⊹ ࣪ ˖ warnings: child/physical abuse, some angst, but generally fluff, christmas fun, lots of friendship and mechanic/the party cuteness
⊹ ࣪ ˖ notes: I underestimated how long this chapter will be so if this is extra crusty, it's because I barely had time to edit this lmao. As always, massive thank you to everyone who takes the time to read, like, reblog, comment and especially send me messages. You're the reason I crack my back trying to get these chapters out weekly 😭❤
read on ao3. ⊹ series masterlist.
“So what you’re saying is you want to smell like a department store exploded on you.”
Dustin’s face screws up in offence, clutching the bottle of Farrah Fawcett hairspray like it’s a holy relic. The afternoon light coming through the shop’s grimy windows catches the aerosol can, making it gleam. “This is Steve’s advice. Steve Harrington. The guy literally every girl in Hawkins wants to—”
“Yeah, yeah, Mr Perfect Hair, got it.” You lean against the workbench in Frank’s shop, wiping grease off your hands with a rag that’s probably dirtier than your hands were to begin with. The lights buzz overhead, casting everything in their particular shade of industrial yellow. Oil stains bloom across the concrete floor like abstract art. “And you’re taking grooming advice from a guy who goes through more Aqua Net than my mom and every girl at Hawkins High combined.”
Lucas snorts from where he’s perched on an overturned milk crate, legs swinging back and forth. “She’s got a point.”
“She always has a point,” Mike mutters, but there’s no bite in his words, just observation. He’s sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, knees drawn up, looking about as enthusiastic about the snowball dance as someone facing dental surgery without an anaesthetic.
You’ve been at the shop since six this morning. It’s now pushing four in the afternoon, winter dark already creeping in at the edges of the day. The GTO you’ve been working on is still three hours from done, its engine spread across the workbench like a mechanical autopsy. Frank left an hour ago with a grunt about young people and their damn dances, which you’re pretty sure was his way of saying you could use the space if the boys needed to talk.
They always need to talk.
“Look,” you begin, softening your tone because Dustin’s starting to get that kicked-puppy look he gets when he thinks he’s messed something up. His hat sits crooked on his head, curls escaping around the edges. “The spray is fine. Just don’t use the whole can. You want to look nice, not like you’re trying to hold up a small aircraft with the structural integrity of your hair.”
Dustin’s face brightens immediately, that goofy grin that makes him look about eight years old. “So like... three spritses?”
“Two. Max.”
“Who’s Max—oh.” His face goes through an entire journey—confusion, realisation, panic, forced casualness. “Right. Max. Who’s going. To the dance. Where I’ll also be. Coincidentally.”
Lucas rolls his eyes so hard you’re surprised they don’t fall out of his head. “Smooth, man. Real smooth. She’s going with me. So don’t even think about it.”
“I’m smooth,” Dustin argues, defensive and puffed up. “I’m very smooth. Steve said I just need to—”
“If you say act casual one more time, I’m going to throw this wrench at your head,” you interrupt flatly.
You pick up said wrench, testing its weight thoughtfully. Mike gives you a look that says he might help hold Dustin down if it comes down to it.
“You wouldn’t,” he gasps, but there’s an uncertain flicker that ripples across his expression.
“I might,” you say pleasantly. “Depends on how many more times I have to hear Steve Harrington’s dating philosophy regurgitated at me.”
The door to the shop bangs open, letting in a gust of December cold that cuts through the space heater’s best efforts. Will slips in, cheeks pink from the wind, breath clouding in the sudden temperature differential. He looks marginally less haunted than he did four days ago when you saw him last at the Byers’ place. The exorcism worked. Mostly. The Mind Flayer is gone from his body, particles fled through window cracks into a night that won’t forget them. You haven’t forgotten them either. Not when you’re building weapons in your bedroom at three in the morning, trying to calculate the exact electromagnetic frequency that might hurt something that shouldn’t even exist.
“Hey,” Will says quietly, offering a small wave to the group.
The boys chorus their greetings, and Dustin immediately launches into a recap of the Great Hairspray Debate. You watch Will settle into the group, the way he folds himself into the conversation, as if testing whether he still fits here like he’s checking if the seams of his life still hold after being torn apart from the inside. He catches your eye over Dustin’s head. You give him a faint smile and a wink, and he smiles back, small but genuine.
Some conversations don’t need words.
“So wait,” Lucas says, redirecting the conversation. “We’re really doing this? All of us?”
“Well, I’m doing it,” Dustin says. “You guys can stay home and be boring if you want.”
“That’s not what I meant, idiot,” Lucas protests. “I just meant... you know. Together. All of us. It’s different from when it was just the four of us doing our own thing.”
There’s weight in that statement. The four of them have been a unit since elementary school days, a closed system that occasionally welcomed you in. But El cracked it open last year, and now Max is wedging herself into the gaps, and nothing fits quite the way it used to anymore. Growing up, you think absently as you watch them bicker, looks a lot like things breaking apart and reforming into new shapes, and sometimes that hurts.
“It’s just a dance,” Mike retorts, but his voice says he knows it’s not just anything.
“It’s a social event,” Dustin corrects primly. “A chance to demonstrate our sophistication and charm."
“Okay, now you definitely sound like Steve,” you say with a groan.
Dustin grins as if you paid him a compliment. “Steve knows what he’s talking about. He’s got experience.”
“Harrington’s experience is being hot and oblivious,” you point out dryly, crossing your arms. “You’re going for a different strategy. Hopefully.”
“What strategy should we use?” Will asks quietly. It’s the first thing he’s said beyond his greeting, and all three boys turn to look at you like you’re about to dispense ancient wisdom upon them.
You wipe your hands again, buying time. The thing is, you were never good at this stuff: school dances, social navigation, the intricate politics of being a teenage girl. If you could, you would wear jeans to prom because they have better pockets and you could fit a socket wrench in them if you needed to escape to the parking lot and fix someone’s car. Your entire fashion philosophy can be summed up in two questions: does it have pockets, and will it survive if I have to crawl under an engine block?
But these kids are looking at you like you know something they don’t, desperate for guidance.
“Okay,” you say slowly. “Real talk. You guys know what you’re doing, right? This isn’t some complicated mystery. You shower. You wear clean clothes that don’t have visible stains or smell. You show up. You’re nice to people, and you’re especially nice to the girl you want to dance with. That’s literally it.”
“But what if we’re not... you know…” Dustin makes a complicated gesture with his hand. “Cool?”
And there it is—the real question underneath all the hairspray anxiety and wardrobe debates. A small pang thuds through your chest, softening your features further.
“I’m not sure I’m the right person to help with that, Dust.”
“Of course you are.” Dustin looks genuinely confused by your words, like this should be obvious. “You’re literally the coolest person we know.”
Lucas and Will nod in agreement at once. Even Mike, who’s been radiating low-level misery about this whole thing, gives a reluctant shrug that says he’s not wrong. You stare at them. These kids who’ve fought monsters and saved the world and somehow decided that you—the girl from the trailer park who fixes cars and can’t afford college and spends her Friday nights elbow-deep in engine grease—are cool.
Nobody thinks you’re cool. Nobody’s ever thought you’re cool. Teachers think you’re trouble, too much, too intense. Other students think you’re weird or a know-it-all. Your mom thinks you’re brilliant but worries you’re wasting it. Billy Hargrove thinks you’re—
You’re not thinking about Billy Hargrove.
“You guys,” you say, and your voice comes out rougher than you intended. “You don’t need me to make you cool. You already are.”
“We’re really not,” Mike scoffs.
“Yeah, we’re pretty much the opposite of cool,” Lucas adds.
“We’re nerds,” Dustin says cheerfully. “It’s been scientifically proven.”
“Okay, fine. You’re nerds.” You set down the rag, giving them your full attention. “But you’re the kind of nerds who saved Will’s life. Twice. You’re the kind of nerds who looked at an interdimensional monster and said we can fight that. You’re the kind of nerds who learned to use a wrist rocket well enough to take out a demodog, who literally saved a girl from being used as an instrument and kept her safe while government agents hunted for you.”
They’re all staring at you now.
“You want to know the secret to being cool?” you continue, leaning slightly forward, looking at each one as you speak. “It’s not hairspray. It’s not acting like someone you’re not. It’s knowing who you are and being that person so completely that everyone else has to adjust to your frequency instead of you adjusting to theirs. And you guys? You already do that. Every single day.”
The boys are quiet, swapping shy glances, like the words are too big for the space.
“So yeah,” you continue lamely, picking up the wrench again because the moment’s definitely getting too big and you need something to do with your hands. “I’ll help you look presentable. I’ll make sure you don’t show up smelling like gym socks. But you don’t need me to make you cool. You just need to show up and be yourselves. That’s always been enough.”
Silence settles over the shop, broken only by the buzzing fluorescent lights and the distant sound of traffic on the main road.
Then Dustin says, voice wobbling slightly, “That was actually really cool advice.”
“Shut up and hand me the three-eighths socket, Henderson,” you say, but you’re smiling.
They stay for another hour, the conversation drifting from dance anxiety to safer topics. Dustin recounts Steve’s disastrous attempt to flirt with a girl at the grocery store. Lucas talks about his mom’s reaction when he told her he was going to the dance with Max—apparently, Mrs Sinclair had opinions about proper corsage selection and how Lucas needed to impress his date properly. Will sits quietly, laughing at the right moments, slowly relaxing into the warmth of the group.
Mike, predictably, steers the conversation toward El.
“Do you think she’s really okay with this?" he asks, ostensibly to everyone but clearly directed at you. “Like... going to a public thing? With people?”
You think about Eleven in the Byers’ house, power crackling around her, exhausted but fierce. Think about the way Hopper looks at her like she’s simultaneously the most dangerous and most precious thing in his world. How she smiled, relieved, when you offered her a napkin for her nose and asked if she was okay.
“I think,” you say carefully, “that she’s stronger than any of us give her credit for. And I think if she didn’t want to go, Chief wouldn’t make her, and if he didn’t want her to go, he couldn’t stop her even if he tried. That man would fight god himself before he let anything happen to her.”
“That’s true,” Will says softly. “He’s... really protective.”
“Aggressively protective,” Lucas agrees, rolling his eyes. “Like, I’m pretty sure he ran a background check on all of us.”
Biting back a smirk, you say offhandedly, “He definitely ran a background check on all of you. He asked me about you guys last week. Wanted to know if you were good kids or the kind of kids who cause problems.”
No such thing happened, but the way they all spring up like you’ve jolted them with electricity almost makes you laugh despite everything that’s happened recently.
“What did you tell him?” Dustin asks, eyes wide.
You grin. “I told him you were the kind of kids who cause problems in the service of solving bigger problems. He seemed satisfied with that.”
Their shoulders slump at once and bite your inner cheek.
“Wait, Hopper talks to you?” Mike looks confused. “Like... regularly?”
“Sometimes.” You shrug, focusing on the carburettor in your hands. “He knew my dad. And sometimes drops by to ask me stuff about electrical systems. Power grids. How things work. I think he likes that I don’t ask questions.”
What you don’t tell them is that Hopper showed up at the shop two days after the lab, looking about as wrecked as you felt. Sat in Frank’s office for twenty minutes while you cleaned up, not saying anything. Then, as he was leaving, you did good, kid. Bob would’ve been proud.
You haven’t forgotten that. The gruff acknowledgement. The way his hand landed heavily on your shoulder for just a second. The closest thing to a hug someone like Hopper knows how to give. The unspoken understanding that you both carry the weight of that night in different ways.
“Huh,” Mike mumbles, processing this. “I didn’t know you guys were like... friends.”
“We’re not friends,” you say automatically with a snort. Then pause, reconsidering, adding, “We’re... allies. We both care about keeping people in this town alive. That’s all.”
Will nods, as if this makes perfect sense to him. Maybe it does. Maybe when you’ve been through what he’s been through, you understand that some connections don’t fit neat categories.
“So what’s the actual problem here?" you wonder aloud, cutting through Dustin’s increasingly elaborate plans involving hair gel and hairspray in a combination he’s dubbed the Double Threat. “You guys know how to shower. You know how to put on clean clothes. The dance is just... standing around in the gym with slightly better lighting than usual and crepe paper that’s supposed to look fancy but really just looks sad.”
“That’s what I said,” Mike grumbles.
“You said it was a waste of time and that dances are conformist social rituals designed to enforce heteronormative hierarchies,” Lucas corrects bluntly, pulling the exact quote from memory with the precision of someone who’s heard it at least seventeen times.
Your eyebrows nearly migrate off your head. “Did you actually say that?”
Mike’s ears go red, the flush creeping down his neck. “Nancy’s been taking a sociology class, okay?”
You grin ruefully, but spend the next forty-five minutes going through the actual logistics. How much cologne is too much (any more than one spray). Whether they should bring flowers (Lucas should because he asked Max properly; the others shouldn’t because it’s not that kind of dance). What to do if someone tries to start something (find Nancy, find a teacher, or—worst case—call you, and you’ll handle it).
Dustin practices his “casual lean” against the workbench. It’s nowhere near casual. You don’t have the heart to tell him that the right kind of girl will probably think it’s endearing anyway.
Mike asks, voice carefully neutral, whether it’s okay to dance with someone who’s not technically your date. You translate this as is it okay to dance with El even though I didn't technically ask her and tell him yes, obviously, she’s likely hoping he will.
Will doesn’t ask anything. He just listens, absorbing everything like he’s studying for a test on being a teenager. You catch his eye at one point, and he gives you another genuine smile, timid around the edges. It makes something in your chest unknot slightly.
They leave another hour later in a cluster of bikes and backpacks and renewed confidence, Dustin’s voice carrying back as they disappear into the dark. “I’m definitely doing the Double Threat…”
You shake your head, smiling despite yourself, and turn back to the GTO.
You work until your hands are numb and your back aches, until Frank’s ancient radio plays through three full cycles of the same twelve songs. The engine finally purrs to life around eight-thirty, a sound as satisfying as anything you’ve ever heard. You lock up the shop, climb into your truck, and sit in the cab for a long moment before starting the engine.
You haven’t told anyone that you’re scared. That the idea of leaving Hawkins feels like abandonment, and staying feels like drowning, and you don’t know which fear is stronger.
—
Your ribs get better in slow, boring inches.
No one tells you healing is mostly just tedium and irritation. Not for this kind of thing, anyway. No stitches to take out, no cast to sign. Just tape you change every few days, bruises shifting through that ugly technicolour spectrum, pain that goes from white-hot to dull to annoying background hum.
By early December, you can cough without seeing stars, but laughing is still risky. Sneezing feels like someone is trying to pry your sternum open with a crowbar. But you can roll onto your side in bed now without swearing out loud, and you can crawl under a car again as long as you move like you’re made of glass.
Frank keeps a passive-aggressive stopwatch on you.
“Ten minutes on, ten minutes off,” he grumbles the first time he catches you on your back under a Buick with a wrench in both hands. “You start breathin’ funny, and I’m draggin’ you out by your ankles, you hear me?”
“You drag me by my ankles, and I’ll haunt the shit out of this place,” you tell him, tightening a bolt and pretending your shoulders don’t already ache.
The space heater in the corner whines with more desperation as temperatures dip day by day. Frank tapes tinsel to the doorframe of the office, but it’s slowly losing the war against gravity. There’s a plastic Santa head stuck to the wall clock, his eyes following you everywhere.
School limps to the end of the term.
There are paper snowflakes taped to the classroom windows now, cut by kids with more enthusiasm than motor skills. The heater in the chemistry lab rattles like it’s going to give up any second. The hallways smell faintly of wet wool and cheap candy canes. Your teachers keep giving you looks over their glasses. Some of it is concern (ribs, bruises, the fact you missed a chunk of school with that “flu” everyone keeps referencing). Some of it is… pity. The college stuff. You see it in the way they say next year, like they’re trying not to say if.
Physics is the only class where you still feel entirely solid. Mr Clarke corners you after the last lesson before break, when everyone else has filed out to freedom and the promise of TV specials.
“You, uh, got a second?” he asks, shuffling some papers on his desk.
“Sure,” you say, sliding your textbook into your bag.
He fiddles with his tie, clears his throat. “I’ve, um, heard back from a few of the schools,” he begins purposely. “They’ve reached out to me. Asking for additional references, that sort of thing.”
Your stomach does that weird swoop it does these days whenever college comes up.
“And?” you ask, keeping your voice flat so it doesn’t crack.
“And I’ve told them the truth,” he says simply. “That you’re the brightest student I’ve ever taught. Certainly the most… dogged.” He smiles a little at that. “That your grades reflect not just ability, but the fact you’ve been juggling more responsibility than most adults I know.”
You swallow the lump in your throat, focusing on his table instead.
“Some of them will be fools and say no,” he goes on gently. “But some of them won’t.”
“Feels like they already have,” you shoot back flatly, before you can stop yourself.
He leans back in his chair, studying you. “You’ve had a rough run, I know,” he says, and you hate how kind he sounds, how kind he’s always been to you, one of the very few. “But the process isn’t over. Far from it.”
You don’t tell him about the letters on your table. The same sentences arranged a dozen different ways. The way your chest squeezes every time you see your own name under that cold, typed regret.
You force a smile instead that doesn’t quite reach your eyes. “Thanks, Mr C,” you say, and mean it. “For, you know. Going to bat for me.”
He waves a hand, embarrassed.
“It’s the least I can do,” he reassures you, and you don’t point out that he’s made more effort to help you than this entire town has combined. “Just… don’t count yourself out too early, alright?”
You nod, but you’re not sure if you mean it.
—
The rejection letter from Northwestern awaits you when you get home.
You know what it is before you even open it. The envelope is too thin, too light. Rejections come in single sheets of paper that might as well say we don't want you in 72-point font. You sit in your truck in the driveway for a full minute, staring at it.
Then you open it.
Dear Applicant,
We regret to inform you...
The words blur together after that. Something about a competitive applicant pool again. Something about encouraging you to pursue other opportunities. Something that translates to, you’re smart, but not smart enough. Try again somewhere else. Somewhere lesser.
You fold the letter precisely in half, then in half again, like you’ve done with all the others. Add it to the stack of similar letters in your glove compartment. Northwestern joins Purdue, the University of Illinois, Michigan State and MIT. Five schools. Five variations on the same polite rejection.
The only one you haven’t heard back from is Caltech, but the waiting is becoming its own kind of torture.
The trailer is empty when you let yourself in, your breath still clouding in the warm air from the temperature shift. Mom’s working a double shift at the diner, won’t be home until after midnight. There’s a note on the counter in her looping handwriting. Leftovers in fridge. Heat for 3 min. Love you, baby.
You heat the leftovers. You eat them standing at the counter, without tasting anything. You wash the plate, dry it, put it away with mechanical precision, each movement automatic. Then you go to your room and pull out your current notebook.
The pages are covered in your handwriting, cramped and intense, margins filled with recalculations and crossed-out equations. Schematics for the electromagnetic pulse weapon prototype that you’ve redrawn six times because you can’t afford the capacitors the original design calls for. Calculations for the upgraded EMF detector, where you’re trying to substitute RadioShack components for proper lab equipment. Design iterations for the handheld flamethrower where you’re reverse-engineering commercial propane torch mechanics because buying actual flamethrower parts would require money you don’t have and raise questions you can’t answer.
You’ve been working on this for a week straight, every spare moment between work shifts and checking on Will and pretending you’re fine. Building weapons because you couldn’t build a defence fast enough to save Bob.
The problem is materials. The problem is always materials. You’ve never before felt your own lack more acutely than in the last few weeks.
You need copper wire, but the gauge you need costs twice what you can afford, so you’re winding thinner wire in double coils to compensate. You need high-voltage capacitors, but those require special ordering and questions about what a teenage girl needs with electrical components designed for industrial applications. You need proper insulation, proper tools, proper everything, and what you have is: a RadioShack gift card from your mom’s birthday, a drawer full of scavenged parts from broken appliances, and a brain that won’t shut up about the mathematical difference between what you need and what you can actually build.
So you improvise.
The pulse weapon prototype sits half-assembled in a shoebox under your bed—car batteries wired in series because you can get those from the shop, copper coils wound from stolen wire because Frank won’t miss a few feet here and there, a homemade capacitor built from aluminium foil and wax paper because the real ones cost sixty dollars each and you’ll need three. The math works. Theoretically. You’ve checked it seventeen times, run the calculations forward and backwards, compensating for the improvised components.
You won’t know if it actually works until you test it, and testing it means finding somewhere isolated enough that an electromagnetic pulse won’t knock out power to the trailer park or erase every cassette tape within a hundred yards.
That’s a problem for later.
You flip to a fresh page, dated and labelled: December 9th, 1984.
Northwestern rejection received. Fifth denial. Pattern emerging: strong test scores and an unconventional background are not sufficient to overcome the lack of a traditional academic profile. Theory: “girl from trailer park who fixes cars” reads as an interesting but ultimately risky investment.
Your hand is steady as you write, even though something in your chest feels like it’s compressing, getting smaller and harder and more dense.
Caltech application still pending. If five schools have already said no, what are the odds the best one says yes? Question: Am I setting myself up for the biggest disappointment yet?
You close the notebook. Stare at the water-stained ceiling above your bed.
The thing is, you’re good at this. At reverse-engineering, problem-solving, taking the impossible and making it work with whatever parts you can scavenge. You rebuilt your truck’s entire engine when you were fifteen, using a Chilton manual from the library and components from three different junked vehicles. You created a working EMF detector from RadioShack parts and a theory you half-pulled from scientific journals you weren’t supposed to understand. You’re building weapons to fight interdimensional monsters in your bedroom using car batteries and stolen wire.
You’re not supposed to be able to do the things you can do.
But colleges don’t want not supposed to. They want perfect grades from perfect girls who perfectly fit their institutional moulds. They want students who learned in proper classrooms with proper equipment, not girls who taught themselves electrical engineering from library books because their school’s science program stops at basic chemistry.
The flamethrower design is the furthest along—copper tubing from the hardware store, propane tank adapter you machined yourself on Frank’s lathe when he wasn’t looking, ignition system scavenged from a broken grill lighter. The math is simpler than the pulse weapon, more mechanical than electrical. Fire is an old technology. Fire, you understand.
The EMF detector upgrade is stalling. You need more sensitive components than RadioShack carries, and you can’t exactly order them from a speciality electronics supplier without raising questions. So you’re trying to boost the signal using an improvised amplifier circuit, compensating for the cheap components with clever design.
It’s progressing. Slowly. Each prototype is a little better than the last, each recalculation bringing you closer to something that might actually work.
Sunday afternoons help.
Max helps you wind copper coils, holds components steady while you solder, and writes down measurements while you work through calculations. Mostly, you think she’s just glad to be out of her house. Away from Neil’s voice carrying through thin walls, away from whatever complicated thing is happening with Billy. She doesn’t talk about it much, and you don’t push.
Last Sunday, she held the flamethrower prototype while you tightened the propane connection, her hands steady and sure.
“This is actually really cool,” she said with a thoughtful frown. “That you can just build this stuff. Out of nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” you corrected automatically. “It’s just not the stuff it’s supposed to be. Reverse engineering. Working backwards from what something does to figure out how to make it work with what you have instead of what you need.”
“Still cool,” Max insisted sternly.
And you smiled despite yourself. “Yeah. I guess it is.”
You still wonder if she understood how much that meant to you.
—
Time passes in a blur of work and weapons and carefully not thinking about Billy Hargrove.
You see him, of course. It’s impossible not to in a town this small. His Camaro growls past the shop on a random Tuesday. You catch a glimpse of him at the grocery store on Thursday, all sharp angles and California tan fading into Indiana winter pale. He’s buying cigarettes and milk, and you’re in the next aisle over with bread and sandwich meat, and you both pretend very hard not to notice each other.
The connection is still there. That invisible wire pulled taut between you, humming with proximity. You hate it. Hate that you can feel when Billy is close, like your nervous system has been rewired to track his location at all times, hate that you want to look and touch and—
You don’t look. You keep to your word.
In the shop, you bury yourself in work. Frank gives you the complicated jobs, the ones that require focus and precision. Transmission rebuilds. Electrical system diagnostics. Anything that keeps your hands busy and your brain too occupied to drift toward midnight conversations and the way Billy’s voice went quiet when he said you came to me.
You didn’t come to him. You came to his door because you were hurt and stupid and looking for... what? Comfort? Understanding? Someone who would look at your bruises and be as angry as you were?
It doesn’t matter. It’s done.
You’re here now. Back to sharp edges and careful distance. Back to the way things were before Halloween, before the night outside his house, before he saw your fear and matched it with his own particular brand of fury. You’ve reverted to something worse than enemies. Enemies at least talk. This is controlled burn.
It’s better this way, you tell yourself.
(It doesn’t feel better.)
—
The kids cling to you harder than usual in the weeks after the lab incident.
Will invites you to a small campaign in the Wheeler basement one Friday night. It’s supposed to be just the usual suspects—Lucas, Mike, Dustin—but El shows up with a quiet smile and a shiny new headband, and somehow you’re dragged to the table too, a pencil in your hand before you can protest that you have no idea what you’re doing despite Eddie’s best attempts to initiate you.
“Your character already exists,” Dustin informs you, shoving a piece of paper into your hand. “We made her for you. She’s a mechanical warlock. Like, literally.”
You scan the sheet. Stats. Spells. Sketch of a tiny stick-figure with a wrench.
You shake your head, sliding your eyes in their direction. “You named her Torque?”
“Hell yeah, we did,” he declares proudly.
Lucas snickers. Mike rolls his eyes but smiles. Will hides his grin behind his DM screen.
El leans into your side, warm and solid, and you don’t fail to understand the trust that comes with that gesture. A girl locked away all her life, used and abused like a lab rat, learning what it means to have people who love her just because. “We missed you,” she says quietly.
“I missed me too,” you say dryly, half-meaning it.
El’s hand finds yours under the table, squeezes once, hard, where the boys can’t see. Her eyes are bright and fierce and old, so you squeeze back because you know El sees more than normal people. Can likely feel the weight around your shoulders, glimpse the shape of your nightmares that wake up in the middle of the night and make you work on your schematics until you pass out again from exhaustion.
But for the next few hours, the world is just dice clattering across the table, boys yelling about goblins, Dustin bargaining with a cursed sword, and Lucas trying to flirt with a barmaid to get out of being cursed. In the end, you blow up a bridge, sacrificing half the town, and save the party with a made-up spell involving metal and lightning. Mike promptly proclaims you chaotic neutral. You decide you like the sound of that.
Later, after the boys have been claimed by their respective parents, and El is curled up in the corner with a blanket and a box of Oreos waiting for Hopper, you help Mrs Wheeler stack plates in the kitchen.
“You’re very good with them,” she says, sounding genuinely impressed.
“They’re very loud,” you say with a shrug, feeling decidedly awkward next to a woman who is so put together, living in a house so big that her kitchen alone is bigger than your entire trailer. “Hard to miss.”
She laughs. It’s a thin, bell-like sound. You catch a glimpse of her reflection in the window over the sink; the lines around her mouth are deeper than you remember.
“Are you staying in Hawkins after…?” She trails off delicately. “After school?”
You shrug, staring down at the bubbles. “Looks like it,” you reply neutrally. “Unless someone ships me out in a crate.”
She makes a sympathetic clucking sound, like you’ve told her you’ll be stuck with a bad haircut for a year.
“Well,” she says brightly, “the boys will be glad to have you around.”
You’re not sure if that makes it better or worse.
—
“I need your help with something.”
You look up from the circuit board you’re cleaning to find Max standing in the shop doorway. She’s in her usual uniform—flannel, jeans, skateboard tucked under one arm—but there’s something different about her today. Nervous energy, maybe. The way she’s shifting her weight from foot to foot is so unlike her that it immediately catches your attention.
It’s a Sunday—five days until the snowball dance.
“What kind of help?” you ask, setting down your tools.
Max glances over her shoulder like she’s checking for eavesdroppers, then steps fully into the shop. “The boys said you’re helping them get ready for the dance. I was wondering if you could... I mean, if you have time... maybe help me and El too?”
You’ve only seen El twice since the gate was closed, but you understood Hopper’s caution in keeping her off radar.
“First time she’s been allowed to do anything normal since... you know.” Max goes on, placing her board in a corner she’s claimed as her own. “She’s kind of freaking out about it.” Another awkward pause. “We both are.”
There’s something vulnerable in the way she says it. Max, who’s all sharp edges and defensive posture, admitting to being scared of a middle school dance. And you get it. You remember being thirteen, the particular terror of trying to figure out how to be a girl when all the rules seemed designed for someone else.
“Yeah,” you say. “I can help.”
Max’s whole face lights up, then she schools her expression like she’s caught herself doing something illegal. “Really?”
“Really. Come by the trailer around four on Friday. We’ll figure it out.”
She slots beside you, making note of what you’re doing, reaching for her notebook where she scribbles all the information you feed her and smiles thinly. “Hey, um... thanks. For this. And for, like, being cool.”
You nudge her shoulder with a slight, crooked smile. “Anytime, team member.”
—
That Friday evening, your trailer becomes ground zero for teenage girl crisis management.
Max shows up at 3:45, early and vibrating with nervous energy she tries to hide, skateboard tucked under her arm. She’s got a new setup—you notice it immediately because you notice these things—fresh grip tape and what look like brand-new trucks.
“Nice axes,” you say with a low whistle, nodding at the board as she sets it by the door.
Max lights up, the way she always does when someone notices her skateboarding. “Yeah! Billy actually—” She pauses, like she’s surprised by her own words. “Billy took me to Indianapolis last weekend. There’s this shop there that has way better stuff than anything in Hawkins. He didn’t even complain about it. Just drove me there and waited while I picked everything out.”
You keep your expression neutral, even though something in your chest nearly trips over itself in shock. You try to visualise that, examine it in the cold light of day and run into a wall. Except it’s true, evidence of that trip is literally right in front of you. You’re not entirely sure what to make of it. “That’s... good. That he did that.”
“I know, right?” Max sounds genuinely confused by it. “It was weird. Really weird but good weird. I think.”
You think about Billy Hargrove trying to be a good brother, driving three hours round-trip for skateboard parts. Think about him doing something kind and not making a production out of it.
Think about not thinking about Billy Hargrove.
“Well,” you say, overly brightly as you steer her inside. “I’m glad you got your setup sorted. You ready for tonight?”
Max’s nervous energy returns immediately, even when she fights to keep her expression straight with a jerky nod.
El arrives at 4:00 sharp with Hopper, who gives you that look—the one you’ve learned means I trust you, but I will absolutely arrest you if anything happens to her. After his gruff-but-warm departure speech, the trailer feels suddenly very small with two thirteen-year-old girls staring at you with expectation written all over their faces.
“Okay,” you say, feeling wildly unqualified for this. “Let’s see what we’re working with.”
Max brought clothes in a backpack—a dress her mom bought her, jeans and a nice shirt as backup; and about seventeen different accessory options spread across your bed like a cry for help. El has exactly one outfit, courtesy of Joyce’s shopping trip: a pink dress that actually suits her, simple and pretty in a way that doesn’t overwhelm.
They spread everything out on your bed like they’re planning a military operation.
“I have never been to a dance before,” El blurts out, touching the dress fabric carefully, almost reverently. “What do I... how do I...?”
“Just be yourself,” Max says immediately, then seems to hear how inadequate that sounds. “I mean... It’s just standing around and music. Some people dance. Mostly people just talk and eat terrible snacks and try not to look like they care too much about anything.”
“I’m not good at talking,” El confesses, discomfort creasing her expression. “Or not caring.”
“You don’t have to be,” you assure her, pulling the dress closer to examine it. “Mike’s going to be so excited to see you, he’ll probably do enough talking for both of you. Trust me, that kid can monologue.”
El’s face does something that might be a smile, tentative and hopeful.
You help them figure out what to wear first. Max ends up in the jeans and nice shirt—burgundy, fits her well—infinitely more comfortable than the dress her mom clearly picked with someone else in mind. You can see the relief in her shoulders the moment she puts it on, the way she stops holding herself like she’s trying to shrink.
El keeps the pink dress, but you add a denim jacket you haven’t worn in years, fished out of your closet from the back, where forgotten things live. It’s too big on her, hitting mid-thigh, but she seems to like it. Makes her look less fragile, more real. More like a girl going to a dance instead of a weapon being allowed out for good behaviour.
El tests the pockets carefully, sliding her hands in and out. “I like them,” she announces with a crooked little smile.
Makeup is an adventure. Neither of them has much experience. You don’t wear it often yourself—hard to justify lipstick when you’re lying under an engine—but you’ve got the basics ready. You dig them out: drugstore mascara that’s probably too old but still works, a couple of neutral lipsticks, some powder your mom gave you that you’ve never touched.
