I'm tentacute@Ao3. My hobby is slipping into Harringrove blogs and weeping quietly because I love 'em dumb boys. I have more OTPs than common sense. 18+ blog coz there might be steamy stuff in the future but also because children intimidate me.
Headcanon: the reason why Billy has his tits out in winter is not because he runs hot. Not because he has that California fire burning in his veins. Sure as hell not because he’s so tough and invulnerable.
No, it’s because during that first party in Hawkins he had grossly misjudged just how fucking cold Indiana can get, and when mildly concerned people were like Hey man aren’t you cold? Of course Billy couldn’t just fuck up the precious first impression and do something as lame as admit that yes he is fucking freezing, right? So he he grins all smug and does the whole 'California boys run hot' shtick only it sort of becomes His Thing... Thus dooming him to a bleak future of frosty nipples.
Hope you have an amazing day filled with fun, with a little treat from me!
😭🥳☺️ Thank yooouuu! Best treat, much appreciated ☺️☺️ Happy Halloween to you too, and to everyone else who happens to read this!
My creative powers have been restored. Time to write this drabble in which Steve is a guardian angel assigned to the most self-destructive asshole in Hawkins… *rolls up sleeves*
Billy is the kind of guy that suffers in silence and aggressively downplays just how sick he is, because being sick means staying home. (They say there's no place like home, and they're right--home is where the worst things happen.) It's normal for Billy to walk around with a fever and a runny nose and a dismissive attitude.
It's not normal for Steve.
When Billy catches a nasty flu (because of course he does, walking around with his tits out in goddamn January) he and Steve have a very short but very furious fight about it ("Stop fussing!" versus "Stop being such a stubborn bitch!"), in the wake of which Billy is all but forced to get the full Nurse Steve Experience. He's genuinely shocked to discover that it doesn't suck, and pretends that his eyes are all glassy because of fever and not because being taken care of in a loving (if long-suffering, since Steve is fully convinced Billy's thing is all for the sake of his badass macho bullshit) way unlocks some old memories aaaaaand yeah he's going to cry. It's the flu. Shut up, Steve, it's the fucking flu.
I live for a Billy who has no idea that he is a total little spoon (how would he know that anyway? He’s a wham, bam, thank you, ma’am type, not the type that stays the night) and discovers it by accident; one night he is so worn out that he sorta passes out instead of sneaking out through the window, and a couple hours later wakes up surrounded by warmth. Steve’s arms around him, Steve’s breath tickling the back of his neck.
Hell hath no fury like a Billy Hargrove creatively constipated. Or, well, maybe not fury—not anymore—but definitely some firm annoyance.
The abandoned poem lies scattered over the pages of his notebook, reviewed so many times it’s a miracle his favorite pen still has any ink left. Old habits keep prompting him to find something to drink—some mediocre rum or maybe a shitty beer for old times’ sake—but it’s been years since he had last enjoyed a drink without someone nearby to keep him company.
Some habits are not worth returning to.
He makes tea instead.
Bathed in the warmth of the setting California sun, his little nest looks like something out of a fairy tale; warm and cozy, soft in the way that Billy would’ve never associated with himself, and yet here he is. The smell of orange and cinnamon swirls in the air.
He burrows deeper into his cardigan, chasing warmth provided by high-quality cashmere. It’s a bit silly to be wearing such a thing in Cali, where winters are sunny and mild, but he always feels a bit cold these days. When he was a kid, he used to run hot in more ways than one, shirt unbuttoned all the way to the navel even in fucking December in Indiana, but then the Shadow happened and here Billy is, not even thirty and already down a spleen and one kidney, with busted circulation and nerve damage that sometimes keeps him up at night. Wrapped in bulky sweaters. Doing yoga instead of lifting weights. Drinking cinnamon tea instead of alcohol.
...It’s not that bad. Better than the alternative in which he’s rotting in a tiny wooden box, that’s for sure.
