❝ You promised me a tarot reading, ❞ she reminds him, when they're put sitting at the same table at some godawful social event for some godawful mutual friend. The Duke enjoys, she quietly suspects, to watch all those rich, untalented hacks eat the little artists up like hors d'oeuvres, before picking their teeth clean with little bones.
She's watching such a process unfold now: her husband, the hack financier who self-brands as producer, is staring longingly at some teenager's under-developed breasts. It's humiliating.
So, she's decided to humiliate him right back. He's very insecure about the Duke. She expects because the Duke is charming, witty, more intelligent than he, and because last winter she made a passing comment about how he needed to eat more slowly because he was in the top three for fattest pigs in the room, alongside the Duke, and the actual hog-roast. She made it clear, too, that he didn't come third. Oh, he'd given as good as he'd gotten after, but it had been worth it.
She doesn't know the Duke well, really, but since the birth of her daughter, she's been out more on Gil's arm, he dutiful wife. The living repellent for all accusations of untowardness. She glares at her husband across the room. She flashes the Duke a glittering smile, and slides into the seat beside his booth. ❝ I hope you're not leaving before you give me that. ❞ Sometimes she wonders if she's charming at all, or if she's just very bossy and gifted with the sort of beauty that many women would kill to have. it's always scary, settling in beside someone one doesn't know as well. She bats her eyelashes, and prays to God that she doesn't have to start this whole strategy again on a man she doesn't know, or likes considerably less.
For a student struggling financially as he trudged his way through his Masters degree, the ability for a primarily online, traveling student to utilize the resources of colleges partnered to his own came as a great relief. That day, his team's current location and the duration of time they'd spend there had brought him to the University of Beverly, and more specifically, its expansive research library. A massing pile of textbooks wobbled in Dan Heng's arms as he warily eyed a sliding footstool to use just to reach his latest quarry. Huffing, he glanced at the person also sharing the aisle who similarly must've been looking for research materials.
Wanting to get out of the house for a bit Diluc decided to hit up one of his favorite places, the local bowling alley. They had become quite a past time for him considering almost everywhere he had ever moved had one and they usually open fairly late. Great for someone that couldn't go out in the sunlight. There were also usually people that were easy to fed from. Bowling alleys usually had bars and the drunks were easy targets. Even if he wasn't fond of the aftereffects of drinking from the intoxicated.
"Damn." He cursed getting a 7-10 split. He must be getting rusty again.
Alright FINE, we’ll put some brackets in the title! (Are you happy now?)
For Harringrove AUgust day 30: "Internet AU"
~~~
“I just don’t understand why. It looks weird.”
“It does not look weird. It looks cool. It’s a thing.”
“A weird thing.”
“All the cool kids are doing it.”
“I hate to burst your bubble, Dustin, but we’re not exactly cool.”
A dramatic gasp, and Steve looked up from where he’d been absent-mindedly scrolling through his Instagram feed. He may not be the most attentive babysitter, but at least he paid attention to any noises that may or may not be a precursor to some kind of trouble. This time, though, it was just Dustin being his normal over-dramatic self, clutching at his heart and staring at Max with betrayal written all over his face.
“What are you talking about?! We’re totally cool!”
Max leveled him with a look, raised her eyebrow pointedly at Dustin’s T-shirt (a yellow and green atrocity which spelled ‘proud geek’ in neon pink) and said in a deadpan voice, “Oh yeah. So cool.”
Will, who was sitting between them at the table, snorted.
“The coolest,” he added.
Dustin’s eyes narrowed, as if he couldn’t decide if he was being insulted or not. In the end, he seemed to decide that Will was on his side, and threw his arm around his friend.
“That’s us,” he grinned. ”The coolest bunch.”
Steve had to bite down on the laugh that wanted to escape. He loved the kids – really, he did – but ‘cool’ was maybe not the first word he’d use to describe them.
Unfortunately, Dustin looked up at that exact moment, and his face fell at Steve’s amusement. “Are you laughing, Steve? Why are you laughing? I know you’re not laughing at us. Steve.”
That’s when the doorbell rang. Steve – who would normally gladly let someone else get the door – jumped up, slipped his phone into his back pocket and shrugged as if to say ‘so sorry, it seems I don’t have time to answer your question, gotta go’ before he fled the room, leaving a spluttering Dustin behind. He could hear Max and Will laughing as he headed for the front door.
Saved by the bell.