You show them how to do simple things. Mascara without stabbing themselves in the eye (harder than it looks). Lip gloss that doesn’t look like they smeared Vaseline on their mouths (it’s all about the amount). A tiny bit of powder if they want it (they mostly don’t).
Max picks up on it swiftly, her hands steady and sure. She’s good with details, with precision. You’ve seen it firsthand back at the shop. Probably from skateboarding. You need steady limbs and awareness of your own body to land tricks.
El struggles more; her fine motor control is still recovering from whatever hell she lived through in the lab. The mascara wand shakes in her hand, and she makes a frustrated, low noise.
“Here,” you say gently. “Let me.”
She sits very still while you do her mascara, barely breathing, like she’s afraid of breaking the moment. Up close, you can see the faint scar on her temple, the way her eyes track movement like she’s always calculating threat levels. But right now, in your tiny trailer bedroom with winter light coming through the frosted window, she just looks like a kid.
“There,” you say lightly, stepping back. “Look.”
They crowd around your tiny bathroom mirror, shoulders pressed together. Max grins at her reflection, turning her head side to side, examining the faint sweep of blush across her cheeks. El stares at hers with something like wonder, fingertips coming up to touch her face like she’s not sure the person in the mirror is real.
“I look…” El starts, her voice faint and small.
“Pretty,” Max finishes firmly. “You look really pretty.”
“So do you.”
They’re both beaming at each other, and something in your chest cracks open just a little. These girls. Thirteen years old and already survivors of things they shouldn’t have had to survive. Max, with her shitty stepbrother, her cross-country move, and her desperate need to prove she belongs. El with her trauma and her powers and the whole world feeling too big and too bright after a year in hiding.
They deserve soft things. Dances and dresses and the chance to be kids, just for one night.
You move on to hair next. El examines your things, padding around your cramped room, curiously tracing textbooks and tools, careful not to disturb anything, while you work on Max’s curls.
The redhead fiddles with the hem of her dress, then suddenly blurts out: “Billy said he’ll drive me. To the dance.”
Your brain does a weird little misfire again. “Billy Hargrove,” you say slowly. “Volunteered to chauffeur you to a school function.”
“I didn’t say volunteer,” Max defends, but you see pink crawling up her neck. “More like… he didn’t freak out when I said Lucas was coming.”
You blink owlishly.
“I see.”
“Yeah.” Max stares at her own knees. “He’s been weirdly… quiet. I told him I was going and that Lucas was my date, and he just… stared at me. For a really long time.” She shivers, like that look wasn’t entirely comfortable. “Then he said whatever. Just like that.”
You hear the unspoken for once. Your hands move again, automatic, twisting a curl around your finger and pinning it in place.
“You think he’s planning something?” you ask lightly, too lightly.
“I think he’s planning to implode,” Max says bluntly. “He’s been… different. Since…” She trails off, eyes flicking up to meet yours.
The last time you spoke to Billy properly plays in your head like a bad tape. Neil’s voice at the door, thick with contempt. Girls like you. The look on Billy’s face when he saw your bruises. Your own words spitting out like shrapnel. You scare me. Because I don’t know where you end and he begins.
You swallow. “How so?” you ask, keeping your voice light.
Max considers her words before settling on, “He stopped asking about you.”
You feel that first. A tiny, stupid sting of it. Then the rest of her sentence lands.
“But it’s not, like… gone,” she continues. “He still does that thing. That—” She gestures at her own face, furrowing her brows. “Like he’s thinking real hard about something he hates.”
You hum, your pulse beating in your throat.
“He’ll be sitting on the couch pretending to watch TV, and then he’ll just… grind his teeth and get up and go do push-ups or something,” Max says, faster now, like she’s been waiting to share this but wasn’t sure she could. “Or he’ll go out to the driveway and just stare at the Camaro for, like, an hour. Not even working on it. Just… staring.”
You picture that. Billy outside in the cold, smoke hanging around him, jaw clenched, eyes on the car like it might give him an answer only he can find. Max shifts again, the chair creaking under her.
“It’s not like before,” she continues. “He’s still an asshole. Like, he’ll yell and slam doors and all that. Neil’s still… Neil.” Her mouth tightens into a painful little line that makes you hurt all over. “But the way he’s mad is… different.”
“Different how?” you ask quietly.
“Feels like he’s not mad at me,” Max explains with a frown. “Or, like… not only at me. Or you. Or Lucas. It’s like he’s mad at… everything. Or at himself. He’ll say something, and then he looks like he wants to take it back, but he doesn’t know how.”
Your hands slow, smoothing down a stray curl. El nods solemnly, like this makes perfect sense to her.
“You think maybe you kicking his ass helped?” you pose thoughtfully, trying for lightness. “Standing your ground and all that.”
Max smirks faintly at the memory. “It didn’t hurt,” she agrees. “But I don’t think that’s all of it.”
She looks at you, eyes too sharp for thirteen. “I think something else happened,” she says. “With you.”
Your pulse skips. You force your face to stay blank.
“Yeah, well.” You tap her nose with the tail end of a comb, deflecting. “Maybe he just realised you’re scarier than him.”
“Obviously,” Max says smugly.
You try to shrug instead, playing at nonchalance. “Maybe he’s turning over a new leaf. San Diego boy tries not to be a colossal dick for once. More at eleven.”
Max rolls her eyes while El snorts from behind you, but a moment later, Max’s forehead creases.
“I know I should be happy that he’s leaving me alone,” Max says, voice going quieter. “I should be celebrating. But it’s kind of freaking me out? Because at least when he was being a dick, I knew what to expect. I knew how to navigate around him. This version—the quiet, angry-at-himself version—I don’t know what to do with that.”
El reaches out, touches Max’s hand with the careful gentleness of someone who knows what it’s like to be fragile. “He’s scared,” she says quietly, with that certainty she gets when she’s reading something the rest of you can’t see.
Max blinks. “What?”
“Your brother. He’s scared of something. I can feel it.” El’s gaze shifts to you, dark and knowing. “He’s scared of losing people.”
The air in the trailer goes still and quiet. You can hear the heater clicking, the distant sound of someone’s TV through thin walls, your own heartbeat too loud in your ears.
Max processes those words, face going through several expressions. “That’s... actually that makes sense. I mean, his mom left. Just took off when he was a kid. And Neil’s…”
She trails off, but you can fill in the blanks. Neil’s a nightmare, a monster; Neil’s the kind of father who makes you understand why some people turn into monsters.
You clear your throat, breaking the moment before it can expand into something you can’t handle. “Well. That’s... a lot to think about. But right now, you two have a dance to get to, and Billy’s not your responsibility. You’re allowed to go to a dance and have fun and not worry about what’s going on in his head. That’s his job to figure out.”
“Is it though?” Max wonders, and there’s an undercurrent in her voice that makes you look at her properly. “Figuring stuff out on your own? Isn’t that kind of what got him into this mess in the first place?”
She’s too damn smart, this kid. Too observant. You can see her making connections, drawing lines between your isolationist tendencies and Billy’s, recognising the same self-destructive pattern in different flavours between you.
“Sometimes people need to work things out themselves.”
“And sometimes,” Max counters stubbornly, “people need someone to tell them they don’t have to do it alone. Even if they’re being stubborn assholes about it.”
She scowls the moment she’s finished speaking, like she’s annoyed with herself for being almost defensive when it comes to Billy. You hum thoughtfully, your attention briefly going to her skateboard, those new axes.
You help them finish getting ready, pack up their stuff, and take a few photos on your mom’s old Polaroid camera because Max insists, and El seems delighted by the idea of physical photographs, something permanent and real. They look beautiful. Young and happy and normal, exactly what they should be allowed to be.
The Polaroids develop slowly, that familiar chemical smell, images emerging like ghosts becoming solid. Max and El making faces at the camera. Max and El with arms around each other like they’ve been friends forever instead of a few weeks. El’s genuine smile, the first time you’ve seen it reach her eyes. The final photo is of them, pressing their faces on either side of yours, the three of you grinning at the lens.
You tack them to the wall next to your wardrobe, next to photos of the boys and pictures of you and Eddie over the years, surrounded by sketches of weapons and calculations for electromagnetic pulses. A reminder that this—protecting these moments, these kids—is what all the obsessive building is for.
—
When Hopper comes to pick up El, he fills your entire doorway like a mountain wearing a police uniform. He’s in his civilian clothes—flannel and jeans—but he still has that cop posture, that way of taking up space that says he’s used to being the authority in any room he enters. His eyes do a quick sweep of your trailer, automatic threat assessment, before landing on El.
Then his whole face changes.
It’s subtle. Most people probably wouldn’t notice, but you’ve gotten good at reading people, the way his walls come down in increments. The hard line of his jaw softens, something in his eyes goes tender and terrified in equal measure.
“Hey, kid,” he says, voice gruff but gentle. “You ready?”
El nods, smoothing down the pink dress. She looks nervous and excited and young, so impossibly young. “Do I look okay?”
Hopper’s throat works at the timid question. For a second, you think he’s actually going to cry, this giant man brought to his knees by his adopted daughter in a pink dress.
“You look beautiful.” Hopper clears his throat roughly, jerking his chin at you in greeting. “Thanks for doing this. Joyce said you’ve been helping the boys, too.”
“Yeah, well.” You clear your throat, suddenly uncomfortable with the gratitude you see there. “Someone’s gotta make sure they don’t show up looking like they got dressed in the dark.”
“Still. It’s…” He pauses, searching for words you know he’s never been good at finding. “It’s good what you’re doing. For all of them.”
There’s weight in that statement. Recognition. You think about the lab, about Bob, about the way Hopper’s hand landed on your shoulder in the aftermath and stayed there while you both tried not to fall apart in your own ways.
“They’re good kids,” you say. “They deserve someone looking out for them.”
“So do you,” Hopper shoots back, and it comes out more pointed than you think he intended.
Your defences snap up at once. “I’m fine.”
“Yeah.” His expression says he knows that’s a whole lot of bullshit. “You look fine. Real fine. That why Frank called me last week, asking if I knew you were sleeping in your truck between shifts?”
Shit. You didn’t know Frank noticed, didn’t think anyone noticed.
“I wasn’t sleeping. I was working on—”
“I don’t care what you were working on,” Hopper interrupts, but there’s no heat in it. Just that same gruff concern that makes your chest tight for some reason. “You’re a kid. You’re supposed to go home and sleep in a bed, not in a truck cab.”
“I haven’t been a kid for a while now, chief.”
“Well, you’re all my problem until you’re old enough to be someone else’s problem. That’s how this works.”
El is watching this exchange with interest, head tilted. Max is grinning like this is the best entertainment she’s seen in weeks.
“I’m nobody’s problem.”
Hopper gives you a look that’s pure exasperation. “Kid, you’re everybody’s problem. You just hide it better than most.” He pauses, a shift in his expression. “Joyce mentioned college applications. How’s that going?”
The question lands like a punch to the chest. It takes every shred of self-control not to let the pain and disappointment show. “Fine.”
“That’s what you said about sleeping in your truck.”
“Chief—”
“I’m not pushing,” he says, raising his hands. “I’m just saying... if you need someone to write a letter of recommendation or whatever, I know some people. At the state university, a couple of other places—”
“Well, if you can get me one for Caltech,” you interrupt jokingly, then immediately wish you hadn’t because his eyebrows shoot up.
“You applied to Caltech.” He doesn’t say it mockingly, but you still feel stupid because you’re standing in a shabby trailer, in the middle of Indiana, and you know how that sounds. “Like, the Caltech?”
“There’s only one, chief.”
“Alright, smart-ass.” But he’s grinning, genuinely pleased. “That’s ambitious, kid. Really ambitious. When do you hear back?”
“A couple of weeks, maybe.” You shrug like it doesn’t matter, like you haven’t been obsessively checking the mail every day. “Already got rejections from five other schools, so I’m not holding my breath.”
The grin fades into something more resolute. “Hey. Those other schools are idiots. You’re—” He struggles for words, settles on, “You’re the kind of smart that scares people. The kind they don’t know what to do with. Doesn’t mean you’re not good enough. Just means they’re not ready for you.”
Your throat closes up. You manage a shallow nod.
Hopper clears his throat again, turning back to El. “Alright, kiddo. Let’s get you to this dance. But we’re going over the rules one more time on the drive.”
“We already went over the rules,” El protests immediately.
“We’re going over them again. Humour me. I’m old and paranoid.”
They head toward the door, and Max waves when El glances back, offering you a slight, happy smile, eyes shining with gratitude.
They’re barely gone for five minutes when there’s a sharp honk outside.
Max jumps.
“That’s him,” she says, breathless, all the bravado gone from her voice for a moment. “That’s Billy.”
Your heartbeat spikes, which is stupid. You knew he was coming. This shouldn’t feel like the ground just tilted under your feet. You move more slowly than you want to as you grab her jacket. Max shoves her arms through the sleeves, fingers fumbling with the zipper.
“You want me to walk you out?” you ask, keeping your tone casual.
“Yeah,” she says immediately, her eyes locking on you. “Yes. Definitely. Please.”
You nod, throat dry. Your side twinges faintly as you straighten up, but adrenaline mutes it a little. You open the door and the cold rushes in, smelling like exhaust and faint cigarette smoke. The Camaro idles at the edge of the lot, headlights cutting harsh lines across the frost. Billy’s silhouette is sharp through the windshield—the slope of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, his messy curls and the tilt of his full mouth. Music thrums low from inside, just a bassline and a hint of something loud.
For a second, you think about staying in the doorway, letting Max walk those last ten steps alone. Keeping the distance you carved at midnight with your bare hands.
Then Max’s fingers hook into your sleeve.
“Come on,” she says quietly.
You go with her. The gravel crunches under your boots. Max walks half a step ahead, nerves giving her speed. Billy’s gaze locks on the two of you as you come into the wash of the headlights. His expression doesn’t change much. His hand rests on the top of the steering wheel, loose and powerful. His jaw shifts once, muscle feathering when you draw closer.
You knock on the driver’s side window with your knuckles before Max can yank the door open. He rolls it down with the slow, deliberate crank of someone buying time.
Up close, he looks tired. You’re used to his golden-boy shine, the smirks, the show of ego. This is… stripped down. There are shadows under his eyes, his hair a little less perfectly arranged, stubble shadowing his jaw like he forgot to care for the day.
“Nice taxi service,” you say, because your mouth is on autopilot. “What’s the rate? One insult per mile?”
His eyes flick to Max, then back to you. There’s something different in them. The usual spark is still there, but it’s trapped under something heavier, more fractured. This is the most you’ve said to him in weeks.
“Funny.” Billy’s voice is rougher than you remember. “Didn’t know they were letting crash-test dummies out of the lab these days.”
Max rolls her eyes so hard you can almost hear it. “Are you two done?” she demands. “Because I have a dance to get to and Lucas is gonna have a panic attack if I’m late.”
Billy’s mouth twitches, like he wants to smile and doesn’t trust himself with it.
“You look nice,” he says to her absentmindedly. Then, as if realising he’s exposed something he shouldn’t, he adds a lazy, “For a nerd.”
Max glows anyway. “Shut up.”
He reaches over and unlocks the passenger door. “Be out by ten,” he orders coolly. “I’ll be out front.”
“You mean we can’t walk home in the snow and get murdered by demodogs?” Max asks snidely. “Lame.”
Billy frowns. “The hell is a dem—”
“Don’t ask,” you cut in quickly, your hand dropping on the Camaro roof. “Just keep the tank full.”
He looks at you then. Really looks. You feel the moment his gaze drops, just briefly, to where your ribcage is under your jacket. The memory hangs between you, heavy as the bruise itself. His hand tightens on the wheel.
“How’s—” he starts, then cuts himself off. He scowls, shaking his head. “Whatever. You look like shit.”
You snort.
“Thanks,” you say. “You look like you haven’t punched anyone in a week. Proud of you.”
His eyes flash. Max huffs impatiently, dragging the door open.
“If you start fighting, I swear I’ll hitchhike,” she says, half in, half out of the car.
“Get in the damn car, shitbird,” Billy says sharply, eyes still fixed on you.
She does, and the door slams. For a second, it’s just you and Billy, separated by a car door and the sharp line you drew between you.
The air goes electric.
You can feel it, you always can—that invisible wire between you, pulled so taut it’s humming. The distance of weeks compressed into half a step of frozen ground. Every unspoken thing from the midnight fight sits heavy in the cold air between you. Max is saying something about being ready, about not being late, but the words blur into background noise. The space between you feels simultaneously too much and not nearly enough. You can see the hollow of his throat where his pulse beats. Can smell cigarettes and cologne and cold night air. Can feel the way he’s looking at you like he’s trying to memorise something he’s not allowed to keep.
You want to move closer, want to close the distance. Want to see what happens if you stop fighting this pull for one second, just one—
“Seriously,” Max calls out, louder now, looking between you both with exasperation written all over her face. “I have a dance to get to. You two can have your weird intense staring thing later.”
The spell breaks.
“Right,” he says, his voice rough. “Dance. Let’s go.”
The engine roars to life—too loud, too aggressive, all that restless energy needing somewhere to go. You watch the Camaro pull away, taillights disappearing into the dark. The cold air finally registers. You’re standing in the middle of a December night, your skin covered in goosebumps that have nothing to do with the temperature.
The trailer feels exceptionally empty once you return.
You stand in your kitchen, looking at the mess of makeup and hair products spread across the counter. At the Polaroids tacked to your wall, still faintly damp. Your reflection in the bathroom mirror shows tired eyes, grease under your fingernails, and a flannel that’s seen better days but has great pockets.
Your skin still tingles where his eyes touched.
—
The Caltech letter arrives on December 22nd.
You check the mailbox on your way to work, same as every morning. Your mom’s already gone—early shift at the diner, the kitchen still warm from her coffee, her note on the counter in that looping handwriting. Leftovers in fridge. Heat for 3 min. Love you, baby.
This envelope is thick, heavier than the usual rejections. Official seal embossed in the corner, your name printed in neat, professional letters. Nothing about this envelope is normal. You stand in the driveway, holding it. The paper is smooth and cool against your fingers. You can feel its weight shifting when you tilt your hand, the heft of more than a single sheet inside.
Open it.
You don’t. At home, you put it in your dresser drawer. Under the circuit design manual. Under the stack of notebooks filled with weapon schematics.
It’s still there the next day. And the next.
The longer it sits unopened, the longer you exist in the in-between. Both accepted and rejected, both leaving and staying, both enough and not enough. Schrödinger’s future sealed in cream-coloured paper, and you know that’s cowardice. You know you should rip the bandage off, read the words, let reality land.
But five schools already said no. And there’s a version of opening that letter where the sixth says it too, and then the last door closes, and you’re here. Just here, forever. In Hawkins, with your glove compartment full of rejections and your whole future contained in a few-mile radius of rust and dead leaves and things that crawl underneath the skin of your world.
That version keeps your hand out of the drawer.
—
Christmas sneaks up anyway.
Hawkins decorates itself whether you’re ready or not. Plastic snowmen on lawns, tangled lights on front porches, tinsel that sheds more than a golden retriever. The grocery store plays the same handful of songs on loop until you want to shove “Last Christmas” into a snowblower. Your mom leans into the festive mood harder than usual. She digs out a box of ornaments, hangs them on the crooked little fake tree you’ve had since you were eight. The star on top tips to one side.
“Looks just like us,” she says, hands on her hips, admirably cheerful. A little crooked, still standing.
You smile because you’re supposed to.
On Christmas Eve, she insists on making a proper dinner. Ham from the deli, potatoes out of a box, canned green beans. You’re pretty sure the cranberry sauce has seen better years. The trailer smells good anyway. You set the table with mismatched plates and the one real candle you own. The TV is on in the background, some claymation reindeer nosing their way across the screen. Your mom hums off-key to a carol as she stirs the gravy.
“How’s the side?” she asks over her shoulder.
“Still here,” you reply mildly. “Hasn’t filed for divorce yet.”
She laughs. “I swear you get that mouth from your father,” she says fondly.
The words hit you like a stray bullet. You haven’t heard her say it in a while. Usually, it’s just him, or nothing at all.
You keep your eyes on the mashed potatoes. “Yeah,” you mumble. “Lucky me.”
She doesn’t notice the edge in your voice. She’s too busy timing the oven, sneaking sips of boxed wine, fussing with the salt shaker like it’s a matter of national security.
Dinner is… nice.
That’s the weirdest part. You sit at your tiny table with a cracked vinyl seat, eating oversalted ham and fake potatoes with your mom, and for once, there’s no underlying panic humming under her skin. No overdue notices stuck to the fridge, no whispered phone calls in the other room. She has two days off in a row for the first time in months. Someone at work gave her a bonus. It’s not much, but it’s enough.
She tears open her present from you—cheap perfume in a glass bottle shaped like a swan—and acts like you’ve given her a mansion.
“Oh, honey,” she breathes, tears shining in your eyes. “It’s beautiful.”
You’ve already opened yours: a set of screwdrivers in a neat little case, each size slotted into its own plastic groove. She must’ve noticed the way you’re always borrowing Frank’s, or using butter knives instead.
“I figured that way if you’re gonna take apart half the appliances in this place, you might as well do it right,” she says, smiling.
Your chest tightens.
“Thanks, Mom,” you whisper. “I love it.”
You do. The weight of them in your hand, the way they all fit together. It feels like she sees you. Or at least the part of you that spends more time under cars than in shopping malls.
After dinner, you do the dishes while she slowly slides down the couch, wine glass in hand, eyes glued to whatever Christmas special the network’s pushing this year. Her eyelids droop earlier than usual. By ten, she’s out cold, snoring softly, the TV glow flickering blue and red over her face.
You stand in the doorway for a long minute, dish towel still in your hands, just watching her.
She looks small when she sleeps. Younger. The lines carved by worry are softer. She clutches the remote like a talisman to her chest.
You should go to bed.
Tomorrow you’ll probably get roped into something with the kids. Or Frank will decide the shop’s “sort of open”, and you’ll end up elbow-deep in an engine while he pretends he’s closed. Your ribs are still a little tender. Your brain is more tired from how ruthlessly you’ve been pushing yourself.
Instead, you hang the towel over the back of a chair, pull on your jacket, and quietly open the door.
The air outside is cold and clear, a slap to the lungs. The sky over the trailer park is a murky orange from the sodium streetlights, but you can still see a few stars stubborn enough to punch through. Your breath streams out in white clouds around you. The ground crunches under your boots, the top layer of dirt hardened by frost.
You shove your hands in your pockets and start walking. No plan. Just motion.
Across the way, Mr Calhoun sits alone at his table, TV dinner tray in front of him, TV light flickering over his bald head. There’s a tiny string of lights around his window, half of them burned out. He lifts his beer bottle toward the screen in a slow salute.
Further down, the Jacksons are mid-argument, from the look of it. Their silhouettes move sharply and jitterily behind thin curtains. Someone gestures wildly; someone else throws up their hands.
The trailer next to yours has a tree so buried in tinsel it’s a miracle it hasn’t spontaneously combusted. Kids run circles around it, wrapping each other in cheap garlands. An older man in a flannel shirt sits in an armchair watching them, a sleepy smile on his face, a cigarette burning between his fingers. A woman reaches over and plucks it from his hand, scolding him without much heat.
You keep walking.
You’ve always liked looking into lit windows at night. Not in a creepy way. Just… there’s something about seeing these little squares of other people’s lives, each one its own tiny movie. Moms and dads and grandparents and siblings. Trees and tinsel and food and fights. All the stuff that makes up a life, contained in twelve-by-twelve flashes as you pass.
Your own windows look like that from the outside, you realise. Warm rectangle of light in the dark, your mom snoring on the couch, the sad little tree in the corner with its leaning star. Someone could be walking past right now, making up a whole story about you.
They wouldn’t guess there’s a stack of college letters on your table like unexploded bombs. They wouldn’t guess there are scars on your ribs that still ache in the cold. They wouldn’t guess you’ve seen things under this town that make the “leak” on the news look like a joke.
Your boots hit the little strip of road that leads out of the park.
You go left without thinking, toward the main drag. There are Christmas lights on the telephone poles now, cheap paper stars that flap in the wind. The grocery store sign glows at the edge of town, Family Foods in humming red neon. A half-deflated Santa slumps against the storefront like he lost a bar fight.
You pass the diner where you and Eddie split fries, and he talked about campaigns like they were war plans. The video store with a cardboard Bruce Springsteen standee someone has drawn a moustache on.
You think about your dad leaving.
You remember being mad at your mom for weeks, for not chaining him to the couch. For letting him go. For loving him in the first place. You remember deciding, very quietly, that you were never going to need anyone that much. That if you kept your edges sharp enough, no one could get close enough to hurt you like that again. But then Eddie came along, and you realise now with a painful twist in your chest, that if Eddie hadn’t come along, loneliness would have devoured you and spat out something more monstrous instead.
You shove your hands deeper into your pockets, shoulders hunching against a wind that suddenly feels like too much.
You end up in one of the quiet little residential streets near the newer houses, the ones with actual yards instead of patches of mud. The suburbs, Hawkins-style. Lawns with sleighs and plastic reindeer, bushes wrapped in strings of white lights. A cul-de-sac where every mailbox has a big red bow. A couple argues in the driveway of a split-level, voices low and intense. She’s in slippers, arms crossed; he’s in a jacket, keys in his fist. The words don’t reach you, just the shapes of them. The distance between their bodies says enough.
A little girl in a pink coat sits on the steps of another house, holding a doll. She’s staring up at the sky like she’s expecting Santa to come screaming out of the clouds. Her mom appears in the doorway and calls her in. The girl hesitates, then goes.
You tilt your head back.
The sky is still that weird orange, but—
Huh.
You squint.
Is that—
A cold fleck lands on your cheek. Another brushes your eyelashes. You blink.
Snow.
Real, actual snow, not just the crunchy frost you’ve been stomping through for a few weeks. Tiny flakes drifting out of the orange-lit sky, melting almost as soon as they hit the ground, but there, undeniable.
You laugh under your breath, surprised by it. Of course, it waits until midnight on Christmas to show up. Hawkins always had a flair for the dramatic. You hold out your hand. A snowflake lands in your palm, a brief, perfect star before it dissolves against your skin. You stand there for a minute, letting the cold soften the inside of your head. Snow on your hair, snow on your jacket, snow on the street until it starts to stick at the edges.
You should go home.
Your mom will worry if she wakes in the middle of the night and you’re gone. You’ll catch a cold. Your ribs will hate you tomorrow.
You turn to go.
Then a motion catches your eye. It takes a moment for your brain to catch up, to realise you’re standing at the bottom of Cherry Lane.
The Hargrove house sits at the end of the lane, porch light on, curtains drawn. From here, you can see the Camaro parked nose-in by the side yard, blue paint gone dark and dull in the winter night.
Turn around.
Turn around.
The front door opens, and you realise the motion that caught your eye earlier was a silhouette through the glass.
Light spills out, followed by a figure. Then another, and even at this distance—forty yards, maybe fifty, you across the road and half-hidden by a dead oak—you know the shapes. You know the geometry of this. The bigger one crowding forward, the younger one refusing to step back, the particular physics of a man who’s decided to make a point with his body.
Neil has Billy by the front of his shirt.
The sound doesn’t carry. Too far, too much wind and snow, but you don’t need the sound. You can read it in the way Billy’s head snaps sideways—a slap, swift and full-armed, the practised economy of a man who’s done this a thousand times and has it down to muscle memory. Billy stumbles. Neil’s hand stays fisted in his shirt, hauling him back upright, saying something. You can see the finger jabbing, the snarl, the rigid line of a body that mistakes violence for authority.
Then the shove.
Billy goes backwards off the porch steps, catches himself on the railing, barely. Neil says something else—harsh, final—and the door slams. Porch light goes dark, the lock clicks.
Billy is left outside like a kicked dog.
Christmas Eve.
His own child, on Christmas Eve.
Your blood rushes to your ears.
Billy stands in the yard. Doesn’t move, doesn’t beat on the door, doesn’t shout. Just stands there in a t-shirt and jeans, no jacket, arms hanging at his sides, and the stillness of him is worse than if he were screaming. It’s the stillness of a body that knows the drill. That knows the cold outside is nothing compared to what’s waiting if that door opens again.
Your hands are shaking.
Not from cold. From the effort of keeping calm. Every nerve in your body is screaming at you to cross the street, climb those steps, put your fist through that door and then through Neil Hargrove’s face. You could do it. You’ve been hit by worse than a middle-aged man with a drinking problem and a god complex, and you’ve hit back harder.
But that’s not what Billy needs.
You learned that about him—watching from the edges, piecing it together from split knuckles and flinches and the way he holds his jaw when he walks into school some mornings. He doesn’t need someone to fight his battles. He needs someone to not look at him like he’s already broken.
You swallow the rage, fold it up, shove it somewhere deep and airless.
Then you cross the street.
Your boots on the frozen pavement are loud enough to announce you. Billy’s head snaps around—fast, coiled, the reflexes of someone who’s been trained by years of incoming blows never to let his guard down. You see his body go tight, see the fists form, the weight shift to the balls of his feet.
Fight stance. Automatic. God, you hate Neil Hargrove.
Then he sees it’s you, and something moves through his face too fast to catalogue. Surprise. A flash of something raw and wanting. Then the mask, fast and practised, slamming down like a security gate.
“You lost, princess?” His voice comes out wrecked, rough and cracked at the edges, but he props the smirk up anyway, shoulders squaring, chin lifting. The performance reassembling itself in real time. “Park’s that way.”
He brings the cigarette to his mouth, lights it with another sharp flick of the Zippo. The orange glow kisses his face, throws the split in his lip into sharp relief. You wince before you can stop yourself.
“Nice gift,” you say. “Who wrapped that one for you?”
His eyes shutter for a second, the shutters peeling back just enough that you catch the flash of something raw underneath. Then the smirk slides into place again.
“Ran into a door,” he replies casually. “Happens.”
“Must’ve been one hell of a door,” you retort. “What, did it fight back?”
He lifts one shoulder in a shrug that’s all brittle bravado.
“You out here carolling or what?” he asks, smoky breath curling in the air between you. “Gonna go door to door and tell everybody they’re on the naughty list?”
“Already did my rounds,” you tell him, tracking the restless energy in his limbs. “You were the finale. Thought I’d save the worst for last.”
Billy snorts for real this time, exhaling, catching on a sound that might be a cough, might be a laugh.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he says, glancing down at your jacket like it’s not enough. “You still look like you got pushed down a flight of stairs.”
“You say the sweetest things,” you say dryly. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”
His gaze lingers on your side again.
“Your… whatever.” He flicks his cigarette hand vaguely toward your torso. “Still messed up?”
“It’s healing,” you reply with a sigh, but he asked this time, and you’re not going to punish him. “I can sneeze without seeing Jesus now, so that’s progress.”
He looks like he wants to smile at that, but doesn’t quite manage it.
“Jesus, Billy,” you say softly. “You ever gonna learn to duck?”
He swallows. You see his throat move, the tendons shifting beneath his taut skin. “Door came outta nowhere.”
You meet his eyes. You don’t say liar. You don’t say I saw. You don’t say he’s hurting you, and it makes you want to scream.
The snow intensifies a little, flakes fat and slow, landing on his hair and your lashes. The cul-de-sac is quiet. You can hear the canned laughter from someone’s TV, faint and distant. You both stand there, stupidly, like two satellites that accidentally drifted too close again. Somehow, you always end up like this, pulled together, tied at the seams.
You clear your throat.
“You, uh,” you mumble, nodding toward his mouth. “You’re bleeding.”
Billy licks his lip on instinct, hissing breath slipping between his teeth when he hits the split. “It’s fine.”
“It’s bleeding on your shirt.”
“It’s a shit shirt anyway.”
“Billy.”
“What?” Sharp. All teeth. The cornered-animal edge that you know means back off and don’t go in the same breath, the one he uses when someone gets too close to the wound underneath the wound.
“You don’t have to be fine,” you tell him. “Not tonight. Not with me.”
He stares at you. Snow catches in his hair, on his bare arms, on the space between you. He’s shaking. Small tremors through his shoulders. Cold or adrenaline or the aftermath of Neil’s hands. Maybe all three.
Then he says something you don’t expect. “Truce?”
You blink. “What?”
“Christmas truce. One night.” He makes a vague peace-sign gesture, then turns it into flipping you off because he can’t help himself. “World War I. Guys in the trenches stopped shooting each other for one night. Played soccer in No Man’s Land.” He shrugs, as if this is common knowledge. “So, Christmas amnesty. No bullshit, no ‘we’re done,’ no you storming off. We sit. We talk. Like… normal people.”
