Oh yeah! Added the fics I read to complete this line and a lil description if anyone is interested.
Billy tries- The Shape of Your Soul by thepictureofdoriangay
Another fic chock full of pining. They literally make out in the first chapter yet they still can’t get it together. Peak Harringrove.
Protective Billy - Mr Steve and the Monster Hunter by DragonflyLady77 @dragonflylady77
I oved this one, such a cool idea. Billy LIVES and he’s so cool in this one. This fic is just super fun and I was obsessed with it by the end of the first page. Billy is a damn monster hunter here , what more can you honestly ask for?!
Slow Burn - A Town Called Malice by boneyaard
First harringrove fic I ever read. It’s the slowest of slow burns, literally I think we only get two kisses but it’s so so so good I don’t even care. Billy has been left blind by the mindflayer so there’s some nice added angst. It’s truly 270k words of fucking perfection.
Neil is his own warning- Scoops Troop and a Cherry on Top by Deathinasmalltown @billysblueeyes
Season 3 with added Billy. Billy works at SCOOPS, he’s in the uniform guys just imagine it. I think this fic is pretty much how Billy fans would like to imagine how canon went. It’s perfection.
Billy has a crush on - Disaster at the Hawkins Farmer's Market by nervoussis @passivenovember
The actual sweetest thing I’ve ever read. Soft, pure and candy floss sweet. Gets me grinning like a fool when I read it. So ridiculously good it makes my heart feel fit to burst!
Billy knew what he wanted as soon as he saw her. The car market had gone in the direction of making cars look like soap box derby contestants. He wanted a car that looked like a car. Like pizzazz on wheels, an exoskeleton of the driver, and a really stylish boom box for his superior taste in music.
She was a little retrofitted from other Camaro models, but Billy liked that just fine. No other car would look like his. Between her age, remodeling, and the fact that this car had been in an accident already, she was a hell of a steal. The biggest chunk of his money went into having her painted. Billy wasn't the type to have a random red door and a green bumper, but he could certainly enjoy the ever so slightly murky, sapphire blue that made his baby girl gleam in the early dawn light.
Billy learned his car inside and out. He knew how she purred, knew her high speed roars, and every tone and pitch of her tires on any surface...
Billy knows the sound of a human voice. There's something about the sound resonance of a voice that carries differently. A voice just moved a certain way on the ear; arrived at the ear with a tangible difference.
He could hear someone humming even with the car's speakers blasting. That's how it started. Billy kept hearing a voice in his car.
It drove Billy nuts. Scared the shit out of him first, thinking that someone had gotten into his vehicle without him being aware. Made him circle his vehicle like a pacing dog every time he came and went from his car.
One time, it was just a split second as he put groceries in the back of his car...but he shut the trunk and thought he saw a shadow in his rearview mirror. But he was seeing it through the rear windshield - plenty of glares on the curved glass and it was gone as soon as he blinked anyway.
His annoyance swung back into fear when the humming returned. Billy had been tired of his tapes so he indulged in the radio for once, at the risk of same old hits beating themselves over his brain. There were worst things than Fleetwood Mac to serenade the drive along the California coast...
Would you stay if she promised you heaven?
Billy blinked.
Taken by the sky.
Billy knew a voice over a speaker, over the phone...
Love's a state of mind.
Billy knew a voice right next to him. He looked in the rearview mirror, and saw the biggest brown eyes he'd ever seen. They were a little a little tilted...sad looking. Too young to be so sad.
Until those irises flicked to meet Billy's tropical water eyes, and smiled.
"Stop the car."
Billy didn't understand, until he realized he was driving off the road and toward the rocks that tumbled down into the jagged surf below.
A large hand reached past him, and turned the steering wheel the same time his car seized up. In an instant, Billy lurched to a stop on the ocean-side curb. Dirt and sand sprayed into the thorned brush, creating a beige cloud around him.
The voice was gone. Billy was the only person sitting in his car.
Billy didn't have a name for the cold, alarmed sensation gripping his spine. The only words he had made him feel stupid and paranoid. Regardless, he pulled an illegal U-turn and parked in front of the local library.
Hours went by, until his eyes burned from reading newspaper scans. His search was already a narrow funnel of variables, how could this take so long? A ghost haunted his damn Camaro, which gave him, at most, fifteen years of a window to find a car accident that would have killed somebody...
A piece. A piece is all that would be needed...right? His car had a lot of pieces, from all over the country.
Sometimes it wasn't the wreck that killed a person, but the wounds afterward.
Billy was at a loss and too exhausted to read anything else. On a whim, as he walked past the librarian counter on his way out, he asked, "Hey, did you ever hear about a car accident that killed a guy? Like a young guy. My age."