Or, as he discovered when he opened the door and saw who was standing there, perhaps ‘out of the ashes and into the fire’ was more apt.
“Harrington,” Billy greeted him lazily with a grin and a two-fingered salute.
Valiantly resisting the urge to groan out loud, Steve plastered on a fake smile.
“Hargrove. What are you doing here?”
“What?” Billy said, faux-innocently. “I can’t come over and visit my favorite person in the whole wide world?”
Without looking, Steve pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “The mirror’s right there. Knock yourself out.”
He turned his back on Billy and added, under his breath, “Literally knock yourself out. Please.”
“What was that?” Billy said, too close to Steve’s ear.
Steve jumped and tried to cover it up by turning abruptly and shoving Billy back, which just resulted in a sharp bark of laughter that made Steve scowl.
“Personal space, Hargrove. It’s a thing.”
“Never heard of it.”
“No shit.”
Resigning himself to having to put up with Billy’s presence for at least a couple of minutes, Steve walked back into the living room, trusting him to follow. The kids were in the middle of a discussion when they entered, and Steve caught the tail end of what must have been a pretty compelling argument by Dustin, judging by the thoughtful way the other two were watching him.
“–telling you, it is gold!”
Max was obviously not convinced, but when Dustin exclaimed, “Come on, I never get to decide anything!”, she rolled her eyes in defeat.
“Alright fine, we’ll put some brackets in the title!” She scribbled something on the paper that was in front of Will on the table and then glared at Dustin. “Are you happy now?”
“What title?” Steve asked at the same time as Billy said, “What are you brats talking about?”
Max looked up from Will’s paper and glared at her brother.
“None of your business. Go away.”
Steve looked heavenwards, sure that it would lead to some kind of venomous outburst, and was more than surprised when all Billy did was huff.
“Oh, you think I actually cared? My bad. I don’t.” He grinned at her scowling face, and continued, “And I won’t go away. I’m here to pick you up. Susan got held up by whatever. So come on, shit-for-brains. Finish up.”
“My grades are better than yours were at my age. I’m smarter than you!”
“Not in any way that matters. Let’s go.”
Max sighed and picked up her stuff, and then said her goodbyes to the boys and walked out after Billy – who had already turned around and made for the front door – like she was being walked to her death.
“Bye, Max!” Steve said pointedly when it looked like she would leave without so much as a goodbye. And that just wouldn’t do; he’d been nice enough to let them hang out at his house, after all, the least they could do in return was to be polite.
“Bye, Steve. Thanks.” He tactfully ignored the way she rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, bye Steve,” Billy repeated with a grin while holding the door open for Max and ushering her out. “And thank you.”
He looked way too mischievous to be serious, and Steve’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“What the hell are you thanking me for, Hargrove?”
“The view,” Billy said and licked his lips.
“What?”
Steve looked over his shoulder, because what view? Then he heard the telltale click of a phone camera taking a picture, and his heart sank. He turned back just in time to see the door close behind the Hargrove-Mayfield siblings, and he groaned in frustration.
That groan of frustration turned into a groan of mortification when he realized that he was wearing the My Little Pony T-shirt that Dustin had gotten him as a gag for his last birthday. It was light blue, and had three colorful ponies on it, none of which Steve recognized (thankfully). He’d put it on just to mess with the boy today (and maybe to match Dustin’s horrible shirt), and had forgotten he was wearing it. And now Billy had photo evidence.
“I hate you,” he muttered when he passed Dustin and Will at the table to throw himself back onto the couch.
“What?” Dustin exclaimed, as if Steve had been serious. “Why? What did I do?”
“This shirt,” Steve said and pinched the fabric between his thumb and finger, holding it up. “Now Billy fucking Hargrove has seen me in a My Little Pony shirt!”
“So what?” Dustin said and looked confused.
And well, Steve didn’t have a good answer to that that wouldn’t offend at least one person present.
“He seemed to like it,” Will piped up. “He kept staring at you, even when he was talking to Max.”
Steve huffed out an unamused breath and pointed at the shirt. “Of course he was staring at me. It has glitter on it!”
“Only real men can get away with glitter,” Dustin said, trying to sound profound.
Steve wanted to bite back with something acidic, but he also wanted Dustin to grow up and become a good person who didn’t care about gender roles, so he held his tongue. As a distraction, he dug up his phone from his pocket and resumed his browsing of social media while Will brought out his own phone to show Dustin something to do with some kind of comic. Steve had stopped listening.