Now armed with a cup of hot tea, Billy looks at the coffee table, where his work remains temporarily abandoned.
When he had first started to write it was as a form of self-therapy—half-assedly picked from the list suggested by Owens, chosen purely by virtue of being less girly than, say, knitting or scrapbooking—but somehow it turned out that Billy Hargrove has a knack for something other than fist fighting and being a disappointment. Words that he would never say out loud turned out to be easy to put on paper, flat and disconnected from the emotions they bring, thus significantly less threatening.
Billy filled the first notebook before he re-learned how to walk.
Fast forward ten years and he now gives people business cards with the word Writer right under his name.
Sometimes he still has to sit down and ponder how the fuck it happened. William Hargrove, former playboy and general menace, current writer with two moderately successful tomes of poetry to his name and a small but dedicated fan base that does shit like write him letters about how touched they were by his words and how much they related to his struggles, what the fuck. (He tries not to cry when he reads stories from people who are just like him.)
Billy sits down, drinks some tea, and picks up his notebook. He winces immediately.
He always feels guilty when writing about Max.
They don’t hate each other anymore, but their relationship is still strained and built on old hurt that new understanding never quite scrubbed clean. There was a time when everyone expected them to start over, rebuild themselves from scratch in the context of a real brother and a real sister, and they tried. They tried for years, until they realized that the best they can do is polite amity and decided to leave it at that.
Sometimes Billy wonders if its because in his heart he had enough space for only one sister, and the gap was filled almost immediately by Jane. Sometimes he wonders if he hurt Max by allowing someone else—a stranger—to take the place that was prepared for her.
Maybe he should write about Jane instead.
Billy drinks his tea and re-reads the poem for the hundredth time, as if he doesn’t know every single line by heart by now. The more he reads, the more he feels words slipping out of control, as if his thoughts are drifting away. Leading him somewhere else, somewhere he doesn’t care to go right now.
“Fuck that,” Billy announces to the empty room and drops the notebook back on the coffee table. He’s been trying to avoid the elephant in the room for hours now, but there’s no point in pretending he can write anything while in this kind of shitty mindset.
He doesn’t deal well with loneliness, is the thing.
Billy brings the empty cup to the kitchen, washes it, dries it off with a towel, and puts it back on the shelf—an old routine, one too useful to bother uprooting from his brain. Neil is quietly rotting in his shitty little house back in Hawkins, destined to die alone in the small-town prison he tried to condemn his son to. Billy can pick and choose which rules he wants to obey now. He can keep the useful ones and ditch everything else.
The little post-it note he’s looking for is stuck to the fridge with the horrible plastic magnet shaped like a slice of radioactively yellow pizza—a small piece of Argyle’s brilliant idea of a housewarming gift, that is a pack full of weed and pizza-themed memorabilia.
Billy consults the note a couple times as he dials the unfamiliar number. Counts the beeps. Waits.
“Hello?”
Billy sighs. His shoulders relax at the sound of familiar—albeit unpleasantly tinny—voice in the receiver. “Hey. It’s me.”
“Hey, you,” says Steve, and it’s like all the miles and miles stretching out between them are suddenly gone.
Steve sounds tired—the kind of tired that even enthusiasm can’t quite mask. It’s late in New York. He should go to sleep soon.
But Billy is a selfish bastard.
“How’s work?”
Steve groans.
“Somehow both very shitty and very rewarding? The team is awful—getting them to do anything is like, a major achievement. No idea where the hell my dad found that project manager. Fucker is worse than Keith from Family Video.” Steve laughs tiredly. Billy basks in the warmth.
“Yeah?” he asks, almost breathlessly. “Tell me about him.”
It’s not that he’s particularly invested in Steve’s job. Steve’s job is fucking boring, some paper-pushing, meeting-organizing, numbers-watching thing that Mr. Harrington had eagerly pulled out of his Burberry-clad ass. Steve doesn’t really hate it—at least not the way he expected to hate it back when he was a teenager and the prospect of working for his dad was just a looming threat—but it’s still a brain-dead office job without much potential for personal growth.