Her eyes widened as if she had already been thinking about such things. "Why, yes. People your age are too young to be dying. Of course I'd remember such a thing. Take your pick: there was that poor girl who died in her boyfriend's motorbike accident in Oregon. There was a whole VW bus of youths who drove into a lake - hot boxed out of their minds and unable to get out of the vehicle. There was another young man who died in Indiana under bizarre circumstances - "
"Him," Billy took a guess. "What circumstances?"
"Oh, well, from what I remember, there'd been children driving the car."
Billy's brows furrowed and she nodded. "My astonishment, exactly, but apparently he was already injured. The kids were trying to get him to a hospital, but the poor fools hadn't bothered putting a seatbelt on the young man. When they crashed, they all stayed put, but he didn't make it."
"Do you recall a name?"
"I'm afraid I don't - not the boy's name, at least. But Hawkins. Hawkins, Indiana is where it happened. Beautiful lake country."
"Thanks," Billy grinned, far too brightly after a discussion about teen catastrophe. He went back to the newspapers and found the articles immediately:
Hawkins Senior in Fatal Accident
Hawkins Sheriff's Department Pushes for Seatbelt Awareness
Hawkins Police Ticket Fees Go Up After Teen Fatality.
Steve Harrington's Obituary. With a picture and everything. It was his senior photo, grinning from ear to ear in some kind of rented tux jacket, shirt, and clip-on bowtie that all the men had to wear for the yearbook. His hair was inflated two inches above his hairline, and glossy under the photography lights.
Steve hadn't worn a tux in Billy's car. Billy couldn't believe he even retained such details after a scare like the one that morning, but...
A jacket. Steve wore a simple athletic jacket and a collared shirt. And a watch. A gold-rimmed watch had been on the hand that stopped the steering wheel.
Billy printed every article focusing on Steve, paid in dimes to the librarian, and jogged out to his car.
Billy drove to the beach. The horizon beamed with neon orange, shadows, and the screams of amateur volleyball players.
Billy gazed at the picture of Steve Harrington. He looked handsome, in a high school dreamy sort of way.
Steve Harrington.
Steve was the only son and child to Robert and Annette Harrington. He was a proud varsity student of Hawkins High School. Steve was co-captain of the swim team and the basketball team, as well as a contributive member of the Prom Committee, Student Council, Key Club, Future Business Leaders of America, as well as a beloved babysitter to the Hendersons and Wheelers. His parents are valued members of the Hawkins community, making Steve a bright light of prospects -
"I didn't have any of those."
Billy had been reading under his breath. Now he looked up at his rearview mirror at the young man sitting right in the center of his back seat. "Hey, Harrington."
He'd been looking out the window at a family packing up their car to go home after a long day at the beach. Then his attention rotated to Billy, who fanned his face with the papers. "I guess those little Hendersons or Wheelers were the ones who killed you?"
Steve blinked slowly, almost like he was tired. "I don't remember."
Billy shook his head gently, as if to say, You don't have to.
Instead, he asked, "What did you mean? You didn't have any what?"
"Prospects."
"With all these extra curriculars, nobody was offering you jobs? No schools lined up begging for your family name on their alumni?"
Steve shook his head, looking sad again. "I don't remember."
Billy exhaled a quiet huff. He pursed his lips, nodding as if coming to a decision. "Well, you seem to be a permanent resident in my car. How does that make you feel right now?"
"Like you have bad taste in music."
Billy couldn't help but laugh at his stupid luck. "Jesus," he cursed, setting an elbow on his open windowsill to prop his head. "I get a pretty boy all to myself and he's a total snob."
Steve's eyes squinted at him, like he was needing all cylinders firing to work through his thoughts. "Who are you? I know your music and I know your dates, but I don't know you."
Billy glared at him in the rearview. It wasn't great, having someone know about his cover-up dates with girls, the out-of-wedlock sex they had, or all the men Billy had in here. Then again, who was a ghost going to snitch to?
"Billy. Billy Hargrove."
Steve smiled. It was almost like the sunlight actually touched his skin. Almost.
Prompts:
"You can stay at my place."
Reunion
Flinching
Pillow Fight
Breakfast Club AU
Jim Hopper as Billy's Dad
Hidden Injuries
Secretly Royal
Read on Ao3
A1 — Swiping Right (9.3k)
Prompt: "You can stay at my place"
Summary: Steve helps his roommate, Robin, land a Tinder date and maybe finds some romance of his own along the way.
