just a lil dialogue idea: “...did you just sniff me?”
good luck with school :-)
“Not to sound, I don’t know, ungrateful for the redemption you’re providing me with here, but do you all have to stick your noses into everything? Because I think your whole little group needs a new hobby.”
Steve wrinkles his nose. “You think this is redemption? That’s an interesting take. I’d call it charity, maybe,” he says, ignoring the rest of Billy’s comment.
Billy follows his lead and ignores him too. “Like, you guys could start a knitting circle, I’m sure ol’ Joyce would enjoy that. Oh! A Bridge Club. What do you think, Harrington? Think that would occupy you enough to stop willingly tracking down monsters with nothing but a fucking baseball bat?”
Billy has been out of the hospital for three months. He’s been adopted by Joyce Byers for two, and has been patrolling the woods for monsters with Harrington for one.
None of it was really his choice, but neither was the possession back in July, and he finds this to be something much more tolerable to have thrust upon him.
Steve gives a small smile, taking quick crunching steps through the dark forest. “Aw, don’t hurt my feelings, Hargrove. I might start thinking you don’t want to hang out with me.”
Billy scowls, but he can feel it lacking its usual venom. Somehow, the events of the summer have made him someone worth saving, worth helping, worth befriending, instead of someone to be feared.
No, the Mind Flayer taking over his brain and making him commit atrocities only encouraged Harrington and his whole flock of a family to put an axe in his hand and make him help to make sure it never happened again. Go figure.
“I don’t want to hang out with you,” he grumbles, though it isn’t entirely true. What he doesn’t want is to be going after the very thing that almost killed him. The Harrington aspect is the only part that makes it less terrifying, makes his heart beat too fast for reasons far away from fear.
“Fine then,” Steve says, but he sounds bemused more than angry. “Stay back next time and hang out with the kids. You can play Dungeons and Dragons with them, I’m sure that’d be fun for you.” A wide grin overtakes his face. “There’s your alternate hobby. Sorry it’s not quite as exciting as- what was it? A knitting circle?”
Billy fights to keep the frown on his face, but it’s hard not to be intoxicated by Harrington’s humor, his ability to be light and brave, even when doing something as frightening (and fucking stupid) as combing the woods for monsters. “If I did that, I couldn’t hold a real axe, I’d have to have a fucking imaginary one and speaking of which: don’t you think you should stop antagonizing the person with a weapon walking behind you-”
Steve turns his head back towards Billy with his fingers to his lips, makes a Shhh sound.
“Shut up, Billy, Jesus,” Steve says, and all of the humor and goodness from his voice a few moments earlier is gone.
It’s then that Billy notices the rustling sound, and the low growl emitting from a handful of yards away, its source hidden behind some brush.
Panic shoots through him. In his mind there’s only him, being dragged down into the basement of that steel mill; him killing Heather, him killing Mrs. Driscol, him killing a third of Hawkins, all because of that thing, that thing that took him and is now only a minute or two away from doing it again.
A hand clamps around his wrist and he has to keep from screaming. But when he opens his eyes to face death a second time, it’s just Harrington, tugging him away. “Come on, Bill. Just-”
Steve drags him by his arm all the way to a tree to their left. A generous piece of its trunk is hollowed out and Steve stuffs the both of them inside. “Just stay quiet. It’ll come out of the bushes in a second and we’ll see what it is.”
But Billy doesn’t want to see what it is. He wants to be sitting at the kitchen table with Joyce, drinking tea at two in the morning when neither of them can sleep. He wants to be driving Max home from the arcade and pretending to hate the music she chooses. He wants anything but this.
The panic is almost blinding. In therapy- another thing he does involuntarily, but can’t deny the benefits of -Dr. Owens is always trying to give him ways to calm down from anxiety attacks, claiming every new skill is a “tool for his recovery toolbox” or something like that.
And it’s dumb. But Billy hates feeling like this.
Alright. Stupid hollow tree. Steve. Roots and grass under his shoes. His own hand. Some stars up in the sky.
Four things you can touch.
Usually he’d reach out and actually touch the things he listed, but most of what is in reaching distance is Steve or on Steve’s person, so he refrains. Still, he finds things that he could touch.
Tree bark. Steve’s hair. Steve’s shirt. Steve’s jeans.
Billy’s breathing is still uneven, the world still feels like it’s going to cave in. He keeps trying.
Three things you can hear.
Steve’s breathing. An owl hooting, distantly. That damn monster still rustling in those bushes, refusing to just reveal itself and put him out of his misery.
Two things you can smell.
The sappy, woody scent of the tree. And Steve, but Steve smells like a lot of things. Like hairspray and like cigarettes and like denim and sweat and expensive cologne.
A bit of calm finally begins to settle on Billy. He takes another deep breath, breathing in Harrington. It’s comforting.
“Um.” He hears Harrington clear his throat. “Did you just sniff me?”
Billy opens his eyes. Unconsciously, his face has moved closer to Steve, his nose a mere inch away from Steve’s shoulder. Billy jerks back.
“Jesus. Sorry. Just trying to uh. Ground myself.” He pinches his wrist for how fucking stupid that sounds.
Suddenly the rustling stops, but then it gets louder as, to Billy’s horror, the creature starts making its way out of the brush, the sound of it getting closer.
Billy tenses, painfully glad that Steve is there with his bat and it won’t be Billy who has to be brave tonight.
A head pokes out from between the trees and Steve’s body relaxes. Billy squints his eyes to look.
Steve gives a sharp, involuntarily cackle and then looks directly at Billy.
Billy looks back and then they’re both laughing impossibly hard, all of the coiled up energy in their veins escaping through loud guffaws in the otherwise silent forest.
Steve’s head lands on Billy’s shoulders as they continue to laugh. As they settle down, Steve seems to remember something. He looks up at Billy.
“Wait. Did you sniff me earlier?”
Jesus Christ. “Don’t think so highly of yourself, pretty boy. I was just breathing, I don’t know, deeply to calm down.”
Steve smiles. “Scared, huh?”
They’re still in the tree, the small space seeming so much more cramped now that it isn’t fear that keeps them there.
“Oh, shut up. Of course not.”
When Steve tilts his head up to meet Billy’s eyes, the change in angle makes his lips only a breath away from Billy’s own. “Do I smell good?”
“Fuck off,” Billy breathes, but when he tries to break Steves gaze, to turn away or get out of this tree that feels so charged and hot, he’s shocked it hasn’t caught fire, Steve’s lips catch his.