You stare at him blankly. Billy Hargrove, bleeding, freezing, quoting the Western Front at you like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“You know about the Christmas Truce,” you say, and disbelief is blatant in your voice.
His expression sharpens immediately, a blade turned outward. “Yeah. I read. I know that’s a shock, coming from the idiot with the nice hair who just gets by on his jawline—”
“I didn’t say—”
“You looked it.” He points at your face. “Right there. That little crinkle. Very judgey. Very oh, he knows things.” His smirk returns, bloodied and dangerous and a little bit delighted by your discomfort. “Not just a pretty face, princess. Hate to break it to you.”
Something warm uncurls in your chest. You fight it.
“Okay.”
Light sparks in his eyes, chasing away the apprehension. “Okay?”
“Truce. One night.”
Billy’s eyes darken. It’s clear he didn’t expect to get this far. He jerks his chin toward the Camaro.
“Come on then, grease monkey,” he says. “I ain’t standing out here freezing my nuts off to be sentimental.”
The Camaro smells the way it always does: leather, cigarettes, that sharp cologne that doesn’t belong in Indiana. Ocean-adjacent. California bleeding through even here.
Billy cranks the heat, kills the engine so the battery runs without the growl. The windows fog almost immediately, your combined breath and body heat turning the car into a sealed pocket of warm dark—a small, enclosed space; a world of its own.
You slip out quickly, jog back to your trailer, and return ninety seconds flat with the first-aid kit and a clean towel. Your mom’s still asleep on the couch, the TV still flickering blue. You move like a ghost through your own home. When you slide back into the passenger seat, Billy’s got his head tipped against the headrest, eyes closed. In the dim light from the streetlamp, he looks different. Younger. Less assembled. The bruise on his jaw is already purpling, and there’s a tiredness in the set of his mouth that has nothing to do with the hour.
“This is gonna sting,” you announce, uncapping the peroxide.
“You’re hilarious. I know what peroxide does.”
“Then stop bracing.”
“I’m not—” He hisses through his teeth when you press the soaked towel to his lip. His hand flies up and catches your wrist—instinct, fast, athlete’s reflexes—and his fingers close around your pulse point before either of you can stop the contact.
You go still. So does he. His grip loosens, but doesn’t leave. His thumb sits against the thin skin of your inner wrist, and you can feel your own pulse hammering against it, betraying you.
“Reflex,” he says, low but unapologetic.
“I know.”
You work carefully. Clean the split; it isn’t deep, thankfully, but it will ache for days. Dab at the cut at the corner of his mouth. Move to the bruise on his jaw next, which requires cupping his face, turning it toward the weak light. His skin is hot under your palm. You can feel the clench of the muscle, the tension running through him like current through a wire. It should probably concern you how natural it feels to touch him like this, that he allows it, and that you want more.
Billy watches you. Not blinking. Just that focused, intent way he has—like he’s memorising the way your hands move, the furrow between your brows, the way your tongue peeks between your teeth when you concentrate. You’ve felt this before. At the shop, the first time he brought the Camaro in. That weight of attention that sits somewhere between threat and worship.
“You’re good at this,” he notes, almost absently.
“Lots of practice.”
“On who?”
“Shop accidents. Eddie’s constant attempts to be more metal than his coordination allows. Kids who fall off bikes.”
“You take care of everyone.”
“Someone has to.”
“Yeah?” His eyes are very blue in the dim light—too blue, too still. “Who takes care of you?”
You don’t answer, and to Billy’s benefit, he doesn’t push. But his thumb traces a slow circle against your wrist, and the question sits between you like something with its own heartbeat. You finish with his face and set the supplies aside. The silence that’s left behind in the car is thick, warm, a living thing.
“You saw,” Billy says. Not a question.
Your hand stills where it’s resting on the centre console. “I was walking. I ended up on Cherry Lane. I—”
“You saw.” Flat and final. His jaw locks and unlocks, like he’s chewing on something he can’t swallow down. “How much?”
“Enough.”
The word nestles between you. Billy’s eyes cut to the fogged windshield, then to his own hands in his lap, then back to you. There’s something dangerous in his expression now. Not directed at you, but circling, restless, a caged thing looking for a wall to throw itself against.
“Don’t,” he warns.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t look at me like that. Like I’m something you need to fix.” The last word comes out barbed, ugly. “I’m not one of your engines, mechanic. You can’t just pop the hood and swap out the parts that don’t work.”
Your jaw tightens. “I don’t think you’re a project.”
“Then what?” He turns toward you fully, and the movement shrinks the car, eats the space between you. His knee is almost touching yours. His eyes are burning, bright and furious and hungry in a way he can’t fully hide. “What do you think I am?”
Dangerous. Scared. Trying. Failing. Beautiful in a way that makes me angry. Angry in a way that makes me ache.
“I think you’re a guy sitting in his car on Christmas Eve with a split lip, and I think the door didn’t hit you.”
The fury drains out of him so fast it leaves him looking hollow. “No,” he agrees, too quietly. “It didn’t.”
A few beats pass. “You want to tell me about it?” you ask. No pity. No softness. Just the offer, laid flat.
“No.” Immediate and tight response. His fist clenches in his lap, then, “He wanted me to apologise. For something I said last week. I didn’t. That’s the whole story.”
It’s not the whole story. You both know it’s not the whole story. The whole story is years-long, with chapters in California and a mother who left and a boy who learned to flinch before he learned to shave, but you don’t push. That’s not what tonight is for.
“Okay.”
He turns to you, blatantly suspicious of the acceptance. “That’s it? Just okay?”
“Truce rules. No emotional terrorism.”
Billy’s mouth twitches despite itself. “Those are my rules. You can’t use my own rules against me.”
You give him a look that almost passes for sly, and say, in your best Billy imitation, “Try me.”
He laughs. Rough, surprised, dragged out of him by your antics. The sound fills the car, and you feel it in your chest like the bass from Eddie’s speakers—deep, physical, real. His split lip starts bleeding again, and he touches it with the back of his hand, pulling it away to look at the red smear.
“Shit.”
“Hold still.” You lean forward with the towel, dab at it gently. He’s close enough now that you can see the ring of darker blue around his irises, can smell cigarettes and copper and the cologne that always makes you think of a coast you’ve never seen.
“Tell me something,” you say, dabbing carefully. “Something I wouldn’t guess.”
“Why?”
“Truce. That’s what truces are for. Learning things about the enemy.”
His eyes narrow, but there’s heat in them now. Interest. That particular sharpness he gets when you engage him like an equal instead of a threat. Like you’re a fire he wants to stick his hand in just to see what happens.
“I can cook.”
Your eyebrows go up. “Cook.”
“My mom taught me. Before.” A flicker across his face, there and gone. “Pasta, mostly. Some Mexican stuff she picked up in San Diego. I make a decent enchilada. Not that anyone in this frozen shithole town would appreciate it. You people don’t even believe in decent spice.”
Your mouth curves at his petulant tone. “Billy Hargrove. Secret chef.”
“Spread it around, and I’ll deny everything.” He stretches, one arm along the back of his seat, fingers drumming the leather. “Your turn. What’s the first song you remember actually fucking with your head. Like—” He taps his temple with two fingers “—making you feel something you didn’t have words for yet.”
You pause, thinking. The car hums faintly around you. The tape hiss fills the cracks in the quiet.
“Landslide,” you say eventually.
It’s his turn to raise his eyebrows.
“Fleetwood Mac,” you add.
“Yeah, I know it,” he shoots back. “You don’t think I listen to anything without a guitar solo?”
“You listen to Van Halen on loop,” you point out with a huff. “I’m not convinced you hear lyrics at all.”
He shrugs, acknowledging the fair hit. “Why that one?” he presses.
You feel the answer before you say it. Your dad’s hands on the steering wheel, the radio low, your feet not touching the floor yet. The way his face went soft and far away for the length of the song. The way the word changing lodged in your chest and never quite worked itself free.
“It was on in the car,” you recall distantly, keeping it simple. “My dad played it a lot. Before he… before he left.”
Billy watches you as you say it. Doesn’t look away. You hate the way the words feel in your mouth—thin, overused, not big enough for the hole they point at.
“Song stuck,” you go on, shrugging like it’s nothing. “Guess I did too.”
He doesn’t crack a joke at that. Doesn’t offer sympathy either.
“My mom liked that one, too,” he says instead, voice going quieter. “She’d sing it when she was doing dishes. Before he—” He cuts himself off. “Before.”
You search his face. “It’s a good song.”
“Yeah,” he grunts. “Guess it is.”
Even though the conversation is heavy, you realise you’re both grinning, and the realisation catches you off guard. This. The ease of it. The way the air in the car has shifted from heavy to something lighter, electricity and safety instead of destruction.
Billy notices too. You see him noticing. See the way his expression rearranges around the thought.
“This is weird as fuck.”
You snort. “Extremely.”
“We don’t do this. We do—” He gestures between you. “The other thing. The arguing thing. The thing where you call me on my shit and I pretend I don’t care.”
“We’re on truce.”
And I miss you and your stupid face, even when I shouldn’t, even when I should hate you.
“Right. Truce.” He drums his fingers. Restless, always restless, all that energy with nowhere to go. The music on the tape shifts into something louder, kicks the mood away before it can settle into something sticky. He taps his fingers on the wheel in time with the drums.
“Your turn,” he drawls after another moment of quiet. “Ask me something. Preferably not ‘what’s your favourite blood sport.’”
You think about the questions that sit at the back of your mouth all the time. Why do you let him hit you? Why do you scare Max? Why did you take her to Indy? Was it a genuine gesture or done in some vain hope I’ll forgive you? Why do you look at the road like it’s the only thing keeping you from disappearing? You pick something smaller.
“What’s your favourite place you’ve ever driven?”
He huffs a little laugh. “Good question,” he admits, giving you an appreciative look from the corner of his eye. “You’re learning.”
“Shut up,” you mutter, trying not to smile as you shove his shoulder without thinking.
Billy exaggerates the impact, rocking with it, grinning around his split lip.
“Pacific Coast Highway,” he tells you after a beat, and you can hear the longing, stark and deep, in his voice. “Middle of summer. Top down. Sun so bright it hurts, salt in your teeth, sweat in your eyes. Radio up so loud you can’t hear yourself think. Just… everything open.”
You try to picture it, pressing your cheek into the seat, your body angled towards him. Road like a ribbon along a cliff. Ocean on one side, big and too impossibly blue, nothing on the other side but sky and whatever comes next.
“That sounds really nice.”
“It was,” he says wishfully. “Before everything went to shit.”
There’s a shadow behind the last word. Divorce, custody, moving across the country to this town that feels too small to hold him without breaking something.
“You miss it,” you note.
“Every day,” he replies without hesitation.
The honesty is so clean it throws you for a second because you’re not used to this quieter, honest version of him.
“Why the hell are you still in Hawkins, then?” you demand. “You’re almost eighteen. You have a car. In a few months, you could drive until the land gives out and just… keep going.”
Billy lets out a sharp breath that’s more snort than laugh.
“Yeah, and end up where, exactly? You think they’re just handing out apartments on the beach to guys who barely scraped through school and got a record before they could drink legally?”
“Could fix cars,” you insist. “You’re not completely hopeless with your hands. I would know.”
“You offering me a reference?” he asks jokingly.
“Don’t push it, Hargrove.”
He smirks, then it fades. His eyes slide back on the windshield, morose and brittle this time. “He’d find me.”
He doesn’t say Neil’s name. Doesn’t have to. You picture Neil Hargrove crossing state lines like a curse, tracking down his son with paperwork and rage. You understand suddenly, painfully, that it’s not just money or fear holding Billy here. It’s a chain of laws and custody and control. The world is big, but some people have a way of shrinking it just by existing in it.
His hand is still resting on the back of his seat, fingers drumming, and the movement catches the faint streetlight on metal. The ring. Silver, worn band, sitting on his right hand. You’ve noticed it before—hard not to, the way he uses his hands, always in motion—but you’ve never asked.
“The ring,” you say absently, catching his hand before you can stop yourself. “Does it mean anything? Like the medallion?”
Billy stills, and you let the heat of his hand soak into yours. Even without a coat, he seems to be burning up from the inside out. He glances down at his hand in yours like he’s forgotten it’s there, which you know is a lie because Billy is aware of every part of himself at all times. The ring, the medallion at his throat, the way he holds a cigarette—everything curated, everything deliberate.
“Yeah,” he says, guarded.
“You don’t have to—”
“It was her wedding ring.” He turns his hand slightly with yours, letting the dim light catch the band. “Well. Not the real one. The real one was gold, but she sold it when my dad—when things got tight. This was the replacement. Silver. It costs about twelve bucks at a pawn shop in Oceanside.” His mouth twists. “She used to joke it was more honest anyway. Said the expensive one was the lie and the cheap one was the truth.”
Small, tender part of you folds at those words.
You look at him—really look, past the split lip and the bruise and the armour—and you see it. The medallion at his throat, his mother’s saint of travellers. The ring on his hand, her twelve-dollar truth. The recipes he carries in his head like a reminder. The way he said the ocean when you asked about California, and what he really meant was her.
Neil Hargrove has spent years trying to make his son into something hard and sharp and male. Be a man. Stand up straight. Don’t cry. Don’t flinch. Don’t you dare be soft. And Billy has—he’s hard, he’s sharp, he’s all the things Neil demanded him to be. But underneath that, threaded through him like wire through a circuit board, his mother is everywhere. Little tokens of her ghost worn on his body like a shrine. The cooking. The ring. The medallion. The way he gravitates toward the ocean, toward the life she built before she dismantled it and left.
Neil made Billy into a weapon, but the weapon is decorated with his mother’s jewellery, and you think that’s the most quietly devastating act of rebellion you’ve ever seen.
And you recognise it. Because you do the same thing, don’t you? Carry your father in the parts of yourself you can’t cut out—the way you listen to engines, the way your hands know tools before your brain does, the patience you have for machines that you can’t quite find for people unless they’re yours in that private, greedy way. His voice in your head, don’t look, just listen.
But the way you carry it is different. Your dad is a wound you’ve bandaged over, hidden, denied. You carry him in silence, avoidance and the refusal to look directly at the absence. You push it down and build walls over it and weaponise your words when anyone gets close enough to see the gap.
Billy carries his mom on his skin. Out loud. In plain sight. Daring the world to say something about it.
You with your words. Billy with his rage. Both of you holding too tight to the ghost of someone who walked out, both of you pushing the living away to make room for the dead and gone.
You force yourself to find your voice again. “She had good taste. In rings, anyway.”
Billy’s eyes flick to yours when you release his hand. There’s a wariness there, the readiness for mockery or pity. He finds neither on your face.
“Yeah,” he says, and his voice is rough. “She did.”
He turns the ring once on his finger—an unconscious gesture, you think, like checking that it’s still there. Still real, still hers.
“People keep telling me I’m too much. That’s not the same as terrifying.”
“It is, actually.” His eyes are steady on yours. No smirk. No performance. Just him, in the dim light, with blood drying on his lip and snow building on the windshield outside. “You’re too smart for this town. You’re the kind of person who walks into a room and rewires the whole dynamic just by being there, and most people don’t know what the fuck to do with that, so they call you too much because it’s easier than admitting you just make them feel small.”
Something cracks behind your sternum.
“But you know where you wouldn’t be too much?” He tilts his head. That wolfish look, the one that’s all challenge and dare. “Somewhere with an ocean and people who are loud and intense and don’t apologise for taking up space.”
“Are you describing California?”
“I’m describing anywhere that isn’t this frozen hellhole, princess.” His mouth curves, a deliberate upturn, almost teasing and cocky and him. “But yeah. Big city. You’d fit right in. They wouldn’t know what hit them.”
With you, whispers something reckless in your chest, sharp and wanting and far too loud. He’s talking about California, and he’s looking at you like—
You shut that down.
“I've always been too much,” you say instead, and you don’t know why you’re telling him this, except that it’s Christmas Eve and you’re in his car and the truce has clearly made you stupid and honest. “Even before the schools said no. My dad left, and I spent years thinking it was because I was too—” You make a restless, angry gesture. “This. Too many questions. Too angry. Too everything.”
Billy doesn’t move. He’s watching you the way he watches things that matter—completely, without a second of broken focus.
“And then Eddie came along,” you continue, gentler, loving despite the way Billy’s jaw ticks at the name. “And before Eddie, I had nothing. I was this angry, jagged thing who had nothing. I pushed everyone away because I figured if I did it first, they couldn’t do it to me. But Eddie just kept showing up even when I was awful. Even when I tried to make him leave.” Your voice cracks, just slightly. “He’s the first person who stayed. He’s my family. Not blood, just—”
“Chosen,” Billy finishes. “The family you chose.”
“Yeah.”
He’s quiet for a moment. His thumb has found your pulse again, tracing slow circles. You don’t know when he took your wrist; you didn’t even notice when he did it, but you can’t quite force yourself to pull away.
“My mom left when I was eight.”
It comes out bluntly. Undecorated, a little prickly. Like a door kicked open instead of unlocked.
“Just went. And I did the same math you did—figured if I’d been quieter, better, less me, she might’ve taken me with her.” His jaw clenches, the muscle jumping. “Different flavour. Same shit.”
“Same shit,” you agree quietly.
“And you know the fucked-up part?” His voice has gone rough again, almost hoarse, but he doesn’t look away, doesn’t pull back. This is Billy at his most dangerous—not when he’s yelling, but when he’s honest, open. When the mask drops and what’s underneath is too raw to look at, but he makes you look anyway. “I still listen for her car. Every engine that sounds right, I look. Like a goddamn dog. Ten years and I still look.”
I still hear his truck in my dreams.
You don’t say it aloud. You don’t have to. Billy reads it in your face, and something passes between you, then—recognition, kinship, the particular communion of two people shaped by the same wound from different directions.
“Quite the pair,” he murmurs.
“Devastating.”
“Catastrophic.”
You laugh—you can’t quite help it—and the sound surprises you both. His eyes light up, that flare of heat he can’t quite control when you crack, when the armour slips and something soft shows through. Something hangs there, suspended between you and the fogged windshield. It feels like being at the top of a drop, the moment before gravity remembers to do its job.
You’re the one who looks away this time, glancing at the digital clock, guttering red on the dash.
“I should go.” Your voice feels too loud in the small space. “Before my mom wakes up and decides the Grinch murdered me.”
He huffs a laugh. “Yeah,” he mutters. “Can’t have that. Bad way to go.”
You reach for the handle. Billy kills the power, the dash winking dark, the tape sighing to silence. The sudden absence of the music makes your ears ring. You both climb out into the cold.
The air bites harder now, like it resentfully remembers its winter. Your breath plumes in front of you, mixing with his. The snow has decided to actually stick, tiny flakes catching in his hair, in the lashes at the outer corner of his eyes. They melt as soon as they touch him.
You close the door gently, the metal heavy under your palm. Billy comes around the front of the car, hands shoved in his jean pockets, shoulders hunched more against the world than the weather.
“You gonna be okay?” you ask before you can stop yourself.
He gives you a sarcastic look, tongue dragging over his teeth. “Depends on your definition of the word.”
“Not dead,” you say immediately and hate yourself for it. “Not arrested. Not left outside to freeze all night.”
Billy smirks, the cut at his lip pulling, a little bead of red bright in the streetlight. “Go home.” He pauses then he gives you another lazy peace sign, followed by his middle finger. “Merry Christmas, grease monkey.”
You snort, flip him off, too. “Merry Christmas, Billy.”
You spin on your heels.
“Wait.”
You pause, turning back. He’s looking at you with an expression you’ve never seen on him before. Open in a way that looks like it hurts him, raw around the edges. Vulnerable in a way he’d kill you for naming out loud.
“Can you—” He stops, choking down whatever he wanted to say, then, “Say something for me.”
“Depends.”
“William.” His eyes find yours through the snow. “I just want to hear what it sounds like. When you say it.”
It takes you a second.
Then you remember the roll call at school, the way teachers said it the first week. The name printed on his locker roster, on his file in the office you once saw peeking over some secretary’s shoulder.
William Hargrove.
You’ve never used it with him. Nobody does if they want to keep their teeth. It’s the name that gets thrown like a weapon in his house, you imagine, usually right before the crash.
“You sure?” you ask quietly.
He doesn’t look at you when he answers. “Truce,” he reminds you. “One night.”
You step a little closer without meaning to, feet crunching in the light dusting of snow.
“William.”
You take your time with it, let each syllable form slow, deliberate—Wil-li-am—the way you’d handle something that might shatter. You savour it, cradle it in your mouth, let it roll through your body like something precious and stolen and all yours now.
Billy closes his eyes.
When he opens them, there’s an inferno there, bright and raw and barely leashed. His hand lifts—reaches toward your face, fingers curling, gravitational—and you can feel the heat of his palm before it touches you, an inch away, hovering there.
He stops. Holds it there. The air between his hand and your skin hums. But then Billy lowers his hand, slow and reluctant.
“See,” you murmur, your voice barely above the whisper of falling snow. “Didn’t kill you.”
“Not yet,” he answers, his voice a deep rasp that wraps around you. “Say it again.”
You consider telling him no on principle, but you’re tired, and he’s locked out of his own house on Christmas Eve, and you don’t have the energy to fight him tonight. Instead, you want to sink into the heat of him, just for this one moment.
“William.”
You watch it hit him. Watch it settle into his shoulders, into the line of his throat. He looks like he’s holding himself back with both hands from something you’re not sure you’re ready to name. His breath shakes on the way out. Just once. Then the mask starts reassembling—slower than usual, unwilling—and he nods, jaw tight, eyes bright.
You walk, cutting through the snowfall.
Don’t look back.
You look back anyway.
He’s still there. Visible through the white, one hand raised, extended in a half wave. Like he’s holding onto the shape of something that’s already gone. El’s words spring back in your mind unbidden.
He’s scared of losing people.
You get back home in a few minutes, close your trailer door behind you, and breathe. Stand in the dark kitchen, heart hammering, and taste his name in your mouth.
William.
an:
Fun fact: this final scene between them was actually one of the first scenes I ever came up with for this fic, and it only took 130k+ to get here lmao. But I hope this was as satisfying to read as it was to write. Thank you for reading (●'◡'●)
⊹ ࣪ ˖ summary: “For the first time in a long time, you’re not just standing still inside the cage made for you.”
⊹ ࣪ ˖ pairing: billy hargrove x f!reader
⊹ ࣪ ˖ wc: 18.2k+ (oops)
⊹ ࣪ ˖ warnings: billy's pov, physical/verbal/emotional abuse (the neil special), crudeness, physical violence, billy is straight up spiralling in this one yeehaw 📣
⊹ ࣪ ˖ notes: this is arguably the most important chapter of the story so far. we're going back in time a little and chapter picks up from Halloween dance, but I felt it was necessary to see the moment from Billy's pov for reasons you'll soon see. finally, I hated last chapter but your feedback/support has been nothing short of astounding, so thank you so much ❤ I breezed through this chapter despite the fat wc because I was so inspired lol. so thank you all very much for your support/questions ❤
read on ao3. ⊹ series masterlist.
INTERLUDE II: DIRECTION.
Billy spots you the second you walk in.
It’s hard not to. The whole place is a mess—sweat, limbs, smoke and Tina’s rich-girl Halloween bullshit, plastic cobwebs, fake blood, and kids trying too hard to be impressive. He’s got his spot in the kitchen, hip to the counter, cigarette in one hand, beer in the other, girls orbiting like they always do. It’s noise and heat and the same old nothing.
And then you step through the doorway.
Leather pants painted on your legs that make his brain go blank for a moment. Something fitted on top that shows a strip of stomach when you move. Not your usual coveralls and grease and don’t-look-at-me flannel. Hair down instead of tied back, eyeliner like you mean it, mouth pursed, eyes searching and arresting. You don’t look like you belong here, and somehow that just makes you fit the room better than anyone else here. Like you’re a live wire somebody dropped into Tina’s curated little terrarium.
Billy takes a greedy drag off his cigarette, forces his mouth back into the lazy half-smile they expect from him. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t go to you. King doesn’t chase. He watches.
You find Munson first.
Metalhead damn near levitates when he spots you. Billy can’t hear the words over the music, but he gets the gist from the way Eddie’s face goes slack, then stupidly bright. You spin for him, mock-showy, elbow catching some zombie. Eddie laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen, every inch of him angled towards you like he’s helpless against your gravity.
He’s the person dearest to me. Which is more than you’ll ever be.
Billy’s jaw tightens.
He tells himself it’s nothing. He tells himself he doesn’t care who you came with, what you’re wearing, what you do. Except then Eddie drags you to the living room, and you let him. Let him pull you. Let him put his hands on you. Let him be the one you laugh with, and it all feels like some fucked up joke.
You disappear into the crush of bodies, and Billy stays where he is, shoulder to the frame, a girl pressed against his side whose name he can’t be bothered to remember but who keeps mentioning how good she is with her mouth. He watches the room instead. Watches for Munson’s ridiculous curls, for the flicker of your jacket, for the way your body moves.
He catches glimpses. You spinning under Eddie’s arm. Your head thrown back in a laugh, eyes closed like you forgot the ceiling exists. Munson acting like a fucking cartoon, all flailing limbs and no rhythm, and somehow you’re smiling at him like that’s enough, like it’s the happiest you’ve ever been.
Something sour sits under Billy’s tongue. He crushes his cigarette out in a half-empty beer can, fishing for another without looking. He’s been restless all day, all week. Since the game. Since the way you stood up to him in that hallway to defend a girl you didn’t even know, and that cold night after the game when you told him you’re not good for me.
He takes a swallow of warm beer and reminds himself of what he is. What you think he is. What he’s proven himself to be, over and over. So when he feels that prickle along the back of his neck—someone looking, really looking with weight that haunts him into his goddamn dreams—it’s already halfway to anger before he turns.
You’re alone when you push back into the kitchen. Munson must’ve gotten distracted by Madonna or some other shiny thing. Sweat shines on your skin, your hair is a little messy, and your lips rest parted on a breath. You go for the cooler like you’re on a mission, crack a beer against the counter like you’ve done it a hundred times, and the casual confidence in the move goes straight to his dick. You look looser. Softer at the edges. Drunk, maybe. Reckless, definitely.
Billy doesn’t decide to move. His body just does it for him, unable to ignore the pull.
The crowd parts for him without him having to ask. It always does. People step aside when they see the leather, when they see the look on his face. He keeps his gait easy, loose, like he’s not already strung tight as a wire. He stops just in front of you, close enough that your scent and smoke and sweat hit him over the stink of the room. Your eyes flick up at him, annoyed first, then sharp in that particular way he craves.
“Mechanic,” he says, like the party’s just gone from tolerable to interesting. His voice cuts through the noise without him needing to raise it.
“Hargrove.” Flat. Guard up.
“Didn’t think parties were your scene.” He lets his gaze run over you slowly, deliberate, because he wants to see you feel it. Wants to watch what it does to you, if he can boil your blood the way you boil his.
“They’re not.”
He tips his head. “So what are you doing here?”
You snap back something sharp about not needing his permission. He expects the bite. What he doesn’t expect is the way his own mouth quirks, like he’s enjoying this more than he should.
“New look,” he says. Because it is. Because it rattles him, and the only way to keep a hold of himself is to turn it around on you.
“What about it?” you fire back.
He shrugs, trying for casual. “Nothing. Just makes me wonder what you’re trying to prove.”
He doesn’t mean it to come out like that. Doesn’t mean to sound like Neil with his “who are you trying to impress, boy?” bullshit. But the second the words are out, he hears it; feels how it lands wrong between you.
Your pulse jumps in your neck. “I’m not trying to prove anything.”
“Liar.” Automatic. Everyone in this town’s trying to prove something. Trying to prove they’re not scared. They’re not poor. They’re not stuck. He’s just saying what nobody else does.
You step in, right up into his space, eyes locked on his, and it’s stupid how much he loves this. The defiance. The heat in it, the way it coils around his bones every time, fuelling him. The fact that you don’t back down from him, not really. You’re throwing “you’re in my space” at him like that’s not exactly where he wants to be. If he could, he would plant himself somewhere you would never be able to ignore him. It’s such a childish want, but who can stop him from feeling it?
“Yeah?” Billy says, leaning closer, chasing the fight. “What are you gonna do about it?”
He thinks you’ll shove him. Or storm off. Or start listing all the ways he’s a piece of shit because that’s how this usually goes between you. What Billy doesn’t expect is for your hand to shoot up, fast as a snake, and hook into the chain around his neck.
The medallion catches the kitchen light as you drag him in. His breath stutters.
The whole world contracts to the cool press of metal against the base of his throat and the warmth of your fingers on it. The way your knuckles brush his collarbone. The way your eyes go dark and focused, lashes low as you turn St. Christopher over like you own the right to it, to him.
“What are you doing?” he manages, and his voice is rougher than he intends. It’s been a long time since anyone’s touched the damn thing without yanking it, using it to haul him around. This is different. Careful, almost. Gentle in a way he has no idea what to do with.
“Examining your jewellery,” you answer, breath ghosting the space between you.
You study it like it’s a problem to solve. Your thumb brushes the little dent on the side from where Neil slammed him into a wall two summers ago, chain snapping and charm bouncing off tile before he scrambled to grab it. Billy watches that thumb trace the mark like you can read the history in it, and a weird, cold-hot feeling slides down his spine.
“Where did you get this?” you ask.
Billy’s jaw locks up. He could lie. Could say some girl gave it to him, could say he stole it or that he got one for himself. Every answer feels like handing you something sharp enough to gut him with because they’re all untrue, and the medallion means too much to lie about.
“Why do you care?” he counters.
“Answer the question.”
He flicks his eyes over your face. You’re not letting this go. He can see it. That stubborn choke-hold you get when you’ve decided something matters. Fuck, he wishes you would let it go. But he also knows, deep down, that you would be just another face if you didn’t demand, if you weren’t just like him, dogged in the worst goddamn way when you want something.
“California,” he grits out finally. “Surf shop in San Diego. My mom gave it to me before—” Before she left. Before she walked out and didn’t look back. Before she handed him this saint of travellers, as if it were going to keep him safe, and then left him stranded with Neil, with his cruelty and fists. “Why?”
“Because my dad had one, too,” you reply, quieter.
The floor drops out from under him for a second. His eyes snap to yours. Your pupils flare, catching the light, and there’s an intensity there he’s never let himself look at head-on. Dad had one, too. Before he left.
Of course.
Something ugly and tender twists inside Billy’s chest. For a second, he sees it: two kids on opposite sides of the country, each with a parent who gave them a little silver promise and then vanished. He clamps down on the feeling prickling in his chest hard because showing it would be pathetic.
“So what, you’re feeling nostalgic?” he sneers, because the alternative is letting that hurt show. “Wanna bond over daddy issues?”
You don’t flinch. “No. I want to dance.”
Billy blinks. For a moment, he thinks he misheard you. The room noise roars back in—the music, people yelling over each other, some idiot laughing too loud—and you’re still there, still holding his chain, eyes steady on his, saying I want to dance like it’s a goddamn fact.
“You want to dance,” he repeats, voice flat with disbelief. “With me. After spending the last few months acting like I’m contaminated.”
“I’m feeling generous.”
“Are you drunk?”
“I’m feeling reckless,” you say, and your fingers skim his collarbone as you let go of the chain. The trail of touch burns all the way down his body. “Got some moves for me, California? Or are you all talk?”
His brain is a knot of suspicion and raw want. You’ve never offered him anything that wasn’t edged. This feels like a trap. But you’re looking at him like that, like you’re daring him, and he’s been thinking about you, standing in the ocean of his mind, telling him not yet. And how you’re offering the chance to touch you without a fight, without anger.
Reckless. Yeah. Billy knows a thing or two about that.
Without looking away, he flicks his cigarette into some freshman’s cup, hears the abortive protest die the second the kid sees his face. He offers you his hand, not a gentlemanly gesture—he’s never been that—but a challenge.
You don’t take it.
You shrug out of your jacket, toss it somewhere, shoulder clipping his bare chest as you push past. The contact is like being touched by electricity. He inhales sharply, the smell of you sticking in his head, and then he laughs under his breath because of course. Of fucking course you do it your way.
He follows.
