ᵇⁱˡˡʸ ʰᵃʳᵍʳᵒᵛᵉ

rp blog [] follows from @@to-kill-a-procrastinator []

[billyyhargrve]

He scoffs, the shock of the question almost pushing a genuine bit of a smile into the motion. He looks to see her standing there, unassuming, with the dog by her side. He's never talked to this girl, not really. Sure, her face is familiar. But he only knows her now from seeing her hanging around Max's friends and the ever-expanding ragtag group they have.

"Couldn't be better," he grits out, turning his head back to the woods. He feels the humming in his eardrums like a bassline warbling out from the trees, seeping down through the roots and into the ground. "You?" He spits the word out with a sarcastic glee, like they're old friends catching up. Like having normal conversations can somehow force him to be anything other than what he is, which he ironically can't even be sure of.

Most days, he feels like a blip of space between frames of film. Like he exists only in moments no one sees, hears, or breathes. Like something else takes over for all the other moments in between.

[rp-anne-watson]

Anne blinks at him, almost more surprised than he seemed to be at her question. Quite truthfully, she hadn’t expected him to answer, much less to ask back. Although she’s not quite sure how to place his tone of voice. Was he mocking her? Or sincere? It wouldn’t be the first time she failed to read the room, but she quickly decides that if he was the one mocking her, he was the asshole, something she refuses to be. Might be naïve, but what was the worst that could happen? Well, the worst that could happen to her? Billy would probably not be stupid enough to agitate her dog.

Shifting her weight from one leg to the other and back, she quickly thinks about what to tell Billy, before answering slowly.

“Same as always, as always, I guess,” she shrugs, absentmindedly wrapping Sammy’s lead tighter around her hand. “Dry skin from dusty books in the library and I cut my hand on a broken glass in the Diner yesterday-”

She holds up her bandaged hand as if to prove her words.

“And I wish the damn radios would finally stop glitching,” she adds, almost like an afterthought.

[billyyhargrve]

"Hm," he hums absently in response. He seems to have deflated slightly, like an animal no longer threatened. Billy can't tell a working radio from a busted one these days. He doesn't trust that the shapes in the static he sees in the TV are real, and he couldn't give less of a damn about the garbled nonsense coming from the radio speakers. It's all cacophony inside his head and out, anyway.

He sucks in a deep breath after a stretch of silence. "Well, what are you doing over here, then?"

His throat is thick with something fearful and unknown. It usually is these days, but this is a new brand for him. This is the anxious ache of spreading himself out, letting a curtain edge open to see what will happen. No one talks to him straight anymore. Not Max, not the kids, not Susan, not the cops or the scientists or anyone. It's all careful maneuvers around him, intentional words only when necessary, and always cautious not to provoke unwanted results. When was the last time he got a straight answer? A casual conversation?

[billyyhargrve]

Billy ★ At the Edge of the Woods

The rotting picnic tables on the outskirts of Forest Hills trailer park have become a place of refuge for him. They sit right where the gravel stops and the brush becomes unkept. It's the one place he mysteriously has a clear enough head to not feel like such a freakshow. The border of the forest seems to hum in a way that quiets everything else raging in his head: the memories from Starcourt, the grating voice of the Mind Flayer echoing in his head, the strange voices screaming out to him in the night, the low, concerned whispers of Max's posse. Might as well be his posse, too, now, with the way they never leave him alone. He feels like their test subject, a volatile specimen that needs to be watched.

He'd kill for a cigarette right now. Tragically, he had to kill that habit. Owens' doctors said his lungs were shot after that Mind Flayer tendril punched a hole in his chest. He would've ignored them if he were able to take a deep enough breath of normal air without breaking into a pitiful fit of hacking.

As wrecked as his body is, his mind's worse. The voices. The nightmares. Flashbacks, hallucinations, panic attacks. All symptoms of PTSD, he's told. But it feels like more. It feels deeper, like an abyssal pit. He can't keep anything straight anymore. For months after the mall, he could barely muster a sentence. He's worked his way partially out of his crumpled shell, but he's far cry from the loudmouthed bastard he was before this shit came into his life.

And he feels this profound, foreboding dread building under his skin with every day that passes. Something is coming, hurtling towards this shithole town like a comet, he can feel it. The itch nags at him every moment of the day, and it only seems to abate when he can decompress here, at the edge of the woods by the trailer park.

