apricity ( billy hargrove x reader )
(n.) the warmth of the sun in winter.
After Uncle Bennie’s death, you’re uprooted from the beaches of Santa Monica and dropped into Hawkins, Indiana, a town still recovering from the events 9 months prior, where your father inherits Bennie’s diner, your mom gets reassigned to Hawkins and your senior year quietly unravels. With California clothes, tanned skin, and a brand-new Mercedes, you stick out in a town that never lets anyone forget they’re different.
You try to make Hawkins work, earning a spot on the Varsity cheer team, waiting tables at the newly renovated diner, and building a fragile sense of normal with new friends and your neighbor Steve Harrington and his girlfriend/new best friend Nancy Wheeler.
But then another family moves to town.
They’re from California too.
Their eldest son, a boy you meet one rainy afternoon at the diner, isn’t the same person you face when school starts. And he knows you see it. You slowly find out that in a town built on secrets, that kind of recognition is dangerous, and he has no intention of letting you out of his sight.
fanfic playlist : https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6dfhdgehMmX9a26Zh479Nz?si=7bc9f3ba33a3472b
Chapter 1 | Uptown Girl - PRELUDE
It was April of 1984 when everything changed, when your life quietly cracked down the middle and started over in a place that smelled like wet pavement and pine instead of saltwater and sunscreen. One minute you were under the endless blue skies of Santa Monica, and the next you were packed into the backseat of your dad’s car, watching California disappear in the rearview mirror. Your family looked the same as always. Pressed collars, polite smiles, picture-perfect in that stiff, magazine-cover way, but none of you felt whole anymore.
Hawkins, Indiana greeted you with skies the color of old TV static and air that couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. Some days were almost bearable, warm enough to shed a jacket. Other days, the cold crept straight through your jeans and settled into your bones. By the time the car rolled up Carlton Road, your fingers were numb, and your patience was worse. The house sat at the top of the hill like it had something to prove—navy siding, white trim, suburban perfection. It was the kind of house money bought without hesitation. The kind of house your father could afford five times over.
It was nice. Too nice. Clean, orderly, lifeless.
Nothing like the sun-bleached beach house back in California, where the walls held memories and the windows always rattled with laughter and ocean wind. This place felt quiet in a way that pressed in on your ears.
You had left everything behind. Your friends. Your favorite mall with the flickering neon signs and record stores you knew by heart. Your spot on the beach where the sand was always warm and the world felt endless. All of it traded in when your dad decided Hawkins was worth the move—worth uprooting your entire life—because it was where Uncle Bennie once lived.
You loved Uncle Bennie.
He was the one who showed up at holidays with grease-stained hands and stories that made your parents sigh and your brother laugh. He cracked jokes like life wasn’t so serious, like there wasn’t a right way to do everything. So when the phone call came, when the word suicide was whispered like it might shatter something, none of it made sense. A bullet to the head. Blood on the cracked surfaces of his diner. Years of work are gone in an instant.
You stood at his funeral under an Indiana sky that threatened rain, watching dirt fall onto the casket, each thud echoing in your chest. Hawkins was still unfamiliar then, but you already hated how heavy it felt. As if the town itself was swallowing things whole. You sat through the reading of his will in a stiff chair, hands folded in your lap, listening as Bennie’s diner, his diner, was handed over to your father like it was just another line item on a balance sheet.
Your dad flipped businesses for a living. He shook hands, smiled wide, and signed contracts that left people tied to him for life. He was good at it. Too good. So when the chance came to bring his expertise to a “small town with potential,” he didn’t hesitate. Hawkins wasn’t a place to mourn for him, it was an opportunity.
The rest of the family fought it at first. Your mom had a comfortable position at a CIA domestic site in California, something stable and safe. Your brother was a star on his middle school baseball team, already dreaming big. And you? You had everything figured out. Straight A’s. Varsity cheer. Friends who felt like family. A future that finally felt yours.
You were happy.
That didn’t matter once your mom got reassigned. Right to Hawkins, of all places. Once she took your dad’s side, the decision was final. Careers came first. Your senior year came second.