The living room is a furnace. Bodies pressed tight, lights low, Bowie posters curling on the walls. The song shifts just as you step in, some track people scream for—Heroes, he realises a beat later, the whole room yelling along to we could be heroes like any of these assholes know what that means. You move first, and it’s small at the start. Hips catching the beat, shoulders loosening as you let music sweep you up. He circles you like he’s testing the fence. Doesn’t touch, not yet. Just lingers close enough to feel the heat radiating off you like an addict prolonging the anticipation of the first hit.
“You dance like you fight,” he leans in to murmur, mouth almost at your ear.
You don’t look at him. “And you fight like you dance. All show.”
Billy laughs. Can’t even help himself. It comes out real and rough at the edges, some startled bark of amusement he doesn’t recognise. He hasn’t laughed like that in so long he’s forgotten he could even produce a sound like that, one that doesn’t end mean. It irritates him that you can pull it out of him, and you don’t even seem to be trying to. Plenty of girls have tried in the past and never once gotten anywhere close.
The music drives you both forward. He reads your body without meaning to, like a part of him already knows every move you’ll make before you commit to doing it. The way you’re holding back, even now. The subtle tension in your neck, the way the beer has loosened you but not enough to wipe out caution.
He closes the distance.
One hand lands on your waist when you stumble, the other hovering near your shoulder. He’s ready for you to jerk away, to tell him to fuck off. You freeze, just for a heartbeat, eyes snapping up to his, searching. He sees it then—something like surprise, because his grip isn’t hurting. He’s not digging in. He’s just… holding you.
“See?” he says, low, letting pride curl around the words. “I have moves after all, huh?”
You glare, but your mouth twitches, and fuck, it looks good on you, and feels even better to know that he’s the reason for it. “Don’t get cocky, Hargrove.”
“Too late.”
He pulls you back into the beat. He doesn’t drag; he guides. It’s instinct. He knows how to lead when people let him. On the court, in the car. Here. He’s not good at many simple things, but Billy’s body knows music, knows motion and its rules, and you follow. That’s the part that drives him crazy. For once, you simply follow and the rush of it, of that sliver of trust, tangles a complicated knot inside his chest.
It shouldn’t feel like anything; it’s just a stupid dance, but it feels like everything.
He spins you, slower this time, your hands ghosting, your hair brushing his arm, and then you’re back against his chest. His palms find your hips like they were always meant to, like his hands are this exact shape and size because they were meant to brace your hips exactly like this. Billy breathes you in, nose near the curve of your neck, and fuck, you smell like cheap beer and soap and something that’s just you, and he wants to breathe you in forever.
If Billy could freeze reality and stay in a single moment of his life forever, it would be this one. Just eternity of this, of you.
One hand slides up from your hip to your stomach, fingers spreading, dragging you back flush against him. He doesn’t even think about it; his body simply wants more contact and takes it. And the best part is that you welcome it, lean into it, breathing with him, swaying and humming.
“Fuck,” he breathes, so quiet he almost doesn’t hear it himself.
Because you relax, just a fraction. Let your head tip back against his shoulder for a second. Trust him with the balance, and it punches straight through his ribcage. His grip tightens, and Billy knows, distantly and a touch greedily, that he’s leaving marks. He wants to. Wants evidence. Something to look at later as proof that this wasn’t all in his head. He hates himself a little for thinking it.
You laugh, head tilted, throat bared. The room around you screams we could be heroes, just for one day, and for one insane heartbeat, Billy allows himself to imagine it. You somewhere that isn’t Hawkins. Your hair blowing in California wind, sand between your toes, your head angled towards the sun with ocean salt on your lips, no Neil, no step-brats, no Munson.
Just you, the ocean, and him. Together.
“You’re not the centre of the universe,” you say suddenly, sharp enough to slice through the fantasy.
He huffs a laugh into your hair because if he doesn’t make a joke, he might say something worse. “Wanna bet?”
You pull away just enough that the air rushes back between you, too cold, so Billy chases.
You brush his chest with the back of your hand as you turn, and the skin there is hot, slick with sweat. Electricity arcs from your touch straight down his spine. Your fingers climb, curling around the back of his neck, nails scraping lightly into the curls at his nape. Every nerve in him lights up, snapping, impossibly, even more awake.
“You need to—” he starts, because if you keep doing that, he’s going to forget where you are, who’s watching, what he is to you.
“Need to what?”
Your mouth is too close. Your eyes are wide, pupils blown, challenge and invitation both.
“Stop doing that before I forget we’re in public,” he grinds out.
You do it again.
And Billy snaps. Not in the way he usually does—shouting, throwing punches—but in the smaller, more detrimental way. His gloved hand comes up, wrapping around your jaw like it’s done before, thumb dragging over your bottom lip, that swell of flesh he wants to taste and nip with his teeth until he’s imprinted there forever.
Your lips part for him, breath hot against his skin. You don’t pull away, your gaze steady on him, pinning him in place. Liquid fire rushes through his veins, and Billy leans in eagerly. He’s going to kiss you. Right here, in this ugly living room with fake cobwebs and Tina’s parents’ money paying for their soundtrack. Right where everyone can see you’re not scared of him. That you chose this, chose him.
Someone slams into you from behind.
You jolt, weight tipping from its axis. Billy’s hand shoots out, pure reflex, closing around your upper arm to steady you.
You flinch like he’s electrocuted you, jerking away.
Billy drops his hand like he’s touched a hot stove. A cold feeling flushes through him because he knows this reaction; he’s had it himself a thousand times: instinctive jerk away from pain. His eyes snap to where his fingers just were, to your skin. A finger-shaped bruise blooms on your arm, four darker marks stark in the light. Too ugly and so familiar, Billy forces back bile.
“What the fuck is that.”
It tears out of him before he can soften it. Not a question so much as a verdict.
You yank your arm in, shield it with your body. “Nothing.”
“Don’t bullshit me.” His hand catches your wrist, not gently this time, not like earlier. He yanks your arm back into the light because now he needs to see, needs to learn exactly what was done. The bruise is worse than he thought at first glance. Too deep, fresh too, because he knows all there is to know about this particular cycle of biology. Exactly like all the times Neil’s fingers got printed on his own skin, but worse, because it’s you.
He can feel his pulse in his teeth, at the back of his skull.
“Some asshole from work,” you say eventually, and your voice sounds wrong to him, too small in a way it never is. “This afternoon. At the shop. He grabbed me. Frank kicked him out. It’s fine.”
It’s not fucking fine. Neil’s hands on his mom flash behind Billy’s eyes like a shitty reel, except this time it’s you overlapping the shape, your head snapping to the side, you crying out.
“It’s not fine.” He can hear his own voice, and it’s frightening even to him. Empty in a way that means violence. “Name. Now.”
You lie. He’d bet his car on it. Claim you don’t know.
“Description, then. Car. Something.” His grip tightens without meaning to as he reaches for details. “Give me something to work with.”
“Billy, it doesn’t matter—”
“It matters.” His eyes won’t leave the bruises. His jaw is clenching so hard there’s a throb in his temple. He’s picturing some fucker’s hand there. Picturing the look on your face when it happened. Picturing his own hand on your jaw, on your throat, all the times he’s crowded you and told himself it was different because it wasn’t fear. “Some piece of shit put his hands on you, and you’re telling me it doesn’t matter?”
You bring up Frank again. Say he handled it.
“Frank should’ve put him in the fucking hospital,” Billy spits, finally tearing his gaze up to your eyes. They’re big, blown wide with anger and something he doesn’t recognise. “Tell me what he looked like.”
Your heart is going a mile a minute. He can see it in the hollow of your throat. “Billy, you can’t—”
“Can’t what?” he snaps. “Find him? Make sure he understands what happens when you touch things that don’t belong to you?”
As soon as it’s out, he hears it: hears Neil in those words, that same controlling bite, the same poison. He hears every asshole in this town talking about their property. Cold slides through your eyes, replacing the warmth he’s finally got to feel directed at him, no matter how briefly.
“Things that don’t belong to you,” you repeat, slow like poison.
Billy realises right then and there that he fucked it. Because he made it about him, about ownership. His own ego. That isn’t what he meant. Or—fuck, maybe it was, a little. He doesn’t know where the line is anymore between wanting you safe and wanting you as his.
He tries to pivot. “You know what I meant.”
“Do I?”
“I meant—”
He doesn’t even know how to phrase it. That if someone hurts you, he can’t just… do nothing. That the thought of you being scared and him not doing shit about it makes him feel like he’s eight again in the Hargrove kitchen back in San Diego, listening to the sound of his mother’s suitcase scraping the floor as she walks out, leaving him behind in a nightmare.
“I meant someone needs to teach that asshole a lesson.”
“Oh,” you say, and your voice is like broken glass now. “And you think violence is the answer.”
“It’s the only language assholes like that understand,” he bites out.
And he believes it. Neil never listened to nice. Or reason, or pleading, or even begging. He listened only to fear, to broken noses on the playground, to the news that his son was the scariest thing around town, willing to shed blood and be a man.
He sees the way your face changes at those words. The way something hammers shut behind your eyes.
“Yeah, well, it’s also the language that gets you arrested,” you fire back. “Gets you kicked off the basketball team. Gives your father another reason to—”
You cut yourself off. Don’t say it because you don’t have to. Billy hears it anyway, loud and clear. Another reason to hit you. Another reason to treat you like you’re a mistake. Like you’re weak because he is.
His skin goes tight and hot. “My father. Right. Because that’s what this is about. You think I’m going to turn into him if I—”
“I think you’re looking for an excuse to hurt someone and using me as justification.”
That hits closer to home than he wants. He laughs instead of admitting it. “That’s such bullshit—”
“Is it?” Your voice rises, and some people nearby turn to look, and Billy wants to bark at them to mind their fucking business, that this, everything, is between you and him, and no one else. “Because it seems like you’re more pissed off about the fact that someone else touched me than you are about the fact that I got hurt.”
He wants to scream that it’s both. That the thought of you hurt makes him sick, that the thought of another man’s hand on you makes him homicidal, but the words tangle with pride and habit.
“Why the hell are you working there at all?” he throws back instead.
It sounds different in his head, more like concern. Out loud, it sounds like blame, borderline accusation.
“Because I like eating,” you snap back. “And the power company doesn’t do charity.”
“You shouldn’t be there,” he insists, gesturing sharply. “Not with men like that. You’re putting yourself in their way.”
He means: it’s dangerous. He means: he’s seen how guys talk in garages, has been that guy more times than he cares to admit. He means: he knows what a room full of men will do to a girl they don’t think anyone will protect.
But what you hear is something else entirely.
“You literally just said I shouldn’t work there so some asshole can put his hands on me.”
“I’m saying you shouldn’t give them the chance,” he grinds out, frustration spiking.
Why can’t you just hear what he means? How come no one alive understands him better, sees him better, and yet misunderstands him more than you?
Your hands are shaking now, trembling at your sides. Your eyes shine in the low light, not with tears but with rage. He feels the old, ugly instinct rise—tell you he’s not like them, that he’s on your side. He reaches for it and only grabs more anger.
“I’m trying to—” he starts.
“To what?” you snap. “Protect me?”
Billy doesn’t answer, and the silence damns him even more.
You laugh, a sound so brittle in cuts through him. “I didn’t ask you to protect me. I asked you to dance.”
Those words land like a punch to his mouth. Because you did. For once, you came to him without an agenda, without wanting to tell him he’s fucked up, how he could be this or that. You said I want to dance because you had a shitty day, and he still managed to turn it into a fight.
He leans in, because that’s what he does when he feels cornered—closes distance instead of giving it. “If I hear some guy at that shop put his hands on you—”
“You’ll do what?” you throw at him, stepping closer too. “Beat him up? Feel like a big man? Make it about you and your fists instead of the fact I shouldn’t need a man to defend me just to exist?”
Billy’s hands curl into fists at his sides. He wants to shake you and kiss you and drag you out of this house in equal measure. He wants to tell you, then, that he would never let some prick put his hands on you. Not because of his ego, or because—no matter how much he chafes against it—that small, greedy part of him that got left behind considers you his, but because—
“You don’t get it,” he growls.
“I get it perfectly.” Betrayal rings through your words, trembling around the edges, and he wants to put his fist through a wall because how did one of the best moments of his shitty life spiral into this? “I get that for one minute, I thought you were actually different. That I could have fun with you, but this version of me isn’t for you. You’ve made that perfectly clear.”
Something in him flinches. Some stupid soft part he keeps pretending isn’t there anymore, isn’t weak. The you from his ocean dreams stands in front of him for a brief second, those same eyes, piercing and too shrewd, when you told him: This isn’t for you. Not this version of me.
“Yeah?” he says, and his voice comes out colder than he intended. “Well, good.”
He can see the way the word hits you. Can almost see it happen—the way you close off, the way your shoulders go rigid.
“Right,” you say, bright and brittle. “My mistake. I forgot you only do two things: hurt people and pretend it doesn’t matter.”
Not true, his brain wants to snap. I don’t pretend. It matters too fucking much. But you’re already rolling, already ripping into him, and every word is true in ways he doesn’t want to face. You lay it out: he had one chance to say I’m sorry that happened to you and leave it. One chance to just be there, not fix, not control. And he blew it. He tries to defend himself. Says he’s trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Says if you’re too stubborn to accept help, that’s your problem, not his. Even as he’s saying it, Billy hears Neil again, hears all those lectures about how his mom “made him do it,” how she should’ve known better, should’ve been better.
“Help,” you repeat, like the word tastes foul. “Is that what you call it? Because it sounds a lot like you trying to control the situation. Trying to control me.”
He throws up his hands. “I’m not—”
“You are,” you cut in. “You grabbed me in the past, too, remember? Your hand on my jaw. That was you trying to control me, too.”
He swallows. He remembers every time. Remembers the unease in your eyes that first night in your drive, beneath the engine rumble and the cool breeze. Remembers the way it thrilled and disgusted him that he could do that, that he could make someone like you freeze.
“That was different—”
“Was it?” you ask, and your voice is shaking with how much you’re holding back. “Because right now it feels pretty fucking similar.”
He hasn’t forgotten. Billy never forgets anything he’s ashamed of. He just shoves it under new sins until the stack is too high to see over. Because if he doesn’t, he’ll have to face it, live with it, and that would eat him alive.
“The problem isn’t my job, Billy. The problem is men who think they have the right. And apparently you’re one of them.”
That one goes straight through him. For a heartbeat, all the sound drops out from around him. It’s just the two of you, your words hanging between you like smoke. One of them. Like Neil. Like every bastard he swore he wouldn’t be, and yet is.
“Fuck you,” he says, because there’s nothing else left that doesn’t sound like begging.
It comes out quieter than he wanted, almost hoarse. But you only stare at him, breath heaving. Whatever fragile truce you had during your dance, the stupid, brief moment of being just a boy and a girl moving to Bowie, is gone.
You turn. Billy doesn’t stop you.
He watches you shoulder your way through the crowd, ignoring Munson’s worried call, ignoring everyone. The front door sucks you out, and the cold night pours in for a second, raising goosebumps on his arms. Then you’re gone, and the heat rushes back, and the party swallows the space you left like you were never there.
He realises his hands are still shaking. That he’s still half hard, and that’s, for once, low on his list of problems.
Someone calls out his name. Tina, maybe, tugging at his sleeve. Asking if he wants another drink, if everything’s okay, if he’s coming back to the fun. He shrugs her off without looking. His eyes are still on the door because, for maybe twenty minutes, he had something that didn’t feel like punishment. You laughed with him, touched him like you wanted to, trusted him enough to lean back, to let him hold you up.
And then he did what he always does.
He ruined it.
The party vomits him out into the freezing Indiana night in a blur of beer breath and cheap costumes, and he’s got half a mind to go back in and find somebody willing and mindless to burn this feeling out of him. It would be so fucking easy. There were at least three girls eyeing him like a dare all night. He knows how to play that game with his eyes closed.
But his body’s wired wrong.
It’s not their hands he remembers when the door slams behind him, and the bass dulls to a heartbeat through the walls.
It’s yours.
Your palm on his shoulder when he spun you too fast, nails biting through leather. The heat of your waist under his hand, the way your body fit against his for one treacherous second when you stopped fighting the beat and started moving with it. The flash of your laugh—real, cracked open, not barbed at all—before you remembered who you were supposed to be and it all went to shit.
He leans against the Camaro, breath ghosting in the cold, trying to get a grip.
His heart’s pounding like he just went three rounds with some asshole behind the gym—not because of a fight, but because of a dance. That thought alone makes him want to punch something.
Billy can still see the exact moment it turned—his fingers closing around your arm, your flinch like a gunshot, the bruise blooming under your sleeve. The way his brain went red with murder, then tangled into that ugly, familiar script about whose fault it is that men are monsters.
He watched your face close up like a door.
Just for a minute there, he had you. Really had you. Not under him, not conquered—with him. Moving, laughing, letting yourself exist near him without spitting fire.
And he fucked it in record time.
“Idiot,” he mutters to himself, grinding his teeth.
Billy gets behind the wheel and peels out faster than he needs to, engine snarling down the road like it’s equally as pissed off. Trees blur around him, headlights cutting through pockets of fog. The world outside the car is black and muddy, all the colour bled out of it.
Inside, it’s just him and the ghost of your body pressed close, the phantom heat of your laugh under his ribs.
Billy hates it.
He hates that wanting someone feels so much like losing control.
. . .
The next afternoon, the gym is loud enough to drown out most thoughts.
Squeak of sneakers, thud of balls on hardwood, the echo of the coach’s whistle. The easy, dumb laughter of boys who’ve never had to think about anything more complicated than the next game, the next girl, the next six-pack.
Billy leans against the bank of lockers, towel slung around his neck, hair damp and curling at the ends. He’s riding the high of practice—the good kind of ache in his legs, the burn in his lungs, the way the team follows his lead without needing it spelled out. On the court, the rules are simple: be fast, be brutal, be better.
Off the court, the rules are the same, just messier.
Tommy slaps him on the shoulder as he drops onto the bench opposite. “Man, you were insane out there,” he says. “Think you scared half the other team just by looking at them.”
Billy smirks. “Half?”
A few of the guys laugh. They’re towelling off, changing, talking shit. Someone brings up the party. Someone else mentions the way some sophomore puked in the punch bowl and how some girl they know lost her virginity, which launches a whole debate about virginity vs experience that Billy only half listens to.
“Dude,” one of the juniors says, pulling his shirt on with a wiggle. “Serious question. What’s your type, Hargrove?”
There’s a chorus of agreement. “Yeah, man, what does it for you?”
Billy doesn’t even pause. Performance is muscle memory. “Hot,” he drawls, dragging the towel over his chest. “Breathing. Not picky.”
Laughter bounces off the metal.
Tommy snorts. “That older chick last week looked like she wanted to eat you alive,” he jokes, wiggling his brows. “That one with the red nails? Bet you got a thing for the moms.”
Billy rolls his eyes, playing it up. “Single moms are dedicated, man. They got… stamina.”
More howls. A couple of them make “wooow” noises, and someone tosses a balled-up sock at him. It’s easy to smirk. Easy to lean back and spread his legs and act like the king he’s worked himself into being. He tosses a few more lines—something about cheerleaders, about girls who know how to shut up, about the difference between good girls and boring girls.
The whole time, somewhere under the practised filth, his brain tries to answer the question for real.
What’s your type?
He tries to summon the usual fantasies: the laughing mouths, the eager eyes, the girls whose names he forgets before he’s even zipped his jeans back up. They come, hazy and repetitive, like Xeroxed images in a neat stack.
Then something else muscles in.
Not a type.
A face.
You, shoving him in the chest, teeth bared. You, hands blackened with grease, sliding across the engine of his Camaro that very first time he met you. You, head tipped back in laughter against his chest, eyes bright before they hardened again. Billy remembers the weight of your hip under his palm when he dragged you closer on the dance floor, the way you didn’t collapse into him, didn’t melt. You resisted and chose to move anyway.
The rush that came with that—the feeling of being matched—makes his skin prickle even now. He swallows it down because it makes him think of the bruise again, of the way the moment curdled like spoiled milk. If he lingers, his face will give him away.
“Come on, man,” someone presses. “Blondes? Brunettes? Cheerleaders? Band chicks?”
Billy smirks again because smirking is easy, because it’s convincing when he does it, or used to be when this really was all he knew or cared about. “Seriously, don’t care,” he shoots back, bored and dismissive. “Long as they know how to use their mouth.”
More groans, more laughter, loud and hooting. It’s disgusting. It’s expected. It’s safe.
Tommy leans in, conspiratorial this time, a glimmer in his eyes. “How about the mechanic? Looked like you two got real cosy last night, man. I felt like blushing just watching.”
Billy’s body goes tight before he can stop it. He forces himself to shrug because he would rather avoid another repeat of the hallway fight, instead choosing safer waters, something that won’t make him snarl and slam Tommy’s big head into a locker and tell him you’re not his to look at in the first place. “She’s not my type.”
He can feel the truth sitting under his tongue like a live wire. His type, apparently, is cold fire and stubbornness and a mouth that won’t quit. Someone who looks at him like she sees the cracks and doesn’t run. Someone who makes him feel like the version of himself in his own head isn’t inevitable.
He hates that.
So Billy laughs, tosses a towel at Tommy, and lets the conversation skid back to safer targets.
He can’t afford to give you that kind of space in his brain anymore.
You’ve already taken too much as it is.
. . .
Billy times getting home like a military operation.
Lights off in the drive? Good sign. TV glow in the living room? Bad sign. The particular way the house seems to hold its breath, too many lights on? Worst sign.
Tonight, there’s a line of yellow seeping out under the curtains and the blue flicker of the television painting the front window.
Billy’s stomach tightens. He kills the engine and sits in the dark for a moment, letting the Camaro tick as it cools. His heart pounds in that rapid, small way—nothing like the adrenaline rush of a fight or a game, but a pathetic little rabbit hoping to outrun his fate even when he knows he’ll never escape the jaws around his neck. This is the rabbit heartbeat, the one he hates most, the one he’s never quite managed to beat out of himself.
He tells himself he’s not afraid. He’s just… prepared.
He walks up the front path with his shoulders relaxed, keys jingling a little too loud in his hand. The night air is sharp in his lungs. He can hear the TV before he opens the door—commentary from some sports game, crowd noise, Neil’s low rumble of disapproval at whatever the players are doing wrong.
Billy steps inside.
The living room smells like beer and aftershave. Neil is in his chair, socked feet up, a half-empty bottle on the side table. His eyes cut to Billy the second the door clicks shut.
“You’re late.”
Billy shrugs out of his jacket, keeping his movements loose. “Practice ran over,” he lies easily. “Coach wanted to talk plays.”
Neil snorts. “Coach wants to keep his job,” he rumbles. “You win, he looks good. You lose, he finds someone else to blame.”
Billy doesn’t answer. There’s no right answer anyway. Though silences can be just as tricky to navigate, he can never give Neil the impression that he’s ignoring him or hurrying him along. It’s a tightrope Billy learned to walk over the years. Just enough, never too little, and certainly never too much.
“Shower,” Neil adds, wrinkling his nose as if sweat itself is a moral failing. “You smell like a locker room.”
Billy nods obediently, keeps it casual. “Yes, sir.”
He can feel Neil’s gaze on the back of his neck as he moves down the hallway, and has to resist the urge to hunch his shoulders. Hunching reads like guilt, guilt reads like weakness, and weakness is an invitation. He gets into the bathroom and closes the door quietly, gaze cutting briefly to Max’s closed doors. Not a sound or a whisper.
Only then, enclosed in another space, does Billy let his jaw unclench.
The shower is quick, too hot, scalding his skin. Soap that smells like generic pine and cheap cologne, scrubbed over bruised knuckles and the faint marks on his arms from where you slapped his hand away. He stands under the spray until the hot water begins to cool. He doesn’t think about you in there. He refuses to. He focuses on the rhythm of breath, the sound of water on tile, the familiar catalogue of aches and pains in his own body.
When Billy emerges, towel slung low on his hips, the house is quieter. TV volume down. Neil moving around in the kitchen, the clink of a bottle against glass, the scrape of a chair. Billy darts past the doorway before Neil can call him in.
“Bed,” he throws over his shoulder, not waiting for confirmation.
It’s a risk, but Neil’s had enough to drink that the path of least resistance might actually be to let him go. He expects a barked order, a demand, something equally as nasty. Nothing comes. Billy gets to his room and exhales for half a second, like someone cut a string. He locks the door, then checks it. He shouldn’t, really. It’s a provocation if Neil notices. But tonight the thought of that handle turning, of that bulk filling the frame, of that voice dripping dismay over something Billy can’t even predict—it makes his chest tight enough to hurt.
He needs one night without a scene. He drops onto the bed and stares at the ceiling.
The house creaks around him. A familiar orchestra he’s learned to sleep through. He can tell, by the pattern of footsteps and the way the sound of the TV gets abruptly cut off, when Neil finally goes to his and Susan’s room.
Only then does Billy’s body start to relax. Only then does his mind open the door you’ve been pounding on all day. The dance. The way your body moved against his, the way your eyes lit up just before they sharpened again. The sudden, ugly turn when he grabbed you wrong and saw pain flash across your face.
He rolls onto his side, working his tight jaw.
His dick is still half-hard, stupid and stubborn, responding to half-remembered contact. He could take care of it. It would be easy. He’s done it a thousand times with far less stimulus. Close his eyes, picture skin and mouths, get it over with. But every time he tries to drag up a faceless body, it morphs into you. Your eyes looking at him like you’re about to call him on his own bullshit. Your hand at his shoulder, curling there with a hint of possessiveness he recognised in himself. Your mouth a breath away from something that could’ve gone a different way if either of you knew how.
Billy swears under his breath and throws his arm over his eyes.
The house is quiet, but his head is a riot.
Sleep doesn’t feel like surrender tonight. It feels like getting dragged under.
. . .
The ocean greets him like an old friend.
He’s standing at the edge of it again—Hawkins gone, Indiana gone, the pine trees replaced by a horizon that stretches forever. The sky is colourless, heavy, the clouds abovehead forming a low ceiling. The water glows faintly from within, sick green-blue light pulsing with the tide like a heartbeat. The sand is cool under his bare feet, packed hard from ocean spray. Wind tugs at his hair, curls tickling over his forehead. The air tastes like salt and metal and something sweeter he can’t quite name.
You’re there, exactly where he knew you’d be.
Further down the shore, at that place where the tide reaches up and retreats, letting the foam lick your boots. Hands in your pockets. Shoulders relaxed in a way he’s never seen when you’re awake, except for when you shared your dance. Your hair moves with the wind, not fighting it, and the ocean-light paints your figure in strange, otherworldly colours.
You still look different here, like the version he hoards, but slightly to the left. Like the edges of you have been sharpened and softened all at once by things he hasn’t seen yet. Haunted, yeah, but not hollow, not the way Billy knows he is.
Tonight, something in your expression has shifted. Not much, but enough to feel like an invitation. It pisses him off that that’s what he notices first. He starts walking without meaning to, sand whispering under his steps.
“You again,” he calls, because sarcasm is armour, even here.
You turn your head slightly, profile cutting clean against the dull sky.
“Me again,” you agree, taking him in with such intensity that Billy almost lowers his eyes.
Your voice fits this place, lower, raspier, like the comfort of the ocean crashing in his ears. Or maybe his mind just recognises you, he can’t quite tell in this place, strange as it is. Billy stops a few feet away, where the water just reaches his toes, then pulls back, leaving nothing but a chill behind.
“Am I allowed to touch you yet?” he asks, half a joke, half not. “Or is this still look-but-don’t-touch time?”
You really look at him now, eyes sweeping over his face, his posture, the tension he can’t hide even when he’s dreaming. There’s so much in your gaze he doesn’t want to understand, so much it would freak him out if he weren’t dreaming.
Your answer is simple. “No,” you say lightly. “Not yet.”
He snorts. “Figures.”
Billy wants to reach out anyway. Just to see what happens. Just to test the edges of the rules here. The ocean, the sky, you—it all feels like a system he could maybe crack if he pushed hard enough, it’s his own head afterall. But something in your stance stops him. Not fear or rejection. More like you’re protecting him from what would happen if he tried.
“Stop looking at me like you know something I don’t,” he snaps, because anger is easier than whatever else this is.
You smile faintly. “I do know things you don’t.”
He hates that his pulse jumps at that. “Like what?” he demands.
You don’t answer the challenge directly. Instead, you tilt your head, sea-light catching in your eyes. You’re searching for words, or maybe something else, and Billy braces because he feels like he will not enjoy whatever you say next.
“You felt it. At the party.”
He tries and fails to keep his voice level. “Felt what?”
“That you’re capable of something other than hurting,” you tell him, matter-of-fact.
The words hit like a punch to the solar plexus. He scoffs, too fast to be convincing. “Yeah? You see a different movie than me, sweetheart? ’Cause last I checked, I did a pretty good job of fucking that up.”
“For her, yes,” you agree, with that same infuriating calmness. Like this you sees clean through his anger, his insults, his patronising tone; sees through it and lets it slide off you like it's nothing. “For you, it was something you haven’t let yourself feel in a long time.”
He feels exposed in a way that makes his skin itch. “You don’t know anything about it.”
You just look at him. It’s infuriating in a way that’s similar and yet completely different from your usual arguments. Billy shifts, unable to keep still, and that’s when his gaze snags on your arm. You’ve got your hands in your pockets, jacket open enough that the wrist of your left arm is bare where the sleeve’s pushed back to your elbows. There, just above the ridge of bone across your forearm, is a scar.
He hadn’t seen it before. It’s not the clean, thin line of a knife or even a work injury he can recognise. It’s ragged, crescent-shaped, uneven in depth, like something tore into flesh and held on. Puckered but healed, all wrong and angry even at a distance.
His mouth goes dry.
“What the hell is that?” he demands, jerking his chin toward it.
The question comes out rougher than he would have liked, more bare. You glance down at your arm like you’re surprised it’s noticeable. When you look back up, your smile has tilted. Secretive. Slightly sad around the edges, caught between bitterness and something more complex, a shadow that could be fondness.
“An old shadow,” you reply, purposely light. “Doesn’t matter now.”
“That’s bullshit,” he snaps, and that old fury from the party rushes back in. “Somebody did that to you.”
“Something,” you correct absently, and the way you say it makes the back of his neck prickle. “Not somebody.”
He steps closer, instinctively seeking you out, until the water is lapping over his ankles and seeping cold into his skin. “Who?”
You shake your head, peering out towards the endless expanse of the ocean like you can see whatever is on the other side. “Wrong question.”
“Then what’s the right one?” Billy throws back, hating how frustrating it feels to stand here and see and feel and— “Why do you keep showing up in my head?”
For once, you seem to consider how to answer.
“Because you’re moving,” you say finally, taking in his appearance like you can read something there he can’t. “For the first time in a long time, you’re not just standing still inside the cage made for you.”
He stares at you. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
A slight smile tugs at your lips, like the fact that this is the second time he’s said those words here amuses you. “You’re heading in a better direction,” you answer simply. “Even if you can’t see it yet.”
Billy lets out a laugh so sharp it hurts his throat; it helps to cover the deep pang he feels slice through him. “Yeah. Sure. Next you’ll tell me I’m going to Heaven.”
“That’s not how this works,” you say, visibly amused despite everything. “And you don’t believe in Heaven.”
“How do you know what I believe?”
“You believe in pain. And speed. And control. You believe if you’re the one doing the hurting, you won’t have to feel your own.”
He goes very still. The wind roars in his ears for a second, louder than the surf. He wants to fold into himself for a moment, strip you out of here, root and stem, and go back to when things were easy, when his only worry was avoiding Neil’s fists and deciding which girl he was gonna bend over and fuck.
“Fuck you,” he says quietly. There’s no heat in it. Just something raw and too strangled to name.
Your expression doesn’t change much, but something in your eyes softens, just a touch, which is worse because he likes it too much, is too greedy for more of it, and that’s dangerous, that’s weakness, and Billy can’t be weak, never weak or Neil will—
“See?” you murmur, and it’s almost fond, the way you say it. “Better direction already. You didn’t swing.”
He hadn’t realised his hands had curled into fists until you pointed it out. Billy deliberately uncurls them.
“You got a point,” he mutters snidely, staring at the water. The glow moves beneath the surface, like nerves firing through his body. “Or you just here to give more fortune cookie speeches?”
“There is a point,” you say with a sigh. “You just won’t like it.”
Billy snorts and wants to mockingly ask if he’s ever liked much of any honesty you’ve thrown at his face, but instead says, “Try me.”
You draw a slow breath, give him a long, weighted look. “You need to come clean,” you tell him promptly. “About the kids.”
Billy’s head snaps up. “What kids.”
You just do the stare again, head tilting slightly to one side, knowing and glowing with unspoken don’t try this bullshit with me.