The afternoon sun is warm on his skin, the heat soothing in a familiar and basal way. He picks at the splinters in the rotting wood of the table, staring out into the shadowy green of the forest, eyes flitting over the dark emerald of the leaves and the winding stems of weeds and wildflowers.

He enjoys it while he can, because he's never alone for long. He may be on a steep mental decline, but he's nothing if not perceptive. Those dorks that call themselves "the party" are always on his ass for one reason or another. They don't like it when he's unsupervised for too long, and it makes him feel like a goddamn child.

Sure enough, after ample time has passed, he hears the poorly concealed crunch of gravel behind him.

"You rats can't leave me alone for more than five minutes, can you? Piss off." He spits, but it has a tiredness to it. It lacks the bite that a younger Billy would have put into it. "I can't guarantee I won't bite your head off if you keep annoying me."

@sterpstarters

[cynicalkilljoy]

“Whoa now, it’s just me. It’s Ollie…” she said as she walked closer, her hair flowing in the wind, her feet crunching against the gravel. “Don’t worry, I’m not here to babysit you… I just always come here by myself to smoke. I didn’t know you’d be here.” She stopped a few feet away from him, crossing her arms. The afternoon heat made beads of sweat form on her forehead. After a moment, she uncrossed her arms and wiped the sweat from her skin with the sleeve of her light plaid shirt. Her eyes looked at Billy. She’d seen him around, he was one of the people taken by the Mind Flayer. Guilt kicked in as she realized it, not knowing what to do. None of it was her fault, but she still remembered his screams at the mall that night. Yet here he was, alive in the flesh.

Something felt off. Ollie could sense it. She had never even asked Eddie or Billy how they managed to come back or what it was like for them. But Ollie knew some questions were better left untouched, and some truths could hurt even the strongest hearts. The stillness felt peaceful for a moment. Ollie swallowed hard, trying to speak again, but did she dare to? He already seemed upset with the party constantly watching over him. She knew what that felt like from when she was back in the lab, how close she had been to Henry, not knowing he would do any of this. She blamed herself for not doing anything. But what could she have done anyway? She couldn’t stop him, even when she tried.

Her mind whispered his words back to her: I’ll come back for you, Olivia. He had only ever called her by her full name, never the nickname she’d been given. Facing what was in front of her now, she walked closer to the table, stopping on the opposite side so she was facing Billy, hoping he’d at least look at her. “I have this, if it would help.” She pulled a cigarette from the pack and set the pack on the table. “I don’t smoke these, but you can have them.” Then she took a joint from her pocket and lit it with a click of her lighter. The flame framed her face for a second as she inhaled. Ollie set the lighter down on the table and exhaled a thick cloud of smoke, turning her head so she wouldn’t blow it in Billy’s face. She leaned slightly over the table before pushing herself up to sit on top of it. “If I’m bothering you, I can leave if you want. I’d understand if you just wanted to be alone.” Her green eyes met his again, the sun catching in them as she waited.

[billyyhargrve]

"I do." He said, but with a bated intonation that would imply a current changing of heart. He looked intently down at the cigarette and lighter against the wood of the table. He didn't know this girl much at all, but almost every stranger in the trailer park was wary of him. They never talked to him, never bothered coming up to him. He supposed he liked it that way.

So it was odd, even for a stranger, to come sit next to him and offer him a cigarette. A cigarette he shouldn't have. A cigarette Max and her friends would berate him for having the carelessness and self-destructiveness to smoke.

But damn, it was refreshing to not be pitied or babied or feared outright. So he picked up the lighter and lit himself a cig, taking a short but sweet drag and relishing in the woody burnt taste of the smoke entering his lungs.

"Why d'you have these if you don't smoke 'em?" He asked. It felt weird. He realized he hadn't prompted anything like a real or normal conversation since before Starcourt. It was uncharted territory for this new, mangled Billy.

[billyyhargrve]

Billy ★ At the Edge of the Woods

The rotting picnic tables on the outskirts of Forest Hills trailer park have become a place of refuge for him. They sit right where the gravel stops and the brush becomes unkept. It's the one place he mysteriously has a clear enough head to not feel like such a freakshow. The border of the forest seems to hum in a way that quiets everything else raging in his head: the memories from Starcourt, the grating voice of the Mind Flayer echoing in his head, the strange voices screaming out to him in the night, the low, concerned whispers of Max's posse. Might as well be his posse, too, now, with the way they never leave him alone. He feels like their test subject, a volatile specimen that needs to be watched.