Steve also stopped breathing – at least for a second – when he saw that Billy had already tagged him in a post. As he feared, it was a picture of him, in the horrible glittery My Little Pony shirt, head turned away slightly so his face was in profile. The caption said “Stay gold, Pony-boy” followed by the wink emoji and the wagging-tongues emoji, and even though it was only posted two minutes ago it already had 68 likes and six comments, all of which were a variation of ‘haha’ or a string of laughing emojis. Steve groaned out loud and tried to smother himself with a pillow.
“Oh hey,” Dustin said, looking down at his own phone, “Billy posted a picture of you.”
Steve resisted the urge to scream into the pillow, instead counting to ten (really, really fast) and schooling his face into something resembling neutrality before biting out, “I saw.”
“A hundred and ten likes!” Dustin grinned at him, all innocently delighted. “See, they like the shirt!”
“M-hmm,” Steve said, contemplating deleting his entire account – all his accounts. “Sure.” Then a thought occurred to him. “Why are you following Billy Hargrove anyway?”
Dustin levelled him with a look as if he was stupid. “’Know thine enemies’, Steve? Ring a bell?” The ‘duh’ was implied. “Besides, you said you’d seen it too, so I think the better question is; why do you follow him?”
Steve didn’t deign that with a reply, mostly because he didn’t have one that would leave him with a shred of dignity. Instead he huffed and scrolled past Billy’s post – without liking it or interacting with it in any way, thank you – and tried to forget it ever happened.
Only, Instagram’s stupid algorithm apparently decided that Steve had missed Billy’s last two posts (he hadn’t), and treated him to a picture of a protein shake posted this morning (8458 likes) and a shirtless mirror selfie in which Billy had his tongue out and making devil horns with the hand not holding the camera from last night (19856 likes).
Steve closed the app and threw his phone to the other end of the couch in frustration.
~
Three days later, and they were all crammed around two tiny tables at McDonald’s at 11.30 pm, which wasn’t quite as unusual an occurrence as one would think. The kids (Dustin, Will, Mike, Lucas, El and Max) had been hanging out late and going to the movies, and Steve – as Dustin’s pseudo-brother – had been tasked with driving all of them to the Byers’ place for their sleepover after. Only, of course they wouldn’t all fit in his car, which was apparently why Billy was there as well, currently stealing fries from Steve’s tray.
“Hey, stop it!” Steve hissed and smacked at Billy’s hand. “If you want fries, then buy your own!”
“Your whole tray is full! You can spare a couple, don’t be greedy.”
“Don’t be a mooch. I bought this for everyone.” He motioned at the kids around the table, who were mostly busy munching on their accompanying burgers and nuggets.
Billy adopted a fake-innocent look and pointed at his own chest, eyebrows raised. “And I’m not included in ‘everyone’? That’s cold, Harrington. I’m hurt.”
“I meant,” Steve growled and pulled his tray closer when Billy reached out to steal another fry, “everyone who doesn’t have an income. You and I have jobs. They don’t.”
“Technically, neither do I,” Billy said and managed to nick a fry and avoid Steve’s hand swatting at him in one fluid motion.
“Whatever,” Steve scoffed. “Having a decent following on social media might not be a job, but I know you earn enough to buy your own damn food. Mooch.”
Billy leaned over the tiny table so he got in Steve’s face and smiled sweetly at him. “I have over a hundred and fifty thousand followers, sweetheart. I think that counts as more than ‘decent’.”
Narrowing his eyes as Billy stole yet another fry, Steve pushed him away and glared at him. “Whatever.”
“And a hundred and ten thousand subscribers on Youtube. So far.”
“Stop stealing my fries!” Steve said, catching Billy’s wrist when he went for another. “You keep eating this junk food and no one’s gonna wanna follow your goddamn workout channel. Lord knows why they follow you anyway.”
Instead of dropping the fry, Billy leaned forward so he could eat it even with Steve holding his wrist, and he also took the opportunity to lick Steve’s hand, prompting him to immediately let go of Billy’s hand. While Steve glared and wiped his hand off with a napkin that Dustin held out for him, Billy leaned back in his uncomfortable plastic chair with a big grin on his face and pulled his shirt up, showing off his honest-to-God picture perfect abs.
“Probably because of these,” he said, looking smug.