Such is life. You don’t always get what you want. You don’t always get what you deserve.
At least it pays well—more than it should, really, not that Billy is complaining.
Steve talks about some guy named Cliff who sounds like a complete prick, one of those older guys who are too close to retirement to give a fuck, too comfortable in their belief they are irreplaceable, too confident in their outdated ways to listen to some kid young enough to still have all his hair. Billy closes his eyes, tries to tune out the tinny static. Pretends that Steve is right next to him, leaning against the wall with a cup of his gross yerba that smells and tastes like wet cigarettes.
“But I’ve somehow managed to whip them into shape,” Steve is saying, a little more lively now. A little satisfied. “Maybe this branch won’t collapse the second I skip town.”
“When are you coming back?”
Yeah, yeah, Billy is clingy and pathetic. Sue him.
“On Thursday,” Steve says firmly, and from the unyielding tone of his voice Billy can kinda tell that he must’ve waged at least one office war for this. “Abigail wants me to stay till the end of the week and fly home Saturday morning, but fuck that. I’m not a miracle worker.”
Their conversation briefly strays towards Abigail, who apparently still believes that Steve is one of those ambitious and bloodthirsty young sharks instead of a glorified office worker he actually is, and as such keeps trying to help him bump up his position in a rat race he is not at all interested in participating in.
Abigail is a bit dense.
“Okay, enough about my shitty job,” Steve says. “How’s the poem going?”
Billy scrunches up his nose. Ugh.
“It’s not going.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Yeeeeah,” Billy drawls, toying with the coiled phone cord. “I think I might have to… Dunno, either scrap it or sit on it for a couple days. When it comes to Max there’s something I can’t get out of my system.” He yanks at the cord a couple times, watching it stretch and bounce back, stretch and bounce back. “It’s like I’m constantly chasing after closure I’m never gonna get—don’t tell me to just talk to her.”
He can hear Steve’s mouth shut with a click on the other end of the line.
Yes, Billy should talk to Max. Yes, Billy knows that. No, Billy is not going to talk to Max. Even the usual hour-long catch up sessions they do whenever a holiday demands a customary phone call end up sapping all the strength from his body, and they rarely go beyond the safety of small talk. Maybe it would be different if they could talk face to face, but Max and Lucas live in fucking Canada where there’s even more snow than in Indiana, so there’s no way in hell Billy is ever going there. Cold temperatures make him—nah. If he could, he would move to fucking Africa. Either way, he can’t ask Max to leave her perfect little life abroad just to come all the way to California so they can talk.
It’s fine. They’re fine the way they are. No point rocking the boat.
“Billy? Baaaaabe?”
Billy coughs. “Yeah,” he mutters, “Yeah, sorry, just… You know. Max.”
“I know,” Steve says. “Anyway. What else are you up to?”
“Not much. This morning I spent three hours on the phone talking Jane through an oil change.”
“How did that go?”
“She’s getting the hang of it,” Billy says, and tries not to sound as overwhelmingly fond as he feels. “Would’ve probably went faster if we didn’t spend at least one of those three hours talking about fashion.”
He waits for Steve’s affronted squawk and is not disappointed.
“Why is she talking to you about fashion? You used to have an honest to God mullet!”
Billy grins at the absolute indignation in Steve’s voice. “Yeah, and you fucking loved it, asshole,” he drawls.
“Yeah, no. It was like a rat’s nest. Gross,” Steve argues, as if he’s not completely obsessed with Billy’s curls, no matter their shape or style.
“She’s a rebel, baby. Of course she’s gonna talk to the guy who wears a leather jacket and knows the importance of waterproof eyeliner,” Billy purrs into the phone. “If she talked to you… Man, you’d probably try to put her in pastels.”
