Oh my god you wrote Stebbins so well. By the river made me CRY, that was amazing. I don't know if you take requests for the long walk, but I've been so hyperfixated, and barely anyone writes for it. I was wondering if you could maybe do a timeline of sunlight and Stebbins? Like how they got together and some of their best and worst moments. OR maybe an alternate ending to by the river, where sweet angel Stebbins makes it out alive and comes home to his sunlight? I love angst to comfort, but you can do whatever, and I'll be so happy. No pressure to write this, I'm just starved, thank you anyway!
um so this is like the cutest thing anyone’s ever said?? i love you so much??? i hope i did this well, so i hope you like it!!! 🥹👉👈
sunlight ('by the river' alt ending) — b. stebbins
▸summary: he thought he was a goner, another item of roadkill on the tarmac that he was sure was ruining his life. but they say love conquers all, and it'll continue to do so. and billy stebbins has never been so grateful about a cliche.
▸characters: billy stebbins (my actual baby fr), fem!reader (billy's sunlight that i fear may become a future larger project but we shall see)
▸tw: angst, the long walk canon gore and violence, veiled cruetly (but also not), bodily filth, yucky themes, death, multiple deaths, disturbing description of death, just death guys, it's stephen king, COMFORT, FLUFF, LOVING, SUNLIGHT, SLIGHT DOPAMINE AT THE END
▸a/n: requested by anon!! i hope it does your request justice!! i did love writing it so i hope you loved reading it. lemme know if you want more sunlight and billy!! or send through your requests for other shows and movies and characters!!
HE THOUGHT FOR sure he was a goner. His liver failing, his lungs filling with fluid, his kneecaps twisting and his pelvis threatening to give out. There would be a myriad of issues that would follow this stupid walk.
They were walking on the bridge, the three of them. Stebbins had told them his past, his aim, his goal. His will was losing its resolve. He told them of you. Of course, he did. He told everybody at the beginning of the walk. He kept a sketch of your dream ring in his shirt, your picture in his hat. People were bound to ask questions, and they had when morale was high.
"Oh, she's my sunlight," he'd smile and say. "I'm gonna use the money to get her dream engagement ring. I'm gonna marry 'er when this is over. Gonna get her a white dress, and pretty flowers for her hair. And her dream ring to match her eyes."
That was the only thing in his mind as he walked. Even as his body gave up on him, he thought only of you.
Now, he was ill, pneumonia probably. His head was stuffed with cotton wool, his ears ringing with the endless bounce of his brain. He stumbled every third step, he inhaled glass splinters. He almost wanted to die.
"I'm gonna end this shit," he half-sobbed, half-muttered under his breath. He just didn't know that the other two were listening to him, "with my head held high. Instead of-of crawling on my belly, like a lizard chokin' on its own mucus."
"Sounds like a mighty dignified way to go," he barely heard Ray murmur. Stebbins' delirium was setting in waves. "Sounds mighty fine."
Stebbins almost paid no heed, turning his face upwards, his eyes shutting briefly. "Think it'll rain tonight, boys?" He heard a voice, but he didn't hear the reply. He turned to face the other two walkers, who were looking down with mirrored expressions. His confusion cut through his delirium. "What?"
He watched Pete swallow. "Just wondering." He didn't look away from Ray, who was staring right back. Without so much as a glance, the boy spoke again. "I'm sorry, Stebbins."
"What're you doing?" Stebbins asked, almost in alarm.
Ray shrugged, only then turning to the blonde. "Just realising that this is as far as we're gonna go together."
Ray wasn't talking about the three of them, and Stebbins knew it. He saw the looks the boys were giving each other. It was the same way he and his sunlight looked at each other. The blonde looked down, tears rising at the hands clasped tightly, Ray's clutching Pete's as his breathing sped up. "Hey, Stebbins?"
"Can you look in on my mom?"
The blonde stumbled, barely catching himself. His eyes blurred with tears as they rose rapidly. "Yeah, Ray."
The other boy turned to him, his ginger hair slick with sweat, and Stebbins just noticed the carnal exhaustion on his face. It was a primal tiredness and bitter disappointment that mixed in his eyes, but they swirled with such a love that he could relate to.
So there was no ill will to the two walkers that joined hands and looked at the blonde with broken resolve and resigned smiles.
"Hey, Stebbins," Pete called from beside the love of his life. Stebbins turned to him, watching the boy break out into a grin. "I dibs the name of your first born."
The blonde choked on a laugh, it sounding more like a sob. "Sure, Pete. You and Ray both do."
"It's been a pleasure walking with you, Stebbins," Ray piped in, quietly. Gently. His lidded eyes closing further as he walked. Thunder roared above them.
"An honour," the blonde sobbed. He kept his face forward as Ray and Pete disappeared from his vision, from his life, from his soul.
First warning, forty-seven. First warning, twenty-three.
The sickness was swallowing him whole.
Second warning, forty-seven. Second warning, twenty-three.
He kept walking, his toes scuffing the ground as he tried to keep pace.
Third warning, forty-seven. Third warning, twenty-three.
Ray laughed. He laughed at something Pete had said. Stebbins hoped they had both laid it bare for each other to see. Hoped they'd both said the words that need to be said and the ones that didn't.
Stebbins screamed, a raw, primal sound that echoed from his soul. His hands came up to his already blocked ears, the sound of two shots ringing through his already damaged brain. The sound also brought the faintest whisper of that which he hoped to say again.
