grounded | billy hargrove
Long-time no see! To make up for my time away, I have this little baby for ya. It’s longer than my other posts, but I definitely think it’s worth it of course, I could be a bit biased. All joking aside, I hope you guys enjoy! It starts with a little bit of a onesided crush from the reader on Steve, but don’t worry. Our favorite guy (who just looks so deliciously badass in this gif) is the main focus. Remember folks: consent is key, and it’s never the victim’s fault. Never.
Word Count: 4,653
Warnings: Dissociation, sexual assault, mentions of abuse, swearing, victim-blaming (self-blaming), panic attack, and I think that about covers it?
There were times where you didn’t quite feel like your world was real. It wasn’t like you were delusional. You just sort of... floated sometimes. Like you were there, and you were living your life, but it was through this misty haze that separated your consciousness from your body. You didn’t really know how to explain it, honestly. And it’s not like you could predict it or control it. Sometimes it would just last a few minutes. Sometimes it would go on for a week or two.
The first time it happened was at a party. You had gone with Carol and Nicole, your two best friends, with the promise that a certain pretty-haired boy would be there. At the time, you had a major crush on Steve Harrington. He was one of your close friends, and you were convinced you were in love with him. And Carol and Nicole used that little fact to drag you to the party— nevermind that he had recently been rumored to have started dating a certain Nancy Wheeler. When your constant efforts to flirt with him went unnoticed (or worse, laughed off), you decided to try and make him jealous. You approached a senior boy who had been eyeing you all night. One who was well-known for being sighed over in the cafeteria. One Carol and Nicole had checked out before, despite Tommy sometimes sitting right next to the former when it happened. You figured a little kissing wouldn’t hurt. You hadn’t kept track of how much alcohol you were drinking, and he talked you into another few shots. Before you knew it, you were drunk. Not drunk enough to go into a back bedroom with him, but definitely drunk enough for him to get more than a little handsy with you.
It was all fun and games until he started trying to grab your chest. You batted his hands away a few times before he started to get frustrated. You remember what he said. Sometimes, late at night when you can’t fall asleep, you still hear his rasp of “quit being such a fucking tease, it’s just your tits” brush across your ear and send chills down your neck. You stopped pushing his hands away after that. You thought maybe, just maybe, if you let him try then Steve would see you were open to fooling around. Maybe he’d look at you if he thought you were as fun as Carol or Nicole. You glanced over the nameless senior boy’s shoulder, searching for him. You saw him across the room, laughing with Tommy and Carol. Nicole excitedly pointed you out to the three of them, and your heart broke as you saw him raise his glass towards you. Egging you on. Not caring another boy was feeling you up for all to see.
It was then that hazy state washed over you for the first time, leaving you with this surreal sense of being that made you feel simultaneously detached from your body and more connected to it than you had ever been before. You barely registered his hands brushing across your body, touching you where no other guy had ventured before. Violating you. He felt up your chest, squeezed and groped your ass, and had just finished working his way to the apex of your thighs before you finally managed to feign a sudden wave of drunkenness that had you on the floor and finally safe from his greedy hands. You were left in that floaty, surreal headspace until Nicole called you the next afternoon. You finally learned his name. Allard Collins. She demanded to know everything that had happened between the two of you. She was disappointed to find out it hadn’t progressed much further than what she saw. You realized she thought you were lying when both she and Carol cornered you, asking you about it on Monday before class.
You felt the haze wash over you again as they tried to dig more information out of you. They kept bringing it up, giggling and talking about what a snag he was and “great catch” and “better give it to him again quick if you want him to stick around.” It wasn’t until Friday, when they heard he had gone home with another girl from the party a week before, that they believed you. But by that point, the damage was done. You had been in that floaty headspace all week, and you weren’t sure you were ever going to come back down to earth again.
You slowly stopped hanging out with them, and slowly the floating stopped. You found some new friends, started to get close to Nancy and Barb, and began separating yourself more and more from the incident. You ignored the voice in your head that hissed it’s your fault and you deserved it. You got over your infatuation with Steve, swearing men in general off after a while. You’d still find yourself in that floaty space every once in a while, but you learned to manage it. You could still function just fine and go about your daily business. You just weren’t... connected. But that was okay. Honestly, sometimes it was nice.