Billy runs through the list automatically: the ones on his team, the ones who stare at him in hallways, the ones who get out of his way when he takes up space. Then his brain lands on a different image—bikes through his windshield, skinny arms, Ghostbuster jackets almost blending into the Indiana grey. Max in the passenger seat, screaming his name as she jerked his arm, music pounding because he was still furious about the party, and she snarked at him.
Something in Billy’s chest goes cold, seizing with something he doesn’t dare to call dread.
He swallows. “No,” he says immediately. “Nope. Not doing that.”
You don’t press, not yet. You watch the realisation creep over his face like frost.
“You remember,” you say knowingly.
He flashes on tyres skidding, kids swerving, and Max’s terrified silence afterwards. The way he’d laughed it off, because to admit even to himself that he’d scared her that bad would mean admitting something is wrong with him that isn’t fixable by being more of what Neil wants.
“It was a mistake,” he snaps. “They got in the way. They should watch where they’re going.”
You arch a brow. “That what you told yourself?”
He glares at you. “It’s what happened.”
“It isn’t,” you say, not cruel, just an iron-clad fact. “You were pissed. You wanted to scare someone. You picked the easiest target. That’s different.”
His jaw clenches so hard it hurts.
“You don’t know shit. You’re just a voice in my head.”
“I know what Max felt.”
Billy feels his stomach lurch because of course you do. Max trusts you. He saw it in the way she stood near you, the way she listened when you spoke to her about her stupid board, the way he sometimes catches the tail end of her gushing to Susan about you before he walks into the kitchen, and all goes silent. How great you are, how cool, how you don’t baby her.
“I know what they felt,” you add, even quieter. “They don’t forget that kind of thing.”
He looks away, out at the horizon. The water’s glow has dimmed, like something’s passed over it.
“Why do I have to come clean?” He doesn’t care if he sounds petulant, shoving his hands into his jeans. “Why can’t everyone just let it go?”
“Because you won’t, if the situation were reversed.”
It’s so simple it pisses him off. Christ, he almost misses the you that sees only the bad, because this version seems to know him bone deep, and it’s a sick fantasy to have, a weapon he’s apparently decided would be fun to wield against himself.
“What,” he scoffs. “You in my head now?”
“William.” The way you say his name makes him want to punch the ocean flat. It also makes him want to beg you to say it again, just so he doesn’t think of Neil calling him that first, or his mom. How sweet it would be if your face came to mind first every time. “You dream about this for a reason. You came here for a reason.”
“I didn’t come,” he shoots back hotly, expression souring. “You dragged me.”
You actually smile at that. “I don’t have that power.”
“Then what is this, exactly?” He gestures at the beach, the glowing waves, at you, standing there, perfectly in reach and still not his, not even here, where it should be simple. “Some kind of—what—lesson? Haunting? You my conscience now?”
You watch him with that knowing calm that makes him feel both seen and utterly stripped back, like you’re holding a knife to his throat and he wants to squirm away from it.
“Maybe I’m what you wish your conscience sounded like. Someone you can’t push around. Someone who won’t hit you back. Someone who knows you can be better and isn’t scared to say it.”
The word better makes his throat close up. Billy thinks of Neil—of discipline and blood and rules. Better has always meant quieter, meaner, more obedient. A tighter version of the same shape. Better has never meant different, never meant… softer, kinder, something other.
“This is bullshit,” he says roughly. “I’m not telling you anything. I’m not telling her anything.”
Your shoulders dip, the faintest slump he feels in his own body. Disappointment looks wrong on you. It makes his chest ache worse than if you’d screamed at him. Because screaming, violence, and punches—those all make sense to Billy, but your disappointment hurts so much worse.
“Why not?” you ask quietly. “Why won’t you tell her?”
“Because it’ll just… make it real,” he replies, hating the way the words scrape on the way out. “Because then she’ll look at me like—” He cuts himself off.
“Like what?” you press gently.
“Like I’m him.”
There it is, hanging between you like a dropped weapon. The wind stills for a second, the ocean waves rush in, lapping over you both restlessly.
“You’re not him.”
He laughs, bitter and strangled. “That easy, huh?”
“No.” You shake your head once. “It’s not easy. It’s work. It’s choices. It’s apologies. It’s… stopping before you become the thing you hate most.”
“What if it’s too late?” he whispers, hating how small his voice sounds.
“It isn’t,” you tell him quietly, so certain it makes something in him stutter, cramp with pain, with want. “Not yet.”
Billy wants to believe you. He also wants to shout in your face that you don’t know what it’s like to be shaped like this, bone and bruise and expectation. That you don’t know what it’s like to be told from age six that love is weakness and pain is necessary.
He stares at that scar on your arm again.
“Who hurt you?” he asks, quieter. “Really.”
You follow his gaze. “Someone who thought they owned me.” And there’s something in the way you articulate those words that makes Billy want to reach out again. “They were wrong.”
“How’d you get out?” he pushes, like the answer might be a code he can copy.
You look toward the horizon, face haunted in a way that makes his skin crawl.
“Someone else didn’t,” you say gently. “So I had to.”
He doesn’t understand it, not fully, but something about the shape of the words sits under his ribs like a seed.
“You’re dodging,” he mutters. “You keep doing that.”
“So do you,” you answer.
You take one step back, and the distance between you feels bigger than the literal space.
“You should tell her,” you repeat. “About the kids. About the car. About the road.”
Billy shakes his head, stubborn fear rising. “No.”
And again, “Why?”
“Because,” he grinds out through clenched teeth, “if I say it out loud, she’ll know exactly what I am.”
You meet his eyes. “She already does,” you say lightly. “And she’s still standing in front of you.”
The logic cuts through him with brutal efficiency. He looks around, suddenly desperate for something to hit, something to break, some way to assert himself in this place where his fists don’t work. Then the water surges up around his ankles, icy, and he flinches.
“You’re moving in a better direction,” you say again, your voice already sounding further away. “Don’t stop. Don’t pick the easy thing just because it’s what you know.”
“I don’t know anything else,” he spits.
“Yes,” you say, almost lovingly. “You do. You just don’t trust it yet.”
He reaches for you then, impulse too strong to smother. Your fingers brush his wrist for the briefest, shockingly warm second—
And then he’s awake.
. . .
Later, after he’s back from the lake, it keeps looping.
Not the threats. Not the “I’ll go to Hopper” or the slam of the door. Those are easy to file under rage, under fuck you too, then.
It’s the middle part that won’t fucking quit.
The car is parked a block from the house, engine off, keys cold in his hand. Neil’s wandering shadow moves behind the curtains up the street; Billy doesn’t go closer. He sits in the dark with the lake replaying on the inside of his skull.
You don’t want her heart to live in her throat the way yours had to.
He kept his eyes on the water for that one. Because if he looked at you, he might’ve actually shown something, and that’s not allowed. Not in front of you. Not in front of anyone. And it had worked, for about half a second—stare at the dead grey, breathe, let the words bounce off.
Except they didn’t.
Billy can still feel it, that moment where everything inside him went unstable. Where it felt like he might explode. Or crumble. Or both. You standing right in front of him, saying shit nobody’s supposed to say out loud, and him sitting there like some animal staring down a barrel. He remembers the way he stared at you, that long, dangerous stretch of silence where even he didn’t know what he was going to do. Smoke going stale between his fingers, some internal battle raging behind his eyes you could apparently see.
Then he huffed out that breath.
It might almost have been a laugh if it hadn’t come out so goddamn ragged.
He’d looked past you, out over the water, because that was safer than looking at your face. Safer than looking at someone who sees too much.
“You say ‘team’ like that’s an option,” he’d said, quieter, like the words were sneaking out around his guard. “She hates me.”
And you, without missing a beat: “She’s thirteen.” That pointed look. That little shrug he still feels in his bones. “She’s supposed to hate you. That’s not a law of physics. That’s repairable.”
Repairable.
Like he’s a dented fender you could knock back into shape if you cared enough. Like there’s a version of this where Max doesn’t look at him like he’s the thing she’s scared of in her own house.
He’d snorted then, default setting kicking in, because the alternative was letting that word land.
“You really think saying sorry is gonna fix—”
You’d cut him off. “Not fix. Nothing fixes that. But it starts something different.”
He scoffs out loud now in the empty car, just to drown you out, but his chest is tight in that same stupid, traitorous way. Because that’s the moment he hates the most. Not the threats. Not the accusations. It’s when something small and jagged inside him shifted, like a gear that’s never been used, trying to catch.
He’d felt it, sitting there on the hood of all his bad decisions. The urge to say okay then, what? To say, tell me how. To say, I don’t know how to be anything that doesn’t look like him. Show me.
The words had been right there, crowding his throat, heavy and hot on his tongue. Billy’s fingers had twitched on his knee like he was about to reach for you, like some fucking kid desperate for someone to believe in him.
Instead, his mouth did what it always does. It curved into a sneer and went for the joke.
“What, you want me to go home and be like, ‘hey, remember that time I nearly killed your friends? My bad’?”
He’d heard it as soon as it left his mouth. How thin it sounded. How close it was to the thing underneath it: I don’t even know where to start.
But you’d only given him that look—tired, unblinking, like you were measuring the distance between what he said and what he meant. And he’d felt it, clear as the click of a lock: this is the line. Cross it, and you’re not just playing the part anymore. You’re admitting you want out.
Billy doesn’t get out. He tightens his grip on the steering wheel now until the leather creaks, jaw clenched so hard his teeth creak in his mouth. Anger is easier to hold than the ghost of that almost.
Because the worst part isn’t that you threatened him with Hopper.
It’s that for one fucked-up, suspended second at Lovers Lake, he almost asked you how to be someone who didn’t scare his sister. Someone who didn’t point his car at kids. Someone who didn’t default to his fists and his speed and his sneer.
Someone other than what he is.
And you cut him off before he could. Or maybe he cut himself off. Same fucking difference.
He knows you saw it, too—that flinch in him, that half-step toward something softer. He hates that, too. Hates that you’ll carry that knowledge around now, that somewhere in your head you’ve got a version of Billy Hargrove who might have asked for help and didn’t.
That’s repairable.
He hears it again, in your voice, and something in his chest gives a small, miserable quake that feels too close to hope.
“Yeah, right,” he mutters into the dark, forcing his shoulders back, forcing the snarl into place. “Not this version, sweetheart.”
He jams the key back into the ignition, engine growling awake. He drives home a little slower than usual.
He tells himself it’s only because the cops patrol this road.
He does not think about how close he came to letting you teach him another way to be.
. . .
The days after Lovers Lake taste like rust.
You start disappearing after that. Not all at once. Just… the edges of you get blurrier.
You’re still in some of the same places. Billy still sees the flash of your truck in the lot, the back of your head in a classroom, the hitch of your shoulder when you’re carrying something too heavy and refuse to ask for a hand. But your time in the hallways shortens. You don’t look for him, don’t seek him out, done. Just as you promised.
You’re busy, apparently.
He hears your name in other people’s mouths. The freaks at school—the boys, that little D&D cult—mention you like you’re some kind of deity. She said. She helped. She fixed it. There’s a reverent edge to it all that makes Billy want to smash their heads into lockers.
Max starts disappearing, too.
That grates even worse.
She’s out more. Skating. Hanging around with boys, sitting with Lucas Sinclair in the courtyard, shoulders tilted toward him in a way she’s never tilted toward Billy, giving him looks that aren’t quite defiance and aren’t quite fear.
Your fight at the lake sits in his skull, replaying at random intervals. Your words about Max—about kids, about responsibility—make him feel like his skin doesn’t fit right anymore.
Billy doubles down where he knows how.
He snarls at Max. He tightens the curfew. He cuts her off mid-sentence. He drives too fast, shoves too hard, and uses his fists and his mouth on people who are stupid enough to test him. But the certainty now has hairline fractures.
When he hears the rumour about the pumpkin patch rotting overnight, about weird smells and weird lights, his first thought is not what the hell, but where was she?
He doesn’t see you at all that day everything goes to shit.
Max has been vibrating with some secret for days, more skittish than usual, more defiant, too. He catches her sneaking glances at the phone, at the window, out at the road.
Neil notices, too. Because Neil notices everything when it comes to control.
Billy’s sprawled on his bed, shoes on for his date later, half-dozing in the exhausted, restless way he’s perfected—one ear open for footsteps, one hand within reach of the bat under his bed—when the door flies open without a knock.
“William,” Neil barks out like it's a dirty word.
He jerks upright, heart lurching. Neil’s in the doorway in his slacks, belt hanging loose from his hand. His face is red with fury, veins standing out at his temple, throbbing.
“Where is she?” he demands.
“Who?” Billy asks, playing dumb, buying himself a second.
Neil takes that second, folds it into the belt, and uses it. The leather cracks across Billy’s shoulder before he can so much as blink. Pain blooms hot and sticky across his skin, exploding outwards.
“You listen when I call you,” Neil snarls. “You look at me when I talk to you.”
Billy swallows his first instinct—which is to say she’s a kid, she gets to leave—because he knows what that earns.
“I don’t know where she is,” he grinds out instead, hating the shakiness he hears, the weakness Neil seeks like a bloodhound. “I thought she was in her room.”
“She’s not,” Neil answers, practically spitting the words out. “Her bed is empty, her window’s open, and her skateboard sure as hell isn’t on the porch.”
Billy’s stomach drops. He pictures Max, stubborn little idiot, sneaking out with her board, with her boys, with… with you, maybe. He pictures you in your truck, engine high, taking the curve in the road like the world needs you on the other side.
He pictures himself, in dreams and at the lake, being told to come clean.
Neil’s hand snaps around his jaw, fingers digging into the bruises already there.
“You had one job,” Neil hisses, raising his finger. “You keep an eye on her. You keep this house in order. You make sure we don’t look like trash in front of this town. And you can’t even do that. We talked about this. Respect and responsibility.”
Spit flecks Billy’s cheek.
“I don’t control her when she’s not here,” Billy mutters through clenched teeth. “She’s not—”
The slap comes backhanded, sharp enough to white out his vision for a second. His head hits the bed board behind him, and something in Billy’s neck screams. Neil’s on him before he can shake it off, hand fisting in his shirt, twisting, hauling him up off the bed like he weighs nothing.
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” Neil whispers, terrifyingly calm. “You think you get to decide who’s family? You think you get to decide what’s your responsibility and what’s not?”
Billy’s breath comes fast, quick rabbit gulps he can’t quite control.
“You’re not a man,” Neil spits out, and the word cuts deeper than the belt. “You’re a little punk. You’re a disappointment. You’re a waste of my goddamn time.”
The belt cracks again, somewhere lower. Billy grunts, swallowing the sound, refusing to make the noises Neil wants. You’re in his head suddenly, ocean-calm: You believe if you’re the one doing the hurting, you won’t have to feel your own.
He hates that you’re here, in this room, in his head, witnessing this.
He hates that you were right.
“Get in the car,” Neil orders, shoving him, making him stumble into the dresser. “You go find your sister. You bring her back like a good brother would. And you apologise to me for making me look like a fool.”
Rage boils up, thick and choking, all-consuming.
Apologise.
To him.
For Max.
For this.
For existing.
Billy catches his reflection in the dresser mirror—cheek already swelling, eyes dark, murderous. Neil, behind him, looming, belt in hand. He sees what you saw when you said if you don’t want me talking about him, stop becoming him.
Billy straightens slowly.
“Yes, sir,” he says, voice devoid of emotion.
He grabs his jacket and his keys and walks out before Neil can swing again. The night air hits his face like a slap of its own, cold and clean. He sucks it in like someone who’s been underwater too long. His whole body thrums with pain and fury and something that feels like shame.
He hates that one the most.
He slides into the Camaro, grips the wheel, and for a second, your ocean self is sitting in the passenger seat, watching him with those knowing, disappointed eyes.
You’re moving in a better direction. Don’t pick the easy thing just because it’s what you know.
Billy turns the key, the engine roaring awake.
He picks the easy thing anyway.
. . .
By the time Billy’s knuckles hit the Byers’ front door, his hands are already shaking.
Not from fear. He tells himself that. Not from the belt marks burning under his shirt, or the throbbing bruise on his jaw where Neil’s ring caught bone. Adrenaline. Rage. He knows those well. This is just more of the same.
He pounds on the door again, harder, the crack of skin on wood sending a satisfying jolt up his arm.
“Open the damn door!”
The porch light throws everything into harsh yellow—peeling paint, a porch swing hanging by one chain, dead plants in cracked pots. The house looks like it’s been through a war. He feels weirdly at home because of it.
The lock clicks.
The door cracks open a sliver, and Steve Harrington’s face appears in the gap: hair wrecked, eyes wide, a smear of something—dirt, blood—on his cheek.
Billy smiles like this is all hilarious.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Billy drawls, all teeth and malice. “You miss me, Harrington?”
Steve’s hand tightens on the edge of the door. “Now’s not a good time, man,” he says, voice low and earnest. “You need to leave.”
Billy shoves the door wider with one palm, forcing Steve back a step. He swaggers into the stale, tense air of the house like he owns it. He takes in the bizarre, messy house with a quick sweep, eyes locking onto the living room chair. A jacket is draped there. Your jacket. The same, worn black leather that hugs your shoulders just right. Either you’re here, or were here, and Billy’s pulse leaps at the thought. But no, if you were here, you would be the one staring him down right now, not Harrington.
“I’ll decide when it’s a good time,” Billy shoots back flatly, dragging his eyes away from the jacket. “Where is she?”
“Huh?” Steve plays dumb badly. “Who?”
“Don’t,” Billy snaps, patience thinning to a thread. His temple throbs in time with his heartbeat. “Max. My stepsister. Red hair, bad attitude, skateboard. Ringing any bells, Harrington?”
Steve’s jaw twitches. That’s a yes.
“She’s fine,” Steve says smoothly, clearly judging that by the threatening way Billy is edging closer, it’s better to fess up. “She’s with her friends.”
“Yeah.” Billy lets his gaze slide toward the hallway, toward the sound of feet—light, nervous—somewhere further inside the house. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
He hears it, then: the scuff of sneakers on linoleum, the faint whisper of frantic voices. Every muscle in his back tightens. He thinks of your voice at Lover’s Lake, low and furious: You could’ve killed them.
Neil’s voice rides in on top of it: You had one job.
His hand twitches toward Steve, the urge to grab, shove, hit something a physical itch. Steve plants himself in front of the hall when he realises Billy is looking elsewhere, shoulders squared. There’s a bat in his hand—full-on spiked metal, because apparently, golden boy’s into cosplay now. Billy almost laughs.
“You need to leave,” Steve says again, and this time there’s steel under it. “Max doesn’t want to see you.”
Something in Billy’s chest jolts. He smirks to cover it. “That so?” he asks. “Or is that what you want?”
A shape appears at the end of the hallway—small, skinny, determined. Lucas Sinclair. The little shit freezes when he spots Billy, then sets his jaw like he’s not scared, and Billy can almost see a shade of your stubbornness there, reflected in a smaller, frowning face. Behind him, Dustin and Mike hover in the shadows, eyes big, ready to bolt.
Billy’s grin widens. It feels wrong on his face.
“Well, well, would you look at that,” he says softly. “I thought I told you to stay away from her, pal.”
Lucas lifts his chin. “We’re not doing this with you again.” His voice shakes, but the words come out clear and purposeful. If it weren’t for the rage ripping like wildfire through him, Billy might even respect the little shit for having the sheer nerve. “You don’t get to tell me who I can hang out with.”
Billy’s blood spikes. Words are all tangled in his head. From you, from his dreams, from Neil, from his mom over the phone, informing him that this is it. No way back now. They all boil down to one defiant line that fits his mouth like a hook.
“No one tells me what to do.”
He’s buzzing now. The fight is already in his blood; he can feel it, shimmering under his skin like poison seeping in. The ache from Neil’s hits, the humiliation of Max’s empty bed, the echo of your disappointed William in his head—all of it needs somewhere to go.
Harrington will do.
Steve lifts the bat, holding it between them like a warning, not a threat. That’s how Billy knows he’s still soft in places. Soft in ways Billy was never allowed to be soft.
“I’m only gonna say this one more time,” Steve tells him. “You need to leave. Walk away, Hargrove. That’s it. That’s your choice.”
Choice.
The word twists inside his ribs, tearing a path. You, sitting in the water, had said it like it meant something. It’s work. It’s choices. Neil always said it like a test Billy was supposed to fail every time.
Billy grins wider this time, feeling the split in his lip threaten to tear. “What is this, a self-help seminar?” he sneers. “You gonna give me a lesson about free will, Harrington?”
Steve’s eyes flick to the kids, to the hallway where Max is nowhere in sight.
“I’m serious,” he insists, even more solemn now. “This isn’t about you. This isn’t about me. Just go home.”
Billy snorts derisively and pushes forward. Steve hits him first, and it’s a good punch. Knuckles connect squarely with Billy’s cheekbone, snapping his head to the side. Pain sparks white behind his eye, his teeth clicking together hard enough to hurt. For a blink, Billy sees the ocean again—California, somewhere else, both, overlapping—then the Byers’ living room snaps back into place.
Billy laughs, a loud, terrible cackle. It spills out of him sharp and wild, half delirious, half delighted.
“There it is,” he coos, turning back to Steve, blood already warm on his tongue. He taps his own jaw mockingly. “Looks like you got some fire after all, huh, pretty boy?”
Steve’s breathing hard already. “That all you got?” he shoots back.
Billy’s grin stretches. “I was gonna ask you the same thing.”
Then he stops playing. Billy drives his fist into Steve’s stomach, hard enough to knock all the air out of his lungs. The oxygen woofs out of Steve like someone punctured him. He doubles over, and Billy brings his knee up into his chest, sending him sprawling back over the coffee table.
The kids break into panicked yells. Furniture scrapes and splinters under the assault all around them.
Billy follows, unhurriedly, blood humming in his veins, violence finally releasing the pressure building up inside his skull, and grabs Steve by the shirt, hauling him up and slamming him into the wall. The picture frames rattle, a crayon map crumpling under Steve’s shoulder, fluttering to the floor.
“You think you can tell me what to do?” Billy snarls into his face, spittle flying. “You? Her? Him?” Neil, you, all tangled in the word.
Steve swings again, a desperate hook that catches Billy’s chin this time. He laughs again, high and cracked.
“You hit like you care, Harrington,” he taunts, breathless. “That’s your problem. You care too much.”
He rams Steve’s head into the wall. Once. Twice. Blood blooms at Steve’s hairline, a weak groan escaping him.
“Stop!” Mike yells. “Please, stop!”
Dustin’s voice cracks. “Steve!”
Lucas lunges forward, shoving at Billy’s arm. He might as well be a fly. Billy shoulders him away, barely breaking rhythm.
“You listen to me, Sinclair,” he growls, turning his head just enough to pin the boy with a glare while his fist twists in Steve’s shirt. “You stay away from Max. You stay away from my house.”
Lucas’s eyes flash. “She’s not yours,” he says stubbornly.
It’s a purposeful slap. Steve shoves at him again, catching Billy off-guard with a solid hit to the ribs. Pain flares along the fresh belt marks. Billy sucks in a breath and rides it. He swings back, harder this time. His knuckles split on Steve’s cheek. Steve hits the floor, dazed, trying to push himself up on shaky arms. Billy stands over him, chest heaving, knuckles bleeding, laughter bubbling up under his breath because this feels good—simple, clean. Hit, be hit. Hurt, be hurt. No choices, no moral lectures, just physics of motion, the release that comes with giving in.
You’re yelling in his head anyway.
Stop being him.
He stomps down on the thought like a cigarette. He gears up for another kick—
—and something slams into his back.
It’s small and fast and furious.
Max.
She claws at his shoulders, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt, scratching at his neck. “Get off him!” she screams from the top of her lungs. “Leave him alone!”
Billy staggers, more from surprise than force. His balance slips on the scattered paper and broken glass.
“Max!” he roars. “Get off me!”
She hangs on. The kids are all shouting now. Dustin’s trying to pry her off. Lucas is between Steve and Billy, arms spread like he can shield him. Mike is yelling something Billy doesn’t fully catch, his voice climbing higher with panic.
Billy twists, trying to shake Max loose. She’s light, too light. Her fingers dig into his shoulders like tiny, merciless hooks. He remembers her on the passenger seat, blue light on her face, eyes huge. He remembers your voice: You’re the man in the house who raises his voice and makes her small.
He slams his body into a wall, shouldering the flare of pain that follows. The motion is enough that Max’s grip loosens, and she gasps, winded, slipping. He catches her arm before she falls, fingers wrapping all the way around the skinny upper limb. Her eyes are wide and blazing, tears and rage mixed together.
“This is your fault,” he snarls, pulling her closer. “You don’t get to disappear, you don’t get to sneak out, you don’t get to—”
Something sharp pricks the side of his neck. It’s tiny, barely a sting. Billy jerks back, startled, releasing Max just enough for her to slip out of his grip and stagger back.
“The hell—”
He slaps a hand to his neck and feels plastic. A syringe. A plunger already depressed. Billy stares at it, uncomprehending. Max stands in front of him now, chest heaving, triumphant in a way that almost makes Billy smile.
“Where’d you get that?” he manages, voice slurring at the edges.
“From my new friend,” she bites out. “He says it’ll put down a big animal in one hit.”
The room lurches around him.
“Oh,” Billy says, because his brain is suddenly mushy and that’s all he can manage. “Oh, you screwed up, shitbird.”
He takes a step toward her. His legs ignore the memo. They feel… wrong. Heavy and hollow at the same time, like someone filled his bones with wet cement. His heart starts doing a weird stuttery thing in his chest, fast then slow then too fast again. Billy reaches out, and the wall isn’t where he thought it was.
He hits the floor on his knees.
The kids recoil, eyes wide and gaping. He tries to push up. His arms don’t cooperate.
“Max,” he grinds out, or thinks he does. It comes out more like “Mahh.” His tongue is thick in his mouth, his brain overflowing, foggy around the edges. He hears laughter—his own, from a minute ago—and realises how fucked it sounds now, echoing in this quiet.
You’re there again, in the corner of his vision, sitting in water that isn’t here, hair damp, eyes disappointed.
You’re not him yet, you’d said.
Max steps closer, bat in her hands now. He blinks up at her. The bat lowers between his legs and slams into the floorboards an inch from his balls.
The crack of wood is loud, sharp, final.
Billy’s eyes water from the shock. He tries to jerk back, and his muscles give him nothing.
“You listen to me,” Max begins, voice shaking but loud in the suddenly still room. “Because this is what’s gonna happen if you don’t.” She leans over him, face inches from his, bat pressing into the floor, her knuckles white where she grips it. “You’re gonna stop. You’re gonna stop trying to control me. You’re gonna stop scaring my friends. You’re gonna stop coming after us.”
Her voice hitches, then sharpens again.
“You’re gonna leave me alone,” she insists. “Leave them alone. You hear me?”
The kids are clustered behind her now—Lucas with his jaw clenched, Dustin with his mouth hanging open, Mike pale and trembling. Steve is slumped against the wall, face swollen, watching through one eye. Billy’s chest burns. He wants to say something cutting. Wants to tell her she doesn’t get to make demands. Wants to spit out the line that’s been his shield for months: You’re not my real sister.
It dies in his throat. Your voice overlays Max’s in his head: She’s your sister, Billy.
Max isn’t done.
“And you’re gonna leave her alone, too,” she adds, breathing hard.
Billy’s stomach drops, even as the drug pulls at him. “Who?” he slurs, though he already knows.
Max’s eyes flash. “You know who,” she says, deadly calm. “She’s on our side, not yours. She doesn’t need you screwing up her life.”
Your face flares behind his eyes—the garage lights, the dance, the ocean, every version of you looking at him like he’s a choice you’re hoping to regret a little less each time.
He laughs. It comes out broken.
“You think I…” he starts, then loses the thread completely.
The room swims. He’s dimly aware of his own body dissapearing, flaking away like sandcastles he used to build on the beach, only to watch them disappear in the lapping waves. He smells dust, old smoke, and blood.
Max’s voice is the last thing that really cuts through.
“If you even look at them again,” she says, bat still wedged in the floor, “if you hurt them, if you hurt her—” She swallows. “I will stop you. I don’t care that you’re bigger. I don’t care that you’re my brother.”
Stepbrother, his reflexive brain supplies, but his mouth can’t make the correction, a tiny nugget deep down doesn’t want to.
“You’re not a monster,” she goes on, and somehow that sounds worse than if she’d called him one. “You don’t get to pretend you can’t help it.”
Billy wants to argue that. He can’t.
The sedative drags him under with heavy, inexorable hands. His limbs go numb, then distant, then gone. His heartbeat becomes a slow, muffled drum in his ears.
Somewhere, the ocean roars against rock, beckoning.
You sit in it, soaked to the waist, not looking at him.
He tries, with the last shred of his will, to lift a hand. To reach. To do something other than fall. His fingers twitch against the Byers’ floor. No one sees. Darkness closes in, thick and complete.
The last thought that gets through before it takes him is not about Neil, or Max, or Harrington.
It’s your voice, impatient and stubborn and unbearably gentle:
Better direction. Don’t stop.
Billy blackouts with a laugh catching in his throat, unsure if he’s moving toward it or running the other way as fast as he can.
. . .
Billy dream-wakes to the sound of water hitting rock.
Not sand this time. Not the endless flat strip of California coast burned into his childhood. This is sharper, rougher. The sound is different—less shush, more impact, waves throwing themselves against stone and breaking apart.
He knows it’s the Pacific anyway. Some part of him could find that ocean blind and drunk and half-dead. The air has that same salt ache, that same weight of distance. It lives under his ribs like a tattoo.
He opens his eyes.
The sky is a low lid of cloud, colour washed out to grey-blue. The water is darker than in his other dreams, almost black in places, shot through with that sick light from below. Not the gulf of blue he remembers from California; this is colder, moodier. The horizon is all teeth—jagged rocks jutting up out of the waves like something trying to break through from underneath. He’s standing on stone, not sand. Dark, wet rock, slick with seaweed and spray. Behind him, the land rises fast—pine trees, a cliff that feels too high and too close, the air full of resin and brine.
He’s never been here before. He recognises it anyway, in that way you recognise faces you’ve never seen and places you’ve never been to.
You’re here, of course. You’re always here, inside him.
You’re sitting in the water this time.
The surf only comes up to your waist, but it’s rough, surging around you, foaming at your sides. Your jeans are soaked. Your boots are half-buried under the undertow. You’ve got your hands back on the rock, leaning, letting the waves hit you and pass through, eyes fixed somewhere out beyond the jagged horizon.
You don’t look at him.
That’s new.
Billy stands there for a second, blinking, trying to shake the fog out of his head. The last thing he remembers is Max’s face above him, a needle in his neck, the floor rushing up. His neck still tingles where she stuck him, phantom burn under the dream.
His body feels heavy, but he’s upright. No bruises here. No belt marks. Just sea air and cold and you.
“Not California,” he mutters.
His voice gets eaten by the wind. He walks toward you, boots skidding on wet rock. A wave surges up and soaks his shins, icy even in the dream. He grits his teeth and keeps going.
You don’t move.
By the time he’s close enough to see the fine lines around your eyes, the hollows in your cheeks, the way your hair sticks to your neck with sea spray, he’s breathless in a way that has nothing to do with the climb. He hates that. He drops down beside you without asking, awkward on the slick stone, letting the water crash against his knees. The cold bites, seeps in. It helps, anchors him.
For a moment, you just exist next to each other. You still don’t look at him. The disappointment rolls off you like a second tide. So heavy, Billy almost chokes on it. It digs under his skin worse than yelling ever could.
He clears his throat. “I’m guessing hugging’s still off the table, then.”
Your head turns slowly. The glare you give him could cut glass. His chest does a stupid little flip.
“You’re kidding,” you say, voice flat.
Billy shrugs, settling his elbows on his knees. “What? Thought maybe third time’s the charm.”
“Your actions are too loud.”
It’s not sharp, not yelled—just a verdict, brutally damning.
Billy snorts loudly, but it breaks halfway and comes out jagged. “What did you expect?” he demands, staring out at the rocks so he doesn’t have to see your face. “That you’d give me a pep talk and I’d be a good little boy?”
The words good little boy taste like bile. Like Neil. You exhale through your nose. It’s not amusement. It’s tired.
“No,” you breathe out warily. “I never expected it to be easy.”
He glances sidelong at you. You look older again. More than last time. Not in the obvious ways—no gray, no stoop—but in the way your eyes sit deeper, like they’ve held more nights.