It burned, being ripped out by the roots when you were so close to the finish line. But you didn’t get a vote. So you hugged your friends tighter than usual that April, memorizing the feel of them, the sound of their voices, pretending it wasn’t goodbye. You smiled through it, because that’s what you were taught to do.
And then you left, driving toward a town that already felt wrong, carrying the quiet, sinking feeling that Hawkins wasn’t done taking things from you yet.
At the time, the move itself was strangely easy. Quiet. Almost too quiet. No dramatic goodbyes, no tears in the driveway—just boxes, closed doors, and the feeling that Hawkins was already watching. Your family didn’t try to stand out, but somehow they did anyway. Maybe it was your dad’s too-new car gleaming in the driveway like it didn’t belong, or the brand-new 1984 Mercedes-Benz sitting beside it—your “welcome to Indiana” gift, delivered before you even arrived. A peace offering. One you hadn’t asked for.
But it wasn’t just that.
It was the way people already seemed to know you. The whispers that came before introductions. Word traveled fast in Hawkins, about Bennie’s Burgers being closed for “remodeling,” about the out-of-town family with money, about the girl who’d shown up during a funeral week and disappeared just as quickly. By the time move-in day rolled around, your presence felt less like an arrival and more like a continuation of something unfinished.
So when the doorbell rang that afternoon, you weren’t entirely surprised.
On the porch stood a boy about your age, flanked by who you assumed were his parents. He leaned casually against the railing, like he already knew the place. Later, you’d find out his dad was your father’s legal representative in Hawkins, and your neighbor, just one house down.
That night, your parents hosted dinner.
The adults hovered over bourbon and wine, trading polite laughs and business talk while you stood awkwardly near the doorway. Your brother successfully snuck upstairs and you were considering doing the same until a hand extended toward you.
“Steve. Steve Harrington,” the boy said. His smirk was crooked, confident, but somewhat bored and distant. “Nice to see someone on this street who isn’t wrinkled, dried out, or so rich they forgot how to have a personality.”
His eyes flicked around your house before landing back on you. His hair was… distracting. Perfect in a way that almost felt intentional. You laughed despite yourself, shaking his hand as you introduced yourself, giving him your name.
“Well, I’m glad I could help,” you said. “But I doubt my parents are any different from what you’re used to.”
He hummed, gaze drifting somewhere past your shoulder, like he was already bored again, antsy. “Yeah. I doubt that,” he said, then smirked. “But uh..welcome to Hawkins.”
You weren’t sure how to take Steve at first. You’d heard things as you settled into the mediocre town. That he could be an ass. That he had run Hawkins High like it was his personal kingdom. Too confident, too snarky, too comfortable being the center of attention. Still, being neighbors meant paths crossed. He knocked on your door sometimes, inviting you to whatever party he was throwing that night, and before you knew it, summer started to blur together.
You tried fitting into Hawkins’ social scene. Drove your brother to baseball tryouts and practices. Spent long evenings driving aimlessly with the radio turned up, windows down despite the chill. Watched your parents come and go like they were staying in a hotel instead of a home.
You and Steve had two things in common: parents with money who were never around, and being the kids of said parents with money who were constantly bored. That explained the parties. Your attendance. Everything else that you did with one another when Steve had no one else better to hangout with.
The second time you saw Steve out and about, Nancy Wheeler was with him.
She wasn’t what you expected. She was kind, genuinely so. Smart, soft-spoken most of the time but confident when she needed to be, welcoming in a way that felt real. You couldn’t figure out how Steve managed to keep someone like her, but she greeted you like she’d known you for years. You and Steve never really hung out one-on-one. You teased each other. Pushed buttons. Sometimes you worked each other up just for the hell of it.
But Nancy? You clicked almost immediately.
Top of her class. Organized. Thoughtful. You bonded over academics more than anything, despite your personalities being wildly different but yet so similar. Soon you were running errands together, shopping downtown, piling into Steve’s BMW—or your Benz—as you rode the roads, dragging Steve along whether he liked it or not.