Every time, you were aware it was happening. And there was some small voice that told you it was bad and wrong and shouldn’t feel as... peaceful as it did. But you never had to feel anything when you were there. You didn’t have to feel the pain or the panic or the anxiety that would set in when a guy looked at you funny or a girl would talk about a particularly steamy makeout session. You didn’t have nightmares when you were in that floaty space. You didn’t freak out when you went on dates and a boy tried to kiss you if you were floating. (You had tried to stay grounded once on a date, the first guy after the party, and it ended terribly when he tried to kiss you after walking you back to your door. You almost had a panic attack.) When Barb went missing, you weren’t even fazed. You had already been floating for almost a full week by that point, withdrawing from her and Nancy as the latter started dating Steve. That was the longest time you lived in that hazy existence. It was another week before you finally came crashing back down.
When you crashed, you crashed hard. Everything would hit you, all at once, and you’d often wind up having panic attacks. Not that anyone but your mom knew. You kept it hidden from everyone you could, only turning to her because you didn’t know who else to turn to. Even she didn’t know the real reason they started. You had cited school and bullying, and she had accepted those answers without hesitation. She was content to offer whatever help she could, letting you stay home after your hazy periods when you would crash and be so anxious you got physically sick. She hoped with enough love, it might go away.
You got used to this new reality, drifting along and floating sometimes while being painfully grounded at others. You were content with it, practically even happy. You were fine with only experiencing your love life through a clouded sense of touch until he came roaring into town.
The first time you saw him— the week of Halloween, 1984— he walked into your math class. It was Monday. You were still floating from a date you had gone on the Saturday before. You were floating all through class as he walked in the door, the teacher directed him to take an empty seat, and he scanned the room. You were floating as he smirked, spotting the empty desk behind you. You were floating, barely registering it as he sauntered down your aisle and practically collapsed in the desk behind you. You were floating for the next few minutes, scribbling notes down and paying the new kid no mind (unlike the rest of the girls in class). It wasn’t until he tapped your shoulder that you stopped floating.
You blinked, registering the sudden intrusion into your personal space, and stiffened. A year of flinching every time someone unexpectedly invaded your space and having to make up an excuse as to why had quickly trained you not to draw attention. You ever so carefully leaned away from his finger, trying not to let the panic overwhelm you, as you turned to face him. You turned to meet the prettiest blue eyes you had ever seen, a wild head of blond curls, a sun-kissed face, and a very disarming smirk looking up at you from where his head was resting on his hand.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a pencil I could borrow, would ya doll?” His raspy voice seemed to hum the request. Without missing a beat, you offered him the one in your hand. He sent you a toothy smile and a wink that made your heart stop. You mechanically turned back to face the front, reached down to your backpack, and grabbed a new one as if nothing else had happened. It wasn’t until you were four lines of notes down the page that you realized he hadn’t had a notepad in front of him. Or a binder. Or any paper at all really. You glanced back to see him still watching you, drumming your pencil against his desk without a scrap of paper in sight. He smirked again when he caught you peeking. You whipped back to the front and refused to give him the satisfaction of catching you glancing back at him again.
It wasn’t until the bell rang, signaling the end of class that he caught your attention again.
“Mind if I hang onto this?” You almost shrieked, jolting forward in your seat and practically grabbing the edge of your desk. His voice in your ear and the unexpected presence at your back had sent your stomach into summersaults and your heart flying. It only took you a millisecond to gather your wits, but it seemed like that was enough to make Billy curious. You turned around to face him, and you were quickly caught off guard. He wasn’t smirking in victory at catching you off guard, like you were half-expecting. Nor was he sending you another flirtatious grin. Instead, he was watching you with a hint of... what looked like confusion. Maybe even suspicion? Surprise?
“Hang onto what?” You hated how breathless you sounded. You knew he clocked it too, from the assessing look in his eyes. It was only there for a moment before he slid right back into that easy, flirtatious persona again. But you had seen it. And you weren’t sure what to do.