“What then?” he asks. “You expect me to just… what. Flip a switch?”
“No,” you repeat. “I expect you to do the work.” You pause, sighing from deep in your chest. “I’m not giving up on you.”
Something in Billy’s chest jerks. He laughs bitterly. “You should. Everyone else has.”
You finally look at him properly, eyes catching his. “William.”
It hits harder than the glare, and his stomach squirms. Nobody calls him that unless they’re about to hurt him or apologise for hurting him. Neil uses it like a whip. His mother used it like a promise, long before she left, but hearing it in your mouth is becoming a new kind of ache.
“Don’t call me that,” he says automatically. It comes out smaller than he wants.
Your gaze softens, just a fraction. “You hate it,” you say. “I know.”
“Then don’t,” he snaps again.
“I’m not using it like he does,” you say quietly.
He looks away. Another wave crashes, cold spray peppering his face. He doesn’t bother wiping it off. The sting in his eyes could be salt. It could be something else.
“You hate me,” he mutters.
It’s half challenge, half confession.
“No.”
He barks out another laugh. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“I hated what you did,” you tell him patiently. “Not who you are.”
Billy scoffs in response, louder this time. “That sounds like the kind of bullshit they put on church pamphlets.”
“It’s the truth,” you say, a little sharper. “You know how many times I wanted to put a wrench through your skull? Plenty. You know how many times I actually believed you were incapable of better? Fewer than that.”
“Comforting,” he drawls, the word dripping sarcasm.
“It wasn’t supposed to be comforting,” you answer curtly. “I’m not here to coddle you.”
He clenches his jaw so hard it aches. The anger boils up before he can stop it. Anger’s easier. Anger’s familiar. Anger keeps the ache from spilling over.
“You dragged me here to what, exactly?” he snarls. “Repeat the same moral lecture? Tell me I’m disappointing you? Get in line. My old man’s got that covered.”
You flinch a little at that—barely—but you don’t look away.
“I didn’t drag you anywhere,” you say. “You keep washing up here because you don’t have anywhere else to put this.”
He bristles. “Put what?”
“All of it,” you say simply. “The rage. The shame. The fact that your kid sister had to drug you to get you to listen.”
His mouth snaps shut like you’ve backhanded him. He flashes on Max’s face, eyes wide and wet but unyielding. The feel of the syringe in his neck. The way his body went weak while hers stayed steady.
“Get lost,” he snaps, voice low and ugly. “I don’t need this. I don’t need you. I sure as hell don’t need some… figment of you telling me what a piece of shit I am.”
“I never said you were a piece of shit,” you reply calmly.
“You don’t have to,” he spits out, bobbing his knee restlessly. “You got that look. Like you’re—” He gestures sharply, searching for the word. “Like you’re disappointed your project didn’t turn out right.”
Your mouth tightens, but your tone doesn’t rise. “You think that’s what this is? You think I’m doing… what, some charity case? Trying to fix you so I feel better?”
“Isn’t that what you do?” he throws back. “You fix things. Cars. Kids. Strays. Whatever. I’m just another busted engine to you.”
You breathe in, slow and deep, like it’s taking effort not to bite back. Your gaze goes towards the restless ocean, stay on it. “I’m tired too, you know.” There’s something fragile in your voice that makes his breath hitch. “This isn’t fun for me.”
“Then stop,” he snaps. “Go. Leave. I don’t want you here. I don’t want your fucking—your pep talks, your ‘better direction’ crap, your—”
His voice cracks on the last word. He hates that you can hear it. “I don’t need you,” he finishes, forcing it through.
The wind whips his words away. The waves keep hitting the rock, indifferent to his struggle, to the way he hates himself more than anything. Your chin angles towards him. Your eyes are wet at the corners, but you blink it away.
“I know you don’t think you do. You’ve had to not need anyone for a long time, William. It kept you alive.”
“Spare me the psychoanalysis,” he snarls. “You reading my mind now? Or you pick that up from a fortune cookie, too?”
Silence stretches, suffocating between you. But you don’t snap, you don’t leave, either. You just… take it. Weather it. Like you did the waves. That, somehow, infuriates Billy more. He wants you to scream at him. To crack. To prove you’re breakable, so he doesn’t feel so exposed alone.
Instead, you do something far worse.
You move your hand. Slow and cautious, fingers outstretched, like you’re approaching a wild animal with its leg in a trap. Your fingers lift off the rock between you. You reach across, palm open, until you’re an inch from his knee. Billy feels the heat of you in that tiny bit of air. It’s nothing, not real, but also everything all at once. His nerve endings fire like you’ve already touched him.
He stops breathing.
Then, just before your hand makes contact, you let it drop. Back to the rock. Back to the water. The gesture guts him, but he doesn’t show it. He clamps his teeth down on the sound that wants to tear its way out of his throat. He stares out at the horizon so hard his eyes blur.
He hears his own voice, smaller, hoarser than he wants. “Would it have mattered?”
You turn your head slightly. “What?”
“If I’d told you,” he bites out, breath caught in his throat, his fists clenched painfully. “About the kids. The car. If I’d said it first, before they did.” He swallows, and each word tastes like glass. “Would it have made a difference?”
You go very still.
The waves fill the space between you—crash, hiss, retreat, crash.
He pushes, needing it to hurt, needing something solid to fight. “That day at the lake,” he says. “Or before. Or whenever you started looking at me like I was a loaded gun around them. If I’d come to you and said, ‘Hey, I fucked up, I nearly hit your boys, I scared Max, I was a coward’—” His jaw jumps. “Would it have changed anything?”
You’re quiet for a long time; long enough that he starts to think you’re not going to answer. Finally, you let out a deep, weary breath.
“I don’t know,” you admit softly.
The honesty in it cuts cleaner than any lie could have. Billy lets out a humourless laugh. “What, that’s it?”
“I’m not God, William. I don’t get to rewrite that night just because you wish you’d made a different choice. Maybe it would have changed something. Maybe you would’ve scared me a little less. Maybe Max would’ve felt like someone was on her side for once. Maybe you’d have started moving sooner.”
He keeps his eyes on the rocks. “Maybe.”
“Or maybe not,” you continue. “Maybe I’d have told you exactly what I did at the lake. That you were heading somewhere you didn’t want to be. That I was furious and scared and tired of watching kids clean up adult messes.”
He flinches.
“Then what’s the fucking point?” he snaps, voice cracking again. “If it doesn’t matter. If it doesn’t fix anything, if I still—”
—lose you.
“You’re not asking if it would have fixed it,” you note, too perceptive. “You’re asking if it would have hurt less.”
Billy drags a hand over his face, his fingers wet and salty. “Would it have?”
“For me?” You shrug once. “Maybe. For you?” You shake your head. “It was always going to hurt. That’s the price.”
He wants to scream. He wants to throw himself into the water and see if it lets him sink this time. He wants to grab you by the shoulders and shake you and demand a clean answer, a yes or no, a saint or monster verdict so he can stop living in this fucked up grey.
His hand reaches forward; it’s instinctive, raw need to feel you, to have you, just for a second. His hand moves toward you before he can stop it, fingers splayed, reaching for your wrist, your sleeve, anything.
For a second, it looks like you might let him. Your eyes widen just a fraction. Your body tilts.
Then the world pulls the floor out from underneath him. The rock drops away. The water surges up, cold and heavy, over his head and into his mouth.
He wakes choking.
. . .
Billy comes back up hard enough that his skull bounces on wood.
“Fuck—”
The word scrapes out of his throat like he hasn’t used it in hours. Days. His tongue is thick and dry. His mouth tastes like he’s guzzled down something chemical. The first thing he registers is pain. His face hurts. His ribs hurt. His neck stings where the needle went in. His muscles ache like he got hit by a truck, and then the truck backed up for good measure.
The second thing he registers is that he’s on the floor.
Hard boards under his back. One arm pinned awkwardly under him, the other flung out. There’s a damp spot under his cheek—drool or blood or both. He doesn’t want to know which.
He blinks blearily.
The living room ceiling of the Byers house swims into focus. Water stains, spiderweb in one corner, light bulb hanging limp from a frayed cord. Billy groans and rolls onto his side, fighting a wave of nausea. The room tilts. He pushes himself up onto his hands and knees, limbs trembling like he’s lost all strength in them. The world lags behind his movements like a bad TV broadcast.
“Max,” he croaks.
No answer. The house is quiet, too quiet. The last time he was here, it was full of yelling. His own, the kids’, the sound of his fist on Harrington’s face, the crack of the bat, the shrill protest of his own voice as the sedative hit his bloodstream.
Now, nothing.
Billy drags himself up to his feet using the back of the couch. His legs wobble beneath him, his vision tunnelling. He forces his eyes to sweep the room. The couch is crooked, cushions half on the floor. The coffee table’s at an angle, one leg bent. There are scuff marks on the floor where he and Steve slammed into furniture. There’s a smear of dried blood on the tile. Could be his, could be Harrington’s.
Your jacket is gone.
So are the boys.
So is Max.
His heart lurches. Billy staggers to the window, each step sending a pulse of pain up his side. He yanks the curtain back. His Camaro is not in the yard. For a second, his brain refuses the information. Then it hits all at once, like an avalanche.
They took his car.
Max. The little shits. Maybe Harrington, if he woke up enough to drive. Maybe you—your hands on his wheel, this time with his sister and those kids strapped in the back, heading God knows where.
Billy sways.
A bitter laugh bubbles up and dies in his chest. He presses his forehead to the cool glass, breathing fog onto it.
“Motherfuckers,” he whispers, not sure if he means them or himself.
Your voice is still there, under the pounding in his skull.
You’re heading in a better direction. Don’t stop.
“You picked the wrong idiot,” he mutters, slurring the words.
Billy pushes away from the window and nearly goes down again. The sedative hasn’t fully worn off; his body feels half a second behind his thoughts. His heart is racing, then tripping, then racing again. He staggers toward the door, half on instinct, half on the hope that sheer motion will fix this. He makes it as far as the front porch.
The air outside is colder than in the dream. No salt. Just damp leaves and the ghost of smoke from some neighbour’s chimney. The sky is still that same oppressive Indiana slate, like the world hasn’t moved in however long he’s been out. He stares at the empty space where his car should be.
For the first time since he was a kid, he feels truly, utterly… left.
Not just alone.
Left.
Max did this.
Max, who flinched from him and still climbed on his back to stop him. Max, who stuck a needle in his neck and refused to apologise for it. Max, who chose those kids and—if you’re involved—chose you over him.
Neil’s going to kill him. That thought stumbles in, half-formed and petrifying.
Neil’s going to see him come home without Max, without his car, with his face beaten and his body wrecked, and he’s going to win. Not just in the usual way. He’s going to have proof now. Proof Billy’s useless. Proof Billy’s a disappointment. Proof his son can’t even keep track of his own piece of shit Camaro.
Another thought edges in beside it.
You got yourself hit for this, your ocean-voice says. You took the hit instead of letting it land on her.
He wants to reject that. Pretend it wasn’t a choice. Pretend he didn’t know what would happen if he walked out the door when Neil had the belt in his hand.
But he did know. He chose anyway.
The knowledge sits heavy and strange in his chest, like a stone that might be a seed. He grips the porch railing, knuckles whitening, fighting off another wave of dizziness. The ragged coastline springs up behind his eyes for a second—the rocks, the waves, your hand hovering above his knee, and then dropping. The way you said I don’t know, and how it was the worst and best thing you could have said.
He doesn’t have an answer either.
All he has is the echo of Max’s voice: You’re going to leave me and my friends alone. You’re going to leave her alone, too. Because she’s on our side.
Your side.
Their side.
Not his. Never his.
Billy squeezes his eyes shut and sees you sitting in the water, shoulders squared against the pull of the tide, refusing to let it drag you under.
“I don’t need you,” he told you.
His chest twists. He straightens slowly, using the railing like a crutch. His legs tremble but hold.
He doesn’t know where Max is. He doesn’t know where you are. He doesn’t know why the sky feels like it’s waiting to crack open. He just knows this: when he walks back into his house, he’s going to get hit again. Badly.
And this time, for the first time, there’s a tiny, treacherous part of him that’s starting to believe you were right.
He’s not Neil yet.
But the road’s still there. He has to decide whether to keep walking it.
The thought makes him want to puke.
Billy steps off the porch anyway, into the cold, onto the gravel where his car should be, every nerve screaming, every bruise singing, your disappointment and your stubborn faith twined together in his head like a single light in the endless dark of his life.
Better direction.
Don’t stop.
Billy takes a stumbling step forward, then another.
He moves.
an: I think the main thing I wanted to explore with this chapter, is how difficult it is to break free from abusive cycles. Why and how Billy keeps taking a step forward and five back, how terrible actions can become a comfort blanket because it's all you know, closing down any other avenues for change. How a child hurt over and over won't immediately have the tools to overhaul his life and do the right thing. I tried to stay respectful of the type of abuse he's suffered/is suffering without excusing his actions, while also pulling from my own personal experiences, so I hope all this made sense.
This was Billy's personal low point, and from here on out... well, he's moving. It might not be quick, clean or easy, from here on out but he's moving.
See ya all next Friday and thank you for reading! Any thoughts? Feelings? Theories? Let me know! (●'◡'●)
⊹ ࣪ ˖ summary: “Got some moves for me, California? Or are you all talk?”
⊹ ࣪ ˖ pairing: billy hargrove x f!reader
⊹ ࣪ ˖ wc: 13k+
⊹ ࣪ ˖ warnings: misogyny, and whatever is wrong with billy/mechanic.
⊹ ࣪ ˖ notes: y'all know how hyped I am about this one, so i'm not gonna waffle on like usual. massive, fat, joosy thank you to everyone who supports this series, it genuinely means the world to me and makes me so hyped to write new chapters. been a while since i've written this much and this consistently.
read on ao3. ⊹ series masterlist.
The day before Halloween dawns like any other—a grey flat sky, cold wind, the smell of motor oil and old coffee at Frank’s shop. You can taste it the moment you step into the garage, that familiar tang under the buzz of lights and country radio. The bay doors are rolled up halfway to let the morning light in, but it just makes the chill sharper, the air a little wetter even with your jacket on.
Frank is already there.
He’s a shadow under the hood of a pickup, cigarette hanging off his lip, his grey hair sticking out from under his faded navy cap. His shoulders are broad under his flannel, sleeves rolled to the elbow, forearms stained with old oil.
“’Bout damn time,” he grunts without looking up as you cross the concrete. “Thought you’d run off with the circus and leave me with Jensen.”
You sling your bag into the corner where everyone pretends not to see it. “What, and give up the joys of seasonal tyre swaps? Never.”
He snorts in a familiar, gruff way. “Punch in, brat. We got a full slate. Half this town waits till the first frost to remember that tyre change is a thing.”
You clock in, grab your coveralls from their hook, trying to keep your mind blissfully free of distractions like Billy Hargrove and his voice in your head, insisting I wouldn’t have. The material is stiff with old stains and the scent of oil and rusted metal. You wriggle into them, zip up to your throat, and shove your hair under a bandana. Frank hands you a clipboard without ceremony the moment you appear again.
“You can start with the Nova,” he says, nodding towards bay three. “Oil, filter, look at that rattle the old hag keeps whining about. After that, we got the Ford that smells like Satan’s asscheeks. I need to finish off some invoices in the office, but I’ll join ya before lunch.”
You dip your head in agreement, used to this routine by now. Frank might be the boss, but he never skimps on work. He’s almost as obsessive about his duties as you are, which is saying something.
The morning settles into a comfortable, much-needed rhythm.
You pull the Nova in, set the lift, and get under it. It’s soothing, in a way—this close-up private time with machines that don’t care who you are as long as you know how to fix them. Your fingers find bolts by habit, your ears pick up tiny rattles and knocks under the louder noise. Comfortable, predictable, safe.
You’re still under the Nova, replacing the oil pan gasket when you hear tyres on gravel, followed by an engine that sounds expensive and smooth. German, maybe. Something that doesn’t belong in Hawkins or anywhere south of Indi.
You slide out from under the truck, wipe your hands on your coveralls, and look up, slow and appraising. The car is a Mercedes. Silver, expensive and gleaming. The kind of vehicle that screams money and the particular brand of entitlement that comes with it. Nothing as showy or full of character as your favourite Camaro, but no less irritating for it.
The man who gets out is maybe forty-five, suit and tie, dark hair slicked back with too much product. He’s got the kind of face that’s used to getting what it wants—sharp jaw, cold eyes, mouth set in a permanent sneer of superiority. No ring on his finger. Big city and finances, if you had to guess, because men like that think they’re better than everyone else by simply breathing, but are incapable of loving another human being in any significant way.
He looks at the shop like he’s stepped in something unpleasant, his gleaming shoes clicking on the grimy concrete as he ambles in.
“Help you?” you call out, standing to your feet.
His eyes glide over you. It’s a deliberate, assessing look, the kind that makes your skin crawl and your spine straighten on instinct. His stare lingers on your coveralls, on the grease on your hands, on the fact that you’re a woman in a space he clearly believes belongs to men.
“I need someone to look at my engine,” he calls out, his voice clipped, dismissive. “There’s a rattle. Probably nothing, but I need to reach Indianapolis by tonight, and I’d rather not break down. This was the first joint I came across.”
“Pop the hood.”
He doesn’t move an inch. “Where’s the mechanic?”
You fight to keep your expression blank. “You’re looking at her.”
His mouth curves into something that’s not quite a smile, not quite a sneer. “I meant the real mechanic. The man who runs this place.”
Your jaw tightens marginally. You should have known. “Frank is in the office. But I’m the one who’ll be looking at your car. So either pop the hood or leave.”
For a second, you think he’s going to walk away. Drive off and leave you standing there, and honestly, that would be fine. Better than fine. Ideal. But instead, he opens the driver’s door, leans in, and pulls the hood release.
You move to the front of the Mercedes, prop the hood, and lean in to examine the engine. It’s clean. Obsessively so, the kind of clean that suggests this man takes his car to a dealership for oil changes and pays three times what it’s worth just because he can. The rattle he’s hearing is probably the serpentine belt tensioner. Simple fix. Fifteen-minute job tops.
“Your tensioner is loose,” you tell him without turning around, wanting this over as soon as possible. “I can tighten it, but you should probably get it replaced soon. It’s worn.”
“How much?”
“For tightening? Twenty bucks. For replacement, parts and labour, probably eighty.”
“Twenty dollars to turn a bolt?” His voice is sharp with derision. “That’s daylight robbery, sweetheart.”
Your patience frays little by little, and the way he says sweetheart sets your teeth on edge. It’s nothing like the warm, simple way Eddie calls you sweetheart. This is darker, all disdain and belittlement. “That’s the rate. Take it or leave it.”
You hear him move closer. Feel the weight of his presence behind you.
“You always this mouthy?" he demands, and there’s an edge to his voice now. Something a bit more pointed, prodding for weak spots. “Or just with paying customers?”
You straighten and turn to face him, your expression cold and closed off. “I’m not mouthy. I’m doing my job. If you don’t like the rate, there’s a shop in town that’ll probably charge you double.”
His eyes narrow into slits. “You know what your problem is?”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me anyway.”
“Your problem is nobody’s taught you your place yet.” He takes another step closer, then another. Your eyes flick to wrench on the tray to your right. “Girls like you—working in garages, talking back, thinking you’re as good as a man—you need someone to set you straight.”
Your pulse kicks up. Not from fear. From rage. Before you can speak, a voice cuts in.
“Can I help you?”
Frank’s voice approaches, his footsteps heavy and deliberate. The man straightens, cutting his glare to the older man. You hate how the newcomer’s face relaxes, as if now that there’s a man in the room, it’s somehow different to a moment earlier.
“Yes, I need someone to look at my car.”
“She’s the best tech I got,” Frank informs him bluntly, jerking his chin at you. “If she can’t help you, no one in this shithole town can. Mr…?”
“Caldwell.”
You’ve known Frank long enough to see the way his mouth twitches, as if he has an opinion on the name.
“I don’t know what kind of establishment you run here,” Caldwell begins, realising Frank is not, in fact, joking. “But I’m not paying out the nose for some… little girl to play with my engine.”
You swallow the taste of those words. Because this is familiar in a way your own face is familiar, the way ground moving beneath your feet is familiar. You could let Frank keep handling it. You know he would. He’s done it before—stepped between you and some good ol’ boy with Opinions about your ovaries. But you’re also tired. Of men like this. Of their voices in your ear when you’re thirteen and fourteen and fifteen, and this scorn never ends.
You step forward.
“Lucky for you, I grew up on engines,” you say. “Your car doesn’t care what’s between my legs. It cares if I can keep it from dying on the freeway.”
Caldwell’s eyes flick to you again. There’s something ugly in them now, amusement melting into mean. Not like with Billy. For all his venom, for all his wrath, he’s never once looked at you like this, not even that first time he came to you with his car, and you made a fool of him. This stare says you’re less, like you need to be humiliated and crushed so you never speak again.
“Listen, sweetheart,” Caldwell says, holding his hands up like he’s being reasonable. “I’m sure you’re real good at makin’ coffee and answering phones. You wanna do that, fine. But this—” He jerks his thumb at the Mercedes again. “—this is a precision machine. Not some junker you and your boyfriend slap Bondo on in the yard.”
You keep your face neutral, despite the tension in your muscles. You’ve dealt with worse, you remind yourself. Sweat beads along your spine anyway.
“Precision machine is making noises,” you reply flatly. “Which makes it a whiny precision machine, at best.”
Frank huffs a laugh, quickly smothered.
Caldwell’s mouth tightens. “How old are you?” he demands, and doesn’t wait for an answer. “Eighteen? Nineteen? No way you’ve been doing this longer than I’ve had this car.”
You want to say I’ve been under hoods since before you learned what a dipstick was. You want to say my dad put a wrench in my hand when I was five, so I could make sense of the world, and I never put it down.
You settle for, “I’ve been certified longer than that tie’s been in style.”
He stalks a step closer. “You got a smart mouth,” he says, low in a way that implies danger to your wellbeing. “You know that?”
“Yeah,” you say calmly. “It came standard.”
Frank steps in then, hand on your shoulder, heavy and warm. It’s a welcome, anchoring weight. Unmovable and solid, and the slight tremor in your knee disappears with it.
“Hey,” he says to Caldwell, voice losing the last of its patience. “You want the car fixed, you let my tech fix it. You got a problem with women, take it to a shrink, pal.”
Caldwell’s gaze drops to Frank’s hand on you, then back up to your boss’s face.
“You touchin’ your employees now?” he asks, implication clear in the oily way those words slide between you three. “That part of the benefits package?”
You feel Frank go very still.
“Get out,” he says.
It’s quiet. Flat. No bluster. The type of order you don’t ignore if you know what’s good for you, a tone you’ve only heard from Frank once or twice, and never with such finality, an actual threat woven into the calmness of him.
Caldwell raises his brows. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Frank says, the gruffness of his tone sharpening just slightly. He drops his hand from your shoulder and goes towards the Mercides, shutting the hood with a purposeful thud. “Take your fancy city car and your mouth and roll on down to the dealer. I don’t want your money that bad.”
A muscle jumps in Caldwell’s jaw. He looks at you like you’re the one who slammed the door in his face. Like if you’d just smiled like a good little girl, none of this would’ve happened.
“Maybe she could use the reminder,” he snaps, addressing Frank but staring at you. “World’s a dangerous place for girls who don’t know their place.”
He moves quicker than you expect.
One second, he’s standing there, shoulders cocked. The next, his hand shoots out and clamps around your upper arm, fingers digging in hard. The world sharpens into a dull point of contact, of a grip without an invitation. Caldwell yanks you a half-step toward him, using his height. You stumble, boot skidding on a spot of oil.
“Maybe someone should set you straight,” he snarls, breath hot and awful when it hits your face, his eyes narrowed. “Teach you how to talk to a man who’s payin’ your—”
“Maybe you should get your fucking hands off her.”
Frank’s voice cuts through the bay like a gunshot. He doesn’t swing wild. He’s not a flailer, never has been. It’s one sharp, efficient punch to Caldwell’s arm, right at the elbow, knuckles cracking.
He’s sixty-three, six-foot-two even with the stoop age has given him, and built like someone who’s spent over forty years hauling engines and beating metal into submission. His face is weathered and lined, but his eyes are sharp and cold.
Caldwell yelps, grip loosening on you, and you shove him back, ready to leap at him and punch him until he’s bloody, but Frank’s other hand is on your shoulder again, camping down and shoving you back out of reach.
“Touch her again,” Frank says, voice more dangerous than you’ve ever heard it, “and I will break every goddamn finger you got, starting with the ones you use to count your damn money.”
Caldwell staggers, clutching his arm, his tie crooked under his throat.
“Are you insane?” he barks. “I could sue your ass so fast—”
“Get. Out.” Frank growls.
There’s a quality to it that finally penetrates whatever entitled fog Caldwell lives in. He straightens, yanks his tie back into place, breath coming fast through his nose, his face blotchy with outrage.
“You just lost yourself a customer,” he snaps, more nasally now that he’s winded.
“Oh no,” Frank deadpans. “Whoever will replace all that whining?”
You would laugh if your heart weren’t hammering in your throat too loudly for you to think. Caldwell glares at you one last time, like you’re the source of whatever humiliation he’s feeling. Like he wants to pick you up and throw you through a window. Like he’d enjoy it. You know he would. You’ve seen this hatred directed at you in the past, and it’s precisely how you knew Billy never would have hit you.
It still makes your stomach twist.
Caldwell gets into his Mercedes, slams the door, and reverses out of the bay faster than is smart. The undercarriage scrapes the lip; you wince at the sound even as some petty part of you savours it. The car roars away down the road and disappears from sight.
For a second, all you can hear is the radio, soft in the background. Tom Petty singing something about running down a dream. Your arm burns where his fingers were, nerves buzzing under your skin.
“Son of a bitch,” Frank mutters. “You okay, kid?”
You realise you’re standing weirdly, weight shifted, like you’re still braced against being pulled. You’re shaking too. Nothing too obvious, but you can feel the way your teeth chatter inside your skull, and it fills you with rage so potent you want to scream. You force yourself to straighten instead.
“Yeah,” you exhale, and your voice comes out rough. “Just… surprised.”
Frank looks at you, really looks, like he’s checking for cracks.
“He hurt you?” he asks, gruff but a touch softer.
You glance down. Already, angry finger marks are starting to bloom on the bare strip of your upper arm where your coveralls gap at the shoulder seam. It’s going to be a bruise in an hour, no question. You tug the fabric up, covering it, your teeth gritting.
“I’m fine,” you tell him, fighting to keep your voice steady. “I’ve been smacked harder by a slipping belt.”
His mouth flattens. “That’s not the point.”
“I know,” you say, too quickly.
You really do. You also know if you let yourself dwell on it—on the grip, on Caldwell’s breath, on the look—you’re going to start shaking harder, and you don’t have time for that. There’s work to do, life to live. Frank scrubs a hand over his face, still pissed off, you can tell by the way he keeps glaring in the direction of the Mercedes.
“I’ll talk to Jensen,” he goes on. “We’ll keep an eye out. If that prick comes back, we’ll take care of it.”
You nod absently. A beat of silence stretches between you, the radio filling the heavy air.
“Hey,” he says, softer, gruffer. “That son of a bitch said a lot of things. None of ’em were true. You hear me?”
The lump in your throat won’t disappear no matter how hard you fight to swallow it down. “I know,” you whisper.
“Say it like you mean it, goddamn it,” he rumbles.
“I know,” you repeat, more firmly this time, jutting your chin. “I’m fine, I swear. Just pissed off.”
He grunts, satisfied enough for now. “Good. You should be.” He squeezes your shoulder gently, the one that doesn’t hurt, and you fight the sudden tightness in your throat. “Take the rest of the day. I’ll finish up here.”
“I don’t need—”
“Take the rest of the day,” he repeats, firmer this time. “That’s not a request, kid. Go home. Ice that arm. And if it still hurts tomorrow, we’re going to the clinic.”
You want to argue with him. Want to prove you’re fine, that one asshole with boundary issues hasn’t rattled you, not with years of similar incidents behind you. But the truth is you’re shaking. Adrenaline and rage mix in your bloodstream until you feel sick and dizzy, your knees too soft to keep you steady.
“Okay,” you say quietly. “Thanks, Frank.”
Frank lets out an offended little huff. “Don’t thank me. Just be careful out there, ‘kay? World’s full of assholes like that.”
He would know, his late father was one of them. If it weren’t for the man in front of you, you wouldn’t be standing in this shop at all. It was him who saw the potential in you, who agreed to mentor you when Frank’s father laughed with his men that first time you came to the shop, looking for work.
You nod, adjusting your sleeve again. You grab your bag from the corner and shoulder it, heading for your car.
Your hands are shaking so badly that it takes three tries to get the key in the ignition.
World’s a dangerous place for girls who don’t know their place.
. . .
You don’t go home.
A part of you can’t face the empty trailer, the silence, the way your mom might look at you if she notices the bruises on the off chance she is home. Can’t face the concern, the questions, and the inevitable conversation about whether working at Frank’s is safe for you.
Instead, you drive. Aimlessly. Through Hawkins’ flat streets and cookie-cutter neighbourhoods you know backwards and in your sleep, past the high school and the arcade and the video store.
Your arm keeps throbbing. A dull, persistent ache that makes you want to hit something, but also makes you want to cry.
World’s a dangerous place for girls who don’t know their place.
The words loop in your head, cutting and familiar. Because you’ve heard variations of them your whole life—from teachers who thought you were too mouthy, from boys who thought you were too difficult, from every man who’s ever looked at you in coveralls and decided you needed to be put in your place.
You’re so fucking tired of it. So tired of fighting for space in a world that doesn’t want to give it to you.
Your car ends up at the quarry without you consciously deciding to go there. You park, kill the engine, and just sit, heavy and weary. The sun arcs over the sky in an unhurried path you track dully. The sky cleared up since this morning, making the water below appear even darker and somehow more ominous. Haunted since last year when you had to watch them pull out a fake body from the depths and hold the boys in place as they cracked in your arms.
You roll up your sleeve again. Look at the bruises. They’re darker now. More defined. The shape of a man’s hand, branded into your skin.
“Fuck,” you whisper, hoarse and wet.
You don’t cry. Some stubborn, dogged part of you refuses to. You haven’t cried over shit like this since you were twelve and learned that tears just make men like that smile wider. But you sit there for a long time, watching the sun dip lower and lower, feeling your rage settle into something colder and harder inside your chest.
. . .
Eddie finds you around six.
You’re still staring at the water, watching the last of the sunset bleed out across the sky, when you hear the unmistakable death rattle of his van pulling up the access road. The engine cuts behind you, the door squeals open, and then Eddie’s boots are crunching on gravel, drawing closer to where you stand, leaning against your hood.
You don’t turn around. “How did you find me?” you ask when he’s close enough to hear.
“Where else would you be?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Frank called.” Eddie’s voice is carefully neutral. “Said you left early. Said something happened and you drove off looking like you were about to do something stupid.”
You huff. “Frank’s a damn snitch.”
“Frank loves you,” Eddie counters, coming around to your side and settling beside you, close enough for phantom warmth to tickle over your arm. “So do I. Hence this very dramatic rescue mission by yours truly.”
Your nails bite into your forearms where they rest folded tightly over your chest. “I don’t need rescuing.”
“You’re sitting at the quarry alone at sunset.” Eddie crosses his arms in a mirror image of you. “That’s code red. That’s something’s wrong, and I don’t want to talk about it, but I also don’t want to be completely alone territory. We’ve been over this.”
Despite everything, your mouth twitches, just slightly, just because it’s Eddie, and Eddie never fails to find some crack in your armour. “We haven’t established quarry protocols, Munson.”
Eddie sighs dramatically. “Actually, we established them sophomore year when Tommy put gum in my hair, and I came here planning to shave my head with my uncle’s electric razor.”
“It was dramatic then, and it still is now.”
“I was fifteen and traumatised, you monster. And you—” He points at your face, his rings catching the fading light in your peripheral. “—showed up with scissors and fixed it. Remember what you said?”
Your lips twitch again, a little higher this time. “I said you looked like a really sad muppet.”
“Nope, before that.”
You’re quiet for a long moment, then, softer, “I said: if you’re gonna do something stupid, at least let me help so we’re stupid together.”
“Exactly.” Eddie bumps your shoulder with his and stays there. The warmth of him makes your throat close up again. “So here I am. Being stupid with you. Now tell me what happened.”