“I don’t think this is as strong an argument as you think it is,” Steve says slowly after a brief moment of nearly audible cog-turning. “I put you in pastels and you look stunning.”
Billy idly picks at the sleeve of his cardigan.
It’s yellowish beige. Like sand on the beach.
“Fuck off and go to sleep, Harrington,” he mutters, lips curling faintly at the sound of Steve’s victorious laughter. “I’m serious. It’s late. Go to sleep.”
“Jesus, I really should, huh? I have a conference in the morning, because, you know, Abigail fucking hates me. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Sure. In the evening, okay?” Billy glances at the coffee table, where the abandoned notebook somehow manages to look outright accusatory. “I gotta drop by Brianna’s office. Get a fresh perspective and shit.”
He’s pretty sure that Brianna is just gonna tell him what everyone else is telling him—that he needs to talk to Max—but Steve won’t be back home for two more days and Billy’s already had enough loneliness to last him an extra lifetime or two. So he’s gonna talk to Brianna and maybe even offer to write some blurbs for her, even if Billy really fucking hates writing blurbs. They make him feel like a used car salesman.
“Alright—“Whatever Steve wanted to say next drowns in a massive yawn.
“Bed time,” Billy says pointedly.
“Yeah, yeah. G’night, babe.”
They’re too old to play the you hang up, no, you hang up game, so Billy just grins and makes an exaggerated kissing noise, a saucy mwah that makes Steve cackle.
It’s pretty hard to pick a favourite when waddling through all the hilarious takes people make about Billy Hargrove, but I think my favorite one might be the absolutely demented idea that Billy would be pro-cops.
Like. How the hell does anyone arrive at this conclusion?
How the hell does anyone see Billy, that frustrated and chaotic rebel without a clue, the “problem child,” the delinquent, the fucking metalhead, and think, ah yes, this guy definitely looks like he thinks that blue lives matter?
Listen, even if all the above wasn’t a thing, Billy would still be left with one extremely strong reason to despise cops—they represent oppression, rules, punishment, and violence—which coincidentally are all things that Billy also strongly associates with his abusive dad.
A bit somber and meta-ish today: whenever I see someone claiming that Billy didn't deserve to be redeemed, I am tempted to ask them what they think about prisons. Considering how gleefully vindictive a lot of those people are, it wouldn't surprise me if they had very strong opinions about the concept of punishment vs rehabilitation...
To me it reads like Billy is on the team because it allows him to get the fuck out of the house, thus away from Neil. There's not a whole lot to do in a sleepy town in Hawkins, and the team is not only readily available, it's also the kind of thing that Neil (who tried to force Billy to play sports in the past, specifically baseball) would probably not complain about. All in all, a perfect excuse to not be home.
In all honesty, I think Billy is much more into lifting than basketball. Has anyone noticed a basketball in any of the rare shots of his bedroom, I wonder?
I live... Sorta. Not gonna lie, friends, it's difficult to make myself read this book when I have like thirty tabs of red hot Harringrove romance open on my tablet.
This chapter has quite a bit of stuff. It very briefly touches upon the racism thing. Also, some domestic abuse in this chapter. It's mostly Hawkins with some San Diego flashbacks mixed in.
Spoilers and lore under the cut!
The chapter starts with Max leaving Lucas behind and approaching Billy, who is leaning against his car. We get this scene where Billy grabs Max's wrists and tells her there are people out there that should be avoided.
He wants to know who Max talked with, what Lucas wanted, and also asks if he's causing problems for Max.
Max knows that Neil has many things to say about anyone who is not a white male Lutheran and assumes (emphasis mine) that Billy is the same.
Neil is not "openly" racist. He always claims it's about property value or crime rates or a million other keywords thanks to which he doesn't have to openly state who he is really talking about.
Billy has a history of making fun of Max's friends or interests and insulting her.