Pairing: Steve Harrington x Billy Hargrove // Robin Buckley x Heather Holloway
Rating: M
Type: Oneshot
A2 — California Dreamin' (10.7k) 18+ ONLY
Prompt: Reunion
Summary: When Steve finally goes on his cross-country trip, he never imagined he'd find an old ghost from Hawkins.
Pairing: Steve Harrington x Billy Hargrove
Rating: E
Type: Oneshot
A3 — Planting a Memory Garden (1.9k)
Prompt: Flinching
Summary: All couples eventually have their first argument. Steve never expected it to go like this.
Pairing: Steve Harrington x Billy Hargrove
Rating: T
Type: Oneshot
B1 — Everywhere You Look (There's A Heart) (Coming Soon)
Prompt: Pillow Fight
Summary: Billy never thought he'd be a single father, but he knows he wouldn't give his daughters up for anything.
Pairing: Steve Harrington/Billy Hargrove/Eddie Munson, Billy Hargrove & Daughter!OC
Rating: T
Type: Multichapter
B2 — The Best Thing (That's Ever Been Mine) (4k)
Prompt: Free Space
Summary: When Steve and Billy run away from Hawkins together, they find out the story doesn't end at happily ever after.
Pairing: Steve Harrington x Billy Hargrove
Rating: M
Type: Oneshot
B3 — Don't You (Forget About Me) (Coming Soon)
Prompt: Breakfast Club AU
Summary: Five people who’ve never had a reason to interact much before now have detention together. What could go wrong?
Pairing: Steve Harrington x Billy Hargrove x Eddie Munson, Nancy Wheeler x Robin Buckley
Rating: T
Type: Oneshot
C1— Piece by Piece (3.3k)
Prompt: Jim Hopper as Billy's Dad
Summary: When Max calls for Hopper’s help one night, everything changes.
Pairing: Platonic Billy Hargrove & Jim Hopper, Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Rating: T
Type: Oneshot
C2 — All This and Heaven Too (6.2k)
Prompt: Hidden Injuries
Summary: When Billy is forced into a contract with the devil after becoming a Victor of the Hunger Games, Steve is there, always.
Pairing: Steve Harrington x Billy Hargrove
Rating: M
Type: Oneshot
C3 — One and the Same (Coming Soon)
Prompt: Secretly Royal
Summary: Eddie Munson's life is turned upside down when his Uncle Wayne brings Prince William Hargrove to their home in Hawkins, Indiana as part of the Prince Protection Program.
Pairing: Eddie Munson x Billy Hargrove
Rating: T
Type: Oneshot
A hospital was a strange place for quality time. Mostly, it was the carpool journeys there, since everyone needed regular visits after Starcourt. Tinnitus, concussions, and blood tests were just a few of the situations they were all dealing with.
And if Steve wasn’t available, it’s because he was already at the hospital. Max had a newly instated VIP seat in his car, much to the annoyance of Dustin (who wanted Steve’s time and attention) and Lucas (who couldn’t help but feel cast aside).
Max couldn’t really blame them for not caring about her brother. Hell, she didn’t understand her own depths of affection for him until recently. The shrinks of the hospital kept talking about the Five Stages of Grief as if she were supposed to give a shit about five processes.
Max was thoroughly stuck in the bargaining phase. And she’d stay there until whatever god finally delivered his side of the bargain.
Turns out, it did. Billy Hargrove was alive, and after a long surgery where Steve Harrington of all people held Max’s hand and gripped her shoulder during her erratic mood swings of crying, Billy woke up.
A pacemaker. The god keeping her brother alive was a little, man-made, battery powered device making sure the rhythm of his heart kept time with the right music.
Max could barely make out what the doctors were saying in the hallway. It was a load of information for her mom and stepfather - two people who seemed radically different after July fourth. Neil Hargrove was...just a man. A man who had been humbled down to his knees when he learned that his son was alive, but with a caveat. And her mom...Max could see her visibly overwhelmed with the steep learning curve for taking care of an intense trauma victim.
The device will need to be replace every five to seven years, but that’s routine procedure, nothing to worry about. I daresay, he’ll be able to live a normal life - so long as he stays away from cigarettes and anything more chemically advanced than food. He’s going to be a walking miracle. Four stomach pumps, almost a dozen blood transfusions, a scattering of fractures...that young man has a hell of an angel on his side. While the bones are recovering, I want weekly x-rays and monthly MRI’s. The physical stuff we can handle, but as for his psychological wellfare, that will be a tougher, longer journey...
Max blinked stupidly, because with the doctor’s voice droning out the background hospital noise, it was hard not to focus on Steve Harrington laying a big fat kiss on her brother’s mouth.