The words are right there, burning to leap off your tongue. You’ve relied on Eddie for everything for years, you’ve told him things you won’t admit to another soul, and you know he’s done the same for you, but this is an old, humiliating sting. And one that, despite his best intentions, Eddie could never fully understand. Because he’s a freak, a misfit, but he’s still a man. Even at his worst, he’ll still be regarded higher than you.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re at the quarry,” he argues, as if that explains everything.
“I just needed space.”
“From what?”
You don’t answer because the words won’t come out. Eddie is quiet in that knowing way, letting you come to him, but when it becomes clear, almost ten minutes later, that you won’t, not this time, he hedges a quiet, “Frank might have also mentioned a customer was an asshole.”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of asshole?”
“The usual kind,” you respond dully, keeping your eyes on the water. “Thought because I’m a girl, I don’t know what I’m doing. Thought he could—” You stop, words withering on your tongue. “Doesn’t matter now. Frank handled it.”
Eddie has transformed into a statue beside you. That particular kind of stillness that means he’s trying to keep something locked down and hidden. It’s a new edge to him, one you always notice because it’s so unlike him.
“What did he do?” Eddie asks, his voice carefully controlled.
“Nothing. Frank kicked him out.”
Eddie lets out a frustrated breath, standing and stepping around your extended legs so you’re forced to look at him. His dark eyes pin to you, no amusement in them now, and it’s rare, this level of solemnity from him.
You huff an exasperated sigh at his stubbornness, but finally roll up your sleeve. The bruises are darker now, even more defined. Four fingers, one thumb, unmistakable shape of a hand marring your skin.
Eddie stares at them for what feels like an eternity.
Then he turns sharply and takes three steps away, hands going to his hair like he’s trying to physically hold his head together.
“That motherfucker,” he says, and his voice is low and mean in a way you’ve never heard before. “That absolute piece of shit motherfucker.”
“Eddie—”
“Where does he live? What’s his name?”
“Eddie—”
“Mercedes, Frank said. Silver Mercedes.” Eddie paces across the dirt, visibly agitated, and there’s something jerky in his movements, like a spring knocked dangerously loose. “How many silver Mercedes can there be in the area? I’ll find him. I’ll find him and I’ll—”
“And you’ll what?” You stand up, move toward him in a measured gait, frowning. “Beat him up? Get yourself arrested? Eddie, stop and think.”
“I can’t stop. I can’t—” Eddie turns to face you, and his eyes are bright with rage and something that looks like tears. “He put his hands on you. He hurt you. And I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there, and I should’ve been—”
“Eddie, this isn’t your fault.”
“Then whose fault is it? Because it sure as fuck isn’t yours.” His voice cracks just a little, and your expression softens. “You were just doing your job. You were just existing. And some asshole thought he had the right to—to—”
He can’t finish. He just stands there, breathing hard, hands clenched into fists. You’ve seen Eddie angry before. Seen him pissed off at teachers who condescend, at jocks who shove freshmen into lockers, at a world that’s decided he’s worth less because of where he lives and who his father is. But you’ve never seen him like this. Never seen him barely contained, vibrating with a need darker than you thought him capable of.
Something inside your chest warms at his anger, at how ready he’s ready to throw himself at something that’s hurt you. It’s good, for once, to not feel alone in your loyalty and devotion. Because this, right here, is the reason you placed yourself between him and Billy, why you threw Neil in Billy’s face, even when it was the wrong thing to do. Because you two only ever had each other growing up, and the closeness that comes from those years is not something you can properly define.
“Ed.” You step closer and put your hands on his arms. “Look at me.”
He does. His eyes are wet and shining.
“I’m okay,” you say gently, because you can tell he needs to hear it from you. “I’m pissed off, and I’m bruised, but I’m okay. The asshole is gone. It’s done.”
“It’s not done. He’s still out there. He could do it to someone else—”
“And that’s not your responsibility, or mine,” you say pointedly, searching his face. You squeeze his arms once, pulling him a little closer. “We can’t save everyone. We can’t punch every asshole. We’d never stop punching.”
Eddie laughs shakily, glaring over some point over your head. “I want to, though. I really, really want to.”
“I know.”
“I want to find him and—and—” He cuts himself off, sucking in a shaky breath. “Fuck. I’m supposed to be the one making you feel better, and I’m over here having a breakdown. I’m being so uncool right now.”
You snort, pressing your knuckles gently to his shoulder. “You’re experiencing feelings, Munson. It’s allowed.”
“Feelings are exhausting,” Eddie says with a groan.
“Tell me about it.”
Eddie scrubs his hands over his face, then again. When he drops them, he looks tired but more settled. The dangerous edge has dulled to a manageable level, leaving him coiled but focused. He does another sweep over you, as if confirming to himself you’re not secretly harbouring a missing limb somewhere, and bobs his head absently.
“Okay,” he sniffs. “Okay. I’m not gonna hunt him down and commit felony assault.”
“Thank you.”
He raises his index finger towards the sky, giving you a pointed look. “But I reserve the right to be super pissed off about it.”
You snort, dragging a palm over your own face. “So granted.”
You’re both quiet for a beat, listening to the wind and the distant chirp of birds. Eddie’s eyes cut to you suddenly, searching your face.
“Remember when we were twelve and that kid Brad pushed you off the monkey bars?”
You blink at the abrupt subject change. “Yeah?”
“Remember what we did after?”
You realise a second too late what he’s referring to. “Nope—”
“We came here, and we yelled. Remember? We yelled fuck Brad into the quarry until we were hoarse, and then we felt better.”
“I was twelve.”
Eddie stares at you blankly. “So?”
“So I’m not twelve anymore, Ed,” you say dryly. “I’m not gonna stand at the quarry yelling like a kid.”
“Why the hell not?” Eddie’s grin stretches, daring and sly, his gaze warm and mischievous. “Speak for yourself. I’m staying young forever. Peter Pan style. Never growing up.”
Despite the weight of this day, despite the pain in your arm, you feel a smile tugging at your mouth, small but genuine. Affection for him blooms inside your breastbone, chasing the chill that’s been sitting in your bones since Caldwell’s appearance. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Is it though? Or is it genius?” He spreads his arms wide, gesturing at the empty quarry, grinning from ear to ear. “Nobody’s here. Nobody’s listening. You can yell anything you want. Fuck that guy. Fuck this day. Fuck—I don’t know—thermodynamics.”
You snort. “What did thermodynamics ever do to you?”
“I don’t know, I panicked, and I remembered you ranting about it a while back. The point is—” He moves to stand next to you at the edge. “The point is, we have a tradition. And traditions are important. They’re what separate us from the animals.”
“Pretty sure animals have traditions too.”
“You’re stalling, sweetheart.”
“I’m being rational.”
“Rationality is so overrated.” Eddie cups his hands around his mouth and shouts into the quarry: “FUCK THAT GUY!”
The words echo across the water, bouncing off stone, and despite yourself, you feel something loosen in your chest.
“See?” Eddie croons, grinning at you. “Cathartic. Your turn.”
You’re already shaking your head as he stalks towards you, making grabby hands. “I’m not doing that.”
“Oh, yes, you are. It’s tradition. Come on.” He grabs your wrists gently, swinging your arms like you’re in kindergarten again. “Just once. For me. For the sacred bond of our friendship.”
You glare at him, but you’re smiling. “You’re manipulating me.”
“I’m absolutely manipulating you,” Eddie agrees, wiggling his eyebrows. “Is it working?”
You look at him—at his hopeful face, his ridiculous grin, the way he’s standing here in the cooling evening air trying to make you feel better the only way he knows how, swinging your arms in ridiculous arcs. And you think about Caldwell’s hand on your arm instead. His voice, sinking beneath your skin, into the quietest parts of you. World’s a dangerous place for girls who don’t know their place.
“Fuck him,” you exhale, barely above a conversation volume.
Eddie’s eyes spark victoriously, his grip on your wrists growing firmer, anchoring you. “Louder.”
“Fuck him.”
“Louder.”
You suck in a breath, so sharp and sudden, your throat stings. “FUCK HIM!”
The words rip out of you, raw and harsh, and Eddie whoops, throwing his fist in the air. “Yes! Again!”
“FUCK HIM!”
“FUCK THAT MISOGYNISTIC PIECE OF SHIT!” Eddie yells, and you’re laughing now, the sound surprised out of you. Eddie is cackling, too, his curls bouncing as he jumps in place, his hands cupping around his mouth.
“FUCK EVERYONE WHO THINKS GIRLS CAN’T BE MECHANICS!”
“FUCK PEOPLE WHO GRAB OTHER PEOPLE!”
“FUCK MEN IN EXPENSIVE CARS!”
“FUCK PAUL STANLEY—wait, no, I take that back, Paul Stanley is a god—FUCK EVERYONE ELSE THOUGH!”
You’re both snorting with laughter now, breathless and giddy, and Eddie lets out a whistle so sharp and loud it makes you wince, then grin brighter.
“Goddamn,” he says, still beaming, flushed. “That felt good. You feel better?”
And strangely, you do. It doesn’t fix or change what happened, but it’s like someone turned a valve, releasing some of the built-up pressure, and you feel lighter for it. Cool air stings your flushed skin, but there’s a pleasant buzz in your muscles now.
“Yeah,” you admit, breathless. “I do.”
“Told you. Munson knows best,” he says, a touch smugly, throwing an arm around your shoulders and pulling you into a side hug. “You’re gonna be okay. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
“Good.” He presses a kiss to the top of your head—quick, casual, the way he’s done a thousand times in the past. “Because you’re kind of my favourite person in the world and I’d be devastated if you weren’t okay.”
Your throat tightens. “Eddie—”
“Come to Tina’s party tonight.”
You pull back to look at him. “What?”
“Tina’s Halloween party. Come with me.” His arm is still around your shoulders, warm and solid. “Let’s crash that shit, get drunk, blow off steam, forget about this asshole for a few hours. I’ll protect you from the popular kids. Promise.”
You’re already grimacing before he’s finished speaking. “I don’t do parties.”
“I know. But maybe you should. Just this once.” His smile is gentler this time, a knowing gleam in his dark eyes. “You’ve had a shit day. Let’s end it by doing something stupid together. What do you say?”
It would be wiser to say no. You should go home, ice your arm like Frank ordered, and fill out scholarship applications like a responsible person. But Eddie is looking at you with those hopeful eyes, and you’re so tired, and the thought of sitting alone in your trailer is suddenly unbearable.
“Okay,” you hear yourself say.
Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up in a way that suggests he didn’t expect to win this. “Yeah?”
You nod jerkily, jaw working. “Yeah, but I’m driving myself. And I’m leaving the second it gets too stupid.”
“Deal.” He squeezes your shoulders once more before letting go, stepping back, giddy as he rubs his hands together. “Nine o’clock. I’ll meet you there. And hey—” He pauses, thinking, eyes narrowed, then points directly at you. “Wear something that makes you feel dangerous.”
Shaking your head, you fight back a laugh, “Get out of here, Munson.”
He grins and jogs back to his van. The engine turns over on the second try, and he leans out the window as he’s pulling away, hair blowing in the wind.
“Nine o'clock! Don’t chicken out!”
You flip him off with the flattest stare you can muster. He laughs and drives away, leaving you alone with the darkening sky and the weight of a reckless decision you just made.
You sit there for another ten minutes, watching the last light bleed out of the day. Then you get in your car and drive home.
. . .
The trailer is empty when you get back. Your mom left a note on the counter—working a double, home around 3 am, there’s leftover meatloaf in the fridge—and you crumple it in your fist without reading the rest.
You strip out of your coveralls, drop them in the hamper, and stand under a hot shower, water hot enough to sting. Hot water rarely lasts long, so you’ve grown accustomed to making your routine as efficient as humanly possible. You let the stream pound against your stiff shoulders, your neck, washing away the smell of motor oil and Frank’s shop.
When you finally turn off the water, your skin is clean, and your arm is throbbing insistently, but you feel almost human again.
You stand in front of your closet, wrapped in a towel, water dripping from your hair, trying to figure out what the hell dangerous means in terms of clothing.
Your wardrobe is 90% coveralls and band T-shirts. Not exactly party material.
Heaving a sigh, you bury yourself elbows deep in your cramped wardrobe, digging for anything vaguely resembling cool. A few minutes and one cropped black tank top later, your fingers hit familiar cardboard instead. You drag out your old shoebox from the dark corner of the cupboard, and the lid pops off, spilling your past all over the floor.
Your saved-up cash, bundled neatly alongside your pay stubs from Frank. Beside them is your cypher notebook—1–26 scrawled on the inside cover, substitution tables, some notes you’ve saved from your exchanges with Eddie when you came up with a cypher of your own, pages of Hawkins maps marked in your old codes. Beneath it, the overstuffed inventions folder: Upside Down field sketches from what little you’ve been able to gather about it, half-finished diagrams, Mr Clarke’s handouts buried under your cramped notes about alternative dimensions and physics surrounding them. A schematic of that little sensor you built last year stares up at you, too, the one that used to chirp in your pocket whenever the electromagnetic field in a five-mile radius got disturbed. The one you watched fly out of your jeans in the gym the night El… didn’t walk back out.
You sit back on your messy bed for a moment, and it hits you how long it’s been since you had time to think about any of this. Bills. Double shifts at the shop. Senior year. Billy. Scholarship essays that might be your one-way ticket out of Indiana. No space left for secret codes and homemade detectors when the electric company wants its bill paid on time.
Still, your throat goes tight at the idea of that little device sitting in some government box with an evidence tag on it: unknown object, recovered Hawkins Middle. You shove the folder and shoebox back into the dark before your brain can start spinning models again, but the cypher notebook you set on the bed, right beside the cropped top. Maybe you’ll pick it up again. After the dance. After everything.
It’s when you’re putting the box back in its place that you see them, shoved in the back, behind your winter jackets: your mom’s leather pants.
She wore them in high school, back when she was dating your dad and thought she was going to be someone. Kept them even after he left, even after she couldn’t fit into them anymore. You’ve tried them on exactly twice: once when you were fourteen, and they were too big, and once last year when they almost fit.
You pull them out now, examining them from all angles. Black leather, worn soft at the knees, sitting low on the hips. You hesitate, but a small itch at the back of your brain is back, different from the usual restlessness your brain gets when it’s not busy with a project.
You pull them on. They fit. Perfectly. Like they were made for you, or waiting for you to grow into them. Next, you pull on the cropped tank top you bought at a thrift store six months ago and never wore because it felt too revealing back then, too feminine, too much. An impulse buy you usually never indulge in because there’s rarely money to spare.
Black, snug over your ribs, ribbed cotton, ending just above your navel. You look at yourself in the mirror. The bruises on your arm are visible, as is the strip of bare skin at your waist. You look older. Somehow sharper. Like someone who could hold her own at a party full of people who think they’re better than her.
Your worn leather jacket goes over it. The same one you’ve had for three years, bought for ten dollars at Goodwill and broken in until it fit like a second skin. Your usual boots follow. Scuffed leather, practical, the same ones you wear to work and school, because they add height and a sharpness to your look.
Hair down. You rarely wear it down because you work with your hands and loose hair constantly gets in the way, aside from being a safety hazard, but tonight… tonight you want to be someone different.
Makeup next, you remind yourself. You don’t really wear makeup. Don’t know how, mostly. But there’s a stub of eyeliner in your mom’s bathroom drawer, left over from before she stopped caring about things like that. You grab it now, angling your body in front of the mirror.
Your reflection stares back at you, grim but focused, a gleam in your eyes you don’t fully recognise.
The only reason you know how to do eyeliner at all is because of Eddie. Sophomore year, he decided he wanted to look more metal, more dangerous, and he begged you to help him figure it out. You spent hours in his trailer, trying to recreate makeup looks from crinkled magazine covers, fighting to get the wing right while he complained that you were going to poke his eye out.
You learned by doing his first. And then, just to prove you could, you’ve done your own. You danced around and sang to his records like fake rockstars until the eyeliner smeared from sweat, laughing and tangled in each other’s limbs. You haven’t done it since.
But the muscle memory is still there. You uncap the pencil, tilt your head back, and draw a careful line along your upper lash line. Smudge it slightly with your finger. Do the other eye. Step back to examine your work.
You look—
You look like someone who could walk into a party and not give a fuck what anyone thinks.
You look dangerous.
“Okay,” you say to your reflection. “Let’s do something stupid.”
You grab your keys and drive toward Tina’s house, toward the party, toward a night that feels like standing on the edge of something you can’t see the bottom of.
But tonight…
Tonight you’re jumping anyway.
. . .
Tina’s house looks like every other house in Hawkins when your parents are rich. Sprawling, extravagant, the kind of place with a three-car garage and a lawn that’s professionally maintained. Cars are already lining the street when you pull up at nine-thirty, music thumping from inside loud enough to rattle windows.
You sit in your car for a full minute, hands on the steering wheel, questioning every decision that led you here. But then your arm twinges again, Caldwell’s fingers on your arm, and you’re opening your truck door before you can talk yourself out of it.
The front door is open, bodies spilling out onto the porch. Someone brushes past dressed as a vampire. Someone else is dressed as Freddie Krueger. You push through the crowd, and the wall of sound hits you immediately. Burning Down the House by Talking Heads fills your ears, bass so loud you feel it in your chest, voices trying to talk over it. Orange lights blink around darkwood doorframes. Plastic cobwebs cling to lamps. Someone has stabbed a butcher knife through a foam skull and put it on the snack table like they’re a special effects artist.
The first thing you notice is how hot it is. Sweat and perfume and smoke, bodies pressed too close, costumes brushing, cheap fabric snagging on cheap fabric. The second thing you notice is how quickly eyes land on you—curious and appraising, already building a story. The house is packed in every direction. Kitchen overflowing with people mixing drinks, living room turned into a makeshift dance floor, stairs clogged with couples making out or heading to bedrooms for more privacy.
You make your way to the kitchen and grab a beer from the cooler before anyone can stop you. Crack it open against the counter with a flick of your wrist and take a long drink. It tastes like piss. You take another mouthful anyway, forcing yourself to swallow. Dangerous, you remind yourself. You’re not you tonight.
“Holy shit.”
You peer over your shoulder. Eddie is pushing through the crowd toward you, his face caught between shocked and delighted.
“You actually came.”
You spread your arms and mockingly give him a spin, your elbow clipping a passing zombie. “Don’t sound so surprised, Munson.”
“I’m not surprised, I’m—” He stops in front of you, taking in your outfit as you spin, the hair and the eyeliner. His eyes bulge. “Jesus Christ. You look—”
“Like I raided my mom’s closet?”
“I was gonna say like you’re about to commit a felony.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “A very hot felony. Is that—are those leather pants?”
“My mom’s.”
“Your mom was cool.”
“My mom was seventeen and stupid.”
Eddie, of course, looks like he crawled out of a metal album cover. Fake fangs. Cape. His hair even wilder than usual. People see him and do their typical reaction to him—half amused, half wary, like he’s contagious. You hook your arm around his, partially because you’re protective, and partially because, unlike them, there’s no one you would rather be here with.
Eddie adjusts your arm around his, pulling you along. “Come on. Dance with me before you remember you hate fun.”
“I don’t hate fun—”
But he’s already pulling you toward the living room, weaving through bodies, and you follow because it’s easier than resisting. The living room is chaotic. Twenty, maybe thirty people crammed into a space meant for half that number, all moving to music that’s too loud and too fast. The song changes just as you get there, Rock You Like a Hurricane by Scorpions trembles the walls, all driving guitars and pounding drums.
Eddie pulls you into the middle of it, and you’re immediately swallowed by heat and noise and movement.
“This is terrible,” you yell over the music.
“I know!” Eddie yells back, grinning toothily. “Isn’t it great?”
And it surprisingly is.
Eddie dances like he does everything else: completely unselfconscious, all flailing limbs and terrible rhythm and absolute commitment. He’s not good at it. He’s objectively bad at it, but he’s having so much fun that it’s infectious. There’s a magnetism to him that makes other partygoers smile and laugh when they catch sight of him.
You find yourself moving with him, letting the music take over, allowing your body do what it wants instead of overthinking every motion. The beer helps loosen you, hush your frantic brain, everything softer, warmer, easier. Eddie spins you, clumsy and enthusiastic, and you laugh, high and surprised.
“There she is!” Eddie’s face lights up with triumph.
The song shifts again. Owner of a Lonely Heart by Yes. Not as aggressive but still enjoyable, still good for dancing. Eddie makes an exaggerated, disgusted face. “Ugh. Pop bullshit.”
“It’s not that bad!”
“It’s terrible! Where’s the Priest? Where’s the Iron Maiden? Where’s—” He gestures wildly, glaring at the ceiling like it’s to blame. “Where’s anything with actual guitar work?”
You shake him by the shoulders playfully, tugging on his curls. “You can’t expect taste from the popular crowd!”
“I can and I will! This is an affront to—”
You grab his hands and pull him back into motion. “Stop complaining and dance with me, you snob.”
His protest dies. His smile goes soft and crooked. “Yes, ma’am.”
You dance through three more songs. Eddie makes commentary on each one: this one is too derivative, that one is too overproduced, and this one would be better if they used a Hammond organ instead of synthesisers. You tell him he’s insufferable, and he shoots back, “That’s my charm.”
Somewhere in the middle of I Melt with You by Modern English, you realise you’re actually having fun. Real fun. The kind where you’re not thinking about scholarship applications or bruises on your arm or the fact that you don’t belong here or seemingly anywhere.
The song changes again, and the crowd responds to it. You spin under Eddie’s arm as The Warrior by Scandal blasts through the speakers, catching sight of Steve Harrington and Nancy Wheeler across the room, neither looking particularly happy. Patty Smyth’s voice cuts through the noise, strong and defiant.
“Okay, this one’s acceptable,” Eddie concedes, scooping you closer to him, and you lose sight of the duo. “Purely because of the guitar solo.”
“How generous of you.”
“I’m a generous man,” Eddie brags, shaking his head, more frizzy curls sticking to his sweaty forehead. “It’s my defining characteristic.”
You’re about to respond when someone bumps into you from behind hard enough that you stumble forward. Your beer sloshes, some of it spilling onto your hand.
“Watch it!” Eddie steadies you, glaring at whoever pushed you.
“I need another drink,” you declare, shaking your hand.
“You want me to come with?”
“I’m fine.” And you are. Surprisingly. “I’m having fun. I’ll be right back.”
Eddie nods, lets you go, and gets immediately absorbed into a conversation with some girl dressed as Madonna who’s apparently in his class.
You push your way back toward the kitchen. It’s harder now—more people have arrived, the crowd denser, the air thicker with body heat and spilt beer, noise too loud to hear yourself think. You’re almost to the cooler when you feel it. That particular weight of attention, a prickle at the base of your skull.
You look up, and there he is.
Billy Hargrove doesn’t blend.
He’s in a leather jacket, of course. It hangs off his broad shoulders like a dare. Under it, nothing but skin—his chest a bare wall of muscle, bronzed, a chain glinting at his throat. Jeans that fit as if somebody painted them on his thighs. Hair perfectly tousled, even in the chaos of the party. Someone smeared a streak of fake blood across his collarbone, and it looks real enough to make your brain do a brief, stupid stumble.
He’s surrounded. Girls in skimpy costumes leaning in, laughing too hard. Guys trying to mimic his posture and ease and failing. He’s got a girl pressed against him. Tina, you think, in a cat costume that’s mostly just black lingerie and cat ears. She’s saying something into his ear, hand on his chest, laughing at whatever response he gives.
He catches your gaze almost instantly. His cigarette flares, illuminating his face in an orange glow, his eyes heavy and hooded over the smoke. Not friendly. Not welcoming. Not the easy, practised smile he gives his little court. It’s something sharper: recognition, challenge, heat.
Billy’s eyes roam over you, slow and deliberate in a way that dries your mouth a little. Taking in the leather pants, the bare strip of skin at your waist, the eyeliner, the way your hair falls loose instead of pulled back like usual.
His mouth curves slowly, like he’s just found something he’s been looking for.
Then he moves.
The room seems to part around him without him asking. He cuts through the crowd with that lazy predator stride. Unhurried, confident, like he’s never once had to wonder whether people will make space for him. He halts a few feet from you, close enough that you can smell him over everything else. Smoke. Soap. Leather. Heat. Something electric under it all.
“Mechanic,” he calls out, and his throaty voice cuts through the noise like a knife.
You force yourself to meet his eyes. “Hargrove.”
He exhales smoke through his nose, pinching his cigarette between two fingers. “Didn’t think parties were your scene.”
“They’re not.”
“So what are you doing here?” he asks, and sounds genuinely curious.
“What are you, the door guy?” The words come out sharper than you intended, but you’re not sure how to handle him tonight. Not after the day you had or your last interaction. The way he leaned in, how his eyes burned when you apologised to him, how it felt to see him pushing his body beyond breaking point to feel something, anything. “Last I checked, I don’t need your permission to be anywhere.”
You expect him to scowl, maybe get pissed, but his eyebrows only quirk in amusement, his tongue slipping to wet his bottom lip, and your gaze flicks to his mouth, stays there. He notices.
“New look.”
You bristle, fighting the urge to cross your arms over your chest. “What about it?”
Billy shrugs, lazy and relaxed, flicking his eyes up and down. “Nothing. Just makes me wonder what you’re trying to prove.”
Your pulse kicks up, skittering in your throat. “I’m not trying to prove anything.”
“Liar.” His eyes drop to your mouth, then back up, taking another drag of his cigarette. “Everyone at this party is trying to prove something. You’re just worse at hiding it than the rest of them.”
Scoffing, you stalk closer, closing the distance between you. Up close, you see the flush of colour on him, the way he fills up space, feel the burn of those electric eyes on you. How his curls sit, matted with sweat and whatever else.
“I think you’re exhausting.” He steps closer despite your words, just enough to invade your space, to make you aware of every inch between your bodies, so you add, “And I think you’re in my space.”
Like after the game, when he got so close, you still remember how his breath felt across your mouth.
“Yeah?” Billy leans even closer, his voice dropping, but somehow you still hear him, even with the thumping bass. “What are you gonna do about it?”
The challenge hangs between you, electric and dangerous. You should grab your drink, turn around, and walk away. Should find Eddie, should leave, should do literally anything other than engage with Billy Hargrove when he’s like this. Mean and wired and looking for a fight. But the beer inside your belly is making you reckless, and you’re so tired of backing down. Tired of doing the right thing, the good thing, the expected thing. So you don’t.
Your hand moves—lightning fast and calculated—and catches the chain around his neck in your grip. The medallion is cool against your fingers as you pull him closer. Billy goes still. His eyes snap to yours, and you watch his pupils dilate, devouring the blue, tendons in his throat tensing then loosening.
“What are you doing?”
His voice is rough in such a delicious way that it makes you want to curl up inside his words.
“Examining your jewellery,” you exhale, because in truth, you’re not entirely sure, either. You turn the medallion over in your fingers, studying it closely. You’ve seen it so often, but never up close. St. Christopher gleams back at you—Patron saint of travellers. There’s a small dent on one side, like it’s been dropped or hit. Something inside you goes quiet, your fingers tightening around it. “Where did you get this?”
“Why do you care?”
“Answer the question.”
His jaw clenches, his eyes jumping over your features before he finally relents. “California. Surf shop in San Diego. My mom gave it to me before—” He stops dead in his tracks, his expression closing down. “Why?”
“Because my dad had one, too.” You look up and meet his eyes, unsure whether to laugh or cry. It feels like a nasty sort of irony. You’re close enough now that you can see the ring of darker blue around his pupils as your words sink in. “Before he left.”
Billy’s expression does something complicated, almost unguarded, then it hardens. “So what, you’re feeling nostalgic? Want to bond over daddy issues?”
“No.” You pull the chain again, just slightly, lifting your eyes back to his. There’s just enough pressure there to make him lean in. “I want to dance.”
For a second, he stares at you like you just spoke in a language he doesn’t quite comprehend. Then Billy laughs—short, sharp, cruel. “You want to dance. With me. After spending the last few months acting like I’m contaminated.”
“I’m feeling generous.”
He eyes you suspiciously. “Are you drunk?”
“I’m feeling reckless tonight,” you answer with a glare, dropping your fingers from his chain and accidentally skimming them over his collarbone instead. Billy’s eyes darken at the sensation, his chest expanding in a silent breath. “Got some moves for me, California? Or are you all talk?”
Billy gazes at you for a long moment, like you’re the only two people in this party with all the time in the world. Without looking away from you, he drops his still smouldering cigarette into a cup of a passing partygoer with a lazy flick, and you shake your head when the boy turns, realises who he was about to snap at and wisely scurries off.
He offers you his hand, teeth bared, smoke billowing from between his lips. Not courtly, more like a challenge.
You don’t take it. You step forward on your own, shrug out of your jacket, throw it over a random chair and brush past him so your shoulder clips his bare chest. The contact sparks like a small firework going off. Billy inhales sharply, surprised, then laughs under his breath like you’ve just made his night.
You walk onto the dance floor, letting the beat take you, letting the noise swallow you. Billy follows. The first few seconds are a standoff. You move, but you don’t give him anything. You keep your arms close. Keep your hips steady. Let the rhythm carry you without revealing what you know. Your body wants to hold itself like armour even as the alcohol tries to loosen it.
Billy circles you like a wolf.
He doesn’t touch you at first, but you feel him like a physical weight on every inch of you, roaming, devouring. He moves close enough that you feel his heat, close enough that your skin reacts like it recognises him as a threat worth tracking. He’s smiling—not his public grin, but something private and sharp, wonderfully crooked.
“You dance like you fight,” he breathes into your ear.
You don’t look at him. “And you fight like you dance,” you shoot back with a slight, challenging grin. “All show.”
He laughs again, genuinely this time, and it irritates you how good it sounds on him, how you wish you heard this sound more often. The beat shifts, the song morphing into Heroes by David Bowie, and seemingly the whole house whoops with a deafening cheer. Billy sweeps in closer, forcing you to adjust, forcing you to respond.
You do.
I, I will be king. And you, you will be queen…
You let your shoulders loosen. Let your weight roll into your hips. You give in to the rhythm in spite of yourself, because you’re tired of being clenched up like a fist all the time. Billy watches you like he’s never seen you before. He mirrors you; not mocking, not trying to make you mess up, but matching like he speaks this language too. Like he’s finally found someone who does as well.
Though nothing will keep us together, we could steal time, just for one day…
And then the stupidest thing happens.
You start having fun.
It catches you off guard—this rush of heat, this release in your chest, the way your body starts moving with the beat instead of against it. Your laugh slips out when Billy spins you too fast, and you stumble, catching yourself with a hand on his shoulder. His hand lands on your waist immediately, steadying you. You freeze for a heartbeat, surprised by the instinctive gentleness of it.
Billy doesn’t freeze.
He holds you like it’s the most natural thing in the world, fingers firm at your waist, his other hand hovering at your shoulder without pinning you. His eyes lock on yours, and the room around you blurs. The music becomes something in your blood instead of something outside you.
“See?” he says, low and pleased. “I have moves afterall, huh?”
You glare at him out of habit, but your mouth betrays you by twitching slightly. “Don’t get cocky, Hargrove.”
He smirks, mean and attractive in a way that has no business affecting you as much as it does. “Too late.”
He pulls you into the beat again, not dragging, not forcing, just inviting you into the next step like he assumes you’ll follow. You do. Your bodies move in sync, and it feels obscene how well it works, how your anger fits into his like a key. How the space between you feels charged, alive, like a wire stripped bare.
He spins you again, slower this time, and then your back is to his chest and his hands are on your hips, his nose skimming the crook of your throat, and you’re moving together in a way that has absolutely no business being this sexual in a room full of people. One of his hands slides from your hip to your stomach, pressing you closer, and you feel him breathe in sharply against your neck.
“Fuck.”
He sounds almost pained, and you can’t help but grin, letting your head fall back against his shoulder. Just for a second. Just to see what he’ll do.
Billy’s other hand tightens on your hip. Hard enough that you’ll probably have marks tomorrow, but different from this afternoon. Different from the bruises already forming on your arm. These marks you might want to keep.
You hate him.
You want to bite him.
You want to—
You shove the thought away and throw your head back further, laughing again as he guides you in a circle. Your head tilts from side to side, sweat cooling on your skin as the whole room screams we could be heroes, just for one day. The alcohol hums through you, making you bolder.
“You’re not the centre of the universe,” you announce suddenly, because you have to, because this thing between you is terrifying, the ease of it and the heat of it almost unfair.
Billy leans in, mouth near your ear again, hot breath tingling your skin. “Wanna bet?”
Your breath catches. Not because you’re annoyed, but because the words, rolled with such delicious, gravelly rasp, land like a hand around your throat, and you want to lean in, not away. You angle away before he can see the effect. Keep dancing. Keep the energy sharp, playful.