By the end of summer, you had your own place in Hawkins. A name. A small group of friends. Even a spot on the Varsity cheer team lined up for you before fall semester even started.
And then there was your job.
Your dad had wasted no time with Bennie’s Burgers. Renovations started almost immediately, and when the place reopened, it barely resembled what it used to be. Bright colors. Checkered tile floors. Red vinyl booths. Pink accents and vinyl records lining the walls. It was like the diner had been reborn, and with it came new staff.
Including you.
You remembered the argument vividly.
“You need to learn how to make your own money,” your dad said calmly. “Real-life experience. Otherwise you won’t make it in this world, darlin’.”
Your uniform had already been ordered.
You screamed into your pillow that night, furious that he’d made the decision without you. He had always done that, overriding your feelings and opinion like a complete disregard. But still, as you had calmed down that night, sitting on the cushioned balcony that you had in your room, overlooking your quaint backyard, you settled that there was a small comfort in it. It was your job. Your money. Not something handed to you because of his name.
So the next day you showed up to your Uncle's diner for training, because if you were to work for a man who only cared for money and profit, then you’d at least make the place he recreated into one that your Uncle would be proud of. A restaurant worth opening.
Word of the Bennie’s Burgers reopening spread fast like wildfire through Hawkins. Secrets were hard to keep in such a small town, not that your father had tried to keep it under wraps. So of course people noticed when the tape went down from completed renovations, when the paint had dried on the exterior walls and the lights had been turned on inside. The next thing you knew it was time for the reopening, and well..
Opening night was chaos.
Hawkins showed up in full force. You zipped around the floor on the stupid—but kind of cute—rollerskates your dad insisted the waitstaff wear, so fast your head spun. Nancy came with her family, and you greeted them happily. Mike was less impressed, slouching in the booth until his friend and his family had showed up.
You knew about Will. Everyone did. Nancy had told you what happened that fall, the week he went missing, the week he was declared dead. The same week Uncle Bennie died. You’d hoped, stupidly, that maybe your uncle would come back too. That it was all some mistake.
He didn’t.
But Will did.
Seeing him there felt like a small miracle as he and his family sat down in the booth you had placed them in, right beside the Wheelers. Mike lit up immediately, practically climbing out of the booth to talk to him while Karen Wheeler scolded him to sit down. The Byers family had come in later, quiet, kind, keeping to themselves, but nevertheless bringing a presence with them.
You’d met Jonathan once before while shopping with Nancy one day along with his mom, Ms. Byers. He was reserved, but calming. Easy to be around. Nancy had said they were friends of sorts but you rarely saw him. You could tell he got his personality from his mother, she was more skittish and bubbly than the oldest but still kept a welcoming air to her. You made sure to smile as you welcomed them that night, and to give Will a vanilla shake with extra cherries.
The chief of police stopped by briefly for black coffee and a triple-stack waffle to go, and Steve had swung in for a chocolate milkshake and a quick kiss for Nancy, laughing at your pink uniform.
“I like it,” you told him flatly.
He laughed harder.
By the time the doors finally closed, your feet ached and your ears rang. Families filtered out, thanking you as they went. Two more boys left with Will and Mike—one with darker skin yet a humorous personality and another who kept squinting like the lights were too bright with his curly hair poofing from under his hat, waving as the bell jingled over the door.
You locked up, leaned your forehead against the glass, and exhaled.
Hawkins felt full. Loud. Alive.
And somehow, you couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all just the surface of something much deeper. Like there was a storm in the distance.
You still missed Santa Monica. Where the sun there had sunk into your skin and never really left, like a permanent reminder of the life you used to have. You missed your friends. You missed the version of yourself that belonged somewhere without trying. Some nights, when your parents were gone—wrapped up in their own work, their own secrets—you took the car and drove until the roads blurred together. There was a quiet anger curled up inside you, tight and restless, something you didn’t talk about because you didn’t know how.
But time did what it always does.