He'd kill for a cigarette right now. Tragically, he had to kill that habit. Owens' doctors said his lungs were shot after that Mind Flayer tendril punched a hole in his chest. He would've ignored them if he were able to take a deep enough breath of normal air without breaking into a pitiful fit of hacking.

As wrecked as his body is, his mind's worse. The voices. The nightmares. Flashbacks, hallucinations, panic attacks. All symptoms of PTSD, he's told. But it feels like more. It feels deeper, like an abyssal pit. He can't keep anything straight anymore. For months after the mall, he could barely muster a sentence. He's worked his way partially out of his crumpled shell, but he's far cry from the loudmouthed bastard he was before this shit came into his life.

And he feels this profound, foreboding dread building under his skin with every day that passes. Something is coming, hurtling towards this shithole town like a comet, he can feel it. The itch nags at him every moment of the day, and it only seems to abate when he can decompress here, at the edge of the woods by the trailer park.

The afternoon sun is warm on his skin, the heat soothing in a familiar and basal way. He picks at the splinters in the rotting wood of the table, staring out into the shadowy green of the forest, eyes flitting over the dark emerald of the leaves and the winding stems of weeds and wildflowers.

He enjoys it while he can, because he's never alone for long. He may be on a steep mental decline, but he's nothing if not perceptive. Those dorks that call themselves "the party" are always on his ass for one reason or another. They don't like it when he's unsupervised for too long, and it makes him feel like a goddamn child.

Sure enough, after ample time has passed, he hears the poorly concealed crunch of gravel behind him.

"You rats can't leave me alone for more than five minutes, can you? Piss off." He spits, but it has a tiredness to it. It lacks the bite that a younger Billy would have put into it. "I can't guarantee I won't bite your head off if you keep annoying me."

@sterpstarters

[mavericksdavenport]

Maverick likes the quiet. She likes being alone, and she likes space to think. Her visions, if she could call them that, are getting weirder. She can almost feel them in the room with her, like she is being pushed into the memories. Some are more coherent then others. Some are jagged and confusing. Some are like a VHS tape copied wrong. But she writes them down anyways. Anything to figure out who they belong to. They are not hers. They cannot be hers, she recognises some items from the past that are older then she is. But the memories feel familiar, yet so, so strange. She'd go to Lover's Lake and fuck around with the sinkhole, but not today. Not today when her brain feels like it's being injected directly with straight caffeine. She's broken her radio. It just fucked with her brain worse then usual.

She can live with the false memories. But what she cannot live with is her mind flickers. Lightbulbs exploding when it gets too much. Sudden bursts of emotional clarity, followed by seething, disgusting amounts of pure, unadulterated rage. The memories feel clearer these days. Sharper. One stands out, and it's not the dancer spinning around in a circle. It's a grave. It says Maverick Davenport on it, but it's dated years before she was born. She's never asked if she was named after someone. There was never anyone to ask.

Her father wouldn't have told her shit. Her mother was gone before she could remember. And nobody really ever told her anything about her. Nothing good, nothing bad. She had no opinion on Mama Davenport, beyond questions as to why she'd left. In her mind, her mother named her after someone special. Odyssey was never her legal middle name, it was originally something like...Jade? Yes, Maverick Jade Davenport, but that sounded lame. Odysseys were journeys, and she was constantly on one.

And she sees someone sitting at the old benches. Billy Hargrove, a dead man walking. Does she know him personally? No, not beyond whatever she heard tossed around after he came back from the dead. "Considering we don't know each other, don't you think it's rude to call me a rat?" She calls. She's always wondered about the dead of Hawkins. The ones who, by powers unknown were not dead anymore. She wondered how their bodies coped with the sudden stop of systems then restart. She always wanted to be a doctor, but those dreams died with Maverick Jade, MJ. Working in the Hawkins Library would do her, until the town decided that it didn't like her and then she'd leave. She was a go girl, always running and always the first to leave. That was how it was, and how it would always be for her.

[billyyhargrve]

He glances back at her, eyes still stony, and sighs. "Thought you were someone else," he grumbles. He doesn't know her, but he recognizes her face. He can't tell if he recognizes her from something real or from the tempest of fake memories and nightmares that stew in the sludge of his mind. He's sure he's seen her briefly.

"You're not from here." He says, and he can't stop the words before they come out. He doesn't care where she's from. He doesn't care who she is. He wants to be left alone. He should be left alone. But some energy wills him to speak. The same energy that coils tight in his stomach during a storm, that prickles on his neck after a bad nightmare, and that hums under his skin when he looks at the border of the woods.