“The pencil.” He raised his eyebrow as if it were the most obvious thing. You supposed it was. You just weren’t quite fully firing yet. “After all, you never know when you might need to give a hot chick your number.” You could see his mind working behind the wink he sent you.
You sent him a tight smile, still a little off-guard and not sure how to feel about his blatant flirting. “Keep it. Not that there are many ‘hot chicks’ in Hawkins. At least, not to what I’m guessing are your standards.”
“Not if they’re trying to compete with you.” Oh, he was smooth. You’d give him that. “What’s your name, sweet cheeks?”
“Y/N. You are?”
“The man of your dreams. But you can call me Billy.” That time, you rolled your eyes. You started gathering your stuff as people began filtering out the door and into the hallway.
“Well Billy, keep the pencil. Good luck finding those hot chicks.” You were the last two in the class, and you were hoping to get away with the last word. You should’ve known better.
“I don’t need luck. I already found one!”
You were halfway through the next class before you realized you hadn’t had a panic attack after crashing down to earth from your floating headspace. It was the end of the day before you realized it was the first time in almost three months you had crashed without having a panic attack.
Billy started to become an interesting factor in your life. He was in a decent number of your classes (which surprised you, since you didn’t exactly take it easy in school and he didn’t seem the type to really try). He stopped surprising you with little touches and invading your personal space after a few more attempts at it left you alert and uneasy around him. (You were half-convinced he was looking for something with these little touches. You weren’t sure what though.) Instead, Billy found other ways to flirt with you.
He was still just as verbally flirtatious towards you as he was other girls, but he relied more on eye contact and expressions with you. With other girls, it would be a causal touch here, or pinning them against the lockers there. But you always got the searching looks, the mischievous smiles, the lingering glances that lingered just a little too long. Honestly, he’d flirt with you more than he would them too. Sometimes he’d even stop flirting with one of them when you walked by in the hallway, just to make prolonged eye contact with you or send a little greeting your way. You’d long since gotten used to this little game and started playfully rejecting him or teasing him for his lines. You saw the little thrill in his eyes every time you snarked back. And you enjoyed the little moments with him too.
The stolen glances and fleeting words grounded you. The time you spent floating around slowly became shorter and far less frequent. Before you knew it, you had been grounded for a week. It was like Billy could see the hazy mist wash over your eyes, and he was always there with some sort of line to pull you back down to earth in the most charming way. You looked forward to your little chats with him. You heard the rumors about him getting into fights, and you didn’t doubt he had some anger issues. You could feel it, bubbling under the surface, and you could see it in his open defiance of authority in class. But you saw the gentle way he handled you, as if he knew without asking that you had been hurt. As if he knew the kind of interactions you needed to feel safe. He understood your boundaries in a way nobody else seemed to, and that drew you to him despite everything else. But you refused to do anything more than flirt.
Flirting was fun. Flirting was easy. Flirting was something he did with every girl in Hawkins, something that meant you could stay off of the radars of your ex-friends. Pursuing anything else meant he’d inevitably want to spend time with you outside of school. Pursuing anything else would put you right back in line with Tommy and Carol. And you didn’t want to go back there. You weren’t sure you’d ever come back down if you did. So instead you kept him at arm’s length, content to stay grounded in his stolen glances and flirty smiles whilst pretending to ignore his roving eye and the whispers of his conquests.
It stayed like that through the end of October, into November and December. And every time Billy would take even a moment’s break from his girl of the week to flirt with you, you counted it as a tiny victory. Winter break slowly crept in, and Tina’s annual New Year’s Eve party was suddenly marking the end of break. In true Tina Rager fashion, the girl had procured all the alcohol Hawkins High’s student body could drink and then some. The lawn was crawling with your classmates as you walked up to the house, blaring the biggest hits of the past year from Tina’s brand new sound system. It paid to have parents who were loaded.
You slowly wandered into the house, unsure of how to approach the rager. It had been almost two years since the last time you went to a party like this. You felt the haze start to creep in, clouding your mind before you had even taken a sip of alcohol. You weren’t even really sure why you were here. You had ignored your friends the year before when they tried to drag you to Tina’s party, so you had surprised both them and yourself when you agreed to go this year. All you could think of was a red shirt, left open down to his navel, a leather jacket, and breathtaking blue eyes when you agreed. You had even dolled yourself up, wearing a tight skirt and curling your hair for the occasion. You hadn’t recognized yourself when you stepped out of the house earlier that evening, and now you were stepping into another world.