The months passed. Four of them. A summer that wasn’t long, but long enough to soften the edges. You didn’t love Hawkins. You weren’t settled in some storybook way. But you were… functional. Dormant. Learning how to live with what you had instead of what you lost. You traded the endless ocean for jumping out of trees into Lover’s Lake, for sunburns at the neighborhood pool, for nights that ended with bug bites instead of sand in your shoes.
You didn’t know when the next storm would come. Or where it would hit. You just knew it would—whether from your parents, or from you, or from somewhere else entirely. So you waited. Late August crept in, heavy and humid, dragging summer toward its end. Senior year hovered just around the corner.
That was when the rumors started.
That another family was moving to Hawkins.
You heard it from Bethany—one of the few friends you’d made on the cheer team—after practice one warm afternoon. Supposedly they were from California too. Supposedly one of the kids was your age.”I wonder if it’ll be another girl or a guy,” You remember Bethany questioning as you both made your way back to your cars from the field, bags in hand.”If it's a guy I hope he’s hot, the guys in Hawkins are too bland and all the same.” She retorted with a click of her gum, you remember only laughing as you rolled your eyes. But the news hit you in a way you hadn’t expected, stirring up something old and uncomfortable. You remembered how it felt to hear about your own move, the dread of it. You wondered if they felt the same.
It took a while before you actually met the Hargroves.
Four months in, you were still a mystery to most of Hawkins yourself, so details were scarce. But you knew the moment they walked into Bennie’s.
It was pouring outside, one of those late-summer downpours that rattled the windows and soaked everything within seconds. You were on shift, thankful to be inside as you rolled between booths. The diner was slow because of the rain, Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl humming through the juke box speakers, bright and upbeat in contrast to the weather.
The bell over the door jingled.
You were hanging an order ticket on the rack when you looked up.
They were unfamiliar immediately.
The man stood stiff and straight, brown hair neatly combed, a mustache that made him look older than he probably was. His posture was rigid, like he was always braced for something.
Beside him was a woman with soft ginger curls, her eyes scanning the diner with quiet curiosity.
“Welcome to Bennie’s,” you said easily, grabbing menus as you rolled closer. “How many?”
There was a girl at the woman’s side, long red hair, sharp blue eyes, a skateboard tucked under her arm. She wore a hoodie and didn’t bother smiling, just stared at you blankly. You shifted your attention to the boy standing slightly behind the man.
He looked about your age.
Tall, but tense. Piercing blue eyes. Dirty-blond curls brushing his shoulders. Denim jacket, worn jeans, boots, a faded blue-green shirt underneath. He crushed a cigarette out near the door before lifting his gaze to meet yours,distant, uninterested, like he’d already checked out of the room. You had realized that Bethany’s prayers for the new kid being a boy and being handsome were both answered as you focused back onto the family as a whole. All wet from the downpour of the rain outside, their hair each having droplets on their edges.
You were eyeing a droplet on the tip of the blonde boy's curl when the father seemingly replied quickly,“Just four thank you,” he said sharply.
You nodded, turning your body to suggest they follow. “This way.”
You led them to a booth, setting menus down as they slid in. The boy dropped into his seat last, irritation written all over him. You recognized that look. The girl sat stiffly, arms crossed, while the man rattled off drink orders, water for the kids, black coffee for himself, lemonade for his wife.
You mentally toiled through the scene as you rolled back to the counter to prepare their drinks.
Dolores poked her head out from the kitchen, spatula in hand. “That the new family everybody’s talkin’ bout?”
“Guess so,” you said, filling glasses as a small patch of silence fills the air, before you add. “They feel… off.”
Dolores was one of the cooks that your dad had hired alongside yourself to operate the diner, she was a charismatic older black woman who is anything but someone who minds her own business, and speaks her mind when need be. The woman in question snorted. “I say that about you all the time, and you ain’t changed one bit.” She added as she pointed her spatula at you.
You laughed, balancing the tray as you rolled back out,”Yeah yeah and I’ll never change.” You replied, flipping her off. “Love you too Dolores!”
