billy’s always thinking about Steve’s thighs. “I have a million empty rooms. Empty beds.”

“Plural,” Billy teases.

“Yeah. I was born with a silver fuckin’ spoon in my mouth, sue me.”

“I’m not a charity case.”

“You’re not a charity case,” Steve says, grinning, “You’re my roommate.”

Billy imagines it, as those brown eyes pin him to the hospital bed. Steve Harrington in his space, or Billy in his, always. Forever.

Billy shrugs. Nothing hurts so much he can’t breathe, anymore. Not in the physical sense. “I can’t.”

“Why not? Better offer?”

“No. I’m an invalid.”

“So am I,” Steve says, “Mentally.”

“You’re not, you’re–” Perfect. Billy ignores Steve’s eyes as the go soft and gooey, cookies fresh from the oven. “I can’t make you take care of me.”

“I want to,” Steve says loudly. Stubborn like Billy. Like Max. “I like taking care of you–”

“We weren’t friends before.”

“That doesn’t matter, I didn’t know you before.”

Billy smirks, “And you know me now?”

“Yeah,” Steve pokes at him with one cold index finger and leaves it there, “Yeah, I. C’mon. Move in with me. Let take you out of here.”

–

In the middle of night sometime just after May Day, 1986, Steve Harrington has a nightmare. Maybe he was always having them.

Billy wakes slowly and then all at once, surprised that the pain doesn’t knock him out cold, anymore. Apparently. Steve is a shaking meld of blanket on the cot next to the hospital bed. Billy can just make out the pad of Steve’s foot where it vibrates, toes flexing the cotton expanse of his sock like he’s climbing something, in never-never land.

Billy lies awake and counts the steady beep-beep-beep of his heart monitor, too afraid to get up because Steve’s monsters might eat his head and crawl out of the mass of him, plopping wet and slimy onto the hospital floor.

But.

Steve thrashes violently, and Billy can’t take it anymore.

“Harrington—”

Steve huddles away from the sound of Billy’s voice and it’s a war, not to take it personally, to harness his bravery and toss his blanket to the side, to shuffle off of his lumpy and uncomfortable mattress and stand over the cot, thinking he’s not afraid of me. We’re friends now. Steve–

“Steve,” Billy tries again, teeth clenched against the sound Harrington makes in the throes of his nightmare. Like he’s being chased. Hunted. He twists under the blanket, and the dull, eerie light from Billy’s health monitor catches the sweat on Steve’s forehead, and. The fuckin’ look on his face–

“Please,” Billy says thickly, “Please, Harrington, wake up–”

Steve jolts, ripped out of dreaming by Billy’s hand on his shoulder. The usual calm, sugary warmth of his eyes has disappeared and he zero’s in on Billy, face contorted with rage and fear.

Steve swings wildly, shoving until Billy falls back onto the hospital bed. Harrington watches the fall, coming back to himself just as the air knocks loose from Billy’s lungs.

He hurts, again. Like last summer. Like he always has, the beautiful boy in front of him flashing like lightning, and.

For just a moment. Looks like Billy’s father.

“Billy,” Steve says, cheeks dripping with emotion, “Billy, I’m so–”

Billy flinches away from him on impulse, and.

Steve cracks. Breaks. Before Billy can tell him that it’s okay, it was accident, Billy’s stronger than he used to be–

Harrington bolts from the room, door slamming shut behind him.

–

Freak Byers starts driving Max to the hospital.

–

Billy can’t say he’s surprised when the only people who come to see him are his sister and her stupid little friends, riding their bikes to spend all day at the hospital when the weather is nice enough.

They’re loud and annoying but Billy likes them. Will, at least.

Steve vanishes, so.

It hurts and it doesn’t. They were on to something good, before that night, something Billy wants with the same intensity that he needs air and water. He’s grateful, in a way, that the possibility of roommates has died before it ever began.

Less he can fuck up. Less that can make him bleed.

Bygones. All that.

–

On July 20th, a year after death, Billy moves into Joyce Byers’ house because he has nowhere else to go.

It’s as simple as Will Byers helping Billy into the clothes he brings from Jonathan’s closet, clutching Billy’s elbow until Joyce’s tiny brown car swings into view. “Let’s go home,” Will says.

So they do.

Steve never comes to visit.

–

Two months after moving into the Byers’, his Camaro appears in the driveway good as fuckin’ new. On the windshield they’ve taped a check for five hundred thousand dollars and a note that says, sorry for your loss.

Billy watched a monster tear his only friend in half, dozens of people in half, and all of them were carted around in this fuckin’ car like lambs to the slaughter.

He had to learn to walk again.

It’s good to know what their lives are worth, Billy guesses. What Big Brother is willing do to keep him quiet.

–

“I saw you, once,” Will says, not long after Billy settles onto the couch.

The Byers’ place smells like pancakes and cigarettes all the time and it’s fuckin’ weird. Joyce is trying to quit for Billy and so is Hopper even though they don’t know that Freak Byers rolls joints for him, and the whole thing is huge and uncomfortable. Like how kids hide things from their parents to protect them.

Billy’s starts to think of the living room as his.

All that time he hid on Cherry Lane in that fuckin’ room and all it takes is the soft care of Joyce Byers and a beer from Jim Hopper and Billy’s home. The safest he’s ever felt even though he’s out in the open and vulnerable to Will Byers’ soft declarations. Eleven’s wide, staring eyes.

Billy looks up from the book he was reading, startled, “Huh?”

Will fidgets in the doorway, dressed and ready for the first day of school. Billy resists the urge to snap at him, spit it the fuck out. Will’s not tough like Maxine. He’d melt, probably. Keel over, and. Billy likes the kid.

Sue him.

So he waits, fiddling with the worn edge of his library book, until Will exhales everything all at once. “I saw Steve Harrington feed you pudding at the hospital that day, when you were just learning to talk and walk again–”

The book falls shut.

“--He said you were cute. That you have a nose like a rabbit. And. I was just wondering,” Will says, choking on his words, “I was just thinking. That.”

“Don’t think about it,” Billy says. “Steve and I–”

“--I just–”

“Will,” He says softly. Thinks he should probably be afraid. Hopper’s in the kitchen. Joyce is at work, and. She won’t be able to stop him if Hop gets the wrong idea about Billy. Or the right one.

But.

He knows he’s safe. In the pit of his stomach, curling like warmth through his bones, Billy knows it.

They’re safe, here.

Will shakes his head. Afraid of other things, himself maybe, so. He shakes his whole body. “Billy, I think I might. I might be–”

“I’m driving you to school,” Billy stands up, his blanket falling to the ground.

–

It’s hot enough now that Billy’s arms stick to the leather in the Camaro.

He doesn’t let anyone ride with him, but not for the reasons he used to pull out of his ass pre-’85. Now it’s wrapped in bodies, the skin of dozens and dozens of people who will never make it home because–

Will is silent most of the way, fingers white-knuckle on his knee caps.

Billy loosens his hands on the wheel and it feels like his knuckles are breaking. He itches for a cigarette. Plays Eagles instead. Waits for the other shoe to drop.

They’re parked in front of the high school, watching the excitement of everyone’s first day, when Will says, “I think I like boys,” and.

His voice cracks under a pressure unlike anything Billy’s ever heard.

He gets it. And he doesn’t.

In his own life it was never news. Neil let him know what was happening right away. Three letters thrown back at him, sharp enough to leave scars in their wake.

This is supposed to be news, for Will Byers. The end of the world. Billy’s supposed to look over at the kid and call him a faggot, tell him he’s an abomination, fuckin’. Whatever. He won’t, though. Pot calling the kettle, right?

Billy watches hundreds of teenagers on their path toward a higher education. “Me too,” He says. Life goes on.

Will turns to him, shocked. “You do?”

Billy’s closet is glass. Always was. “Thought you saw me and Steve.”

“I didn’t know Steve likes–”

“He doesn’t,” Billy replies, not. Swallowing. His throat might click with unshed tears. Break and split open, so. “He’s just. Good. A good person, to me.”

“I understand,” Will tells him, “My friend, Mike, is. He’s like that, too. Not like us.”

Us.

Billy breaks for him. Didn’t think he was capable of it, but.

He breaks, anyway.

–

In November, Billy opens the door to his bedroom and Steve Harrington is sitting on the couch right where Billy sets his pillow every night. He jumps to his feet, hands balled at his sides as if caught. Guilty of something else, and all Billy can think about is burning his hand-me-down pillow and sleepin’ with his nose pressed to the place Harrington was sat, watching the front door.

“Billy–”

“I’ve been calling all day,” Maxine says, steamrolling him. She grins at Billy, planted firmly in Hopper’s chair. Queen of the castle.

Neil doesn’t like them to see each other, so.

Billy’s chest expands like a springtime rose at the sound of her voice. He doesn’t take his eyes off of Steve, “I don’t sit around waiting for you to call me, Max, I’m not glued to the phone.”

Steve flushes red. Spilled paint.

“You should be, it’s the only way I can ever get a hold of you,” Steve’s bright yellow sweater is eclipsed by red when Max pulls Billy into a hug, crushing him. “How are you?”

He doesn’t take his eyes off of Steve, “I’m fine.”

“Good, is Will home?”

Billy looks at her, then. “I thought you were here to see me?”

“No. We’re starting a new campaign and you happen to live here, now, I figured,” Maxine pinches him, “Two birds one stone.”

“Great, thanks,” Billy rolls his eyes, padding toward the kitchen, “He’s probably over at the Wheeler’s. Did you check there?”

“No,” Max says, “Steve–”

“Fuck Steve,” Billy says, not caring. Caring so, so much. “They’ll be back soon. If the station wagon’s gone that means Joyce went to grab him.”

Max hovers in the doorway, frowning when Billy digs through the refrigerator for a beer.

Her eyes are blue like his, judgmental like his. “You’re not supposed to drink that shit,” Max tells him, wrinkling her nose.

Billy cracks the pop top. “And you’re not supposed to play DND on a school night.”

“Things are different, now.”

They watch each other, silent, until the front door swings open and a hundred teenagers swarm the living room. Max hugs him once, right around the middle, before following their voices to Will's room. The door slams shut and all the fuckin’ racket gives way to muffled silence.

Different.

Things are different now.

Billy leans against the sink and sips his beer. Waits for Joyce or Freak Byers to round the corner into the kitchen until he remembers that they’ve both got work tonight and Hop’s at the cabin.

Joyce does that. Carts teenagers around in between shifts at the general store because she’s a good mom. Good person.

Steve Harrington appears, arms crossed over his chest. “Fuck Steve, huh?”

Billy’s heart thunders in his chest. It’s been months, and.

He shrugs.

The air rushes from Steve’s lungs. “Don’t have to be an asshole about it.”

“That’s just what I am,” Billy says, “An asshole.”

“Maybe.”

Billy holds his can out, “Want a beer?”

Steve stares at him. Then the slick rim of the can. Then at Billy. “No.”

“Suit yourself,” Billy says. “Where’ve you been?”

“Playing chauffeur, I guess.”

“Couldn’t stop to say hi in between shifts?”

Steve flushes. “Billy–”

“You never came to see me again,” Billy says, “You disappeared. I made it out of the hospital and–”

“I shoved you, Billy.”

“It was a nightmare.”

“Right. Exactly,” Steve shakes his head, like. It doesn’t matter. But the thing is, Billy knows shoving with intent. He knows men who plot to draw blood, and he knows monsters and Steve, just.

Isn’t that.

He is an asshole, though. “Maxine couldn’t ride her bike over?”

And Steve folds like a house of cards. “C’mon, you know Neil doesn’t let her ride that thing around, especially when it’s cold like this.”

“I know Neil. He was my dad.”

Steve looks ready for a fight. Poised to run at any second.

Billy’s never been more exhausted in his entire life. “Glad you can be her big brother, now.”

“Billy–”

“No, they’re some huge fuckin’ shoes to fill. I’m dead, anyway.”