Your friends dashed ahead of you, making beelines for either the dance floor or the liquor counter. Your eyes tried to scan the room, but you couldn’t find his blond mullet anywhere. The sound of cheers over the music reached your ears, and you followed them to the back door. There, you found a whole crowd of people surrounding what looked like two guys doing keg stands. Or at least, that was your best guess from the fringes of the very dense crowd. You could only guess it was Steve and Billy, facing off yet again. You turned your back on the jeers and the shouts of the rowdy group of teenagers, wandering through the sweat-filled and musty living room to the kitchen. You didn’t pay attention as you grabbed a bottle of what looked like whiskey and the bottle of coke and just poured. You didn’t keep track of how much of each was in your cup. You simply capped the bottles and took a swig, hoping the alcohol would help settle the nervous feeling in your stomach and the voice at the back of your head whispering you shouldn’t be here.
One of your friends found you with half your cup gone and dragged you on to the dance floor. You swayed there with the gyrating bodies, slowly letting the haze settle over you as unfamiliar hands and bodies brushed against yours. It had been a while since you had felt its familiar presence, but this time it felt wrong. It didn’t hold the same peace and comfort it once had. Now, it was confining. Constricting. But you weren’t sure how to escape it. All you could do was sway and down your drink until suddenly it was gone. As the bodies around pressed closer, the haze thickened. You felt a pair of hands grab your hips, pulling you against a teenage boy (that was very clear by the bulge pressing against your ass). You felt the familiar detachment settle in as the hands started to roam from your hips, up your body, and that heart-stopping dread took root in your core. You closed your eyes, hoping that would help, knowing it wouldn’t. You tried to breathe through your nose, telling yourself to just get through it. You felt it flow into every limb, as warm as the bodies around you, and the mist in your head thickened until it was practically a foggy soup. You were drowning in the familiar haze until suddenly the body against you was ripped away.
You didn’t know what was happening at first. You didn’t register the shouting, the cheering, and the shrieking until you had turned around to see Billy pummeling some boy you had never seen before. You watched blankly as Billy released the shirt of the boy he was beating, causing his new punching bag to drop to the floor. Clearly unable to support himself. Billy stepped back, reeling up for a kick, when his clear blue eyes flickered to yours. And that’s when you knew.
The horror that accompanied the realization swept over your body, and you tore your gaze from the California boy to the asshole at his feet. The asshole whose hands had been all over you. Who you had let feel you up, grope you, violate you yet again without doing a single thing to stop it. You felt the panic begin to set in. Your head began to spin with the information coming in all at once until you weren’t sure which way was up. You felt a hand grasp your arm, and you tried to struggle against it. You really did. But as your panic attack began, you had little strength left to fight whoever was leading you into the yard, away from the mass of people that had gathered at the sight of the fight. It wasn’t until you were seated in a car that you finally heard him.
“Breathe, y/n,” Billy’s voice rumbled through the small space. “Breathe. It’s okay. I’ve got you. You’re safe. That asshole isn’t gonna touch you again.” Your frightened eyes darted over to his face, and you tried to calm down. You really did. But you could still feel both sets of hands— Allard’s and the nameless boy from the party— roving your body. The leather jacket he had draped around your body to keep you warm left you feeling suffocated and stifled. You felt nausea grip your stomach, and the waves of heat crashed over your body. You threw yourself out of Billy’s car and onto the snowy ground, crawling a few feet away before vomiting up the liquor you had downed. You heard a car door slam and someone cursing as you began to hyperventilate on your hands and knees, tears streaming down your face and landing in the snow. You didn’t lift your head as boots stepped between you and your vomit, and you kept your eyes glued to the ground as the owner squatting in front of you.