She only chuckled as she moved back to the kitchen. The booth felt heavy when you returned. The girl stared at the table as the woman seemingly was trying to talk to her. The curly-haired boy stared out the window like he wanted to punch through it as the man seemingly checked his watch. You set the drinks down carefully.
“Here y’all go..Two waters, a coffee and a lemonade.” You drawled out slowly.
You placed your tray by your side as they took their drinks, then you tested the waters. “I can't say I’ve seen y’all in here before, First time here at Bennie’s?”
The woman smiled, soft and nervous. “Yes. We just moved here from California and heard about this place from the locals.”
“We just finished unloading,” the man added. “Figured we’d grab something to eat.”
You nodded, pen poised, eyes drifting back to the boy who still hadn’t looked at you. Something about it tugged at you.
“Well, welcome to Hawkins,” you said, almost like deja vu as you continued. “My family and I moved here from California too. A few months ago.”
That did it.
The boy finally looked up. So did the girl. Even the man seemed more alert, comfortable.
“Really?” he asked. “What part?”
Your chest tightened just a little. “Santa Monica,” you replied almost out of habit from all the questions you got from locals, adding a soft laugh to ease the tension as you added,” I can still hear the waves from the shoreline.”
The reaction was immediate..and strange. The woman let out a short laugh, almost disbelieving. The girl hummed quietly. The boy didn’t react at all. Just watched you, blue eyes sharp and unreadable as you adjusted your order pad in your hands, the tray underneath your arm.
“Well I’ll be damned,” the man said, glancing around the table. “We're from San Diego. What are the odds?”
Just like that, Hawkins felt smaller.
You let out a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding, surprise settling in slowly. It was rare enough for a family like yours to end up in a place like Hawkins. Rarer still for another family—from the same stretch of California—to land in the same town. A part of you wondered if that was why the familiarity felt so sharp. The heaviness in the kids’ eyes. The careful, guarded way the parents spoke. Maybe it was projection. Maybe it was hope. Hope that you weren’t the only one who felt stranded here.
You nodded, slipping on a practiced smile.
“What a coincidence,” you said lightly. “And in a town this small too. It's definitely different from California.”
The words came out smooth, customer-service perfect, even as they clashed with everything you actually felt. What you wanted to say on the matter. Your attention drifted back to the older brother. He’d gone quiet again, eyes locked on the table, shoulders tense like he was holding himself together by force. He shifted in his seat, jaw tightening, like he was fighting something he didn’t want to show.
The woman laughed softly, polite and careful. “Yes, that we can agree on. We just thought we needed a fresh start as a family, that’s why we moved.”
The word fresh barely settled before it was cut off.
“Yeah. Right.”
The scoff was low, bitter. It came from him.
The air changed immediately. You felt it press in, thick and uncomfortable, like being stuck between glass walls. The man turned sharply, eyes on his son. The boy didn’t look back. His gaze stayed down, something unreadable flickering behind his eyes as his jaw worked. The girl stiffened. The woman’s smile faltered.
You’d seen this before. Not here, but close enough to recognize it.
You stepped in like it was second nature.
“Well,” you said smoothly, lifting your notepad, “now that we’ve got the drinks settled, would you like to order anything to eat? Our burgers are kind of a staple here in Hawkins..if you haven’t heard.”
Your voice was calm, even, instinctive. Your fingers curled tighter around the pen, muscle memory kicking in. You knew how to do this, how to redirect, how to take the edge off a moment before it cut too deep. Most people wouldn’t notice the shift. You did.
It worked.
The man exhaled, attention snapping back to you, politeness sliding back into place like a mask as he cleared his throat. “Yes..right. Susan, why don’t you start?”
Rain tapped steadily against the windows as the tension thinned just enough. You felt the gaze of a familiar blonde on you whenever you were writing, but his eyes were to the rest of the restaurant, almost observing when you looked back up. You took their orders, one by one, nodding, writing, keeping your voice steady. When you rolled back toward the kitchen window to hang the tickets, the music hummed on, and the storm outside swallowed whatever hadn’t been said.