What she finds even worse is that sometimes Billy acts as if he and Max were in on some big secret together, as if they understand one another. As if he is actually concerned for her. Max believes he doesn't care for her and only acts that way sometimes to piss her off.
Ever since the Halloween night, the atmosphere in the house is very tense. While they used to be pretty angry at one another back in San Diego, they haven't been as openly hostile there.
Max realizes it's because Billy used to almost never be home back in San Diego, but in Hawkins he has a lot of free time. He started to fill it with parties, girls, and the baseball team, but all girls have curfews and the parties are rare.
Neil acts according to his routine: he leaves house in the morning and returns after 5PM. He ruffles Max's hair and buys Susan flowers. Underneath it all he's clearly ready to explode, though.
Max is hypervigilant around them, because if Billy fights with Neil he will take it out on her.
One morning Billy and Neil have a weird-ass confrontation during breakfast, lol. Billy picks up a carton of orange juice from the table and a moment later Neil reaches for it too. Billy doesn't let go. They end up quietly wrestling over it? And then Neil pulls hard enough that his elbow knocks Susan's sugar bowl to the ground, chipping it in the process.
Max finds this somewhat symbolic. She also mentions that she's been collecting signs of danger for the past seven months.
Max is not afraid of blood. She's played street hockey and tends to be pretty accident-prone with her skateboard, not to mention she loves slasher movies.
The first time she sees Neil assault Billy was in San Diego. Billy was driving in Mission Valley and was pulled over by cops.
Once Neil learns of this he goes all quiet, cold, and calm.
The scene starts with Max, Susan and Billy in the house. Max is cleaning parts of her skateboard. Billy is standing in front of the fridge and drinking milk straight from the carton, which he does because Susan hates it.
Billy is generally rude and disrespectful towards Susan.
Neil arrives, crumples up the ticket, and throws it at Billy, claims Billy is being irresponsible.
Max notes that the atmosphere in the house has been tense since that day Billy offered her a cigarette.
Max is initially shocked when Neil punches Billy.
Susan doesn't give a fuck. When Max looks to her, expecting her to step in, Susan reacts like she didn't see anything and keeps reading her magazine.
Another punch makes Billy stumble and hit a shelf. A mug falls off and shatters on the ground. Susan doesn't even look up.
Max suddenly realizes that Susan is not surprised at all by what's going on. She's horrified by the fact that her mother doesn't consider Neil's physical abuse a reason enough to leave him.
Billy manages to stand up, but he's unsteady on his feet. His lip is bleeding and his face is starting to swell. Neil tells him he's gonna teach him about responsibility and respect.
Susan leaves the room.
Neil beats Billy with a belt. When he does so, his eyes lose focus and it's like he doesn't even see Billy anymore.
Max is horrified and keeps expecting Neil to realize she's there and stop beating Billy up, but Neil doesn't care. He doesn't even seem to register she's there.
Billy is completely resigned to his fate. He doesn't make a sound and doesn't try to avoid the belt. In his eyes anger is mixed with fear and helplessness. He reminds Max of a stray dog she once saw in a dogcatcher's truck.
Right before Neil is about to start, Max tries to intervene and yells at him to stop. Neil just looks at her, smiles, and turns back to Billy to ask if this is how he raised him, to be a loser who needs a little girl to protect him. His tone is so full of disgust that it almost makes Max tear up.
Neil is not in a hurry. As he's beating Billy up, Max feels completely helpless. After he's done, Neil leaves the kitchen without a word.
Billy stays on the ground, kneeling on the floor. He doesn't say anything. After the silence becomes too much to bear, Max kneels down on the floor next to Billy and asks him if he's okay.
Billy seems completely empty when he tells Max to leave him alone. When she offers to bring him some ice, he looks up at her with hatred in his eyes that Max believes is directed at her. He snaps his teeth at her like a dog and snarls at her, once telling her to leave him alone. His voice is horrible, like a wild animals, and this time Max listens to him.