“You’re not dead–”

Billy tosses the can into Joyce’s recycling bin. It clatters and causes a scene and Billy wants to take it back. Steve deflates like a balloon. “Shouldn't you rinse that before you throw it away?”

“Yeah well. I make a shitty roommate.”

Steve watches, spooked, as Billy shoves past him and disappears.

–

Christmas 1986 and January, 1987 come and go.

Joyce gets him a sweater.

Billy wonders if he’ll ever feel alive again.

–

In April, he starts to miss the sea.

Conscious enough to think of home.

–

“I think–”

Max stares at him, a cigarette pinched between two fingers.

“--I think I want to see California.”

She cut her hair over spring break so it twists, too lazy to be called a curl, under the determined jut over her chin. It’s what girls are doing, in 1987. Cutting all their hair off. Max looks older, all of a sudden, and Billy doesn’t know when he missed it.

She hands him the cigarette because he’s comin’ up on two years post recovery and, dramatics aside, he could shave a couple years off the impending decades. The smoke burns through his lungs pleasantly, paints the sky purple when he lets it go.

“You want to see California,” Max repeats, staring out across the quarry as the words settle on her tongue, “Like–”

“--I think I could stand a change of scenery.”

She takes the cigarette from him. “That’s not a change, you’ve lived there for most of your life.”

“I’m not looking for LBC, I want–”

“--Mountains?”

Billy thinks about it. Really, he wants two-thousand miles between him and everything, but. “Yeah,” he says, because it’s simple. Low stakes. “Mountains could be good, like. A cure.”

“Like tuberculosis victims?”

“Sure. Claws aren’t that different.”

Maxine snorts. They smoke for an eternity in silence, basking in the sunset, and Billy thinks she’s on board. She’s okay with it, because she’s older now, but then she throws the lit cherry at him and it scathes his jaw. Sears him to the bone.

“Ow, Maxine, what the fuck–”

“You’re pathetic,” She says, full of venom.

“Probably.”

“Why are you always running away?” Max slides off the car hood and gets in his face, and Billy.

Two years ago he would’ve–

He can’t think that way anymore.

“Max–”

“So, what? You save everyone and become the hero and fuckin’. Sulk around for two years like a dickbag and now you want to run away? Just when everyone’s starting to love–”

“No one fuckin’ loves me,” Billy says. A non answer. Tastes like a lie, but. It’s the truth. He clears his throat. “I don’t want to run away.”

Max shoves him, “I love you. Asshole.”

“I know. Love you too.”

“Don’t I count?”

Billy grabs her hand, “Of course you do, dipshit. The most.” Maxine’s crying for real, now. Billy hates it so fuckin’ much.

“Can I come?”

“Your a minor,” Billy supplies. Regrets it more than anything that he’s got to leave her behind, but. “Don’t worry. Not about anything, alright? Steve’ll–”

Max shoves him again, “This is about Steve Harrington, isn’t it?”

“No.” Billy lies.

“Steve’s going to–”

“--He’s not gonna do anything,” Billy snarls, “He’s not. We haven’t spoken in months.”

“He always asks about you,” Max says simply, and.

Billy’s got a flat tire. It lets all the air out of the sky. It shouldn’t matter, shouldn’t put his brakes on, but.

He blinks. “Okay.”

“You’re so fucking stupid,” Max says. “He’s not going to let you leave, Billy. Not without–”

“--He doesn’t get a say, in this.”

Maxine stares at him, eyes polished like Riverstone. “Are you going to say goodbye to him? At least?”

“No.”

“Alright,” Max says. She shoves him again, “Dumbass. I hate you. I hate you so much–”

Billy hugs her.

Loves her, just. So much his chest aches and burns like he’s back in the hospital, day one, July 20th, 1985, and.

He thinks.

Worries about how many people he knows he can’t say goodbye to.

–

Will takes it the hardest. June just makes the pain turn raspberry on his cheeks and Billy hates to see him cry, so. He isn’t surprised when Little William locks himself in his bedroom to make shit easier on the both of them.

Freak Byers hugs Billy, slips a joint in his pocket, ruffles his hair.

Hopper gives him a beer. The last they’ll share in all the world. Maxine tells him to call. El tells him to write, and.

Joyce Byers slips a sheet of paper in his glove compartment.

It sits funny, in retrospect. He took his hush-money and ran off to the sea and she left him something to remember her by, and that’s death. Burial. It’s her fault and it’s not. It’s the thing that breaks the dam. The last straw and suddenly the weight of everything is too much.

Really, it starts before that. With the rumble of truck tires into the cracked driveway of a new home, thousands of miles from the sea. It begins with the pier, months before that. A boy with beautiful brown eyes that could only ever raise suspicion in Neil’s gut because he was right about this. Everything. Billy.

Truthfully, it starts with a phone call and a shitty, half-baked apology from a woman Billy would never see again.

He isn’t smart enough to keep track, though.

So he almost dies and then doesn’t, and decides pretty quickly that it's Joyce. It starts and ends with summer air licking at the tender, still-healing pink of a hole punched through his chest 630 days ago. It begins with the glove box, and a note that’s gotta weigh less than an ounce.

It starts with Joyce Fuckin’ Byers.

Billy figures maybe Hop did the dirty work for her. That he took a rolled-down window as an invitation, once Billy caved on the beer he was always offering and let it spill that he was leaving so they thought. Now is the time for action. Hop slipped the thing in between Billy’s vehicle registration and insurance proof when he wasn’t looking. He played his part.

The paper is definitely from Joyce, though.

He’s seen her handwriting, before, all over the fuckin’ place, swooping, swirling cursive that reminds her to get milk the next time she’s at Melvalds. Billy’s seen it pinned to the fridge in sappy, sweet-sick notes that she leaves for Hop and Freak Byers and Byers’ little brother, telling them to eat something while she’s gone, to remember to take out the trash, fuckin’. Whatever.

Point is, Billy knows it was her. And when he finally digs it out of the glove box, when he runs into it looking for an old pack of smokes somewhere outside of Nebraska, it’s folded in half three times and stamped with his name and feels like an attack.

Billy.

Only, Joyce calls him William when it’s something heavy and important, so. William. Might as well be, as far as Billy’s concerned.

Billy, she starts. Good a place as any, sparking a fuse she isn’t equipped to monitor. He doesn’t deserve shared beers and hidden notes.

Billy, Joyce says, with all the weight of William. I know that you’re having a hard time adjusting. I should’ve checked on you but I wasn’t sure what to say and now you’re gone. I wasn’t always the best mother to my own kids, and sometimes old habits die hard. I know you’ve had a hard life, even though you never talk about it, and I know all of this shit must hurt like hell, but you have to know that I’m proud of you for everything. Making it out of the hospital in one piece. Especially that–

His palms sweat, smearing the page when he flattens it against the wheel, smoothing its surface in the moonlight so he can read it, and can’t, because Hop insisted they have one more beer before Billy took off for the coast, and now–

We should’ve checked on you before. That’s all I want to say. You’re a good kid, Billy. You pretend not to be, but you are, and seeing you with Hop, how he loves you like a son…I’m here for you. We all are. I’ve included a list of phone numbers you can call any time. We’re here to help–

Phone numbers for both Wheeler kids. And Lucas Sinclair. And Dustin Henderson. And the Byers’ place.

Call anytime, Joyce says.

Anyone. Anytime.

Seeing you with Hop, how he loves you like a son–

Billy sniffs and chokes on a sudden, violent wave of emotion. Joyce Byers doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about.

–

He should’ve said goodbye to the one person that came second to mattering the most.

It eats at him, tearing away chunks of his flesh with small, sharp teeth. He moves into his new apartment by the sea and thinks about drowning himself in it.

–

A month after landing in California things are different.

Worse.

–

He tries not to think about Steve Harrington, who he hasn’t spoken to since that cold, shitty night in November when they shed each other’s apologies like old winter coats.

Everyone else came to say goodbye, but.

Not Steve. Should be a clear enough answer that what they had was nothing but that doesn’t matter to Billy. Could never matter. Steve’s memory comes up like gray water in the bathroom sink. Not there one day, and then.

There.

Sits like a ghost in the corner in the same outfit he wore the last time Billy saw him, delivering Maxine to a brand new campaign. Soft yellow sweater like swallowing canyons in the morning light.

“You look like shit,” Billy tells him. The Doctors said it could happen, off and on, for the rest of his life. Seeing the dead and the left behind, it’s the cruel result of playing bitch to an interdimensional monster. Taking a claw through the chest and surviving an IV drip of internal bleeding that still acts up when Billy takes a fist to the head.

It never happened, when he was in Hawkins, but.

That’s just Bill’s luck. It’s a punishment. He’s in hell. No two ways about it, because.

Ghost Steve Harrington shrugs his yellow shoulders and everything looks worse, here. Drab. Billy thinks California wasn’t made for gray weather but since it’s November, the sea foam has scrubbed the color from everything until only acid remains.

Ghost Steve’s sweater looks brown in Billy’s bedroom.

Billy gets used to him, more or less. Ghost Steve never says anything, but he watches Billy fall into bed every night and his eyes spell judgment. Why don’t you unpack these boxes? Why haven’t you used any of that green to buy a half-decent setup? Why don’t you call Joyce, you know she worries��

Once, Billy throws a pillow at Ghost Steve Harrington’s head. “Go away, already.”

Billy wonders if the real Steve, alive Steve, is as pretty as his memory makes out for him.

He is. Always was.

Billy hates himself. “You’re not real, you know. You’re alive. Most of you is alive, back in Hawkins.”

Ghost Steve just smiles at him, slow and terrible as if to say I’m dead here and so are you.

It fucking sucks. Billy tugs the blanket over his head and ignores Steve Harrington the Ghost. He ignores everything until it starts coming up like sludge in the bathroom sink.

–

Billy writes a letter to the only person in the world who understands what it feels like to harbor shit for a man who never once noticed him, until they had each other’s blood under their nails.

So.

As soon as the landline is installed, Billy breaks his rule and scribbles the number down, addressing the envelope to Little William Byers, Who Can Always Hold His Water.

415. 667. 8224. For Emergencies only.

From, Big William Hargrove.

Will can be trusted. Billy worries about him and it’s a roiling, sore-spot weakness. He’s terrified that Will’s made up his mind to never speak to Billy again.

He sends the letter, anyway.

–

Billy starts seeing other people, too. In his house. On the street.

Ghost Steve Harrington isn’t too thrilled with all the extra company, but the only other memory in the world brave enough to stand in his bedroom used to tuck him into his He-Man pajamas at night, so. Nothing Martha Hargrove hasn’t seen before.

Billy starts to wonder if he’s going crazy.

Heather’s got dominion over the bathroom. Looks exactly like the last time Billy saw her, in that dumb-fucker Lifeguard uniform, except her arm is gone. Torn away. Little bits of her blood get on Billy’s cheek when she turns from her reflection in the mirror, eyes brimming with vitriol and lost potential as if to say, you fed me to that thing. We were friends, Billy, I was your only friend–

“You’re not real,” Billy tells her. Pisses in the toilet bowl, as if to prove his point.

Heather’s not real.

None of it’s real.

–

A week before Thanksgiving Billy calls to tell Joyce he’s suffocating. To tell her that he misses Freak Byers and his little brother so much that Billy can’t breathe sometimes, and it’s Joyce’s fuckin’ fault. She’s a bitch, and Hop’s a loser, and he misses them both so much that he’s packed and unpacked and repacked his apartment four times because California doesn’t feel like home anymore.

He misses the couch. He wants the dead to stay buried. He wants to go home.

So Billy drinks a bottle of schnapps and calls to say that Joyce can go fuck herself hard, Billy hates her for turning him into this, but Steve Harrington answers the phone.

It’s two o’clock in the morning Hawkins time, so Billy hangs up.

Steve calls back immediately, “Everyone’s asleep,” He says, voice rough with unuse. “Make it quick.”

Billy’s killed himself thinking about Steve, like this. Fresh from sleep. Warm. “Uh,” He says intelligently, “Sorry.”