But you knew one thing for sure.
That family wasn’t here for a fresh start.
And neither were you.
You almost laughed at the irony of it as you hovered behind the counter near the order window, fingers tapping idly against the stainless steel of the drink station. You’d played this game before. You knew the rules. How to read the room, how to soften an edge, how to step carefully around parents when the air turned sharp. It was familiar in a way that made your chest tighten. Suffocating, even.
Your family had mastered the art of containment. Smiles switched on like lights. Tension folded neatly behind closed doors. No matter how bad things got, no one outside ever knew. But with this family—with the Hargroves—it felt different. Like whatever they were carrying didn’t stay put. It followed them, lingered in the room, clung to their words and movements no matter how carefully they tried to hide it.
It wasn’t your business. You told yourself that more than once.
You had your own life to piece back together. Your own mess to manage. You weren’t about to get pulled into someone else’s.
So you turned on the Hamilton Beach milkshake machine your dad had installed, the low mechanical hum grounding you. You focused on work. On muscle memory. On customers drifting in and out, refilling cups, dropping off plates, calling out orders like nothing in the world was wrong. You stayed busy. You stayed detached.
You didn’t intend to make it your business as you scooped ice into a glass, or when you slid a cherry onto the perfect swirl of a milkshake. You didn’t intend to when you rolled their food back to the table either.
And yet.
You set their plates down, then placed two extra drinks on the table, unspoken, deliberate. A strawberry milkshake in front of the redheaded girl. A Coke with a lime wedge resting against the rim in front of the boy your age. Both of them blinked, startled.
“A welcoming gift,” you said quickly, before anyone could stop you. “From one Californian to another.”
The father’s mouth opened, then closed again, stopping himself from whatever he was going to say.
“On the house,” you added, softer. Not entirely true to reason, but close enough.
“Well, that’s very kind of you, Thank you,” the woman said, smiling with genuine surprise.
The man nodded stiffly in thanks. The girl reached for the milkshake almost immediately, eyes wide.
“Thanks,” she blurted, already pulling it closer.
You smiled despite yourself as she did it. She reminded you of your brother, same cautious eagerness, same hunger for small comforts.
The boy took the Coke more carefully. Quietly. Like it might disappear if he moved too fast.
“Lime?” he asked, brows knitting as he glanced up at you.
“I used to put lime in mine all the time during the summer,” you said easily. “Back by the beach. Thought you might like it.”
He studied the drink, then you. His face carried everything he felt, anger, exhaustion, restraint, except now, it was harder to read. After a beat, he leaned back and took it.
“Thanks,” he said, low.
For a second, something passed between you. Not understanding. Not trust. Just recognition. It settled heavy in your stomach as you nodded and rolled away before it could turn into anything else.
You got called into the back soon after for a stock issue. When you came back out, you cleared their table quietly. The parents were deep in conversation. The kids stayed silent. But the tension had shifted, loosened, not gone, just eased enough to breathe.
By the time you circled back again, they were gone.
Payment and a generous tip sat on the table. The milkshake glass was half-empty. The Coke cup was drained completely.
You exhaled, slow and steady, and gathered the cups. Outside, the rain hadn’t let up. It poured in sheets, streaking down the windows, blurring the world beyond the diner. You paused, watching it, how something so loud and violent could exist just beyond the glass while you stood untouched, safe, like an observer in an aquarium.
You lifted the Coke cup and smirked faintly at the shriveled lime at the bottom.
A strange feeling dipped low in your stomach.
You’d seen the forecast the night before. A major storm front rolling into Hawkins. They said it would hit hard. You were waiting for that storm to hit, the one that you’ve been holding out for all summer.
Turns out, it already had.
And maybe, just maybe, it didn’t arrive as thunder and lightning alone.
Maybe it walked in through the front door, soaking wet, wearing denim and boots, with soldier blue eyes and California sun still clinging to his skin.
And Hawkins wasn’t ready for the chaos he’ll bring.