[billyyhargrve]

Billy ★ At the Edge of the Woods

The rotting picnic tables on the outskirts of Forest Hills trailer park have become a place of refuge for him. They sit right where the gravel stops and the brush becomes unkept. It's the one place he mysteriously has a clear enough head to not feel like such a freakshow. The border of the forest seems to hum in a way that quiets everything else raging in his head: the memories from Starcourt, the grating voice of the Mind Flayer echoing in his head, the strange voices screaming out to him in the night, the low, concerned whispers of Max's posse. Might as well be his posse, too, now, with the way they never leave him alone. He feels like their test subject, a volatile specimen that needs to be watched.

He'd kill for a cigarette right now. Tragically, he had to kill that habit. Owens' doctors said his lungs were shot after that Mind Flayer tendril punched a hole in his chest. He would've ignored them if he were able to take a deep enough breath of normal air without breaking into a pitiful fit of hacking.

As wrecked as his body is, his mind's worse. The voices. The nightmares. Flashbacks, hallucinations, panic attacks. All symptoms of PTSD, he's told. But it feels like more. It feels deeper, like an abyssal pit. He can't keep anything straight anymore. For months after the mall, he could barely muster a sentence. He's worked his way partially out of his crumpled shell, but he's far cry from the loudmouthed bastard he was before this shit came into his life.

And he feels this profound, foreboding dread building under his skin with every day that passes. Something is coming, hurtling towards this shithole town like a comet, he can feel it. The itch nags at him every moment of the day, and it only seems to abate when he can decompress here, at the edge of the woods by the trailer park.

The afternoon sun is warm on his skin, the heat soothing in a familiar and basal way. He picks at the splinters in the rotting wood of the table, staring out into the shadowy green of the forest, eyes flitting over the dark emerald of the leaves and the winding stems of weeds and wildflowers.

He enjoys it while he can, because he's never alone for long. He may be on a steep mental decline, but he's nothing if not perceptive. Those dorks that call themselves "the party" are always on his ass for one reason or another. They don't like it when he's unsupervised for too long, and it makes him feel like a goddamn child.

Sure enough, after ample time has passed, he hears the poorly concealed crunch of gravel behind him.

"You rats can't leave me alone for more than five minutes, can you? Piss off." He spits, but it has a tiredness to it. It lacks the bite that a younger Billy would have put into it. "I can't guarantee I won't bite your head off if you keep annoying me."

@sterpstarters

[rp-anne-watson]

“You can try, but I promise you, he’ll be faster.” Anne’s voice is unamused as she gestures to the dog standing at her side, the two ever a duo, unless she’s at work. “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she apologizes in a softer voice. She doesn’t know everything that happened, only bits and pieces in between from what Dustin told her, the boy she might as well adopt as her younger brother.

Of course, she knows Billy, or knew him. Before Star Court Mall. They sometimes came across each other in the school hallways, and his mop of curls was always her signal to duck into a corner and wait out the storm, until Billy’s walked past.

It’s been… what? A year? Since then. She’s grown more confident since then, and Billy is anything but that. There’s little of the bully left who she was so afraid of in school. As little as she likes him, she still can’t help but feel bad for him, considering what he went through. Even just the physical aftermath of the Mind Flayer must be harrowing. Not to mention the emotional and psychological consequences. She could almost pity him.

She’s turning away already, almost ready to leave Billy Hargrove rot like he deserves to, but a few words, words she has carved deep into her heart in rebellion to her parents’ education, keep pushing against her ribcage. “Being kind is being punk.” She’s still learning how to be the second, but she has the first down like an expert.

So, with a sigh, she turns back to Billy. The dog at her side looks up to her expectantly. “Are you okay?” She tries to make her voice sound soft, not aggressive, not mocking. She can only hope Billy won’t take offence. If he does and is still his violent self from school… she’s not sure Sammy, her dog will be as kind as her.

[billyyhargrve]

He scoffs, the shock of the question almost pushing a genuine bit of a smile into the motion. He looks to see her standing there, unassuming, with the dog by her side. He's never talked to this girl, not really. Sure, her face is familiar. But he only knows her now from seeing her hanging around Max's friends and the ever-expanding ragtag group they have.

"Couldn't be better," he grits out, turning his head back to the woods. He feels the humming in his eardrums like a bassline warbling out from the trees, seeping down through the roots and into the ground. "You?" He spits the word out with a sarcastic glee, like they're old friends catching up. Like having normal conversations can somehow force him to be anything other than what he is, which he ironically can't even be sure of.