“Who is this?”

He wonders if Ghost Steve is still in the bedroom, or if he went back to Hawkins. Floating on the clouds. “This is, uh. This is Billy.”

“Billy Hargrove?” Like he didn’t spend months in Billy’s hospital room. Didn’t cry when Billy learned to walk again.

“Yes.”

“Hi,” Steve says, soft.

So warm and fleece-lined with emotion that Billy wants to curl up inside of it and never, ever leave. Something ruffles as Steve shifts his weight, waking up a little bit. “Hold on, Bill, let me–”

“No,” Billy says, “She’s asleep. You don’t need to wake her up.”

“You called.”

“I know.”

“She won’t want to miss you, you never call.”

“I know, alright? I just. I don’t want to wake her up,” Billy says, swallowing against the threat of tears. He hates Joyce but he doesn’t want to make anything worse than he already has by just. Living.

“Are you serious?” Steve snorts like Billy’s the most ridiculous, stupid fucker on the planet. “You called at two o’clock in the morning and you don’t want to wake her up?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“That’s so weird.”

Billy sniffs, exhausted, “Who asked you?”

“Nobody,” Steve tells him easily, “No one, I just think–”

“Why the fuck do you care enough to think about it or me or Joyce?” Billy snaps. The receiver groans a little in his fist, “It’s not any of your business–”

“--You know I care about you, Billy.”

“Do I?” Billy sips at his bottle, angry enough to see red, “You say shit in the dark. When you’re tired. When–”

“Hey, dickshit, you woke me up.”

“It’s not dickshit, it’s dip shit–”

“--Okay–”

“Fuckin’ Einstein.”

Steve doesn’t hang up. Billy considers it, seething until he takes another swig, and then Steve asks, “Are you alright?”

The world comes to a sudden, screeching halt. The tender pink and still-healing parts of himself inflate with vulnerability, which only makes him angry. “I’m fine.”

“Really?”

“Yes, asshole.”

“You’re drunk and it’s two in the morning–”

“--It’s only midnight where I am–”

“--Well, people who are actually fine don’t drink schnapps at midnight on a fuckin’ Tuesday.”

Billy freezes, back going ram-rod straight against the drywall. “How. How’d you know–”

“Only schnapps gets you slurring like that,” Steve says. Then, catching himself, “I mean ‘you,’ as in. The royal you.”

They partied in high school. Never together, but near. Billy–

It feels like a lie. He lets it go.

“I don’t know what schnapps does to you, as in. Billy Hargrove.”

I miss the way you say my name, Billy doesn’t tell him. He tosses the bottle back, swallowing fire as it bubbles up the lining of his throat. “Kay, well. Tell Joyce I called.”

“You could call back tomorrow and tell her yourself.”

“No,” Billy says, fiddling with the hole in his jeans.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s none of your fucking business, Harrington, that’s why.”

“She worries about you,” Steve says, fully awake now. Sitting, probably.

Billy tries not to get caught up in the mental image of Steve Harrington with bed-head and pillow lines on his cheeks and blankets pooling around his hips.

Fails.

Steve says, “Joyce loves–”

“--Why are you sleeping at her house?” Billy demands. Remembering himself. Remembering that the couch used to be his, before he ran away.

“I get nightmares,” Steve says. Billy knows that. Billy knows–

“Bullshit,” He’s angry about it. What tore them apart. “What’s there to be afraid of, anymore?”

“I saw you get punched through the chest,” Steve says, “On July Fourth. I was up there in the rafters, and I just. Saw. Does something to a nineteen year old, you know?”

He was there after, too. Until he wasn’t.

Billy’s palms grow wet and clammy against the bottle.

He has the sudden and familiar urge to apologize. Sorry Steve had to see that. Sorry the image of it meant nothing, in the long run. Nickels and dimes. He lived and, really, what was the trauma for?

Billy opens his mouth, chin wobbling and–

“Is that why you. The hospital. Why you–”

“Shit, it’s late,” Steve yawns. “I’ll tell her you called.”

“Sure,” Billy says, scrubbing the wet on his cheeks. “Thanks. Appreciate it.”

“No problem.”

–

Max sends him letters. Another thing he caves into, later on.

For Emergencies only.

From, Billy Hargrove.

She writes immediately. The envelopes are always crinkled by fingertips and nails, the ink always smudged with tears and grief. He has to imagine that they get that way, dilapidated because a journey across six states can’t be easy on them.

He can’t imagine Max crying as she writes to him. Can’t imagine her crying at all.

He thinks about her in that house, sometimes.

He hopes. Prays. The guilt swallows him whole.

–

Billy develops a system for determining if the person he’s talking to is real.

“You’re a beach bum,” The guy says. All tanned skin and small, curved lips. No black sludge leaks from his eyes, so.

Real. Things have gotten worse on the coast.

Billy stares up at him from the sand, counting the seconds. He doesn’t have a towel. Joyce tried to get him to take some, one, but Billy is the spitting image of his father. Old habits die hard, so. He’s got minerals seeping through the holes in his pants and his hands feel grimy, covered in sea stuff for his pride.

“I see you here,” The guy says, “Every day.”

“Sure.”

“Ain’t you got a job, man?”

Billy turns his attention back to the waves. The foam.

“Guess not,” The guy shifts his weight, blocking dull gray sunlight. “You from around here?”

“LBC, originally,” Billy says, surprising himself. He pulls his knees to his chest with a burst of salty, stinging wind off the shore. Somewhere, about a mile into the deep past Manila landing, something massive is rotting in the waves. Feeding the ecosystem. Circle of life, and all that.

The guy nods, “What brings you to Arcata?”

“Just moved back from the midwest.”

“Mm, Chicago?”

“No, Indiana.” Billy says, not in the mood for conversation.

“Got used to small and shitty, then?”

Billy laughs, surprising himself. It's the first noise he’s made in weeks with a person who’s not caught in a ten-second delay over his landline. Feels okay. Weird. “Yeah,” Billy determines, “I like that Arcata’s on the bay and not wide open. Out there, you know?” Billy gestures to the ocean with his sleeve cuff.

Can’t see the other side of it. Landlocked or not.

The guy seems to understand. He watches the shoreline for a long while and then he says, “What’s in Indiana?”

Monsters. My sister. Shadows. “Nothing,” Billy says. “That’s why I’m on the beach.”

“Nothing here either, amigo,” The guy says, grinning slow and easy, “Looks like you traded shit for shit.”

“Alright. Thanks.”

“I’m Argyle,” Argyle says.

“Billy,” He lifts his hand toward the sky for a shake, just like his daddy taught him.

Argyle just nods at him, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Billy’s palm falls, dejected, to the sand.

They watch the shoreline. They watch a seagull try and swallow a crab and then laugh when its throat is nearly torn open from the inside. It’s good to laugh. Weird. Dark thing to find humor in.

“I own a surf place,” Argyle says when the seagull takes flight. “Ever heard of it?”

There are a million out here. “Sure.”

“Not really a surf place, in the conventional sense. I do longboards too. And Mary Jane. Pizza, for Miss Mary’s lovers.”

Billy nods, pulling his knees close again, watching sand tumble from the grip of his leg hair.

Argyle sparks something that looks like a cigarette and smells like a joint. “You need a job?”

“What kinda job is it?”

“Selling surf supplies. Longboards and weed and pizza–”

“Is that legal?”

“Not yet. Legalize gluten,” Argyle says, with a triumphant fist.

Billy shrugs so Argyle shrugs, casting shadows. Teasing. “If you ain’t got a job, how’d you afford to leave LBC for Indiana, and then bum-fuck for Arcata?”

“Big Brother hush-money,” Billy says, serious as a heart attack but Argyle laughs, and like.

The skies, fuckin’. Break. Open and pour.

It’s the best thing Billy’s ever heard. The timbre of it licks at the pink, still-healing skin on Billy’s chest through his jumper. Argyle’s lilting, chaotic beat lights him up and magically casts itself out of Billy’s lungs until they’re laughing at each other. Laughing together.

It’s weird. Good.

“You’re a bizarre fuckin’ guy, beach bum.”

Billy shrugs, again, self-conscious. “Where’s your shop?”

Argyle points over Billy’s shoulder at a small, driftwood shack he hadn’t noticed today, or yesterday, or last week. The sign looks brand new. Says, Surfer Boy Pizza, In bright, shining letters.

“That’s her,” Argyle says, in love.

Billy stares at the shoreline. “That’s a dump.”

“Hey, I’ve had to hoard money from the Government. We’re not all as lucky as you,” Argyle grins, slow and easy, “You want the job or not? Could use a little silence in the shop. The other guy I work with, Eddie, he’ll talk your fuckin’ ear off about nothing if you give him the chance. Look to me like you won’t give anyone a chance.”

Billy feels like he’s been doused in cold water.

He rocks back and forth, breathing in and out until the feeling passes, “Maybe,” He says. The best he can do. A non-answer. A remedy.

“Alright, well. Stop in sometime, if you get bored staring at the ocean,” Argyle grins at him, beaming itself onto Billy’s face until they’re mirror images. “Freak.”

–

Billy watches a lot of T.V.

His living room is cast in a permanent silver hue, painting his hair gray and his lips purple. All that money rotting in his bank account and he’s only pitched together enough to buy a standard television box, and a place for her to sit, and a place for him to sit.

His apartment is functional, like a prison. His kitchen is made of one bowl, one cup, one spoon (because he can saw into things with its blunt edge, should anything ever come to that), and a hot plate. He doesn’t have a skillet or a soup pot or anything so the shit is practically useless.

He eats dollar tacos from the hut.

He starves.

He drinks enough water and beer to send fluid leaking from his pores, and he watches T.V.

Always. Blue.

This close to Christmas, all three stations are swamped with targeted Ads. Can’t go half a beer without enduring another fuckin’ commercial, selling sneakers and Atari game consoles and brand new VW station wagons.

Billy chugs another PBR and thinks he could buy a hundred VW station wagons, thanks to Big Brother. He could buy a private plane, and an eight-bedroom house on the coast, and if he ever runs out of green there’ll be more where that came from. That’s the perk of getting possessed by a monster, so.

Billy finds a scrap of newspaper border and jots down the number that flashes across the screen. Thinks, he could probably visit VW tomorrow. Could pay for the entire thing in cash. Could pack a bag and drive back to the Midwest–

Hallway through an ad for hair plugs, the phone starts to ring. Billy ignores the shrill ding of the bell until it stops. Starts up again. Stops. Starts.

Eventually he yanks his telephone off the hook, swallowing a mouthful of beer. “What.”

“That’s not how you’re supposed to answer the phone.”

Billy pulls away, staring at the receiver. “Who is this?”

“Steve.”

“Steve Harrington?” Billy asks, a mockery of their first phone call. Like Steve didn’t take care of him in the hospital. Wasn’t there when Billy learned to walk again. When Steve doesn’t say anything back, Billy swallows. “It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

“You were kind enough to call at two my time, thought I’d return the favor.”

His stomach swoops, low and dangerous. “That was weeks ago, now.”

“You never called Joyce.”

“So?”

“So, I promised I’d do a wellness check.”

Billy mutes the T.V., his arms breaking out in goose pimples with Steve’s next inhale. Feeling warm breath against his cheek from two thousand miles away.

“Well. I’m alive.”

“Barely. Tell Joyce that.” Steve Harrington exhales into the phone. Billy imagines cigarette smoke and fire.

Wishes it could burn him to the ground. “Look, I appreciate you reaching out or whatever, looking me up in the phone book so I can apologize to Joyce for being the shittiest of all her adopted children–”

“--I didn’t look for you in the phone book–”

Billy’s mouth dries up, tacky and uncomfortable.

“--No one could look for you in the phone book. Way you run your life, you don’t exist, Hargrove.”

Billy stands. His knees crack. “How’d you get this number?” Sounds like a shitty, drunken cop in a shitty, dark thriller/drama about his shitty, shitty life.