Max groaned from the side, threw a nugget at his head and told him to cover up, and that distracted Billy enough that Steve got a couple of seconds to drink in the look of Billy’s bare skin before he pulled his shirt down. Now, Steve wasn’t really interested in workouts, but he may or may not have created a new account on Youtube, just so he could follow Billy without anyone knowing.
And if he had notifications on, then that was his business. The guy was an asshole who was too full of himself, for sure, but he looked good. He looked damn good. Too bad he was so aware of it.
Later, as they were leaving, Billy was fiddling with his phone – like always – and a second later Steve got a notification on his phone. When he brought it out of his pocket, it told him that he had been tagged in Billy’s Instagram story.
Dreading what he would find this time, he clicked Billy’s profile picture … only to be greeted with a picture of himself – or rather, his ass – obviously taken from a distance when he was paying for their food, judging by the graininess. The picture said “Dat ass!” followed by the eyes emoji, the water droplet emoji, and the sparkling heart emoji.
“What the fuck?”
Steve grabbed a half-full paper cup off an abandoned tray and threw it at Billy’s head. Unfortunately, Billy seemed to have been prepared for it, expertly dodging it while cackling like a madman. Steve tried again, but with a bunched-up burger wrapper this time, chasing Billy out to the parking lot.
“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I don’t want your hundred thousand followers to see me?” He threw a napkin too, and watched it float sadly to the ground, nowhere close to hitting its target.
“Hundred and fifty thousand followers,” Billy pointed out, still grinning, and managed to put the Camaro between the two of them, thus saving him from instant strangulation.
“Whatever!”
“Come on, pretty boy, your face doesn’t even show in that picture!”
“You tagged me!”
Billy licked his lips. “You should be grateful. I’m trying to get you more followers.”
“I don’t want more followers!”
“Yeah, anyone who has seen your Instagram gets that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you have the most boring photos I’ve ever seen!” Billy exclaimed and brought up his phone, scrolling until he found Steve’s profile, and held up the phone as if to show him. Steve, who didn’t have his glasses on, refused to look at it since it would probably make him squint – opting instead to glare at Billy’s face.
“Just look at this!” Billy said, scrolling through Steve’s pictures from the safety of the other side of the car. “A picture of your backyard. A picture of your fancy coffee machine. A picture of your feet. A picture of the kids posing in front of some kind of nerdy thing wearing nerdy costumes –“
“That was Comic-con!” Dustin yelled from over at Steve’s car. “And it was awesome! We won third prize for best group cosplay.”
Billy ignored him. “A picture of a basketball on asphalt. A picture of a dog – you don’t even own a dog, Harrington!”
“It’s my neighbor’s, and I was dog-sitting!”
“Point is, your pictures are so boring!”
“Then why the fuck are you following me?”
Because he did. Billy Hargrove, with his over a hundred and fifty thousand followers, followed a grand total of twenty-one people. Steve included.
Billy smiled and wagged his eyebrows, biting his lips seductively. “Guess I’m still holding out hope for a selfie one of these days, pretty boy.”
Steve, who was all out of projectiles to throw, seriously contemplated throwing his phone at the guy’s smug face. It would almost be worth it, to hear the ‘bonk’ of it hitting his forehead. On the other hand, the bastard would probably duck, and Steve would have broken his phone for nothing.
Instead, he quipped, “Yeah, keep dreaming. Not all of us are attention whores.”
Just as Billy opened his mouth to reply, Max, who had appeared next to Steve and was waiting for Billy to unlock the car for her and Lucas, rolled her eyes and turned around to yell, “You better be writing this shit down!” When Steve turned around, he saw Dustin make a thumbs up from inside the Beemer – he was sitting in the driver’s seat, the little shit, although with an open door – while Will was bent over a note pad in the passenger seat, scribbling something down in a note pad. El and Mike were probably in the back seat already, judging by the empty parking lot.
“Writing what down?” Steve asked, but Billy had finally unlocked his car and Max pushed past him to open the door and turn the seat forward so her and Lucas could get in. Billy threw up a pair of fingerguns and got in, as well.
Before he closed the door, though, he leaned down and looked at Steve through the window. “Can’t help but notice that you didn’t tell me to take the ass pic down!”
He didn’t give Steve a chance to reply, only started the car and drove off. Steve swore after him and stomped back to his own car. Dustin blessedly climbed into the back seat of his own accord, perhaps having seen Steve’s scowl from across the lot, and as Steve got in, Dustin patted him on the head.