Most days, he feels like a blip of space between frames of film. Like he exists only in moments no one sees, hears, or breathes. Like something else takes over for all the other moments in between.

[billyyhargrve]

Billy ★ At the Edge of the Woods

The rotting picnic tables on the outskirts of Forest Hills trailer park have become a place of refuge for him. They sit right where the gravel stops and the brush becomes unkept. Any waking moment that isn't spent with Max's freak friends or the police chief or the government breathing down his neck, Billy spends here. It's the one place he mysteriously has a clear enough head to not feel like such a freakshow. The border of the forest seems to hum in a way that quiets everything raging in his head: the memories from Starcourt, the grating voice of the Mind Flayer echoing in his head, the strange voices screaming out to him in the night, the low, concerned whispers of Max's posse. Might as well be his posse, too, now, with the way they never leave him alone. He feels like their test subject, a volatile specimen that needs to be watched.

He'd kill for a cigarette right now. Tragically, that's a habit he's had to abandon. After fully recovering (if you can even call it that) from the Mind Flayer tendril that punched through his chest, the doctors deemed his scarred lungs forever too weak to risk keeping up the smoking habit. He would've ignored them if he were able to take a deep enough breath of normal air without breaking into a pitiful fit of hacking.

His broken body is a great source of ignominy for him, but not quite as much as the mess his head has become. The voices. The nightmares. Flashbacks, hallucinations, panic attacks. All symptoms of PTSD, he's told. Time and time again, Owens' team of "professionals" tell him his brain has to learn to cope with the normal world again. That everything he experiences are the stabbing remnants of the trauma he's been through. But it feels like more. It feels deeper, like an abyssal pit. He can't keep anything straight anymore. For months after the mall, he could barely muster a sentence. He's worked his way partially out of his crumpled shell, but he's far cry from the loudmouthed bastard he was before this shit came into his life.

And he feels this profound, foreboding dread building under his skin with every day that passes. Something is coming, hurtling towards this shithole town like a comet, he can feel it. The itch nags at him every moment of the day, and it only seems to abate when he can decompress here, at the edge of the woods by the trailer park.

The afternoon sun is warm on his skin, the heat soothing in a familiar and basal way. He picks at the splinters in the rotting wood of the table, staring out into the shadowy green of the forest, eyes flitting over the dark emerald of the leaves and the winding stems of weeds and wildflowers.

He enjoys it while he can, because he's never alone for long. He may be on a steep mental decline, but he's nothing if not perceptive. Those dorks that call themselves "the party" are always on his ass for one reason or another. They don't like it when he's unsupervised for too long, and it makes him feel like a goddamn child.

Sure enough, after ample time has passed, he hears the poorly concealed crunch of gravel behind him.

"You rats can't leave me alone for more than five minutes, can you? Piss off." He spits, but it has a tiredness to it. It lacks the bite that a younger Billy would have put into it. "I can't guarantee I won't bite your head off if you keep annoying me."

@sterpstarters

[mona-henderson]

For a long moment, she just stood at the edge of the gravel, hands shoved deep into her pockets, watching Billy Hargrove sit like he belonged there—like the forest had personally granted him the right to sulk undisturbed. The insult didn’t even register as personal. It was too automatic. Too tired. "Good thing I’ve survived worse than attitude, huh?" Her words came out steady—not sharp, not mocking, just there.

"And I’m not a rat. I’m a Henderson, which is significantly more annoying but slightly less prone to carrying the plague," Mona drawled, her voice a low, cool honey that lacked the frantic, high-pitched energy of the teenagers. She walked forward, not with the cautious tiptoeing of someone approaching a wounded animal, but with a casual, heavy-booted stride. She slowed to a stop just shy of him, her gaze lingering—on the curve of his shoulders, the restless fingers tapping against the wood like he needed the contact to stay steady. The tension rolling off him wasn’t something you could fake.

The quiet held between them as she didn’t say a word. Mona sat down at the far end of the rotting picnic table, the wood creaking softly beneath her weight. She didn’t look at him right away—just let her eyes wander to the tree line, following his gaze, listening to that strange hum the Hawkins woods always carried. It was the kind of quiet that felt alive, like the whole forest was holding its breath.

Her hand slipped into her jacket pocket, fingers brushing against a crumpled pack of cigarettes. She hesitated, remembering what Dustin had said about Billy’s lungs, and instead fished out a pack of gum. With a quiet snap, she popped a piece into her mouth, then flicked the pack toward him in a wordless offer.