“I asked Joyce.” Steve says easily. The hero.

“Where did she get this number?”

“From Max.”

Billy’s stomach swoops. “That’s bullshit. Max knows my address, not my phone number.”

“Maybe Joyce got it from someone else, maybe she didn’t, maybe she found it on a crumpled piece of paper that was thrown into the trash,” Steve says, “Does it really matter?”

“Yes. You had no right to do that,” Billy says, voice shaking. He wonders if Will threw his note away. If he’s angry. “None of you have any right to do this to me–”

“Totally,” Steve says, “Your sister has no right to know where you are. Joyce, who put a roof over your head for a year after you left the hospital, is supposed to stop worrying and missing you because you want it. Screwed that we care about you, the asshole who saved the town and all our lives and the fuckin’ world, on top of that.”

We.

Screwed that we care about you.

Billy’s stomach is full of rocks, roiling and knocking into one another. They throw him off balance and send river water pulsing up his throat. He’s drowning, he–

“You can’t save everyone and then disappear.”

Billy swallows. “I didn’t.”

“You didn’t even say goodbye, Billy.”

“Neither did you,” Billy says, furious. “Before that. At the hospital–”

“I don’t want to hurt you, okay? I. When I pushed–”

“Stop,” Billy says, “Please. Stop.”

“Sure,” Steve Harrington scoffs, full of rage. “My bad. Forgot you can’t accept that you’re a regular fuckin’ hometown hero and I’m a piece of shit.”

Billy hates this. He left Hawkins, to. To get away from this, and. He ran.

Might as well admit that, now.

Billy must make a noise, must fall apart, because. Steve’s stubble scrapes against the phone. “Billy. Look, I–”

“What do you want?” Billy’s voice shakes. Sounds weak.

Harrington doesn’t seem to hear. “I just called to check on you.”

“Feels more like you’re beating me over the head with a rock.”

“Funny,” Steve says, “Cain and Abel, right?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Not really,” Steve tells him. An awkward silence yawns between them, stretching on until Billy thinks the call must’ve dropped, and then; “I didn’t call to check on you.”

Billy snorts. “And after all the steam you put into that speech?” He’s grateful that they’re even, now. Neither looking down their nose at the other. Liars and crooks, two of a kind. “Jesus Christ, what will Joyce say?”

“I haven’t slept in two days. I’ve tried everything, but. I keep thinking about Starcourt.”

It takes the air out of Billy’s lungs.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” Steve mumbles. Soft enough that Billy isn’t sure he heard it right, but then, “Billy. I just. I needed to hear your voice. Are you okay?”

Billy can’t say anything back. He’s learning to speak, again, he can’t walk, he’s on the brink of death–

“Malibu? You there?”

Not a damn thing can be funny, anymore. “I’m sorry, Steve.”

“It’s alright.”

“If I hadn’t been at Starcourt, you’d be asleep right now.”

Steve snorts, “Don’t be stupid.”

“It’s true,” Billy mutters, sick, “In a roundabout way, if I hadn’t been on the road that night, if that. Thing had never crawled inside of me–”

“If that hadn’t happened we wouldn’t be together now,” Steve says.

The weight of the world, on their shoulders.

Billy cracks. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. You. Hargrove, you’re the only person left who doesn’t have to apologize,” Steve Harrington breathes deeply, into the receiver, and Billy swallows it. Fills his own lungs to taste cigarette smoke. “I called because I knew you’d be up. I just. Knew you would be. Cain and Abel, right?”

“Brothers’ keeper,” Billy says. The television screen flickers. The world is blue, and Billy is. Cast in its light.

“Can you sit with me? Just until I fall asleep.” Steve sounds like he’s drowning.

Billy can’t help but to jump in and save him.

–

Surfer Boy Pizza is even uglier on the inside.

Argyle wasn’t kidding about the surf supplies plus description. From the moment the door shuts behind him, Billy’s at a loss trying to figure out what anyone would stop in here to buy since it seems like the kind of place people are exiled to.

The air is stale. Beach salt and sweat permeate the air as the result of a broken cooling unit, leaking onto the ground that hasn’t been scrubbed clean in months.

“Hello?” Billy asks, barely above a mumble, “Anyone home?”

“Back here!”

Billy tugs his flannel closer, cherry-picking his way through piles of useless shit and garbage. Surfer Boy’s walls are messy with knickknacks and shitty wire shelves pushed haphazardly against white and red checkered tile. Piles of fishing nets, lead-bellied life preservers, and vintage scuba gear mark the landing of the main desk, which has to be a repurposed McDonald’s check-out counter.

Behind it, covered in swirling, snaking tattoos, a man stares at him.

He’s cute. His fist turns white around a water-spotted glass jar that says, Eddie’s Homemade Fishing Bait. The H has been drawn to look like the devil.

“Uh,” The guy says smartly.

“I’m Billy,” He puts his hand out but the guy doesn’t take it, he just stares. Stares and Stares.

“Okay. I’m here to see Argyle,” Billy points to the jar, “I’m guessing you’re Eddie?”

“I’m Eddie,” He says, cheeks turning bright pink.

Great.

“Okay, uh,” Billy fiddles with the cuffs of his flannel. “I sit on the beach, sometimes.”

“Every day,” Eddie tells him, still not moving, “I see you out there sometimes.”

“Every day, uh. Yeah. Is Argyle–”

“Are you here for a job?” Eddie asks, tacking his jar behind a sign that says the exact same thing. Eddie’s Homemade Fishing Bait, like maybe he’ll lose one or the other if he doesn’t keep track. “If you’re sniffing around for a job–”

“--Look, man, Argyle asked me to come and work for him.”

“Right, yeah, but I’m his partner,” Eddie says, scrubbing his hands on his jeans. “I’m his silent partner. Do you know anything about crabbing?”

Billy frowns, “Crabbing? I thought this was a surf shack.”

“And a fishing place, we sell longboards, too. Contraband t-shirts, homemade banana bread and vintage earrings, bait–”

“--And weed–”

Eddie jumps over the counter, slapping a damp, smelly hand over Billy’s mouth, “Dude, what the fuck? That’s private. That’s a private–”

Billy shoves him off, chest heaving like he’s just been chased. He’s been caught.

Eddie tracks him, eyes wide and afraid. Big eyes. Brown. Pretty.

“Don’t touch me.” Billy says, moving away.

“Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Your fingers taste like fishing bait,” Billy spits, scrubbing his own hand over his mouth.

“Sorry, I was making–”

“--Sure–”

“--Weed brownies,” Eddie says, wagging his eyebrows.

“Weed brownies,” Billy repeats, tasting fish on his tongue. “Why the fuck do they taste like pond scum?”

“That’s my special ingredient,” Eddie says, and. He cackles. High and bright and frightening, like a man brandishing a knife who knows something Billy doesn’t.

It’s strange.

It startles a laugh out of Billy, anyway. Weird and good but terrifying. Argyle in another font, scribbled in the shape of swirling tattoos and pretty brown eyes.

Eddie watches him.

“What?” Billy says. He rubs a palm over his face, suddenly self-conscious.

“Nothing,” When Billy stares at him, wide-eyed and confused, Eddie grins. “When you laugh, you’re just. You’re beautiful. Know that?”

Billy scoffs, “You’re a fuckin’ weirdo.” He says, but his stomach swoops. The Bastard.

“Yeah. When can you start?”

–

“I got a job,” Billy says, instead of hello when Steve calls on Friday. It’s warm, for late January, California finally giving up her quest toward the unfamiliar.

Steve chuckles. “Got a job as, what, a government spy?”

“No.”

“Supermodel, then. Undercover CIA ops, government supermodel–”

“--Like Nixon?”

“No, what the fuck? Have you seen yourself in the mirror, Malibu? You’re more JFK,” Steve says, sleepy and warm.

“I’m working at a surf place,” Billy tells him. It’s no fun to make Harrington guess when he sounds a minute from sleep.

“No shit? Didn’t know you surfed.”

“Used to,” Billy says, grinning when Steve makes a low, impressed noise. “Don’t get excited, I stopped when Neil moved us to corncob hell.”

“Maybe you’ll get back into it. Being around that stuff all the time, y’know.”

“Maybe,” Billy says. His belly flutters with possibility. He’s strong enough to run now. Hopeful enough to work. “It’s more than just surf stuff, actually. We do fishing bait, and crabbing and long boards–”

“--They sell hand blown Christmas ornaments too?”

“Probably,” Billy can hear the smile in Steve’s voice, dawning over his perfect pink lips. “High people love interior design.”

“What’s high got to do with it?”

“We sell Miss Mary.”

“Criminal,” Steve says, “I leave you alone for two minutes–”

“Eight months,” Billy tells him. A pin drops. “Not that I’ve been counting.”

Billy prepares himself for something, though he can’t put a finger on what’s got him ready to pace the fuckin’ floor, geared up for the deafening click! Of Harrington’s receiver as it hits the cradle.

They’ve never hung up on each other, but. Then again, they’ve never held a conversation this long either. Usually Steve just calls so he can fall asleep to the sounds of Billy swishing beer around in a can, pissing into the toilet bowl, blowing his nose when the weather’s cold enough.

But.

There’s a first time for everything.

“Has it been that long?” Steve wonders, surprising him.

“Yeah,” Billy says. Lying, because it’s more than that. Two Novembers and a New year, a cut and dry four-hundred days trying to acclimate to all of the rot they’ve been dealt. But who’s counting?

“When do you start your new job?”

“Sunday,”

“Got the whole weekend to, fuckin’. Skinny dip, rollerblade on the pier, and hike in the mountains.”

“I don’t live in the mountains.”

“Huh. Maxine said–”

“Jesus. Girl runs her fuckin’ mouth too much.”

“She’s just excited,” Steve tells him. Sounds like a big brother, a proud mom. “She talks all the time about joining you out there.”

“She’d hate it.”

Steve snorts. “Kid was born for the ocean. Like you, you know? Your eyes.” When Bilyl doesn’t say anything back, Steve yawns. “I’m sure you’ve got your reasons. Bay Watch not her scene anymore?”

Billy shrugs, “Not as beachy, where I am. LBC was quintessential California.”

“Where are you?” Steve asks, voice full of wonder. “Hold on, lemme get a pen and paper–”

“Not falling for that, Harrington.”

“Why not?” Steve demands, pouting. “I’m not gonna show up at your apartment door one day, y’know–”

“You might. With your pen and fuckin’ paper.”

“You’re right, I might,” Steve sing-songs, “I was able to bully your phone number out of the Byers’.”

“Hah!” Billy says, leaning forward. His beer’s almost gone so it doesn’t slosh when he jabs an accusatory finger at Steve from two thousand miles away, “I knew Will was the one who gave you my phone number. Little shit.”

“It’s not his fault, I wasn’t eating or sleeping, after you left, so. Joyce took pity on me.”

Billy almost cracks with the weight of his heart battering against his ribs. “Joyce?”

“She. Gave it to me.”

Billy swallows, throat clicking with emotion. “She had it the whole time?”

“They all did. Do, I guess,” Steve tells him. Then, after a beat, “You’re not mad, are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Please don’t change your fuckin’ number because of this.”

“Dunno. Might,” Billy lifts the can to his lips, sad to find it empty. “Should probably move, too, before Maxine tells everyone where my apartment is and you’re all pissed to find that the beach here sucks and we can’t even climb a fuckin’ mountain.”

Steve laughs. “But the other stuff?”

“Totally,” Billy says. He stands, pulling the phone as far as it will go until he gets his hand around the refrigerator door.

Steve lights a cigarette, inhaling sweetly into the phone. “Why didn’t you move to the mountains, anyway?”

“Room and board is expensive up there.”

“Didn’t the government shell out some money for your trouble?”

“Yeah,” Billy says, “Not enough.”

“We could combine our shit,” Steve says suddenly, “Y’know. Merge our assets and get someplace real nice.”