He was bawling now, clenching his fists by his side as a truck roared beside him.
"You did it, son," the Major's cold tone cut through the night as the first droplets burned the boy's skin. "Hop in the truck, an ambulance has already been rung."
"Get fucked, Major Asshole," the boy grit out.
The man chuckled. "Alright, fair enough. What's your wish, then?"
"You get to know it when I get to that ambulance."
So, Stebbins walked. The rain pattered him down, and he almost thought he would keel over before he saw you again, embarrassing him and you further.
But he made it. With the rain like hailstones and the ambulance lights like a beacon of hope, he made it.
Crowds cheered, the paramedics waited, and only then did he stop.
“Well, son?” the Major asked, like he was unaware of the truth in his words.
Stebbins’ eyes blazed through the illness clouding his right mind. “I want that carbine.”
With a nod, the soldier handed it to him. He tested the weight in his hands, as though he was hunting a deer.
Then, he dared to look his father in the face. The gun was hung limply by his side, unthreatening and tame.
“This is my wish, and this is Ray’s wish. And I’ll be damn sure it’s Pete’s wish. Cause fuck you for tearing them two apart.” He aimed the barrel at the man. “Have a nice, hot bath in Hell, you asshole.”
The Major didn’t even have time to raise his hands before his own son shot him straight through the throat. Then the heart. Then his head.
He would’ve shot him another forty-seven times, but then there’d be nothing to clean up. And you didn’t need to see that.
His head whipped around so fast, you thought the whiplash would detach it. You were there. His sunlight. His reason.
Dropping the weapon without worrying about any consequences, he hobbled towards you. You sprinted, he hobbled. He would’ve stumbled, crawled, clawed at the ground to drag himself over if you were going to be running into his arms.
But one loose stone was his downfall. His toe caught on it, and he fell like a sack of them.
You caught him. You came down with him, but your arms were around him. They were there, around him. His sunlight was holding him now.
He sobbed into your shoulder, having no energy to embrace you back, his arms hanging limp by his sides. “I’m so tired, so tired. I wanna go home, with you. I want home. I’ve gotta get up, I can’t stop. I wanna go home, I needa go home!”
Your heart cracked with every plea that exited your boy’s mouth. Tears welled in your eyes as paramedics surrounded him with gentle voices and soft bandages. You felt the warmth of his skin through his clothes. Too warm. A fever.
“You’re coming home,” you whispered. “Home to me. Home with me.”
He babbles in your arms more, the illness catching up to him as he all but collapsed. You choked back a sob as he was heaved onto a stretcher with a mask and machines.
“Don’t leave me,” he cried beneath the plastic, reaching a feeble hand to you.
You exchanged a look with the paramedic, who nodded you on. Scrambling aboard, you took his hand as he cried. You joined him, although you were better at keeping the loud sobs at bay.
Arriving at the hospital was a feat. Staying in the hospital was an inconvenience. Living away from you was torture. Discharge was a relief.
Still, you were there. His sunlight in the dark. You often woke up to an empty bed, heading to the window to watch him.
He was walking as the sun came up.
You joined him one morning. Leaning against him as little as you could, you walked with him for hours. Around the yard, over and over, like he was punishing himself.
You walked with him to Mrs. Garraty, who welcomed you with open arms and tear-stained cheeks. You walked with him to Art’s grandmother’s, listening to stories he told her of her grandson’s bravery and honour.
You listened when the nightmares woke him, screaming for the Pete and Ray he’d left behind. You listened when he said that Ray was Pete’s sunlight. You let him hold you in the despair of the darkness, of the thought that something like that might happen to you both.
You let him sleep in top of you, feeling you breathe, hearing your heart. You helped him when he fell. You loved him.
The hardest part was his week after recovery.
He was walking, as he always did when he felt it. The urge. The feeling. And he panicked. He’d never panicked about it before, but the urge had never come this early in the morning, while he walked. What was he supposed to do? Go, stay, walk, run?
You found him sobbing, standing in the middle of the yard as the sky became orange. The smell hit you first, and you almost burst into tears.
You reached a hand out to him, watching him stare at his own with his own tears hitting them. “Honey, let’s clean you up.”
“How can you put up with me?” he wailed. “What if I’m like this forever?”
A forever walker, sweating from nightmares and stinking of fresh urine that stained his pyjama pants?
“Because you are my forever, Bill,” your voice cracked. You led him inside, admittedly trying not gag at the smell, the unhealthy dark hue of it on his legs. But you meant your words. “I’ll look after you for forever, because you are forever.”
You had drawn him a bath before you went out, like you did on particularly early mornings. You carefully stripped him of his clothes as he sniffled and sobbed like a child. He was a child. He was scared and broken and childlike. Your Billy.
You continued speaking as he lowered himself into the tub. “You are my forever. Even if you wanna walk to Canada and back, I’ll walk with you. If you scream at the dark, I’ll light it up for you. If you get sick, I’ll nurse you.”
“And if I soil myself?” He sniffled.
“I’ll clean you up. Because that’s what love is, Bill. I love you. I always will. Long after we’re both gone. I will love you. Always. Forever.”
“My sunlight, sunlight, sunlight,” he muttered. You words carded him safely to sleep as you kept watch beside him.
His sunlight, sunlight, sunlight.
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