Impressions:
Oh man...
So, right off the bat we have confirmation that Neil is hella racist. Billy being racist is an assumption Max makes based on what kind of person his dad is, as well as the way he reacts to Lucas. Honestly, personally I think internalized bigotry is totally flavor of the month for Billy (alas, this might be a bit of a projection of my own experiences with extremely racist parents). That said, I think this part can definitely also support the popular theory that Billy wanted to keep Lucas away from Max because of Neil's bullshit? It was mentioned in earlier chapters that when it comes to politics and ideology Neil fully demands his household to follow his opinions and does not tolerate differing views. It's pretty clear that Billy is nothing like his father and doesn't want anything to do with him. It doesn't sound unreasonable to assume that his own views might be different than those of his father, even if he still enforces them for the sake of his own safety.
There is no doubt whatsoever about whether or not Max and Susan were aware of the abuse. They both know. Apparently Neil doesn't care about the audience.
This chapter was pretty heartbreaking when it comes to showcasing just how absolutely isolated Billy is in his situation and how strongly conditioned he is to believe that nobody can help him. First there's Susan driving the point home entirely on her own by completely ignoring physical abuse that is happening literally in front of her, but what's even worse is the way Neil instantly uses Max's attempt to help against Billy, in this case by trying to make him feel pathetic and ashamed for being defended by a little girl. Billy is literally taught that people trying to help him are only going to make it worse.
Like... damn, no wonder that kid is messed up. He's sad, he's scared, he's lonely, and he has no hope for things ever getting better. The fact that he didn't get his redemption arc is a crime. I once again reject canon and aggressively embrace fanfiction which gives Billy a happy ending.
"Billy should have broken the cycle" antis piss me right off because I DID break the cycle in my family and guess what? It nearly ruined my life for awhile even WITH a support system. I was homeless twice and my mental health was a joke. I got insanely lucky to be okay 5 years later. I couldn't imagine doing it after a lifetime of isolation and no one to help.
I'm glad you got somewhere safe and out of there! And yes exactly! What do they expect a 17/18 year old to do in a town where he has no one? He's actively being mentally and physically abused and no one does anything. He watches as Susan stands there while he's slapped and threatened, his own mother abandoned him to this life so what does he have? No one.
Its so fucking hard to accept you're a victim and in my case accept you're taking it out on others without even noticing until years later when you're away from the situation making you act like that. When you're living with an abuser you go into survival mode and Billy was not only in that state but pissed as hell that his only joy in life, aka Cali was ripped away from him. He was an emotionally fucked teenage boy acting out not some evil super villian out to hurt everyone for no reason.
Also antis like to act as if child abuse wasn't seen as "discipline" back then. Look at Patrick. Lucas and most likely others knew about his home life and nothing happened?
Breaking the cycle isn't easy or simple and especially in Billy's case just like yours. I'm sorry you had to go through that.
Beyond everything already said by anon and Memes, this is one of those cases where the commenters' age becomes extremely transparent. I notoriously see people having very... for the lack of a better word let's call them modern takes, and trying to project them on the 80s while completely disregarding the fact that it was a very different era. A lot of things that seem obvious to people today were absolutely unthinkable back then.
Hell, friendly reminder that same-sex marriage was first made legal in 2000! In America, the first state to legalize it was Massachusetts in 2004. It was only in 2015 that same-sex marriage became legal in all fifty states. It's really hard to grasp the scope of the massive social shift that had to happen, and to project today's standards on characters from the 80s is, in my opinion, simply callous.
I have the same issue with the thing where people call Steve accepting Robin's homosexuality the way he did "doing the bare minimum." No, it wasn't! Both Robin coming out to Steve, and Steve being completely fine with it is a huge fucking deal, especially in a small town like Hawkins.