Billy drops his beer can. It gushes over kitchen linoleum like an unleashed tidal wave and he swears, stooping to mop it up with a dish rag. “Shit—”

“--Did I say something–”

“--No it’s. Nothing more stupid than the shit you usually say,” Billy tells him. Because. Combine our shit and merge our assets feels like something else. Grows teeth to chew and lips to say remember what tore you apart?

“Billy? You there?”

“I’m here,” Billy says. He dumps the dishrag into the sink, throat drier than it’s ever been in his life.

He clears it.

Says, “You want me to be your roommate,” and the words taste like lead. Burn like poison.

“I want you to be my roommate,” Steve admits.

It’s dark, through the kitchen window. Arcata sleeps and dreams outward, in every direction, and it makes Billy brave. Stupid.

“Alright,” He says, playing along.

“Done deal,” Steve says, grinning, “Pack your bag, baby. I’m coming to get you.”

Billy’s heart swells, ignorant to the pain that will come in the morning when he comes to. “You work at Family Video, now?” Can’t. Stand the pressure of the moment.

“Yeah,” Steve says, “The mall burned down, so. Not a ton of other options unless I want to work at the General Store.”

“And you’re gonna come get me on a Disk Jockey’s salary?” Billy leans forward, fingers scrambling for his pack of smokes. “You could open your own ice cream parlor.”

“I don’t have–that’s not what I want to do with my life.”

“Really? Being a lifeguard is what I want to do with mine.” Billy quips. Steve laughs suddenly, smooth as marmalade on fresh toast. Warm. Billy wants to make him do it again. “Rescuing screaming brats from themselves as they run around the edge of the pool and stub their toes and crack chins on wet cement–”

“--Jesus Christ–”

“--Sunburns,” Billy admits. “The lis goes on.”

“That’s bullshit,” Steve says, ruffling the couch face as he sits straighter. “The chicks never shut up about you, that summer. You tanned.”

“Yeah, over my burns.”

“Is that even possible?”

Billy exhales a cloud of pale purple smoke, basking in the light from the television. “Sure, if you know the right elixir of sunscreen, tanning oil, and bomb-pops. Anything’s possible.”

“Another load of bullshit,” Steve tsks lightly, “Y’know, I was held prisoner in that fuckin’ sailor uniform all summer and I never saw you come through. Not once.” He says. Regretful, like it’s a goddamn shame Steve never got to see him in his slutty little shorts.

“Yeah,” Billy grumbles, “Never saw me once and now I’m damaged goods.”

“You’re Clark Kent,” Steve tells him, “You’ve got, like. Superhero good looks.”

Billy chuckles, “Thought I was a CIA Government Plant, Spy–”

“You’re beautiful,” Steve says suddenly.

Billy stalls. The air escapes from his tires and he’s, fuckin’. Trapped. Stranded in this endless, horrible moment where all the shit he never thinks about lathers like soap suds, tasting bitter on the back of his tongue.

“Needa get your eyes checked, Bambi Boy.”

“Eyes are fine,” Steve grumbles. “How’d you get a bomb pop if you never–”

“--Max would get them for me.”

“Oh! Makes sense, I guess. She was always pink-cheeked and pissed off. Buying two of whatever she wanted that day. Guess I always assumed it was for Sinclair and not–”

“--Her bull-dog brother?”

“Her lifeguard,” Silence yawns again but doesn’t get to settle as Steve lights his cigarette. “Why’d you never come in yourself? Why send the kid?”

“You really gotta ask that?” Billy demands, grinning, “C’mon. Wouldn’t be caught dead in an ice cream parlor before work, pretty boy.”

“Not even for a bomb pop?”

“Not a chance,” Billy says easily, not. Wanting to tell the truth.

Steve seems to understand, anyway. “I lied.”

“--Yeah?”

“I saw you around. That summer, before. Everything,” Steve says. He’s out there alone, making these swooping declarations, and he always has been, if Billy thinks back on it. If he’s honest with himself, so.

“I was carryin’ a torch for you, before that summer,” Billy says. Figures. He probably owes Steve the truth after. Everything.

Harrington sucks in a breath, “Billy–”

“I was scared. Always was.” Steve doesn’t say anything so Billy exhales everything, “Look, you don’t. It’s not–”

“--I didn’t know,” Steve says thickly. “I had a feeling, maybe, sometimes, but. Billy, if I had known–”

“--Then, what, you would’ve dumped your girlfriend sooner? Sucked me off after basketball practice?”

“Maybe.”

Billy’s vision blacks out for a second. Like a hard reset to make room for this new information. Whole machine’s fucked so they’ve gotta restructure, figure something else out.

It’s whiplash.

“I wound't have let you,” Billy’s skin is pink and tender, at his core. Not for monsters, for once. “My dad, and. Everything. I wasn’t a good guy, Steve.”

“Neither was I.”

“No, you don’t get it. I deserved what I got, Steve. Everything I did to my sister, and. To all those people–”

“--That wasn’t you.”

“Maybe,” Billy spits, “The shit in the summertime was fueled by a monster, but. Before? Steve, I–”

“--You’ve only ever been around monsters,” Harrington tells him. It sits for a moment, on Billy’s sternum. Weight. Eventually, Steve clears his throat, “I know more than I probably should, but. Max and I have talked.”

“Yeah, she fuckin’. She told me, right before I left Hawkins. Said that you ask about me. All the time.”

“You’re interesting,” Steve says, like, “Even before Starcourt I was interested in you. Understanding you.”

“There was nothing to understand. You didn’t know me, before–”

“Yeah, but I know you now,” Steve tells him. Because it’s enough. In his world, good’s always going to win out in the end, “And, like. I’m just thinking if there are monsters and Russians under the mall and little girls who can throw shit with their minds, it just. Doesn’t matter. I’m thinking it shouldn’t fuckin’ matter that I didn’t know you before you almost died because I was there for the bad shit. I saw you, Billy. I know you taught yourself to walk again, and I know you make me laugh, and I know that I can’t sleep unless I hear your voice, and I know that they night I pushed you down I ruined something. Good.”

Billy scrubs at his cheek. I comes away wet.

“I’m serious about combining our shit,” Steve tells him, “Merging our assets, or whatever.”

“No you’re not. You haven’t really thought about it–”

“Fuck you, baby, all I do is sit here and fuckin. Think.”

About you. All I fuckin’ do is sit here and think about you, Billy fills in the blanks for him. Figures, they shouldn’t have to spell everything out after everything they’ve barely lived through–

Billy clears his throat. It scrapes and burns. “What about Hawkins?”

“What about it.”

“I dunno, wouldn’t. Everyone miss you? Max and that curly haired, freaky little boy genius, and–”

“--I can’t sleep without you, Billy,” Steve says. Sounds like he’s drowning, like that first night, when he said– “Everything that’s happened, and it’s like. We’re just animals, you know? Caught up in trying to stand on two feet and we get so fuckin’ consumed by the specifics of everything. What you had to do to survive, the shit I don’t know about, the kids, the mosnters, just. Everything.”

Speeches. Billy had to sit through so many speeches, when he wouldn’t fuckin’ die already, and.

Never thought he’d want to listen.

Never thought Steve–

“All I know is I want to be with you, Billy.”

Outside the window, the sky is turning silver.

“Let me be with you. Any way I can.”

–

It’s nice to be around people who don’t know where Billy came from. To the boys at the Surf Ship, he is a ghost, born in some long ego era.

Whoever he was before doesn’t matter.

Argyle and Eddie bring him back to life.

–

Neil Hargrove tries to kill him.

Just after Valentine’s Day, just after we’re animals, let me be with you, all i know is I want to be with you–

Maxine calls to tell Billy that Neil shot himself.

Yeah. Calls, like. The telephone. Billy can’t find it in himself to be angry about that, because he’s missed her and then she says, something happened.

She says, Dad ate a bullet for his first meal of 1988. And then she says, Your dad. Neil did, like Billy would ever forget. Would ever need reminding. Then she says, he didn’t survive.

Billy.

He’s got all sorts of fucked up feelings about it, right away. He folds in half three times until he’s on the floor, marking the way his legs throw shadows on the carpet, large enough to cast doubt over everything Billy thought was true.

He cries.

Neil is dead and Billy cries, already forgetting the sound of his voice.

–

At two o’clock in the morning the phone rings, again.

His neck hurts from laying on the carpet. The frayed edges of Maxine’s notebook paper plant like tiny, insignificant seeds. They catch and take hold and Billy thinks, distantly, that he should do something before grief roots itself in the apartment, where it was never really allowed to before.

The phone stops ringing. Starts. Stops.

Another letter has taken control of his life, and that makes him angry. He cries about it, and the phone starts to ring again.

Billy holds the receiver to his face, watching the note flutter when he says, “My dad died.”

“I know,” Steve tells him. “I meant to call sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“I wanted Max to be the one to tell you. And she doesn’t have your landline–”

“--I know you gave it to her,” Billy says. Thinks, if Maxine had sent him a goddamn letter through the fuckin’ mail to tell him the last monster is dead, he would’ve lost what’s left of his marbles, he would’ve–

“--Neil ate a bullet,” Billy says. He sounds like himself, but. He doesn’t. Steve holds his breath on the other end of the line, so Billy says, “I’ve never seen someone get shot, before. I’ve seen them get ripped apart.”

“Billy–”

“I shouldn’t have left,” He tells the ceiling.

Steve goes quiet. It’s terrible, not hearing the cigarette smoke leave his lungs, not sensing his laugh where it blooms and grows like springtime flowers. They don’t deserve this. They’ve never deserved any of this, but. Who fuckin’ cares.

“You had to get out of here,” Steve tells him. The real Steve, alive and unwell in Hawkins, Indiana. “Billy, this place is–”

“Neil’s dead.”

“Maybe he deserved it.”

“And maybe I should be there for Maxine, for once,” Billy says. Aches to see her. Burns to hold her close.

Steve snorts, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I just. I think that if anyone here was supposed to die–”

“--Stop–”

“--There’s a hole in my chest,” Billy admits. He can feel it, sometimes, rising like tree bark to scrape and tear at the air around him. A monster aiming to carve a place on him.

It’s so late. It’s so goddamn early–

“I’ll patch it up,” Steve says valiantly. The hero. The prince.

Everything’s so easy for him. Simple.

“Maybe you’re right,” Billy says after a minute. After catching his breath.

“Maybe I’m right about what?”

“None of it matters,” Billy tells him. “Nothing matters so much that I can’t just. Tell you–”

But that’s a half-truth, funny in retrospect. Because almost three years ago, Billy died. Nearly. And he never expected that anything would matter to him ever again, but things happen all the time that have nothing to do with anything. That’s the beauty. They help him live. Will and Joyce and Freak Byers and Maxine and–

“Steve. I,” Billy swallows, throat clicking, “I lo–”

“--I want to see you,” Steve says in a rush, “Just. Tell me where you are. I can be there in a few days.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Maybe but that’s what I want. You. I want you–”

“You’re insane,” Billy scrambles, trying to grasp whatever excuses keep eluding him. “Like you don’t already know my address. Like Max didn’t fuckin’ tell you.”

“You’re right. I still need you to say the word, though,” Steve sounds like he’s moving, on the other end of the line. Bouncing on the balls of his feet in anticipation. “I’m serious. Tell me you want me and I’ll leave right now. If I drive through the night I can be there in a day.”

Billy’s heart soars, emotion flapping like wings in his chest.

But.

“You can’t leave Maxine. Not with all this shit happening in Hawkins with Neil, and–”

“I’ll bring her with me,” Steve says, “We can take turns driving.”

Tears slide down Billy’s cheeks, full of hope. “She’s a bitch in the car."

"So am I, I only want to listen to Wham."

"She's only got a permit. What if a cop–”

“--We’ll go on a high-speed chase. I’ll get to you sooner.” Harrington says.

Billy exhales a laugh.

Thinks about the years spent wondering what he deserves. What he wants. Never imagining the line between them would whittle away and disappear until their weight could kiss like reunited lovers.