It was desperate, like Billy was his water in a desert...but gentle, like Billy were made of tissue paper and Steve was terrified of leaving a dent or wrinkle.
Max peeked at the window, worried her mom and stepfather might notice, but they were entrenched in the crash course for Billy’s new instruction manual -
“You don’t get to die,” Steve croaked. For some reason, witnessing Steve crying shook Max’s core more than her own parents’ tears. The guy just...didn’t do that. It was a little too easy to ignore an anchor like that until his rock was lying in bed with more injuries than a fresh eighteen year old had any right to have.
Steve’s hand cradled the junction of Billy’s skull and neck. Blue eyes blinked up at him, not fully conscious, but also not interested in anything other than a sky of big, doe eyes. “Not with a battery in your chest, you damn robot.”
The next day, Dustin chimed, “So he’s like Ironman?”
Lucas frowned at him. “It’s not a pacemaker in Tony Stark’s chest, dude.”
“But it’s protecting his heart. It’s kind of like a pacemaker.”
“It sounds more like a built-in defibrillator.”
“What the hell is that?” Dustin exclaimed.
Lucas pantomimed rubbing his fists together and then connecting them to Dustin’s torso with a jolt of his body. Dustin understood and nodded, “Oh, those medical electrocution things...Where are you going?”
Max sighed as she shouldered her backpack and swung her skateboard underneath her arm. “Turns out, the hospital has the best parking lots for skateboarding. Later, nerds.”
Under her breath, she remarked, “I’d rather watch two idiots make out than whatever this is.”
“No, no, I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” Billy sassed behind him. Steve’s eyes rolled, but he couldn’t be huffy for long. Places like this were just shy of derelict; hell, some of the rooms didn’t have proper floorboards. It was very possible to fall through the floor of a bedroom and land in the ceiling of a parlor or worse: the basement.
“Got that camera rolling?”
“Of course I do,” Steve droned. “That’s kind of the whole point.”
“Just dotting your eyes, pretty boy. If you’re sweet to me, I’ll cross your t’s later.”
That got a sputtered laugh out of him. “What does that even mean?”
“It means that if I’m driving your ass hundreds of miles to an old, haunted estate, then I’m at least getting some ass for it.”
“No one said you had to come!” Steve repeated, and for emphasis, he turned the flash on and pointed the camera at him. Billy squinted at him and palmed the front of the camera to get it out of his face.
“The right thing to say is thank you.”
“It’s hard to be thankful when you volunteer only to complain the whole time.”
Billy sauntered behind him through what had supposedly been ‘the music room’ for the family that owned this place. It had a long wall of windows, which were probably spectacular during the day. As for now, they had a romantic view of the setting sun over the lake behind the house. Otherwise, every window of the house forebode obsidian eyes watching them after nightfall.
“It’s just my luck that the only other queer in Hawkins has a thing for ghosts.”
Steve sent a silent apology to Robin, who would have to make another voiceover for their footage because his and Billy’s conversations weren’t exactly sharable. Then he spun around and accused, “Is that why you’re with me? Because of slim pickings?”
Billy grinned like a cocky wolf. “I don’t have slim pickings. Plenty of bored housewives to choose from at the pool.”
Steve shook his head, extracting a simple EMF reader from his jacket pocket just to have something else to look at. “It’s easier getting ghosts to talk than a simple confession out of you.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Billy insisted. “Your usual pals were too chicken shit to come along to this location.”
“Yeah, but it’d still be nice to have some big boy words now and then,” Steve retorted stiffly. “And replacing my usual superstitious freshmen who can’t do long road trips during finals week isn’t much of a medal of honor.”
“Sinclair sure seemed like he wanted to be an extra hundred miles away from this place,” Billy conversed as he opened one of the French doors to the back patio. A gentle breeze blew in some dead leaves.
“Can you blame him? Who wants to hang out with a bunch of dead conservatives?”
“He needs to get better friends,” Billy said, “or at least friends with better interests. Most of the time ghost stories are old white people with too much emotional baggage.”
“That’s rich, coming from you.”
“Okay, ghost shrink,” he countered as he hit a Marlboro Reds box against his hand. “What’s your dream case?”
“You need a cigarette?” Steve wondered as he watched Billy light up. "You smoked all the way here."
Billy’s metal lighter chimed as he put it away. "We've been exploring the property for over an hour."
“Right, that's enough fresh air for one day.”
Billy exhaled smoke that looked almost white in the twilight gloom as he smirked in Steve’s direction. “Do you wanna tell me about the Camel Blues you keep under your driver’s seat?”
Steve shrugged as he set up the tripod to film a time lapse of the sun setting. “I quit for Nancy, but life’s hard. Sometimes I’m delusional enough to think they help.”