As a human community we have seriously done a lot of progress. Domestic abuse, toxic masculinity, sexism, racism, homophobia, you name it, we've done a lot of work to identify these issues and clearly recognize them as wrong. Today's resources, information, public opinion etc. cannot be compared to the way it was for people living in the 80s, and trying to flippantly apply modern solutions to a character like Billy is just insensitive to all the people who were in his situation back then (and who are in his situation right now). Never forget that life ain't equally easy for everyone!
Harringrove Stuff I Would Love To See (But Am Too Busy And/Or Exhausted To Write Myself):
+ Wedding Planner AU in which Billy and Argyle own a popular wedding planning business and Billy runs into two major problems with their current clients, the rising business star Steve Harrington and his journalist partner, Nancy Wheeler. The first problem is that Mr. Harrington is a bit of a bridezilla. The second problem is that Mr. Harrington is so hot Billy can barely function.
+ Post-S3 in which Billy survives, uses the hush money from the government to put himself through a decent culinary school, and opens a bistro in Hawkins which quickly becomes the hottest place in town for dates and romantic outings. Steve has no choice but to bring all his dates there while doing his best to keep a healthy distance from Billy (because some shared trauma doesn’t suddenly mean they’re friends) and trying not to read too much into the fact that he keeps being served cute, delicious, and very elaborate desserts that he neither orders nor is expected to pay for.
+ After graduation, Sid and Wayne decide to go on a road trip and pay their old buddy Billy Hargrove a visit in Hawkins, Indiana. Once they arrive, they are quite shocked to discover that not only does Billy need a cane to walk, he also lives in a massive lavish house together with some preppy loser.
+ Billy oversleeps and wakes up in a mild panic because years under Neil’s roof have conditioned him to always get up early. It takes him a while to realize that he’s in his and Steve’s bed, Neil’s been out of the picture for years, and there is no punishment waiting for him when he crawls out of bed.
+ Steve gets kicked out of the house for coming out as bisexual. Billy gets kicked out of the house for pissing Neil off one too many times. Once they come to the mutual realization that they’re both currently living in their cars, they realize that if they pooled their resources together they could probably afford a (very shitty) roof above their heads.
(By the way, if anyone wants to treat any of these as writing prompts, please feel free to do so!)
Canonically he did have a bunch of girlfriends, though! Or at least girls who wanted to think of themselves as his girlfriends. In the book it’s mentioned that back in San Diego he always had a girl on his arm and swapped them very often; Max notes that some of those girls were trying to be super nice to her in hopes of, you know, making Billy like them enough to go steady with them, which ofc he never did. Max generally has interesting things to say about Billy’s dating habits: he’s obviously detached and uncaring towards girls, and he doesn’t even seem to like them at all.
Honestly, as a fanfic-oriented writer one can easily read it as incredibly performative. (You know, like something a hella gay kid in denial might do to prove to everyone how straight he is.)
Headcanon/To-Do Fic Idea: After Starcourt, restoring the Camaro becomes the focus of Billy's single-minded and at times almost grim determination. It's more than just a project and more than just a point of pride--it's personal, almost as if Billy putting the completely wrecked car together is some metaphor for Billy rebuilding himself nearly from scratch. Maybe it's a point he's desperately trying to prove: that things can be fixed, no matter how fucked up they are. That nothing is a lost cause as long as it has someone trying to fix it.
Steve starts helping. Very reluctantly at first, and only because Max asked him to, but soon he genuinely gets into it, finds that simple physical work is great for keeping his mind occupied. So they start spending most afternoons working on the Camaro. They start talking about things other than cars. They start hanging out outside of the garage. And on the day they finally get the car up and running, Steve discovers that Billy has nothing against being pushed against the hood of the rumbling Camaro and kissed until they both run out of breath.
"Stop yelling at me! Why are you yelling at me? Why are we even arguing about this?"
"Because you keep playing your shit music despite the fact that it's shit?"
"It's not shit! And if it was up to you we would be listening to metal, like, all the time!"
"Exactly my point, Harrington."