Thinks of death and life. Of Max.

"Y'know, I usually sit on the beach, first thing. Watch the sunrise."

Steve hums. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Billy scrubs away the tears on his face, shuddering as more slide to take up their mantle. “Got something to write with?”

–

The answering machine gets him.

"Argyle," Billy says, standing over his kitchen sink. "You're not in. Uh. I just wanted to let you know that Steve's coming to town. Steve Harrington. He's on his way and I don't know what this means, I sorta feel like I'm drowning a little bit, but. In a good way. A really good way."

Billy rinses his stomach bile, watching as it swirls and disappears.

"I don't think I'm going back to Hawkins, but. I also don't know if I'm staying here. My dad died, and Steve's brining my sister to see me, 'cause. I have a sister, I think I told you about her, and. I have a Steve. You know about him, so."

Billy swallows, wondering how many fuckin' goodbyes he will have to live through.

What he will have to live through, now until forever.

"Just," Billy says, voice cracking, "Thank you. For talking to me on the beach that day, and asking me to come work for you, and just. You brought me back to life. That's it. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow. Maybe I won't, but. Give Eddie a punch goodbye, for me. See ya around." Billy sucks a mouthful of air, scrubbing at his eyes, "This is Billy, by the way."

Billy's grateful Arcata has a shoreline. The ocean has been good to him, his first true sanctuary. Makes him think of the trees back home, in Hawkins. Has him wondering if it's okay, now that home is a person. People.

It's warm, for February.

He watches the sunrise with a lump in his throat, knowing that any minute a car will pull into the lot behind him and love will walk back into his life. Maybe it never left. Maybe it's not something he's ever had to work for.

He counts the minutes. He adjusts his blanket, the very same one Joyce draped over his hospital bed all those months ago, and then a car approaches. Two doors open and shut, one right after the other, and then.

Dawn breaks, driving a knife through the dark.

#harringrove #billy hargrove #holiday exchange #tw: homphobic slur #tw: violence #healing #post season 3

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kanene-yaaay · 1 year ago

Text

Oh, To Die By Your Hands

Kanene's notes: IT SEEMS SO SERIOUS WITH THAT TITLE KJUHYTFRGHUJK Nah, just your normal tickle fic with not so much normal characters. Fit and Pac have been living rent free in my mind since before Purgatory and after their date??? I am dead on the floor. Get a man who will declare his feelings for you in your native language for real for real.

Warnings: Lots of nibbles, tickly kisses and raspberries in this one. Switch!Fit and Switch!Pac. Around 6.500 words. Also! I tried to add the way that Pac calls Fit because of his accent written on the fic because I think it's lovely and cute. Hope it isn't too much confunsing or strange :D

[~*~]

“Thank you for coming, Pac. Ramón really likes when you sing him that lullaby.” His voice was rough but soft, just like his entire form and self when it came to his son, his beautiful baby boy.

Pac smiled, also following his example and lowering his voice, closing the secured door of the kid’s room carefully before they both headed to the other room where they held their first date, a prep on his step. “It’s no problem, Fitch! Actually, I don’t know why he likes that one so much, it literally talks about how a Cuca, which is like… a kind of monster? I don’t know how to explain. But how she will grab, or better, uh, snatch the kid away because the parents are out working.”

A loud peal of laughter was pried from the mercenary’s lips, staring at the other with unbelief in his eyes. “Wait, wait, that is the actual meaning of the song?”

“Yeah, yeah! I don’t know why they made it so scary. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if someone sang it to me before putting me to bed.”

“Damn, brazilian lullabies are just at a hardcore level.”

“Teaches you to sleep with one eye open, right?”

“That is right, that is right.”

They shared smiles. Arriving at the place, the air was still light, but it wasn’t difficult to see the question itching Pac’s throat, wanting to jump out of his body. It was in the way that he walked closely by Fit side and how he kept sneaking glances at him, quickly deviating them to look around the room before going back to stare, keeping the cycle for a while. Each time his steps got closer and closer until their hands intertwined in a hold.

It made sense he would be like that, of course. Fit would be just the same if his boyfriend woke him up in the middle of the night asking him to come to his place to help to calm down his kid after a nightmare because he wasn’t able to.

Still, he was glad that no questions were asked, not when Pac arrived - barely half a minute later after he sent his message, sleep and anxiety clinging like a shadow to his form - and not now, as the storm seemed to have passed.

Shame, however, kept flowing hot in his veins. He and Ramón had been alone since… always, really. They both had dealt with each other’s nightmares and night terrors more times than they could count. This one wasn’t supposed to be different. Shouldn’t be different. He should be there the moment his boy opened the door of his room with tears streaming down his face, sobs stubbornly escaping from his firmly pressed lips and hands open for a comforting hug that Fit should be able to give, a rare show of a child that his baby boy was, but refused to demonstrate most of time.

And yet…

Fit himself hadn’t been much better. Hadn’t been better for a long time, now. Because everytime he closed his eyes the threat from Madagio filled his mind and nightmares kept permeating his every night for the past two weeks, crowding his mind with horrifying scenarios that shouldn’t, but shook his core.

Usually, he would just wake up, push all of it - the feelings, the fears, the screams begging for their life - deep down his chest and hope that it wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass.

Nevertheless to say, as all the things in life, it definitely did.

Because that night, when Ramón looked at his face - and god knows what he saw there - he stopped right in his tracks and carefully signed his name. He had been crying, he had been crying and scared and tired and all Fit could think - because words simply didn’t come out, no matter how much he tried to spill, spit them to comfort his kid - is that he could kill him. So quickly. Easily, even, with a twist of his wrist, a swipe of his trident, a pull from his bomb stacks, he could kill him and suddenly he was frozen on the spot, unable to even get closer to his son.

If Madagio had any power like the Federation, it could control him and destroy his most precious riches in a matter of seconds. It wouldn’t need to come to the island. It wouldn’t even need to pull Fit from it to make his life a living hell.

“There is something that we need to talk, Pac. Please take a seat.”

So, he called Pac. He deserved to know exactly what he was getting into (how many times would they have this kind of conversation?) and Ramón deserved a father who would actually get his shit together and get over it.

Pac gulped and looked at him slightly startled, knowing very well what the serious tune could mean, probably with a thousand of scenarios already running at light speed in his mind. “O-of course, Fitch.”

He then softly squeezed his hand - because there was no universe where Pac wouldn’t be perfect and strong and there but sometimes Fit seemed to forget that so he had to remind him - and let it go, sitting on the blue couch Fit recently added on the room and expectantly waiting for the other to do the same.

Which he promptly did - of course, because there wasn’t any universe where he would go and Fit wouldn’t immediately follow him.

“Wine? What about wine? Do you want some wine?” The brazilian offered, pulling glasses from his well trusted backpack and a bottle from the refrigerator nearby.

“Already wanting to take me to bed, Pac? Wow.”

“No! Stop it.” Pac lightly shoved his arm, both chuckling for a bit before Fit sobered, taking a deep breath and a sip of the liquid. It was good stuff, probably from Aypierre’s vines. “Thought we were here to have a serious conversation, no?”

“We are.”

Fit stopped, pondered how he would put it in words. It didn’t matter, there was no easy way to put it.

“Pac, would you kill me if it was necessary?”

The scientist sputtered, almost choking on the wine before turning in alarm to stare at the other, his gaze zig zagging across his body as if it would transform at any moment into an enemy, a monster in disguise pretending to be his boyfriend right in front of him.

He didn’t doubt Pac’s abilities, even if Pac himself hardly believed in them. He was an extremely good fighter, going through monsters and battles with a calm demeanor and precise, strong attacks that ended the conflict as soon as possible. Fit was very skilled, himself. But he was sure that if Pac used one of his brilliant plans and his scythe, it would take a lot, but he would eventually come down.

But, for that, he needed to know if Pac would go through with the plan.

“Why, why that, Fitch? Did something happen? Are you feeling weird? Is it…” He got closer. Fit’s heart beated louder. If it was him… if it was him it wouldn’t be so bad. “Is it the Federation, again?”

“No. It’s… the other.”

Understanding downed in his expression. “Oh. Did he contact you again?”

Fit shook his head. “No. But it did say that it would hurt you if I tried to betray our contract and I am not planning to but, Pac, I need to know if you’ll do it. If I become a threat.”

Pac bit his lower lip, thoughtfully. Fit’s muscles relaxed, glad to know he was taking this as a serious worry, not just some unfounded fear.

“We will save you. Just like we did before, just like you did to me, Fitch. I, I will be there for you too, when you need and for as long as you need, if you’re gone we will bring you back.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t, but, if I have to kill you, Fit… how will I tell this to Ramón? Or Sunny? WHo is going to be her bodyguard? And what about the morning crew? Are we supposed to just… stay?”

“You are all very strong and I am sure that-”

“No.” His voice was determined, sad. His hands gestured widely. “No, no, no. I am not leaving you behind, Fit. What about when I’m in danger, who will rescue me? Who will share the island’s fofoca with me? Or give me a refrigerator full of food on the first date? Or kill the eye workers when they attack or tease Tubbo when he goes on a date with Fred, or help us to take care of Sunny, or, or, or…” Fit held the other’s hands, squeezing it tight when he started to talk too fast, snapping Pac out of his thoughts, making him take a big breath. “No. You can’t go away, Fitche. Never. I won’t let them take you too.”

Oh.

Yeah, that… that made sense.

This was Pac, who the first thought when seeing his friend being drugged and controlled by the Federation was going under the same treatment so he could find a cure for it. The one who forgave Cellbit in a heartbeat when he told him he had changed. Who refused to kill him - even before the date, when Fit couldn’t even put in words his feelings for the other - during Purgatory. Who threw himself into mines and danger easily without thinking twice and would do all of it again an again if it meant keeping someone he cared about safe, even when the Federation kept taking his family one day after the other. He would do it in a heartbeat.

It made sense he didn’t want to lose another one. He was smart, strong, kind… Fit would trust him with his life into his hands in a blink of an eye.

But…

“If I hurt Ramón, Pac. If ever get close to hurt any of the eggs…”

“I will lock you, Fit. And I, we! We will find a cure again. None of them will die and you don’t need to die either.”

“Do you promise?”

Pac nodded, composure and eyes kept firm in their place, holding him down and reminding him he was no longer on this alone. “I promise, Fit. And if your boss cat comes here to hurt them… Then we will kick his butt, right?”

Fit snorted, if it was anyone else, he would doubt, throw their words away as a senseless attempt to comfort him, without true meaning. His boss was god, some kind of entity with power enough to pull him out of a world of literal destruction and throw him into a dimension where all of it never existed. However, this was Pac. Both he and Mike have proven over and over again that there was no place, no rule, no limit that they weren't able to overcome and laugh at their face when the managed to overcome it.

Maybe… If it was him.

He could believe it. Besides, Pac did promise that he wouldn’t let him hurt the children. They were always the priority, afterall

“Yes, we will. Thank you, Pac.” He took a deep breath. Since he already started, he could as well…

Talk. About stuff.

“Sometimes I… worry about, uh, what I can do.”

(Kill. Maim. Destroy. Break it down piece by piece until there is nothing left. Watch in the shadows and continue his way quietly through all the screams.)

Pac understood what he meant. “Oh. It’s fair. I think, it must be hard, when you think about it…” He then squeezed his hand before letting them go, starting to count on his own fingers. “But, I don’t think you should worry about it, Fitch. You can do a lot of awesome things, too! You’re a really good cooker, you can make very cool bombs and explosions, you’re good at hide and seek, at saving me when I am down. You are also very good at hiking and training, which makes sense, right? With how muscular and great you are, also-”

“Pac,” Fit voice’s took a firm tune, pulling Pac from his rambling and immediately catching his attention, wide black eyes turning at him attentively. “Pac, I was made for killing. All of this is just…”

(It doesn’t matter.)

“Nah.”

