trepverter for Reddie and ignipotent for Harringrove
the Reddie prompt will be a separate post! <3
ignipotent: presiding over fire
Tommy hosts a graduation party out by the quarry the day after finals. Steve doesn’t really know why he’s invited, but he figures, to hell with it. He’s got nothing else going on and no reason not to go, and anyway, it might be nice seeing everyone all together again before they walk at graduation.
He shows up an hour late, not that anyone notices. That might’ve upset him once, but tonight it’s what he was hoping for, to sneak in, have a drink, and head out. Sure, he could’ve had a drink at home, but even if he has the same amount of conversation here as he would there, a party feels different than an empty house. Noisier, fuller, brighter.
Speaking of bright, though, he notices pretty quickly that Tommy’s party has something Steve definitely couldn’t have gotten at home. Mainly, the huge bonfire spitting smoke and embers and the occasional loud pop a few feet from the water’s edge.
Other than that, it’s a standard setup. Cheap beer, a keg, a few people splashing around in the water. Someone’s blasting Cheap Trick from their car speakers, and a bunch of girls from the cheerleading team are dancing and singing along. Steve thinks they sound like cats, but they look like they’re having fun, and that’s pretty cool.
He passes a couple making out on his way to the cooler — Tommy and Carol, as it happens — and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t hoping to kiss someone tonight. It’s not likely to happen if he keeps to himself the whole time, but the thought of trying to get them all to look at him just makes him feel tired for some reason.
There’s a big thing of driftwood blocking the cooler from the bonfire, and Steve crosses over it with a cold one sweating in his hand. He pops the tab and downs it in one go, feeling cold from the beer but warm from the fire.
“You need something stronger there, Harrington?”
Steve crunches the can in his fist and stares at it for a long time before looking over at the shape Billy cuts. All lit up in the firelight he almost reminds Steve of that night his life took a turn for the weird and a fucking monster went up in flames right in front of him. Here and now, though, Billy looks more like he’s part of what makes it burn. Less like kindling and more like accelerant.
“Yeah, actually,” Steve mutters. “If you’re gonna keep talking to me.” He tosses his empty can into a black trash bag already halfway full of cans and sticks.
“How ‘bout a smoke?” Billy asks, and fuck, Steve didn’t even hear him walking over. He pretends to pluck something out from behind Steve’s ear. It’s a joint. “Yes? No? Maybe?”
Steve stares at him. How drunk is he that he’s standing this close and not trying to fuck him up? He’s gotta be trashed — he’d have to to be — except he looks more sober than anyone else Steve has seen since driving up.
Billy raises his eyebrows. “Try again later?”
“Look, I don’t wanna do this with you tonight. I just wanna get a buzz on and go home.”
“Lemme get a buzz on you then,” Billy croons, his smile like a knife and looking more deadly for the shadows playing over his face, making all his edges appear that much sharper. “Or are you not in the mood to have a little fun?”
Steve squints at him. He’d thought Billy seemed sober at first glance, but maybe the joint in his hand isn’t his first of the night. That would explain it.
Some of it.
Regardless, Steve’s not drunk enough to take a peace offering from Billy Hargrove. If that’s what it even is.
“Depends. Are you gonna smash a plate over my head again?”
Billy’s smile stutters, and the weapon of his mouth takes to looking like a wound. He recovers a second later, but he can’t get that blade-like curve to settle in where it was. There was a time when he would’ve felt good about taking him down a peg, but now he just feels like he’s exposed a scar. He’s not sure if it’s his or Billy’s, is the thing.
It reminds him of all the other ways people can give scars — by tearing up a photograph or by smashing a camera. Or with words.
Steve meets Billy’s eyes, Billy who’s gone quiet and squirmy since Steve brought up the fight. They’ve done a pretty good job, both of them, of staying out of each other’s way ever since that night. Steve thought it was because they’d just fight if their paths crossed again, but here they are stood still at a crossroads. Billy doesn’t look like he wants to fight. He doesn’t like he’s been wanting to fight.
“You know,” Steve starts, tilting his head when Billy jumps at the sound of his voice. “An apology goes a long way. I mean. In my experience.”
In the light of the fire, staring and wide-eyed, Billy looks like a kid, but like he’s seen the inside of hell, too. The only other person Steve knows who looks like that is Dustin’s friend El, and he’s got it on pretty good authority that she has seen the inside of hell.
So what has Billy seen?
He jerks out of his trance to glare at the fire. As closely as Steve’s watching him, he’s still surprised when Billy’s hand shoots out. Steve takes it, perplexed until Billy finally looks at him.
“Sorry, for…”
“Yeah,” Steve says, throat tight with his heartbeat, and with something he can’t name.
“It wasn’t — I didn’t — ”
Steve nods, lost but not. He knows what Billy means, somehow, and he knows why he can’t say it. If he put him to it, Steve couldn’t either. Billy pumps his hand once and lets go before Steve’s figured out how to follow him in the gesture.
“So…” Billy clears his throat. “You want that smoke or what?”
Steve smiles and says sure.
“One thing, though. I gotta get outta here. If Madonna comes on one more fuckin’ time, I’m gonna lose my shit.”