He chases like a man possessed.
You catch glimpses of people watching—girls whispering, guys openly staring, Eddie standing at the edge of the pulsing crowd with a blank-eyed expression. But you can’t bring yourself to focus on any of it. For this one stupid, treacherous stretch of time, you’re not the girl who got grabbed at work. You’re not the girl stacking rejections and swallowing grief. You’re not the girl holding this town’s secrets in her teeth.
You’re simply here, so alive and free.
And Billy… Billy is just a boy who can move. A boy whose smile, when he forgets to make it mean, looks almost real.
You spin again, closer this time. The back of your hand brushes Billy’s chest. He’s hot to the touch, skin slick with sweat, and the contact shoots through you like electricity. Billy’s grin falters for a split second as if he feels it too. One of your hands slides up to his neck, feeling the powerful tendons shifting and coiling under your caress. Your nails drag lightly across the nape, into his curls, and Billy makes a sound low in his throat that settles somewhere in your belly.
“You need to—”
Heat boils between you at how frayed at the edges he sounds, how he grips you to him, like he’s unsure if he wants to sink his fingers in you harder or shove you away.
“Need to what?” you breathe, your mouth too close, but you can’t quite move away.
“Stop doing that before I forget we’re in public.”
You do it again. Nails scraping gently, just enough pressure to make him feel it. Billy’s eyes go dark in response, more black than ocean blue. His hand flies up, fingerless leather glove-clad fingers curling around your jaw in an all too familiar gesture, the rough, heated weight of his thumb dropping on your bottom lip. Instinctively, your lips part for him, hot breath fanning over his skin, and Billy leans—
Someone bumps into you from behind, making you stumble, and Billy’s fingers close around your upper arm to steady you. Right where the bruise blooms. Pain flashes white-hot through your body, blinding you for a second. You flinch so hard you jerk away like he’s burned you.
Billy freezes; his hand drops from you immediately, like he feels it too. He steps back, creating the first window of space between you since you started dancing, and his eyes snap to your arm. To the bruises you’ve almost forgotten about. Four dark marks. Unmistakable in the sliver of light illuminating your flesh.
“What the fuck is that.”
It’s not a question.
You jerk your arm back, away from his scrutiny. “Nothing.”
“Don’t bullshit me.” He catches your wrist; not gently this time, firm, demanding. He tilts your arm closer towards him, exposing the skin to better light without asking permission.
The full extent of the bruises is visible now. The discolouration is finger-shaped and ugly.
Billy stares at them for what feels like forever and a few seconds all at once. His face goes through several expressions in a span of seconds: confusion, recognition, and then, finally, something cold and murderous, and beneath that, you think foolishly, sorrowful.
“Who.”
The word comes out flat. Hollow in a way that chills you to the bone.
“Billy—”
His eyes flash, and you realise, belatedly, that this is the first time you’ve ever called him by his name. Despite it, his face is more snarl than the crooked smirk from minutes prior.
“Who.”
The music is still playing, but it feels distant now, muffled around the edges in your tense corner of the house. Everything has narrowed down to Billy’s face, to the rage building rapidly behind his eyes.
“Some asshole from work,” you reply finally, and you hate how small your voice sounds. “This afternoon. At the shop. He grabbed me. Frank kicked him out. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.” His voice is still quiet, but there’s something underneath it now; something that sounds like barely leashed violence. “Name. Now.”
You lie. “I don’t know his name—”
“Description, then. Car. Something.” His grip on your wrist tightens just slightly. “Give me something to work with.”
“Billy, it doesn’t matter—”
“It matters.” He’s not looking at you anymore. He’s looking at the bruises, jaw clenched so hard you can see the muscle jumping and a weight forms inside the pit of your stomach. “Some piece of shit put his hands on you, and you’re telling me it doesn’t matter?”
“Frank handled it—”
“Frank should’ve put him in the fucking hospital.” Billy’s eyes snap back to yours, and they’re more like crushed glass, cutting and dark. The eyes of someone who’s decided violence is the only answer. “Tell me what he looked like.”
Your heart is hammering. “Billy, you can’t—”
“Can’t what? Find him? Make sure he understands what happens when you touch things that don’t belong to you?”
Coldness slices through you, forcing your body to edge away from him. “Things that don’t belong to you,” you repeat slowly.
Billy realises his mistake. You see it flicker across his face, the realisation of how those words landed with you, but instead of backing down, he doubles down. “You know what I meant.”
“Do I?”
“I meant—” He stops, backtracks and tries again. He’s smouldering with rage, while you can feel everything inside you starting to ice over. “I meant someone needs to teach that asshole a lesson.”
Your scoff is scornful. “And you think violence is the answer.”
“It’s the only language assholes like that understand.”
He’s not wrong; it’s not like you’re stupid. You remember the way Frank squared his shoulders at that guy like a bear waking up in a bad mood, and how Caldwell’s confidence evaporated the second another man’s anger entered the room. That’s the part that keeps lighting you up from the inside. Not just the grab. Not just the bruise. The fact that it took Frank’s presence—Frank’s age, Frank’s shape, Frank’s voice—for Caldwell to back off.
As if your words didn’t count until they came out of someone else’s mouth. As if your body was public property until another man drew a line around it.
“Yeah, well, it’s also the language that gets you arrested. Gets you kicked off the basketball team. Gives your father another reason to—” You stop before you can say something you’ll regret. You’ve already gone too far down this road once.
But Billy’s face goes white and tight. “My father. Right. Because that’s what this is about. You think I’m going to turn into him if I—”
“I think you’re looking for an excuse to hurt someone and using me as justification.”
“That’s such bullshit—”
“Is it?” Your voice rises, loud enough for a few people to glance over, even over the thrum of music. “Because it seems like you’re more pissed off about the fact that someone else touched me than you are about the fact that I got hurt.”
“Why the hell are you working there at all?” he shoots back, and his tone makes it sound like the answer is obvious.
Your eyes narrow. “Because I like eating,” you snap back. “And the power company doesn’t do charity.”
Billy shakes his head, scoffing. “No,” he insists. “You shouldn’t be there. Not with men like that.”
The words hit like a slap. You blink, trying to understand if you heard him right. “Excuse me?”
He gestures sharply, frustration spilling out. “You heard me. You’re in a garage all day. Grease and tools and a bunch of guys who think they can do whatever they want because—” He cuts himself off, breathing hard. “You’re putting yourself in their way.”
Something cold slides down your spine. Your laugh comes out small and furious. “So it’s my fault.”
Billy frowns, like he doesn’t understand how you got there.
“I didn’t say that,” he argues.
“You did,” you snap, breathing hard, a low, ringing whine suddenly vibrating inside your skull. “You literally just said I shouldn’t work there so some asshole can put his hands on me.”
Billy’s eyes flash. “I’m saying you shouldn’t give them the chance.”
Your chest burns. You can feel the room again—too hot, too loud, too much. People dancing around you, oblivious to the storm brewing between you. Just a minute ago, you were laughing with him. You were moving with Billy like it made sense, like the universe finally clicked in some small, insignificant way. You felt, for the first time, like you were on the same side of something. Like he saw you and for once didn’t turn it into a battle.
And now he’s doing exactly what every man does—making your body your responsibility, making their violence your problem to prevent.
Your hands shake. “So what,” you begin, voice clipped. “I should quit? I should stay home? I should pick a job where men are less likely to be monsters?”
Billy’s jaw clenches. “I’m saying you—”
“No,” you cut in. “You’re saying what they always say. Don’t walk alone. Don’t wear that. Don’t talk back. Don’t exist in the world unless you can guarantee nobody will hurt you.”
You’re close again, but this time, you both have your teeth bared. “That’s not what I’m—”
“It is,” you spit, so furious your teeth hurt from clenching so hard. “Because it’s easier for you to tell me to shrink than it is to admit men like him are the problem.”
His gaze flickers. Angered, frustrated, almost desperate. “I’m trying to—”
“To what?” you snap. “Protect me?”
He says nothing, but his silence is loud enough to be an answer. You laugh, harsh and unkind. “I didn’t ask you to protect me. I asked you to dance.”
Billy’s mouth tightens, and you see something in him crack; something like regret, or guilt, or anger at himself for letting the fun happen at all, because now you’re both reminded this is reality for you. That no matter how briefly you were on the same page, moving and breathing as one, this is your default state. That there’s no version of you and him that can coexist without trying to tear each other apart. Whatever you thought altered between you since his game last week was nothing more than a temporary fluke.
“You think this is funny?” he asks.
“No,” you say, voice wobbling. “I think it’s fucking tragic.”
He leans in, voice dropping. “If I hear some guy at that shop put his hands on you—”
“You’ll do what?” you challenge, stepping closer so your face is inches from his. “Beat him up? Feel like a big man? Make it about you and your fists instead of the fact I shouldn’t need a man to defend me just to exist?”
Billy’s eyes blaze. His fists flex at his sides like he wants to grab you, shake you, kiss you—something violent either way.
“You don’t get it,” he growls.
“I get it perfectly,” you shoot back. “I get that for one minute, I thought you were actually different. That I could have fun with you, but this version of me isn’t for you. You’ve made that perfectly clear.”
His expressions spasms, nostrils flaring like those words snagged at him in some unexpected way. Billy’s expression hardens before you can add anything else. Because you’ve handed him something tender, you realise, and he doesn’t know what to do with it except crush it.
“Yeah?” he laughs, voice dipping cold, almost brutal. “Well, good.”
The word makes something in you crumble. Your laugh comes out bright and dangerous this time. “Right,” you say coldly. “My mistake. I forgot you only do two things: hurt people and pretend it doesn’t matter.”
He scoffs, working his jaw. “You’re twisting this.”
“You twisted it first,” you insist harshly, because it hurts. Fuck. Why does it hurt? It’s not like you could expect anything else from him. This is Billy Hargrove. “You had a chance—one chance—to say ‘I’m sorry that happened to you’ and leave it there. But you couldn’t. You had to make it my responsibility to avoid it.”
Your arm throbs again as if in agreement, and you press it tighter to your body, suddenly furious that your body is giving him information you didn’t choose to offer.
“I’m just trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he argues, and his voice has gone just as hard, like this whole conversation is annoying him. “But if you’re too stubborn to accept help, that’s your fucking problem.”
“Help.” You laugh, sharp and brittle, your fists clenched at your sides. “Is that what you call it? Because it sounds a lot like you trying to control the situation. Trying to control me.”
“I’m not—”
“You are.” You step back, creating distance, and your chest is tight with disappointment. “You grabbed me in the past, too, remember? Your hand on my jaw. That was you trying to control me, too.”
You might as well have punched him. There’s a flare of something raw in his eyes, just for a moment. “That was different—”
“Was it? Because right now it feels pretty fucking similar.”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you—”
“But you were trying to make me do what you wanted. Hell, you threatened me in my own drive, or did you forget that?” You’re shaking now, from anger and hurt and the particular kind of exhaustion that comes from explaining the same thing over and over. “The problem isn’t my job, Billy. The problem is men who think they have the right. And apparently you’re one of them.”
Those words do land like a physical blow. Billy stares at you like you just gutted him. He grits his teeth, his hands trembling at his sides, and there’s something volatile in his eyes that looks like pain wrapped in fury, a certain wildness burning vividly. Someone, you realise with a pang, will pay for this. He will take this fury and turn it outwards because this is what he does. Because Billy who destroys himself playing, who dances with you and smiles at you, is a figment.
“Fuck you,” he snaps, but it’s quieter than you would expect.
There’s nothing else left to say: the fight, the hurt, fizzles between you, a frayed thread. You turn with one last look at him, and push through the crowd, ignoring Eddie’s concerned face when you pass him, heading for the door.
The night air hits you like a slap. Cold, sharp, and exactly what you need. Behind you, you can hear the party still going, Eddie’s voice distantly calling your name, music and laughter and the sound of people having fun almost swallowing the sound.
You get halfway to your car before you realise you’re shaking, not from the cold. From rage and disappointment and hurt that comes from someone almost being what you need and then proving they’re precisely what you expected.
Because for maybe twenty minutes, you actually had fun with Billy Hargrove.
You laughed with him, moved with him, and touched him. You wanted him. Let your guard down enough to feel something other than anger, fear, or the exhausting need to prove yourself.
And then he ruined it.
an: GENERATIONAL FUMBLEEEEEE
man, i'm so embarrassed for him. but also, s2 billy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ man does NOT have healthy responses to genuine affection/feelings yet. abused child growing up with bigoted influence pipeline innit? s2 canon events next chapter (and maybe first Mind Flayer cameo 👀) and trying to deal with this mess. can it get any worse? but ofc it can! let me know your thoughts, and really hope you enjoyed. see ya next friday (hopefully!)
Pairing : Billy Hargrove x Male reader
Tags : Drunken kiss, Internalised homophobia, slight soft billy ( a small amount)
CW: None
Word count : 3153
beta read : No
The air in the living room was thick and vibrating, a claustrophobic mix of cheap beer breath, stale smoke, and the relentless, driving rhythm of Mötley Crüe tearing through blown-out speakers. Billy leaned against the archway, nursing a plastic cup of something vaguely alcoholic that tasted like cough syrup mixed with regret. He watched the masses of Hawkins High—the jocks preening, the cheerleaders giggling like wind chimes, and the losers and freaks trying desperately to look like they didn’t care about any of it.
He hated parties. He hated the lying, the way everyone was trying so hard to impress him, the new king of the hallway, without daring to actually meet his eye. It was all a lie, and he was exhausted from playing his part: the swaggering, untouchable god in denim and leather.
He needed a minute. His jaw was starting to ache from the perpetual sneer he wore, and the bass was rattling his teeth.
He pushed off the doorframe, letting out a low grunt as he navigated the sea of bodies, his shoulders brushing against sweaty arms and hips, Billy navigated the throng, ignoring the half-hearted attempts by a trio of sophomores to grab his attention as he searched for the bathroom.
He found it, eventually, tucked away past the kitchen and through a poorly lit hallway. The door was ajar, the light inside a dim, sickly yellow. He nudged it open with his foot, ready to brace himself for overflowing toilets or projectile vomit – standard party fare.
What he found was Y/N.
The guy was slumped against the cool tile of the bathtub, knees drawn up, head lolling to the side. His eyes were half-closed, unfocused, and a faint, sweet-and-sour stench clung to him, a cocktail of cheap booze and something vaguely acidic. He was practically passed out, a crumpled heap of denim and flannel.
Y/N was an anomaly in Hawkins, and perhaps that’s why Billy tolerated him. He wasn't a jock, but he could talk sports with the best of them. He wasn't a confirmed ‘freak’ or D&D nerd, but he could hang out with the weird kids without getting mocked, And surprisingly, he and Billy didn’t actively hate each other. He seemed to float above the social strata, universally liked, universally non-threatening, and currently, universally wasted.
Billy shut the door, plunging the room into relative darkness, only a sliver of hallway light filtering beneath the jam.
Billy stepped over him, surveying the surprisingly clean toilet – a miracle, given the state of the party. He zipped down his fly, relief washing over him, and then glanced back at the boy on the floor. Still out cold.
When he was done, he rinsed his hands, water running cold over his knuckles. He considered just leaving Y/N there. It wasn’t his problem. This wasn’t his house, this wasn’t his friend, and he sure as hell wasn’t anyone’s caretaker. Let someone else deal with the lightweight. Let him sleep it off. He probably deserved whatever he got, passed out like that.
But as he turned to leave, he hesitated. Leaving him here meant he’d either wake up covered in vomit or get found by some idiot looking for a laugh. With a sigh of irritation, Billy drew his foot back and gave Y/N’s shin a short, not too hard kick.
“You alive, moron?” Billy grunted.
Y/N stirred, a low moan escaping his lips. His head rolled, and his eyes blinked open, huge and glassy, trying to focus on Billy’s towering form. He mumbled something incoherent, a string of slurred syllables that sounded vaguely like a question, or maybe a complaint about the light.
Billy scoffed, shaking his head. “Thought so.”
Billy cursed under his breath, a low, guttural sound. "Goddammit, Y/N. You are such a pain in the ass." He crouched down, grabbing Y/N’s arm with a grip that was less gentle and more firm. "Alright, pretty boy. You’re not dying on Jason’s bathroom floor. Get up."
Y/N groaned again, a sound of pure misery. His eyes fluttered open, dark and unfocused. "Billy…?" he slurred, a hint of confusion in his voice. "Didn't know you were… here…"
"Yeah, well, surprise," Billy retorted, pulling Y/N’s arm over his shoulder. Y/N was heavier than he looked, a dead weight, all rubbery limbs and uncooperative muscles. "Lean on me, you idiot. Or I swear to God, I'm leaving you."
"M'kay," Y/N mumbled, trying to comply but mostly just flopping against Billy, smelling faintly of stale beer and something vaguely sweet, like cheap wine. His head lolled against Billy’s shoulder, his breath warm against Billy’s neck. Billy felt a strange, uncomfortable jolt. Too close. This was too damn close.
"Watch it," Billy grumbled, adjusting his grip. Y/N’s coordination was non-existent. Every step was a stumble, a near-fall. Billy had to practically drag him out of the bathroom, bracing him against the doorframe, trying to avoid making eye contact with anyone as he wrestled a seemingly unconscious Y/N through the throng of dancers.
They finally made it outside, the cool night air a welcome reprieve from the stifling heat of the basement. Y/N immediately shivered, leaning even harder into Billy. "Cold," he whined.
"Yeah, well, that's what happens when you drink enough to kill a horse, Einstein," Billy said, guiding him towards his Camaro with a firm hand on his back. The car, a beacon of chrome and muscle, stood out in the sea of beat-up sedans and station wagons.
Getting Y/N into the passenger seat was another Herculean task. Y/N kept trying to face Billy, to talk, to wrap his arms around Billy’s waist and rest his head on Billy’s chest.
"Just get in the car!" Billy growled, practically shoving him into the seat. He slammed the door shut, then leaned against the hood for a moment, taking a deep, ragged breath. His shirt was rumpled, his hair a mess, and he felt a primal urge to punch something. Anything.
He got in the driver's seat, the leather warm beneath him. Y/N was already slumped against the window, breathing heavily, but still awake. "Billy the best driver," he hummed.
"Damn right," Billy muttered, starting the engine with a roar that usually thrilled him but now just felt like an extension of his own frustration. He peeled out of the driveway, gravel spitting from beneath his tires.
The drive was agonizingly slow. Y/N was a constant stream of slurred nonsense. He pointed out constellations that weren't there, sang off-key snippets of pop songs, and at one point, tried to offer Billy a non-existent cigarette.
"You really gotta stop talking, man," Billy said, trying to keep his voice level, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
"But… I like talking to you, Billy," Y/N said, his voice surprisingly soft. He turned his head to look at Billy, his eyes wide and earnest, even if still unfocused.
Billy didn't know how to respond to that. "Where do you live, anyway?" Billy asked, trying to steer the conversation back to practicalities.
"Uh… big house," Y/N said, gesturing vaguely. "By the park. White fence. Lotsa… flowers."
Billy knew the general area. It was a nice part of town. He navigated the streets, the glow of the dashboard lights illuminating his tight jaw. "That isn’t an address, Y/N. Street name? House number?” Y/N had gone quiet again, either finally passing out or just resting. Billy hoped it was the former.
He pulled up in front of a neat, two-story house with a carefully manicured lawn and a pristine white picket fence, just as Y/N had described. All the lights were off. Great.
"Alright, we're here," Billy said, nudging Y/N’s shoulder.
Y/N jolted awake, blinking slowly. "Oh. Already?" He sounded disappointed.
"Yeah, 'already'," Billy mimicked, a sarcastic edge to his voice. He got out of the car, slamming the door, then opened Y/N’s side. "Come on, let's get you inside."
As Y/N stumbled out, leaning heavily against Billy once more, Billy realized the house was completely dark. Not a single light on, not even a porch light. "Your parents home?" he asked, a knot of irritation tightening in his stomach.
Y/N squinted at the dark house. "Nah. They're… uh… out of town. Business trip. Back Sunday."
Billy stared. "You're telling me you’re home alone?"
"Yup," Y/N chirped, completely oblivious to Billy's rising anger. "Party at my place!" He giggled again, then started to sway.
"No, no party at your place, you moron," Billy grumbled, catching him before he could face-plant onto the lawn. He found the spare key under a potted plant – of course Y/N would have one of those predictable hiding spots – and unlocked the front door.
The house was quiet, meticulously clean, and completely dark inside. It smelled faintly of lemon polish and something homey, like baked goods, even though it was empty. Billy guided Y/N through the living room, past tasteful furniture covered in white sheets.
"Where's your room?" Billy whispered, aware of the silence of the house.
"Upstairs," Y/N mumbled, pointing vaguely towards the staircase. "Left."
The climb upstairs was even harder than getting him out of the party. Y/N’s legs kept buckling, and Billy had to practically carry him up the last few steps. He found Y/N’s room – surprisingly neat, with posters of bands Billy barely recognized and a well-stocked bookshelf.
"Alright, bed," Billy said, guiding him towards the twin bed in the corner. He pulled back the covers, the sheets cool and crisp.
Y/N sank onto the edge of the bed, a sigh of pure relief escaping him. He looked utterly exhausted, his eyes barely staying open. Billy moved to help him lie down, pushing him gently onto the pillows. As Y/N shifted, trying to get comfortable, his hand accidentally brushed Billy’s arm.
"Th-thanks, Billy," Y/N slurred, his voice barely a whisper. His head was on the pillow now, his eyes fluttering closed, but he was still trying to look at Billy. There was a genuine, almost childlike gratitude in his gaze that caught Billy off guard.
Billy grunted, not knowing what to say. It was foreign, this feeling. This… being thanked for something beyond a cheap thrill or a punch.
Then, before Billy could pull his hand away, before he could process what was happening, Y/N’s hand reached up, surprisingly steady for a drunk, and cupped the back of Billy’s neck. Y/N pulled him down, just a little, and pressed his lips to Billy’s.
It was soft, unexpected. A fleeting brush of warm, slightly chapped lips. It tasted faintly of sweet wine and something else, something uniquely Y/N. It wasn't aggressive, wasn't demanding. It was just… there. A simple, bewildered press of lips.
Billy froze. His blood ran cold, then hot. Every muscle in his body tensed. He felt a jolt, an electric current that wasn't entirely unpleasant, running through him. The world seemed to tilt on its axis.
Just as quickly as it happened, it was over. Y/N's hand dropped, his eyes closed. A soft snore escaped him. He was out cold. Literally passed out just milliseconds after the kiss, leaving Billy standing there, frozen in time, his lips tingling, his mind a chaotic mess of static and disbelief.
He slowly, carefully, straightened up. He stared at Y/N’s peacefully sleeping face for a long moment, his own face a mask of utter confusion. A kiss. Y/N had kissed him. A guy. Y/N.
His hand instinctively reached up, touching his mouth—the spot where the contact had been made. It felt numb, but the ghost of the pressure was still there, the lingering taste of whatever horrible liquor Y/N had consumed.
What the hell.
What the hell was that?
It hadn’t been a joke. Y/N was too far gone to be malicious, and besides, Y/N wasn’t malicious. It was an impulsive, drunken mistake.
But the confusion raging in Billy was not about Y/N’s intentions. It was about his own reaction.
He hadn't shoved him away immediately. He hadn't reacted with disgust, merely shock. The shock had frozen him, and now, the aftershock was burning through his veins.
He looked down at Y/N, who was perfectly still, oblivious in the deep crater of alcohol-induced sleep. He was vulnerable, utterly dependent, and slightly ridiculous, draped in the mismatched bedding.
Billy had kissed girls—lots of them. He had made out furiously in backseats and darkened halls. But those kisses were calculated, aggressive, and part of the performance. They were about conquest and control.
This was none of those things. It was a fleeting moment of intimacy gifted without expectation, without demand, and instantly forgotten by the giver.
He felt heat rising up his neck, a sharp, unfamiliar wave of mortification mixed with something he couldn't name—something that felt dangerously close to the feelings he had buried all his life.
He backed away slowly, deliberately, as if a sudden move would shatter the silence or wake Y/N. His eyes never left the figure on the bed.
He finally reached the door frame, gripping it so hard his knuckles turned white. He had risked his pride and his car interior to get this idiot home. And the reward for his charity was this messy, confusing, stupid moment he couldn't explain.
He turned and walked down the stairs, not running, but moving with a controlled, predatory speed.
He had to get out. He had to breathe.
He slammed the front door behind him, the sound echoing loudly in the quiet street, a sharp, angry punctuation mark to the end of the evening.
When he reached the Camaro, he unlocked the door, slid into the driver’s seat, and sat for a long moment, staring out the windshield at the dark, silent neighborhood.
He didn't start the engine right away. He just sat, letting the cold seep into the vinyl, letting his breath fog the glass.
He ran his tongue over his mouth again, tasting nothing but the faint residue of his own nervous energy.
A kiss.
It meant nothing. It was liquor talking. It was a mistake.
But as he finally jammed the key into the ignition and the V8 engine roared into the night, demanding attention, Billy felt an unsettling tremor beneath his carefully constructed surface. It was the feeling of a boundary crossed—a soft, careless boundary that he hadn’t realized was there until it was gone.
He pulled away from the curb, tires screeching in a defiant, unnecessary squeal. He drove fast, maybe too fast, needing the physical risk to overpower the psychological mess Y/N had left him with. He needed the noise of the engine to drown out the silence, and the silence only contained one thing:
The memory of a slight touch, and a moment of total, bewildering vulnerability.
Billy spent the rest of the ride trying to convince himself that he was only angry because he had been messed with, because his time had been wasted, and certainly not because the contact had felt... like anything at all.
He reached his own house, parked the Camaro quietly, and walked inside. The house was dark. Max was asleep. Neil was probably still out.
He went straight to the bathroom, He stared into the mirror, his reflection tight, wired, and dangerously confused.
He splashed cold water on his face, attempting to wash away the exhaustion and the alcohol, but the cold only seemed to sharpen the memory.
He stripped down to his jeans, tossing the denim jacket onto the floor. He couldn't shake the image of Y/N’s earnest, drunken face, nor the light warmth of his touch.
Sliding into his bed, the sheets felt cold and foreign. He lay there, staring at the ceiling, the relentless energy of the night refusing to drain away.
He knew he would see Y/N in school on Monday, probably pale, shaky, and mortified when he realized he was alive and intact. Y/N would definitely not remember the kiss.
That realization was both a relief and a strange form of disappointment. Billy didn't want to deal with the fallout, but the idea of that fleeting, stupid moment existing only in his own memory, unacknowledged and unexamined, felt like a silent accusation.
He turned over, burying his face in the pillow, trying to suppress the sound of his own ragged breathing.
He punched the pillow, the muffled impact doing nothing to relieve the pressure building behind his eyes.
Every fibre of his being, every lesson Neil had brutally hammered into him about what it meant to be a man, what it meant to be strong, screamed that this was an abomination. A mistake. Something that should be met with immediate, violent disgust.
But the disgust hadn't come. Only shock. And then... the confusing, electric heat that had run through him.
"You're a sick son of a bitch, Hargrove," he muttered into the stale darkness, the words a familiar, self-inflicted lash.
He tossed onto his back, staring at the ceiling again. He needed to find a clean, simple explanation for the tightness in his chest and the jittery energy under his skin.
It was the booze. It was the surprise. It was a fluke.
He would deal with this tomorrow.
He had to see Y/N sober. He had to see his face when the memory—or the accusation—was brought up.
If it had been a stupid, drunken prank, a final, mean-spirited gesture before passing out, Billy would make him regret it. He'd find him in the halls, back him against the lockers, and deliver a harsh, brutal lesson that Y/N would never forget. He'd stomp out the humiliation with a kick to the gut and a public dismantling of Y/N's reputation. It would be over, solved, and buried.
But...
If Y/N’s gaze in that dark bedroom, right before the kiss, had been genuinely earnest—if that soft, brief contact had been driven by a messy, confused, but real impulse on Y/N's part, an impulse that Y/N hadn't been sober enough to control—then Billy had a different, infinitely more dangerous problem.
If it hadn't been a joke, and Y/N had actually wanted to kiss him, Billy would have to deal with the sickening, terrifying fact that he hadn't immediately, violently rejected it. He would have to deal with the part of his mind that was quietly, dangerously replaying the feeling on his lips. He would have to deal with his own goddamn feelings for Y/N, the ones he'd successfully ignored, categorized as simple tolerance or irritation, but which now felt like a thick, choking rope tightening around his throat.
⋆ I Love comments, likes, re-blogs and messages, it feels like validation ⋆
snotty tears streaming down my face finishing the final episodes before immediately going back thru to take screenshots of flambaes massive fucking ass
How [ FLAMBAE ] flirts his way out of getting written up. MALE HR!reader
“Hey pretty boy, you come here often?” Flambae leans over the counter, biceps flexing as he stares down at you.
“I wish I didn’t.” You deadpan, barely casting a glance at the ember-eyed asshole looking at you like his next meal.
Flambae pushes himself off the counter, scoffing. “Oh dont be like that, cmon now!” He saunters his way around the desk making himself comfortable behind you and your chair. “Wouldnt want you to miss me too much, amirite?”
Your eye twitches, keyboard clicking harder under your fingers. “Flambae…”
He starts massaging your shoulders, warming his hands up as he continues buttering you up, no doubt. “Now, now, you work so hard– Wouldnt want you getting too stressed y’know–”
To any other eyes, this would look like a sweet moment between lovers. Maybe too much PDA that could definitely warrant a HR violation– but sweet nonetheless. However.
However.
You very well knew that the comedic timing of your flammable hero coming down to be uncharacteristically nice to you after the fire alarm went off a few minutes ago was no coincidence.
“What did you blow up this time?”
He lets out a chuckle, a little more awkward. “Pssh, me? Blow something up? Please! I could never.”
“Flambae.”
“It was the microwave.”
You clicked your tongue, turning your head to glare at him behind you. “Flambae!” You pushed him back, swiveling your chair as you crossed your arms to scold him. “You broke the microwave?”
“Not broke,” he said, crossing his arms defensively. “More like... upgraded the microwave’s functionality.”
“Upgraded?” you repeated slowly.
“Yeah. It now doubles as a smoke machine.”
A headache blooms behind your eyes, another one this week. The 5th? The 7th? It was only Tuesday. Record low for you, honestly.
“For fucks sake, flambae..”
Flambae threw his hands up. “How was I supposed to know you can’t put aluminum foil in there?”
“Every microwave manual. Every safety poster in the pantry. Every email from HR—which, by the way, is me.”
“Well maybe if you sent me more texts I’d remember–”
You smack his arm, he flinches as he cradles it back. “Do not start.”
“You really need to think about me in and out work more y'know," You cringe, awkwardly nodding at a few of your coworkers starting to stare your way.
“I said don't start–”
“Because I,” Flambae points at himself, shoulders sparking before igniting in orange blazes. “Flambae, the one who controls the fire and the flame, whose skin does not burn, thinks about you constantly.” He waltzes around you, taking you chair and spinning you to look away from your little audience. Also for dramatic effect.
“Like, really constantly. When I'm fighting, bench-pressing quadruple your weight, in the shower, when I’m in bed all alone–” His breath meets your neck, warm as he whispers into your ear. You feel yourself heat up, pushing his face away. “Alright, alright, I get it! Fucking perv…”
“You’re trying to flirt your way out of another HR violation,” you shake your head, ignoring the hand snaking around your waist.
“Is it working?”
“No.” You turn your head to look at him again. Resolve cracking the second you meet those bitchy little eyes. “This is another HR violation by the way.”
“Eh,” He shrugs. “Never stopped me before–” And suddenly his hand is on your thigh, thumb tracing much too close to your crotch. You slap it away before any blood comes rushing the wrong way.
“Yeah, yeah. I won’t write you up. Go away.” You pull your chair closer to your desk, whispering under your breath. “Save it for when we get back home..”
Theres a grin on his lips as he presses it against your cheek. Victorious. “No promises. Love ya.”
He winks as he makes his way out of your department, much to your dismay.
Hear me out: what if, instead of Robert being Flambae’s love interest, it’s actually Waterboy? Just saying, a lot can happen in the remaining four episodes.
I'm really slow to shit and..just slow in general. So lwk if I follow anyone like problematic: proshippers, homophobes, racists e.t.c. PLS PLS TELL ME.
I try to really make sure someone's not like that before following them though!! Ugh just sucks a lot of people here with art I love, are crazy hoes😮💨 not surprising but just sucks yk!?
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