Fit blinked once, twice, quite astonished at how nonchalant the scientist sounded. Stared at those beautiful, soft eyes that watched him with a playful light that somehow nothing on the Island had been able to destroy. Strong. “Sorry?”

“I don’t think you were made for killing, Fit. No one is only able to do one thing and everyone can change. Besides… it gave you a lot of skill, right? Surviving there. That is why you’re one of the best fighters on the island, Fit! The codes, the eye workers… even Cucorucho is no match for you. You’re so strong, fierce, cool, fit and,” Pac’s determined tune tripped a little bit as his words got faster and a tad more distracted, his eyes deviating from his stare, looking at his face, arms, torso… Fit would be lying if he said he didn’t like how it hovered for a little while on his chest and muscles, “and you’re good looking too! Awesome, ruthless, muscular, handsome...”

“Ahalright!” Fit cut him before his face melted from how hot it felt, the tip of his ears feeling like they were on fire. His voice seemingly broke Pac out of his mind and made him immediately attempt to hide his face on his hoodie, trying to jump away to hide and being stopped by the gentle hand still holding his, keeping him close. That didn’t prevent more embarrassed snickers from also filling the air. “Sorry, sorry, I got distracted.”

“Take it easy, big boy, take it easy.”

Fit only laughed harder when the teasy nickname made the other shout in protest, a light hit landing on his shoulder. It successfully distracted him enough so his head peaked again from the deepness of his blue hoodie, so Fit counted it as a win. Especially when a playful gleam took over Pac’s glare.

“Actually, Fitch, I think you were made for something.”

“Oh, you think so?”

Pac got closer, smiling, nodding in such an innocent way that could only mean trouble.

“Yeah, for kisses.” He laid his head on his shoulder and Fit could feel goosebumps travel his entire body from the skin contact. His voice became lower, slower, certain. “Can I kiss you, Fit?”

Fit definitely didn’t bluescreen, half words and meaningless sounds leaving his mouth in a string of incoherency that lasted a couple of minutes before he finally managed to get himself together enough to shove an actual sentence, with a too high pitched tune, through his throat. “I-I mean, of course you can, Pac! If, ah, if you want to.”

Pac’s answer was a single kiss placed in his collarbone before the brazilian focused his administrations on his neck. Soft, warm lips leaving a trail of tingles and electricity whatever they touched. Fit could feel the care in each one and it felt… nice.

Cozy.

Warm.

Tickly.

Ok, actually, it was very, very tickly.

Fit closed his eyes and turned his face around, trying to hide the beginning of a smile that grew bigger with every light - so, so, so light - peck grazing his skin. Not wanting to actually ruin the sweet moment between them, especially after Pac got the courage to ask for what the mercenary had been wanting to do for a while.

(Cuddle and kiss his boyfriend. Oh god, when did he become such a softie?)

The problem with his hiding tactic is that it only left more spots in the open for Pac to attack and bash in attention, not leaving a single patch of skin alone without a caring goodbye kiss, unknowingly breaking piece by piece Fit’s barriers.

He twitched when his boyfriend got too close to the line of his jaw, the warmth racing up to the tip of his ears in a way he hoped that Pac didn’t realized. The one with blue hoodie and attentive eyes stopped in a hitched breath. Waited.

Fit got his racing heart and tickly tingles under control. He was not going to lose to a few accidental tickles. He was not.

He squeezed Pac’s and drew circles on the back of his hands, turning at him with a teasy smirk and crooked eyebrows.

“Oh, is it my turn now?”

Pac giggled and shook his head. “Wait, wait, I still got…”

Without finishing his sentence he dived and placed a light kiss right under his chin, successfully catching the other out of guard and making one of various locked snickers wheezily flee from his lips, quickly being followed by others when Fit tried to cover his smile, turning around once again.

“Oh, god, I am doing this wrong, aren’t I?” Pac pushed himself away and grumbled, starting to search in his pockets for his warpstone, increasing the other’s snickery fit. “Ok, ok, that is it.Thank you so much for calling, I had an incredible time so now I am going to throw myself off the Cristo Redentor and then go to bed, good night, Fit. Tell Ramón I loved him and tell Richas to take a shower, bye.”

“No, no, Pac. Calma, calma.” Fit held one of his wrists, pulling Pac back to his place on the sofa, chasing his black eyes when they kept running away from his while the scientist kept shaking his head from side to other in a dramatic despair. Fit ended up resting his other hand on his cheek, guiding his look back. “I would never laugh at my brazilian boyfriend.” He tried to not grin smugly when that melted the other’s pout in a shy smile “The kisses just tickled me, that is all.”

That immediately brought Pac’s attention. “Wait, Fit… you’re ticklish?”

“It seems like I am, but I am not sure. Not a lot of chances for bonding and laughing when fighting for your life in 2b2t.”

“Oh, I see.” Silence, Pac’s wrist wiggled out of his hold and suddenly there were warm hands flying to his neck, fingertips dancing on it, blunt nails and wiggly fingers tickling the sensitive spot softly. “So, you’re ticklish.”

Fit huffed a laugh at the strange feeling, instinctively scrunching up his neck all while he tried to not pry Pac’s hands away. Same hands that now spidered their way up to his ears, tracing them and giving each one a few scratches, Pac watching in awe as their tips became more and more colored with each passing second.

“Oh my god, Fit, your ears are so red! Are you blushing? That is really, reeeally cute, you know?”

Fit’s shoulders began to shake slightly with the effort to keep all the giggles and laughter trapped inside, the task growing more and more difficult as Pac kept his exploring. Fingers tapping their way down to the mercenary’s ribcage, making his torso twitch from one side to another as they started skittering up and down, tracing senseless drawings and forms on the spot. Another fleeing snigger escaped from his firmly pressed lips. There was no way such light, barely even touching touch could tickle that much.

“You can laugh it out, Fit. I bet it will feel much better! Besides,” the gleam in his eyes got sharper and Pac didn’t really lower his voice, but something in his tune changed, a turning point that made a shiver run down Fit’s spine. It didn’t feel like something truly dangerous but alerts began flashing in his mind when the touch became just a tad firmer.

Fit had to push down the squirms that threatened to push the other away. “You can’t just keep all that laughter only for yourself, now, that wouldn’t be fair. No, no, not fair at all. Keeping all those giggles and snickers hidden from me. Trapped inside. They deserve to be free, you know? So everyone can see how cute they are.”

“Pac…”

But then Pac started digging and his barrier broke. Loud laughter immediately followed the hands vibrating in between his ribs, scribbling, looking for any special spot that would make Fit go insane. Not that he was very far from this, now, head being thrown backwards with how strong his crackles were, because nothing in the world could ever prepare him for the feeling that was being tickled, to have each nerve screaming but not in pain, to have each touch bring a new kind of electricity that traveled his torso and filled his heart with a warmth that made him want to jump out of the sofa and at the same time bring Pac closer.

A curious prodding in a spot in his highest ribs that was almost on his back and Fit slammed his body on the cushion, a snort being pried from his lips and quickly being followed by another and another when the fingers kept drilling and kneading on the spot non stop.

Then he heard it, low as a whisper. “Beautiful….” It came in an awed voice, and in between half lidded eyes Fit saw the one with black hair shake his head, as if getting himself together before slowing down the tickling, thumbs rubbing the remnant tickles as he stared at him. “Sorry, Fitch, I, caham, I got, uh, distracted. Are you okay?” He nodded, chuckles taking over his words and disappearing with any hope of saying something without descending in more of a waterfall of giggles. Still, he tried, the proud smile in Pac’s face erasing his embarrassment in how silly he sounded giddy like this.

“I’m fine, just surprised that I am dating a tickle monster.”

The brazilian laughed, shaking his head and hiding his face on Fit’s shoulder. “Não, não, não (No, no, no). Mike is actually the tickle monster in our team. I just learned a lot from playing fights with him.” Pac trembled in an exaggerated shudder. “He is merciless.”

“Really?”

“Uh hum.” Pac hummed, thoughtful, before doing a little ‘pop’ sound, hands washing down to his sides, tapping senselessly there. “He had this kind of attack where he would be talking to you and suddenly he would start to tickle you and like, it would be really, really light so you didn’t actually, you know, like, died laughing? But at the same time it would be crazily ticklish! Following you around no matter how much you squirmed or snickered.”

“P-pac, come on…”

The other just hummed, still talking and hands still spidering in their resting position, taking turns in between drawing circles on his sides, feeling how his torso would shake with a new round of chuckles blossoming anew, and scratching the little dive of his hips to make them grow faster.

“Then he would try to keep a conversation going and complain like ‘are you even paying attention to what I’m saying, what’s going on?’ as if he didn’t know what was happening, can you believe?! And you couldn’t just… walk away or keep silly giggling non stop and not answer him, because you’re still in a conversation and that would be rude, right? So you’re just there, laughing and wiggling and it always drives me crazy!”

Fit nodded, knowing the feeling very well, in his opinion. His brain trying to pay attention to his words but getting totally distracted by his own attempts to not wiggle around so much because everytime his body trashed to one side, Pac would just dig his fingers on his sides and drum, which made him jump in the other direction only to receive the same treatment, creating a maddening cycle almost impossible to escape from.

Once again, laughing began flooding the room, high pitches and wheezy giggles chasing around one or two squeals when a tentative squeeze grazed the spot before quickly jumping away, the unexpected playful attacks blending with the soft scribbles and somehow making him not being able to predict nor prepare for one or the other.

“And then, out of nowhere he would get bored and that is where it lies the danger, Fitch.” Pac’s voice took a turn to a lower tune, torn between a warning and a threat. His tickling came to a halt, fingertips just laying on his waist with occasional twitches. What was more strange, though, was how, even so, the janitor couldn’t stop the titters taking over his mind and body. He wondered if that was how he would finally die, undone and destroyed by his very lovely boyfriend. Pac snickered in mischief and amusement, breaking his mask for a couple of seconds before cleaning his throat and coming back to his persona, interlocutor voice back again.

“Because, when he stops it means that he is getting bored. You know that he is getting bored and he knows that you know that he is getting bored and that it is just a matter of time before he decided that is enough and something happens” he highlighted the word by spidering quickly across his ribs. His voice sounded like it was closer. “So you just stay there, quiet, waiting for the moment he will strike.”

Fit held his breath, eyes closed. His smile was so big that it traveled from one ear to the other. No more laughter was falling from his mouth, but his shoulders still bounced with the phantom tickles that freely pricked his skin and seemed to follow his every squirm. Pac’s hands felt warm - dangerous - where they touched and he was pretty sure that his entire face would melt at some point of this game.

He waited.

Waited. Nothing.

A kiss was pressed on his forehead.

He opened an eye, muscles immediately untensing and relaxing with the scene, even if adrenaline still ran without control in his veins, of Pac happily smiling, just a few centimeters from his face.

“Oi, Fitch.”

“Roi, Pa-ACK!”

Loud, uncontrollable and unstoppable laughter filled the room, Fit still tried to finish his sentence before giving up and succumbing to the snorts and wheezing that took over his laughter. Squeezes, drumming and prodding attacked his sides, kneading on the ticklish spot before scratching their way up to his ribs, burying themselves there and then keeping their way up to his armpits - poking and scribbling and making him lock his arms on his torso - until it got to his ears, changing the loud peals of booming laughter to a hysterical string of snickers only to make he go back to crackling when he attacked his sides again and again, alternating between each and every tickle spot so he couldn’t picture where he was going to tickle next.

Fit could even swear that at some point he felt a squeeze in his knees that fished a chortle from his lips and an uncontrollable kick from his legs.

It lasted only a couple of minutes. All the electricity and tickly buzzing teased and made him laugh like nothing else mattered, loud and free even when, between his own amused giggling, Pac ceased his mean attack and watched with a giant grin as the other tried to regain his breath, a light blush dusting his face.

“You were saying, Fitch?”

Nonsense. That was exactly what Fit was about to say. Because his brain kind of became a mush after all that attack and the airy giggles that kept flowing from his throat didn’t exactly help him to gather his thoughts nor fade the hotness running still on his face.