Steve slouched over the banister next to him, and looked at the offered cigarette when Billy knocked their legs together. He accepted, earning a smug warmth in Billy’s face as he watched Steve indulge. The embers bloomed with his breath before he handed it back. Billy set the filter between his lips and mumbled, “Tell me what your dream ghost hunt is.”
“Uh,” Steve sighed like were shy. Billy gave him time to get over that and he admitted, “Maybe the prince of France.”
“That’s specific.”
Steve laughed and explained, “Really it’s just a reason to spend a week drinking wine on a French beach, but supposedly the locals have seen a ten year old boy wandering a suburb where a mass grave was excavated. The local legend is that it’s Marie Antoinette’s son. He died pretty bad and was buried in a pauper’s grave.”
“Unmarked,” Billy deduced. “How’d he die?”
“You don’t wanna know. He was ten.”
“I got that part. His parents were decapitated,” Billy said bluntly. “How creative did the French get when it came to the kid who would’ve been the future king?”
“Censored story short: tuberculosis.”
“The whore’s disease.”
“Do you have to say it like that?”
“Do you need history watered down for you?”
“I don’t like thinking of bad things happening to ten year olds,” Steve defended. He plucked the cigarette from Billy’s lips and took a long hit.
Billy gazed at the overgrown lawns curving around the lake. There was a dock on one side, but Billy didn’t trust it to be sturdy for anything heavier than the spiders’ webs. “What would you do? If you got evidence of the kid?”
“I don’t know,” he deflated. “Probably just...talk to him. After the kid was forced to testify against his mom in a court full of people who already hated her, he went mute.”
Billy’s eyes went distant, fingers auto-piloting when Steve handed the cigarette back to him. “What would you say?”
“Just...I’m sorry. We know better now. It wasn’t your mom’s fault, or yours. You were just a kid. You deserved better. You deserved safety and happiness from the adults around you. That sort of thing.”
Billy sniffed, and Steve glanced at him. Billy’s nostrils were a little bit pink; easy to see, since he had a big nose. Steve liked his nose. He didn’t like Billy feeling vulnerable, though. Sometimes Steve forgot that about Billy: the guy was cocky and loud, but fragile.
“People haven’t learned shit. They’re still assholes to kids.”
“Your sister would definitely take your head off for a free lunch.”
Billy blinked and posed accusatory eyes on him. Steve smiled, the tension breaking as he looked down at his watch. “Say something nice for Robin. She’s the one who has to edit all this footage.”
“Wish you could third-wheel our date, Buckley, but not really.”
Steve pursed his lips at him as he snuffed the filter out on the banister and flicked it out into the bushes. “Wha - go get that!”
“Hell no.”
“This is a historical site!”
“Then they should fix the foundation.”
But Steve muscled him out into the yard to hunt down the cigarette filter, and wound up using a littered grocery bag to collect even more garbage. As Billy stuffed a couple of beer cans into it, he complained, “This isn’t what I had in mind for ghost hunting, Harrington.”
Steve groaned as he stood up straight, lifting his ribs to pop his back. “Did you mean it when you said this is a date?”
“Worst date I’ve ever been on. If I find a used condom in these bushes, I’m leaving your ass here.”
Steve laughed and touched his arm. “I’m serious. Is that why you always drive me?”
Billy sighed and waved a vague gesture to the moon overhead. “Well, for some reason, the lighting is always the best in haunted locations. Makes me want to kiss somebody I’m soft on.”
Steve smiled and tossed the bag at the bottom of the patio stairs. “Yeah?”
Billy closed the distance between them, dirt smudged fingers finding Steve’s waist. “Yeah. Is there room for two on that French beach of yours?”
Steve laughed, arms coming to rest on Billy’s shoulders. “More like two hundred tourists. I’ll pack an extra glass for you.”
“Your dad’s got frequent flier miles, right?”
Steve’s brows lifted. “You wanna go soon?”
“I wanna go cheap. Make your dad pay for your hobbies.”
“Oh,” Steve snorted. “I told you I’d give you gas money. I’m good for it.”
Billy petted his cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I already said what I’m here for, and it’s not your money, Steve. It’s to have the first hand experience of you screaming and shitting yourself at a ghost.”
“Just kiss me like a polite boyfriend for once,” Steve ordered bluntly.
The tip of Billy’s tongue slid over his lips. “Nothing polite about how I’m about to desecrate this historical site.”
They did not hand over the footage for Robin to edit. Which on one hand, spared her from knowing her dingus friends way too well. On the other, Steve could never receive confirmation for what he swore were people humming in the camera’s speakers.