“You’re safe, princess,” Billy tried to soothe you. Some sardonic voice in the very back of your head, removed from the panic that gripped your entire being, laughed at the pet name. He’s really pulling out all the stops, huh? “No one’s gonna hurt you while I’m here. Come on, breathe with me.” He set a slow rhythm. You tried to match it, finally lifting your eyes to him. You continued to sob and your breaths were uneven, leaving your lungs feeling raw in this slow cadence he set. Ever so slowly, your breaths started to even out. The waves of heat stopped washing over your body. The nausea holding your stomach in an iron-vice slowly relinquished its grip.
“There we go. That’s better. Now, how about getting into my Camaro before I freeze my balls off?” You saw the concern in his eyes, knowing his crass words were his way of trying to bluster through the tenderness he showed. You nodded, letting him help you get back in his car. He turned it on, blasting the heat. You finally realized how numb the cold had left you as your skin began to prick from the hot air thawing you out. The two of you sat in silence, neither daring to admit you were in new territory.
He knew. There was no way he didn’t. Most people didn’t realize it, but Billy was smart. He had to have picked up on your aversion to touch, your dissociative episodes, your tendency to space out when guys got too close. You might’ve been in denial for a long time about it, but you knew somewhere deep down that was why he had stopped leaning into you, touching you, and flirting with you like he did the others. And after tonight, you were sure he’d put together it had something to do with guys touching you. That same voice in the back of your head started hissing at you. He knows you’re damaged. He doesn’t want you anymore. Maybe he never did. But he certainly doesn’t now after seeing the mess you are. Not after seeing how easily you give it up to other guys. Nobody wants you. Nobody worth it anyways.
“You don’t have to tell me shit.” His voice was quiet, but it still felt like it cracked through the interior of his car. “Your call. But you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. Just know, no other jackass is gonna lay a fucking hand on you. Not when I’m around. Not while you’re my girl.”
Your eyes snapped over to him, and you finally let yourself look at him for the first time that night. You could see the rage still flooding his veins, still itching to be released. You could see the fury, directed not at you but the boy who had put his hands on you. You saw a need to and to defend, a side you had never seen directed your way before. You saw an affection that went past the surface-level flirting you had been doing for months. You saw a desire to claim you, to declare you his, and it sent thrills down your spine. And as his eyes flitted to yours, nervous as you let the silence sit after his declaration, you saw something that chilled you to the core.
You saw an understanding deep in Billy Hargrove’s eyes. You saw an understanding of the fear, the sense of defeat, the panic, the dread, and the helplessness that had washed over you. You saw something in his eyes that told you he was no stranger to someone else laying their hands on him and, while you were pretty sure it wasn’t in the same way you experienced it, it wasn’t any less violating. You saw something broken in him— the same thing you knew was broken in your eyes— and your heart aches for him. As he let you see into his soul with that single glance, you came to a decision. You wouldn’t ask why he seemed to understand so perfectly. You wouldn’t pry, just like he wasn’t prying with you. Instead, you would accept his protection and his affection. You would trust that he would tell you his trauma and pain when he was ready, just as you would tell him yours. And until then, you’d learn to help each other.
“Your girl, huh Hargrove?” Your voice rasped out, not quite full after the shouting from the party and the vomit in the snow. You cleared your voice, hoping it would help. “That’s quite a claim to stake. And I don’t know if you’ve picked up on it, but I’m a bit of a handful here.” You sent him an uneasy smile, hoping he’d catch your hint and let the events of the night go without any explanation.
A searching gaze as he scanned your face was the only response you got at first. When he saw you were okay, that you would manage for now, he let the worry slide for a mischievous (if not a little cautious) glint in his eye. “Oh sweetheart,” he drawled in response. He playfully let his eyes scan over your body, checking in to make sure it was okay before letting his gaze linger a little longer on your chest. “I’ve noticed. And let me say, I can’t wait to get a hand full.”
The lecherous wink he sent your way really sealed the deal as you felt a giggle bubble up. He was trying to act as if nothing had changed, as if it were business as usual, and you appreciated that more than he could ever know. He wasn’t perfect. And neither were you. You were both broken, but a small part of you wondered if just maybe you were broken in compatible ways. You got the feeling he wasn’t the only one in this car who helped the other feel a little more grounded.