“I, er, huh…” and there it was, the sentence got lost to jumpy snickers again. Fit brought a hand to hide them and try to gain at least save a bit of face, but a quick poke on his defenseless armpit made it go immediately down again. He glared without any real heat at his boyfriend, who lifted his arms in rendition.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m done for real, now.”

The silence was extended for a few pieces of time, stretching across them like a cat after a nap.

Fit was the one who broke it.

“That is Mike’s…” He coughed, cleaning his throat “special tickle attack, then? I can see why you call him merciless.”

“Nah, actually that is my own technique. Mike prefers to catch a person out of guard and tickle while taunting them until they promise to make something for him.”

The surprised, amused huff of laughter that came out from the mercenary’s mouth didn’t have anything to do with wiggly fingers this time and Pac joined him.

“You’re such a sneaky guy, Pac, you’re such a sneaky guy.”

“Thank you. Gotta learn from the best right? Maybe someday me and Ramón will team up and win the hide and seek against you.”

“Hmm, you probably would. But maybe I can convince Richarlyson to help me?”

“It would be good. Richas is the best in hide and seek. He would really like to. Hey! We should set up a playdate with them in our Hide and Seek arena. We can even call Tubbo and Sunny, maybe even Philza with Chayanne and Tallulah, if they are awake. The more the merrier, right?”

Fit was sure that if he was shapeshifter like Tubbo, without even wanting to, his eyes would be heart shaped. It never ceases to amaze him how Pac could accept and love everyone - him - like they were and would always be a family to him.

“But, so?” The brazilian wiggled his eyebrows, a smirk opening in his face. “How is it the experience of being tickled for the first time?”

Maddening. Tortuous. Able to make someone go crazy, he was sure. Surprisingly tiring and unexpectedly effective. Strange. Itchy. A lot. Hard to explain.

But also, it was extremely caring. Warm. Soft. Funny. Bonding. Weird. Extremely silly. He couldn’t stop his smile and thoughts about the gleam and shine in Pac’s eyes when he discovered a new spot or how - strangely enough - light and giddy he was feeling right now.

Besides, he never was self conscious about his laughter or anything but listening to Pac calling him… beautiful, in such an amazed voice… Well, his ego really couldn’t complain.

“It was fun.” He decided to go with that, a playful grin in his face, his hands holding Pac’s and intertwining their fingers.

“Oh, I’m happy in hear that! Actually, I-”

“But…” Fit cut him, purposely deepening his voice in a tune that never failed to catch the other of guard, sending a cold shiver through his muscles. “I can think of something even more fun.”

“Y-yeah?” Pac’s blush deepened when he looked at the dangerous, sharp, determined shine in Fit’s eyes, his entire mind getting overcomed with a choir of excited screams, burning face at realizing how their intertwined hands was both a soft gesture and a restrain.

Damn, he was really, really gay.

“Uh hm,” his tune now was almost like a purr of a predator watching his prey wobbly smile back and hold his hands tighter together, knowing very well his fate and still not even trying to escape from it. “It’s something that back on 2b2t we liked to call… revenge.”

With a swift move he pulled their hands and lead Pac to lose his equilibrium, falling backwards on his lap, one hand keeping his arms up and the other lifting his hoodie just the slightest bit, the actual perfect amount for him to immediately shove his face on his stomach and start blowing raspberry after raspberry, quick and ruthless.

“FITCHE!” The sound that came out of his mouth could barely be called a word, the high pitched shout being quickly taken over by a hysterical crackling that made his entire body shake with each laughter.

His boyfriend just chuckled, lifting his head just enough that his next words would be audible to the other, each one buzzing on the ticklish skin and making tiny, tickly electric shocks dance freely across it. “Oh my, Pac, what a delicious belly you got right here. One of the richest, rarest delicacies I’ve ever seen.”

“NONONO, FITCH!” He kicked and trashed, trying to roll away from his predicament but being firmly held in place by the other, which was kind of nice, since he wasn’t sure how to explain to Fit that he definitely wasn’t going to run away if he had the chance.

Still, that didn’t stop the fast, airy and high giggles of painting every syllable of his pleas that began flowing like a stream from his lungs, becoming more and more intelligible with each protest. “Please, please, Fitch anything but that! I will do anything you want! Do you wanna know all Mike’s most ticklish spots? Eu posso te dizer! (I can tell you!) he has this place right under his knees that if you poke he starts making ‘wee’ sounds e é muito engraçado (it’s very funny) Fitche por favor, espera, espera, wait!”

“Sorry, Pac, nothing I can do. I just have to try a little. Raspberries are so delicious and I just… I just gotta, ya know? I just gotta try a little, the tiniest little bit.” He lowered his head once again, carefully and softly nibbling on the ticklish skin and doing a bunch of ‘oh nom nom nom’ sounds as he did so, smugly relishing in how louder Pac’s laughter sounded at this, random portuguese and english being mixed in a series of incoherent talking that he couldn't even hope to understand, even with the translator.

The raspberries and nibbles began taking turns, dancing all across his stomach and sometimes even escaping to attack one lower rib or two in a way that usually drove Ramón crazy. It was kind of funny and endless endearing to realize that both of his boys were extremely weak for the same kind of tickle attack.

All the while Pac was simply dying. There was no other way to describe it. He was utterly and completely dying, losing every tread of.. everything that wasn’t thinking about how much it tickled and laughing both because Fit (Fit!!!!! His boyfriend Fit!!!!) was teasing and tickling him and also because as it seems he was the goofiest dork that ever existed in this world while doing that and somehow that made all the butterflies flying crazy on his belly and tickly electricity following his nerves one hundred times worse and ticklish and it was amazing.

Fit enjoyed a couple more minutes of the silly attack, fondly realizing how much more hysterical and loud the crackles got everytime he added more “hmmm” and “nom nom nom” sounds.

“There we go, big boy.” He lifted his head and got a glimpse of a gigantic, dazzling smile and a red face before Pac immediately hid it behind his hands, wheezes and snickers filling the room.

“Shuhuhut up!”

Fit grinned, but let go of the teasing and took pity on his brazilian boyfriend. He could quite understand why Pac seemed so happy in destroying him minutes ago. There was just a something that made his heart beat faster just in realizing that he was the reason why Pac was so happy and giggly.

Also, the way that the brazilian’s accent got stronger, especially while saying his name in between unstoppable, uncontrollable giggling… Fit thinks he could live with that, yeah.

“Oh my god, Fitche… and you call me merciless.”

The ex-mercenary chuckled. His eyes hovered over Pac’s face, making sure that he was still breathing and alive (he hadn’t taken too far, did he?) when suddenly his look got attracted to his neck, the memory of what started all of this popping like a flashing lamp in his mind.

“Pac…” It was the low voice again, lighter, but still there. Pac’s entire body froze still for a second and alarmed eyes turned to stare Fit, who seemed strangely fixated on his hoodie. “Is your neck ticklish?”

Oh.

Pac 100% blamed the gay screaming in his head for his next words.

“YES!” The shout was as excited as it was loud, making both of them wince at it, Fit looking at the one with black hair with a faintly surprised, crooked eyebrows. “I mean, er, assim, uh, no!!! It’s actually not! NOt even a little bit! What even is ticklish, you know? I don’t even speak english, senhor Fitch eme ce, na verdade, essa é a minha primeira vez aqui na ilha, quem é você e… Não!” (sir Fit eme cee, actually, this is my first time here in the island, who are you and… No!)

The babbling was promptly cut when, once again, Fit chuckled in mischief and shoved his head on Pac’s neck.

Butterfly kisses followed the line of his jaw, attacked that spot under his chin, tickled the place where the collarbone and the neck met, each patch of sensitive skin getting a kiss and a raspberry as a gift, making a series of snorts and high dazed giggles quickly follow the initial surprised shriek and jump around the entire room, Pac’s arms coming to rest on the other’s chest, partially pushing him away and partially holding him, legs kicking behind them with how much adrenaline and giddiness jumped across his muscles and filled his heart.

Pac hid his face on the crook of Fit’s neck, attempting to at least survive a few more seconds from dying of embarrassment, each snort and hysterical high pitched snicker sealing even more his fate and putting another nail in his coffin.

A few curious squeezes on his sides and a final, long raspberry and then Fit finally let him go, watching as the other got his breath again, forgetting for once to hide his blush and brilliant smile into his hoodie, looking completely lost in his own laughing fit. Adorable.

Sometimes Fit wondered how could he be so lucky.

A loud click and a flashing light brought both of them out of their thoughts. Pac almost falling from the sofa when he turned around and saw Ramón quickly hid a camera behind his back while passing three copies of the pictures to Richas, who stopped making gagging noises to hide them on his protected backpack before the adults could take it.

“Richarlyson, Me dá essas fotos!” (Give me those pictures!)

“Ramón, what are you doing awake? You should be sleeping. It’s late.”

Ramón had the sense to look at least a tad admonished, but the expression quickly disappeared when Richas began jumping on the same spot, wiggling from one side to another like he always did when he wanted to cause more mischief. The kids exchanged a look.

“Nenê (Baby), no. Don’t follow Richas’ example, he is a little demon.”

The sandal that went flying across the room and hit the brazilian in the face - which actually led to him falling from the cushions - only further proved this fact. Still, Richas let out plenty of offended noises while getting his sandal back, showing off his tongue when Ramón shoved him and shook his head in disapproval.

Fit tried his best to not laugh and sound serious. “Richas, do not hit your dad.”

“Don’t worry, Fitch.” Pac tapped his arm, getting up from the floor, tsking. “There is no other way, I guess. I’ll have to kill him. Yeah, it was fun to have a son for a while.”

The mercenary laughed, knowing very well how much of a weak heart Pac had for his little troublemaker. “Calma, calma, Pac. I think I have the solution. Since the kids are feeling so… energetic, we should probably tire them out before putting them back in bed, right?”

He also got up and gave Pac a Look, pretending to not see Ramón pulling Richas’ sleeve and exchanging warning words to him, knowing very well what that playful, dangerous shine in his dad’s eyes meant.

Pac grinned, mirroring his own devilish expression. “I think you’re right, Fit.”

Richas once again wiggled around in energy, his dragon tail tapping on the floor while Ramón threw a flower at Pac (smart boy, Fit thought, winning the melting heart from the dad that would have more mercy, very smart) and jumped on the same place, smiling and nodding in excitement.

He then pulled Richas away, starting the chase. Pac immediately following behind with joyfuls “I’m gonna catch you!”.

Fit chuckled.

Maybe Pac was right.

Maybe life - he - was more than just die and kill.

Well… he rolled his shoulders and followed his family in their game, laughing excitedly. He would have to enjoy it while it lasted, then.

#I couldn't help myself. I just HAD to make Pac's accent getting stronger when he is being tickled. I JUST HAD TO.#One day I will write a tickle fic where someone learn the word 'cosquinha' and keep teasing the brazilians about it that day is not today #Because I Would Die. Fall on the floor completely dead.#Fit: I'm a monster Pac // Pac twirling his hair giggling kicking his legs: that man could destroy me hehehe #Sometimes I worry for their mental health #Fit: *is silly* // Pac: *internal non stopping gay screaming*#Pac: a // Fit: You're absolutely right #qsmp tickles #qsmp tickling #Switch!Fit #Switch!Pac #Ticklish!Fit #Ticklish!Pac #Kanene's fic #Kanene's fanfic #Still not over Pac saying that he would kiss marry and kill Fit and Fit answering with 'I like my man dangerous' like GET OUTTTT #I'm going to become homphobic in the end of this I am telling you I can no longer take this I had to keep pausing their date because-#-*I* KEPT GETTING GIDDY AND EMBARRASSED LIKE GET OUT OF HEREEEEE YOU'RE MADDLY IN LOVE YEAH WE KNOWWW #Fun fact here Fit prefers to tickle attack his loved ones with raspberries and stuff because he doesn't trust his hands to be gentle :D #Sorry :')

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