"Metal sucks, though--hey, I'm driving! Jesus, ouch, were you raised by wolves? Okay, tell me, what can you even do with metal? Headbang? You can't dance to this shit."
"Music is not supposed to move your legs, shithead. It's supposed to move your soul."
"...Wow. That was profound, Hargrove. Should tell the kids they got another William the Wise here."
"Fuck off, Harrington."
"No, really, tell me more about how unintelligible shrieking speaks to your dark miserable soul. At least my songs make me happy, not angry."
"Yeah. And you know why? Because they're uncreative drivel designed to turn off your brain and make you feel good."
"Okay? You know what? You're right--it does make me feel good. How is that a bad thing, Billy? Considering all the bullshit we've been through, I deserve a little bit of happiness and that means no metal in the car."
"Billy."
"Hey."
"Wow. Silent treatment? Yeah, real mature."
"...C'mon man."
"You seriously gonna keep that up until we get to Chicago?"
"Billy?"
Steve keeps his eyes on the road. The silence in the Beemer is deafening. He knows, without sparing a glance, that Billy is glaring at the landscape on the other side of the passenger window, sprawled in the seat like he owns the damn place.
With a long sigh, Steve grabs the cassette sitting on the dashboard and pops it back in the radio.
"You're fucking insufferable. A total brat. I hate you," he says a second before the brutally interrupted guitar riff blasts from the speakers.
He pretends he can't see Billy's shit-eating grin.
Me, in love with both Stucky and Harringrove: Man, if I had a nickel for every time I fell in love with a ship featuring a soft but also badass guy named Steve taking care of his long-haired, abused, scarred, pretty boyfriend whose name begins with B and who once almost killed him and is deeply traumatized by a mind-controlling episode that made him kill people against his will I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.
If you ask him about it, he will shrug and tell you that the guy who used to cut his hair had passed away, and other hairdressers in Hawkins are more like butchers than barbers. Definitely not the kind of people he trusts anywhere near his head, thanks. Not like he has time for this shit anyway, not with Owens constantly hounding him about physical therapy and Harrington constantly hounding him about finally moving in. By the way, how about you mind your own damn business?
So Billy's hair keeps growing. Slowly, the ratty mullet starts to lose shape. Golden locks loosen slightly under their own weight, less "baby cherub ringlets" and more "romantic beach babe waves" these days.
Hair ties start to make increasingly frequent appearances in the house. Billy buys them in wholesale quantities and proceeds to lose them everywhere until he runs out of them, which is when he buys another batch and the process begins anew. Which means that their place becomes full of lost ties that keep popping up in the oddest places. In an effort to maintain some kind of order, Steve buys a decorative bowl--simple glass with elegant blue swirlies--to keep the ties in one place. It helps, sorta, in the sense that it slows down Billy's hair tie losing routine. Steve admits defeat after he wakes up one morning and finds he has to dig out a stray hair tie from between his own goddamn asscheeks.
The blue bowl stays, except now Steve joins the regular hair tie contributions. Naturally he decides to be an asshole about it, and soon the hair ties that Billy buys (simple, modest, black) are joined by the ones that Steve buys (outrageously colorful). Cashiers sometimes give him weird looks whenever he picks something shamelessly cute and pink.
Steve doesn't mind. Billy looks much better with his hair long. It makes him look softer. More relaxed. Steve loves Billy soft and relaxed and intends to keep him that way.
That's why he's the only one to ever use scissors around Billy's hair--only to fix the ends. He learns to be quick about it, because Billy always goes all tense and glassy-eyed. On a conscious level Billy understands that the one responsible for the old barber's death was the Mind Flayer, but it doesn't make it any easier for him. So Steve learns how to be quick, and after he's done he carefully braids Billy's hair to gently coax him out of the darkness of his memories.
He always finishes the braid with the cutest hair tie he can find, just to see an eye-roll followed immediately by a tired smile on Billy's face.