“Don’t let him get to you, Steve. A hundred and forty followers is a perfectly respectable amount!” Steve didn’t say that it was closer to two hundred now, probably because of Billy’s increasingly incessant tagging of him in his posts. Dustin continued, “Besides, he’s not even got that many followers. I know someone who has way more than him.”
“You do?” Steve asked incredulously and turned in his seat so he could stare at Dustin. Nerdy, loud Dustin whose friends were also nerdy and mostly loud, neither of which had anywhere near the levels of social media obnoxiousness that Billy Hargrove possessed. “Who?” Because if it was true, that would be an awesome thing to throw in Billy’s face the next time they met.
Dustin’s eyes got round and he shut his mouth with a clack, while Mike elbowed him in the side and El’s mouth formed a little ‘o’. “No one,” Dustin squeaked. Then, for some reason, they all turned to look at … Will? Who was red in the face and hugging his note pad to his chest while staring straight ahead, through the windshield.
“What are you …?” Steve started, but Dustin spoke over him.
“Someone from school! His brother lives in, uh, New York and he’s like, very big on. Modelling. Like, he’s a model. Yeah. Anyway! We should probably go, or Joyce will call the cops and report us missing, am I right?”
Steve sighed, but started the car. He wondered if mentioning someone-from-school’s-brother would be enough to shut Billy up the next time he brought up his follower count. Knowing Billy, probably not.
~
Steve found out by accident. It was pretty obvious that no one had planned on actually telling him, not when he had to find out on Joyce’s Facebook that apparently Will has a webcomic going, and was going to get it published.
Joyce’s post had been a photo of a smiling Will from several years ago, holding up a pretty decent drawing made in crayons, and it had read “I always knew you could do it! I am so proud of you, baby, you made it!” Steve, curious, had written a comment under the post, asking what was going on, and someone else – someone Steve didn’t know – had replied, simply “Will’s getting his webcomic published!”
Ten minutes later, the post was gone, and replaced with a picture of Will smiling, with a simple “I’m so proud of you!” from Joyce.
Weird, but Steve had seen stranger things. Plus, it wasn’t dangerous-weird, so he waited until the next day – when he had promised Claudia Henderson to pick up Dustin from school since she was working nights – to address it. As per usual when one of the kids were picked up by Steve, he ended up with all of them crammed in the car, and also as per usual, they ended up at Steve’s place since – in Dustin’s words – he had ‘the space, the games, and the snacks to sustain us, Steve!’
He waited until the kids had raided his cupboards and were spread out on the floor in front of his giant TV, setting up the X-box, before asking, as casual as he could:
“So, Will. Congratulations, I heard you were getting published?”
Everyone in the room froze. For a second, Steve thought that there was a glitch in reality, before the kids turned toward him one by one, eyes wide.
“You know?” Will asked, voice small.
“What do you know?” Max asked, eyes narrowing, before Steve got a chance to answer.
“Uh,” Steve said. “You have a webcomic? And it’s getting … published?” They all looked so alarmed that he was getting nervous. What was going on?
They were all looking at each other, before Mike took a deep breath and asked, “And have you … read the webcomic?”
“No?” Steve said, and frowned at the way everyone seemed to collectively sigh in relief. “Okay, what’s going on?”
More shifty communications without words went on between the kids, before Lucas spoke up. “Okay, we were going to tell you!”
“We just didn’t know how!” Dustin added.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Will said, almost desperately, making Steve feel bad already. “It started out as this fun thing and then everyone kept adding to it and people kept liking it, and … please don’t be mad!”
“Hang on, time out,” Steve said, holding his hands up to stop him, because poor Will looked like he was going to faint. “Why do you think I’ll be mad? It’s a good thing to be published, right?”
Dustin sighed, and stood up from the floor. He grabbed Steve by the elbow and led him to the couch. “Sit down, Steve.”
“What …?”
“Schhh.” Dustin grabbed Steve’s iPad from the table, and fiddled with it before handing it to him. It was open to a webpage Steve didn’t recognize, but it was pretty obvious he was looking at the cover of some kind of comic.
The title read ‘BS flirting 101: pigtail pulling’, with an underline saying ‘Art by W. Byers, text by W. Byers and The Party’. There was a drawing of two figures on the front, the style bold and blocky: one guy – with brown hair – was playing basketball while another – a blond guy – was holding him back by pulling on his hair.