"I came out here because you look about ten seconds away from either punching a tree or letting it swallow you whole," she said at last, her tone even but edged with concern. Her eyes found his then—sharp but not demanding, warm in a way that didn’t ask for anything back. "You’re fine out here, yeah? Don’t worry, I’m not about to play chaperone."

[billyyhargrve]

He scoffed, something sad and weak. He wanted to refuse the simple offer, to bat the pack of gum out of her hand and send her running, but he didn’t. He plucked a piece of gum from the pack and turned it over in his palm. He pulled his eyes away from where they were transfixed on the forest’s edge and down to the glimmering foil in his hand. 

Mona was just as much of a nuisance as her cousin and the other pests, maybe even more so, considering her seemingly insatiable need to go against the grain. Every grain. Billy thinks he would’ve enjoyed butting heads with her a year ago. The thought exhausted him now; it made his chest twinge. She was noticeably less of a headache today, which Billy attributed to pity. As always. The radius of eggshells that the others perceived to constantly surround Billy was wide and endless. 

He turned the unopened piece of gum over in his palm again and again, looking back up at the magnetizing green of the trees. The gentle yet disorganized sway of the branches in the wind. The darkness of shadows and filtering light between the gaps.

“Well, I don’t need you to play friend either.” He grumbled. He didn’t ask her to leave or throw any fiery insults. “You’re off the hook as far as I’m concerned. Don’t even know why you’re hanging around here.” And what he meant by that, he wasn’t even sure. Hanging around Hawkins? The trailer park? Dustin and Max and their clinically insane group of menace teenagers? Him? It didn’t matter. He knew Mona’s exposure to what Hawkins held must have only barely scratched the surface, meaning she should cut her losses and bail.

“You must be stupider than you look, y'know? To be rolling up in this shithole and walking up to people like me.” He cleared his throat and blinked a couple of times, feeling the familiar sensation like a buzzing of electric energy behind his eyes.

[billyyhargrve]

Billy ★ At the Edge of the Woods

The rotting picnic tables on the outskirts of Forest Hills trailer park have become a place of refuge for him. They sit right where the gravel stops and the brush becomes unkept. It's the one place he mysteriously has a clear enough head to not feel like such a freakshow. The border of the forest seems to hum in a way that quiets everything else raging in his head: the memories from Starcourt, the grating voice of the Mind Flayer echoing in his head, the strange voices screaming out to him in the night, the low, concerned whispers of Max's posse. Might as well be his posse, too, now, with the way they never leave him alone. He feels like their test subject, a volatile specimen that needs to be watched.

He'd kill for a cigarette right now. Tragically, he had to kill that habit. Owens' doctors said his lungs were shot after that Mind Flayer tendril punched a hole in his chest. He would've ignored them if he were able to take a deep enough breath of normal air without breaking into a pitiful fit of hacking.

As wrecked as his body is, his mind's worse. The voices. The nightmares. Flashbacks, hallucinations, panic attacks. All symptoms of PTSD, he's told. But it feels like more. It feels deeper, like an abyssal pit. He can't keep anything straight anymore. For months after the mall, he could barely muster a sentence. He's worked his way partially out of his crumpled shell, but he's far cry from the loudmouthed bastard he was before this shit came into his life.

And he feels this profound, foreboding dread building under his skin with every day that passes. Something is coming, hurtling towards this shithole town like a comet, he can feel it. The itch nags at him every moment of the day, and it only seems to abate when he can decompress here, at the edge of the woods by the trailer park.

The afternoon sun is warm on his skin, the heat soothing in a familiar and basal way. He picks at the splinters in the rotting wood of the table, staring out into the shadowy green of the forest, eyes flitting over the dark emerald of the leaves and the winding stems of weeds and wildflowers.

He enjoys it while he can, because he's never alone for long. He may be on a steep mental decline, but he's nothing if not perceptive. Those dorks that call themselves "the party" are always on his ass for one reason or another. They don't like it when he's unsupervised for too long, and it makes him feel like a goddamn child.

Sure enough, after ample time has passed, he hears the poorly concealed crunch of gravel behind him.

"You rats can't leave me alone for more than five minutes, can you? Piss off." He spits, but it has a tiredness to it. It lacks the bite that a younger Billy would have put into it. "I can't guarantee I won't bite your head off if you keep annoying me."

@sterpstarters