Billy/Steve Fighting Me Epilogue
Might never be posted on A03 because I kind of like the more open-end from before.
A burly man on the street. Steve didn’t think it was him at first. Tight ripped jeans. A loud motorcycle. Screaming radio. A lankier man behind him to him with a hand around his waist.
Pulling the motorcycle helmet off, tousling blonde curls.
Blue eyes saw him instantly. Recoil.
How could he have thought it was anyone but Billy?
A few cities away from Hawkins.
“You never got out of here, did you?” A horrible way to start a conversation.
A shake of his still bleached head, features sharpened with age, but not yet wrinkled. Five years maybe? He adjusted leather gloves.
“I’m just passing through,” He tilted his head toward the third man, “Showing him where I’m from, where I was around. Cross country trip. I live in New York now. You?”
Steve’s heart fell. Frustration maybe? Jealousy. At the very least jealousy for that freedom. Robin had left, maybe two years ago. Said she ‘couldn’t take it anymore’ and ‘don’t you just want to Do something?” She’d invited him. He’d declined. He received a phone call once a week informing him of her whereabouts. …or at first it was once a week. Her life has moved on.
“Same old same old,” Steve glanced around, hopefully his girlfriend wasn’t back yet from the quaint downtown shop she’d stepped into. This was the best shopping district closest to Hawkins.
The man next to Billy was tall and intimidating. Dark hair. Moustache. Both meticulously gelled.
Steve smoothed his own hair behind his ear. It was shorter than in high school. His few days of stubble he would never have allowed to grow in before.
Billy smiled at him. “Is that good?”
Was that teasing? Flirting?
Was it good that Steve was still here? He honestly tried to never think about it. He could say that he had a rental with his girlfriend. That he had a good job at the steel plant, and she worked at the newspaper with Nancy. Him and Nancy were on good terms now. She’d just had her first kid who was also named William. Should he tell Billy that he might be getting married? That he might be proposing to his girlfriend?
Kind of pathetically she was the only person he’d slept with after Billy. After a horrible dryspell that was the fallout after that summer. She moved in and caught his fancy. Clarissa, a peppy girl with soft brown hair. Moved here to escape a boyfriend… Billy might have scarred him into liking manic tragic types.
He noticed a purple mark on Billy’s collar. A love bite. What else could it be?
Billy’s presence still made him shudder. His smell. His touch. It all flooded back. He needed to re-adjust himself in his jeans.
Billy always alluded sexual energy. But he didn’t want to go back there. The screaming. The mind games. The guilt mixing and poisoning pleasure….. thick muscles, slick with sweat….
Billy was still staring at him, he hadn’t answered the question.
“I-I think it’s good.” He hadn’t looked at anyone after billy.
The man Billy was with stepped up beside. Charming smile. White teeth. His boots were sharp on the pavement. Attractive but not stirring the same urges.
Billy was still youthful while Steve felt aged.
Steve shook the man’s hand. It was never asked how Steve knew Billy. Was it implied? How much did Billy disclose?
He hadn’t touched Billy’s hand yet…
Why did any of it even matter?
Clarissa came out of the shop, shopping bag swinging. Denim dress flowing around her, top few buttons unbuttoned. Cute and manic in an entirely different way than Billy.
He didn’t want to go back there.
Looking between Billy and the new man, he bid his goodbyes. There was no use in going back there.
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