Incidentally, exactly what had happened between Steve and Billy during practice one time – Steve couldn’t remember, but he probably grumbled about it to the kids when driving them home that day. Only, the way Steve remembered it, Billy didn’t have hearts in his eyes when he pulled on Steve’s hair so that he missed his shot.
Feeling something cold wash over him, he swiped onto the first page and started reading.
During the next fifteen minutes, he read through the first issue of the comic, refusing to look up from the screen. He was distantly aware of the kids moving around and speaking quietly under their breath, but his eyes were glued to the pages.
The pages, which depicted him and Billy (or, the characters simply named S and B). Things that had happened between them, and things they had said to each other – sometimes word for word! Only, this comic made it seem as if there was something going on between them, as if Billy was somehow interested in Steve and as if Steve was maybe, sort of, interested in Billy too, which was –
– which was ludicrous, really. Totally made up, unbelievable, not even close to being truthful …
Yet Steve felt his face go red as he read through the comic. Was this really the way they sounded? Was this how the kids saw them? Were there really some kind of … hidden messages in their interactions?
According to the comments on the last page of the comic, the answer was a resounding yes. He scrolled through and skimmed through twenty comments, all of them gushing about how cute this was, how moronic the dudes were, how in love they obviously were … before he got to the bottom of the page and saw that it was only the first page of comments. There were 57 pages in total.
“Fuck,” he said – the first thing he’d uttered since he started reading. He dragged a hand through his hair and looked up. “How many people are reading this?”
The kids were sitting on the floor, protectively huddling around poor Will, who was white as a sheet.
“Um,” Will said and cleared his throat. “The latest page of issue three had over half a million individual hits.”
“Half a …” Steve started, and pulled at his hair. “Million? Wait, issue three?”
“Yeah, there’s …” Dustin said and got up, leaned over the iPad and clicked on the header.
It lead to a page where the first issue was, right next to two more: ‘BS flirting 101: enemies to lovers’ and ‘BS flirting 101: your words say you hate me (but the way you look at my mouth when I talk says you want to kiss me)’. The last one had B and S on the cover, their faces so close they were almost touching. Even Steve could see the sexual tension there.
He was feeling light-headed.
“Does …” He had to clear his throat to get the words out. “Does Billy know about this?”
“Uh, do we look dead to you?” Dustin said, at the same time as Mad held up her phone and said:
“He does now.” As everyone turned to her with various looks of fear and betrayal on their faces, she frowned. “We always said that we’d tell them both, eventually. And if Steve knows, it’s only fair that Billy gets to know, too! Besides,” she added when Dustin drew in a breath to – no doubt – complain, “I already sent him the link, like ten minutes ago.”
Ten minutes. Billy didn’t live too far from here.
Just as that thought went through Steve’s head, the doorbell rang. And right after that, someone started pounding on the door.
No one moved.
The pounding on the door got louder, and accompanied by shouting, and Max eventually rolled her eyes and went to unlock it.
Billy barged into the living room a couple of seconds later, red in the face – red all the way to his ears, in fact, which Steve could only see because he had his hair in a bun – and dressed in workout clothes. Fresh (or, not-fresh) from the gym, probably. He was sweating, but that could be due to him running all the way over here. The redness of his face was probably due to anger, though, as opposed to Steve’s, which was caused by mortification.
Billy immediately sought out Steve in the room, and waved his phone around. “Did you know about this?”
Steve shook his head. “Found out now.”
He must have looked as shell-shocked as he felt, because Billy only gave a sharp nod and let his gaze sweep over the room until he caught sight of Will. Then his eyes narrowed and he took a threatening step forward. “You …”
To their credit, the other kids all moved as one to get in front of Will, who meeped and hunched down behind Mike. Steve found himself taking a step forward too, and all of a sudden his hand was on Billy’s chest. He was warm; the T-shirt he was wearing damp with sweat.
“Hey,” Steve said, trying to draw Billy’s attention away from the kids. “Did you read it? It’s actually pretty good.”
“I read enough,” Billy growled.
Steve’s hand was still on Billy’s chest – neither one of them moved to remove it. It should be disgusting, Steve thought distantly. But it kind of wasn’t. Far from it, actually. He took a step closer, his mind whirling with the images he had just seen in the comic. The little hearts that was so often surrounding one of the two characters on those pages.
This was insane.
“You know,” he said, voice too high and tinged with hysteria because he kind of wanted to – “He’s got way more followers than you, even.” Billy’s eyes narrowed again, and Steve plowed on, “and you know what they say; half a million people can’t be wrong.”
