For @billyhargrovebingo 🎥 👻
BINGO! (one column done!) ~ read on ao3 ~
B3 - “You don’t have to come...”
• • •
“You don’t have to come.”
“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.