And that’s how Steve winds up crashing through the underbrush with Billy and stepping on his heels when the shadows get too dark to see through.
“Harrington, Jesus Christ.”
“What? It’s dark!”
Billy feels out into the darkness for him and hauls him the rest of the way through the trees. They’re close enough to hear laughter and just a suggestion of music, but when Steve walks out to the edge of the bank the woods let out onto and he can’t see anyone. It’s damn near cozy.
“How’d you know about this place?” Steve asks.
“I didn’t,” Billy tells him, puffing once and passing him the lit joint. He drops down to sit and stretches his legs out in front of him.
Steve sits, too. In the moonlight, he can’t remember what it was about Billy’s face that made him look anything but young. It’s weird, still, to be this close to him, but that feeling goes up in smoke, hit for hit. As it leaves him, it starts to feel weirder not leaning into Billy so their arms press in a single line from shoulder to wrist.
Billy flicks the nub when they’re done with it and digs around in his jacket for another. Steve’s already feeling pretty good, but he’s not gonna say no to feeling better. It’s why he’s already saying yes when Billy starts to ask him a different question.
“Wait, what?”
“I said, you ever shotgun a hit before?”
“Oh. Then no.”
“What did you think I was gonna say?” Billy purrs, back on his grinning bullshit, but he doesn’t look dangerous like he usually does. Between the lopsided tilt of his smile and the glazed look in his eyes he looks more at risk for raiding a fridge than he does for starting shit.
“I just thought you were gonna ask if I wanted to smoke some more. What’s — what did you call it? A shotgun?”
“Yeah, shotgunning. It’s the same hit. Goes from me to you. Sharing is caring, right?”
“Sure, I guess. How does it work?”
Billy flicks his tongue against a sharp tooth. He shrugs one shoulder. “I blow smoke. You breathe it in. Easy.”
“What, like, you blow it in my face?” Steve asks, starting to grin, too. That sounds silly.
“Nah, I blow into your mouth.”
“My mouth?” Steve echoes, feeling something warm and insistent uncurl low in his belly.
Billy hums, takes a slow drag and holds it. There’s a patient, oddly steady look to his eyes, the same one he pointed at Steve that night outside Mrs. Byers’ house. Steve stutters and gives a jerky nod.
When that doesn’t get Billy to move, he swallows and unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth. Says, “Yeah, okay.”
He only flinches a little when Billy leans in close and taps the spot under his chin. Something about Billy touching him makes his heart race, and it’s not because he’s scared of getting hit. He doesn’t quite breathe in at the same time that Billy breathes out, but he catches most of it. After, for a moment, Billy’s still close enough to —
Well, they could almost be kissing if Steve’s lungs weren’t full of smoke. He chokes on the realization and turns his head, sputtering and coughing and buzzing where Billy thumps him a few times on the back.
Billy’s laugh, usually psychotic, sounds softer now. Everything about him seems softer, everything but the lingering weight of his palm spanning Steve’s shoulder. He’s got his other hand halfway to his mouth to take another hit when Steve stops him. Their fingers overlap when Steve clumsily takes the joint from him, and that small touch, that slide of friction, gets his heart pounding. The silence that rises up between them, whatever it might mean, makes the blood roar in Steve’s ears.
He’s not stupid. Billy’s mouth was close enough to taste, and Steve wanted him closer still. He knows what that means, even if he can’t make sense of why. Billy watches his eyes, then his mouth, and he only hesitates as long as it takes for Steve to press his fingers to his jaw.
They draw in closer this time, and the way Steve feels, there’s no way he’s not finding out if his lips are as soft as they look. There’s no way.
He lets the smoke rush out of him, lets Billy take it from him, and sways in to smear a kiss into his mouth. It’s like standing by the bonfire again, cast in a burning glow and sparking to life everywhere that Billy’s touching him, everywhere Billy could be touching him.
Billy breaks away to breathe and let the smoke go. Steve tries to remember how to breathe, too, but he’s having a rough go of it. He stubs out the burning cherry until it goes dark, thinking, okay, now they’re gonna fight, now Billy’s gonna kick his ass. Steve’s halfway to apologizing and most of the way toward accepting that he’ll be going home with a black eye when Billy turns back to him.
And kisses him again.
He frames Steve’s face with his hands, gentle in a way Steve didn’t think he could be. Steve wraps him up in his arms, crushing him closer so they can sink down together. Together.
Billy smells like a bonfire and tastes like beer. He feels like falling. The kind Steve hasn’t been doing much of lately. Billy bends down to mouth at his neck, and when he lets his head thunk back onto the ground, Steve’s awareness of the music starts to trickle back in. He looks in that direction, listening, and grins.
“Do you hear that?”
“Stay… stay darling…”
“Hmm?” Billy doesn’t look up from where he’s no doubt sucking a mark against his throat.
Steve laughs and tangles his fingers in Billy’s hair. “Madonna.”
“Ugh, God,” he groans, and that just makes Steve laugh harder.
“When you walked out my door — ” Steve starts, but that’s as far as he gets before Billy surges up to bite and kiss him quiet.