“Half a mill–mpff!“
Billy’s lips were chapped, and his moustache scraped against Steve’s top lip, and their noses smashed together before they angled their heads right out of instinct, but then the shock wore off and there was a tongue in Steve’s mouth and Steve’s hands were in Billy’s hair, and if Steve had known that kissing Billy Hargrove would shut him up so efficiently, he would have done it months ago.
A click of a phone camera brought them back to reality, both of them jumping apart at the same time. Max was standing there with Billy’s phone – which she had apparently snatched out of his grip while he was … otherwise occupied … and she was holding up a finger while she looked down at the screen, typing something one-handed. Billy and Steve just stood there, dumb-founded and panting.
“There,” she said and pressed a button on the screen before throwing it back to Billy, who caught it clumsily. “You’re welcome.”
Steve’s phone dinged in his pocket. Almost afraid to look, he brought it up and saw that he had another Instagram notification. Tagged in a photo. His hands shook when he tapped on Billy’s icon to see the newest update.
It was a photo of the two of them, taken just now. You could clearly see it was Billy even from the back – he was in his workout clothes, sweaty back and all – and just barely see Steve’s hair behind him; his hands in Billy’s hair, messing it up. It was pretty obvious what they were doing, but neither of their faces were showing.
The caption said, simply, ‘Fucking finally!! /Max’
It already had 23 likes. Steve updated the page; 57 likes. Again, 72 likes.
“…shit.”
“You little shit!” he heard Billy say from next to him.
“You’re the one who wanted to be internet famous,” Max said, voice like honey. “Now you’re the star of a comic which will be read by millions – and you got the boy! So shut up and enjoy it.”
Steve glanced over at Billy just as Billy glanced over at him. For a second they just stared at each other. Then Billy’s face split in a grin. “Well,” he said, “I can do one of those things, at least.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
“She lives.” He reports. The voice on the other end is low with disbelief.
“That,” as crisp as the first winter winds, “is impossible.”
“Apparently not.” Frank’s voice holds satisfaction. He had fought to get her spared now, it seems she has spared herself.
“If this is true then she and all that are with her, must be taken out.”
“Sir?” he can’t be hearing what he thinks he is.
“Eliminated Captain Randall. With extreme prejudice. Immediately. She trust you and will allow you in. Take them out.”
“There are children in there sir.”
“Not the ones we spared. Take them out or we will take you out.” The voice disappear s leaving a shocked Frank staring at his phone.
“This is?” she points at the letter on the board.
“F.” Faith replies.
“Very good. Now can you give me a word beginning with F?”
She will say Faith, Mary thinks. The child surprises her. “Fergus.” He looks up at the math paper her is working on. A week of school work has passed. The children are a bit more settled. The nightmares continue. But they don’t last the entirety of the night anymore. Mary is impressed by the children’s intellect. They are all anxious to learn.
Meanwhile, Jamie and Claire are anxious to get to the bottom of what the mist is and how to fight against it. There are some testing kits in the bunker. The issue is getting a sample of the mist without putting the bunker at risk.
Claire paces across the floor. Jamie is updating his notes on each of them. He is determined to figure out if the mist and it’s consequences have caused any unseen reactions in them. This extraordinary time needs documented for Mary’s baby and all that come after.
“There must be a way. If I can figure out what is in it then maybe I can kill it.”
“Then we can go outside?” William asks. He is reading a book that was left there. It is way above his grade level but, he was doing well with it.
She and Jamie share a look. Good question. It isn’t just the mist that is dangerous. It is all those bodies. “We will be closer lad.”
He nods at Jamie’s answer.
He travels through the wasteland. The mask protects him from the smells of a dead population. He is immune to the Mist. The mask will also protect him from Claire’s questions. He must pretend he is as scared of the Mist as she is. Until…
“Are you really going to do this?” he asks himself. He doesn’t have much of choice. They will if he doesn’t. Not gently either as punishment for his disobedience. Then they will kill him.
He shouldn’t have told. He thought they would be happy or, at least curious about, survivors. No, they just want them dealt with. Can he? He isn’t sure. Claire was his first love, then there are the children.
“Don’t think about it.” He orders himself. He distracts himself by studying the dead. The Mist was designed to kill fast then cause rapid decomposition. From what he sees, it is doing just that. One thing that went right. With a sigh, he moves closer to where his job awaits.
