This is the most terrifying thing Billy’s ever done.
Forget staring up at a wave twice your height, forget staring down demodogs with nothing but a crowbar in his hands. Forget his dad staring him down across the dinner table.
Billy turns the Camaro’s engine off and stares up at Steve’s house, every window in the house lit. Steve left the porch lights on for him. When he knocks, Steve’s voice calls out,
“It’s open!”
Billy follows the smell of food to the kitchen, where Steve is standing bare chested in front of the stove, wearing only basketball shorts and stirring something in a pan. Usually, Billy’s skin feels like there’s a colony of ants crawling under it, making him jittery and anxious and angry, but the sight of the expanse of Steve’s back, with his wide, relaxed shoulders and his creamy skin and his moles, it settles something deep inside Billy. It makes his anthill calm.
“Hey,” Billy settles against Steve’s back, feeling the warmth of his skin on his chest through his open shirt. His hair is damp and he smells like shampoo, fresh from the shower. Billy knows Steve likes to shower as soon as he gets home from the Mall, or else the smell of ice cream lingers in his nose. He slides his lips over Steve’s shoulder until he reaches his neck, where he kisses him, slow and wet, until Steve leans back against him with a groan.
“You’re distracting me,” Steve whines, and turns his head to kiss him back any way. “I’m gonna burn the sauce.”
Billy groans when their tongues meet, shifts them so he can lean Steve against the counter without risk of getting burned.
“You’re distracting me, princess,” Billy says against Steve’s cheek. “Come home to find you half naked making me dinner like that…” It slips out, just like that. Come home. Like the Harrington’s big house belongs to just them, to Billy and Steve and this thing between them that’s been growing for months.
Billy remembers what he needs to do tonight, what he needs to say to Steve, and it sits like a stone in his stomach.
“I’m making us dinner, shithead. And it’s gonna burn if you don’t let me go,” Steve’s arms tighten around Billy’s waist, fingers digging into his skin under his shirt.
Billy can only hold him back, stroke his thumb over Steve’s cheek. Kiss him again.
He lets Steve go with a slap to the ass that has him sputtering and laughing as he turns back to the stove. Billy grabs two beers from the fridge and cracks them open, setting one next to Steve.
Steve leans in to kiss him thank you. He’s too sweet.
The sauce turns out alright, and they eat their pasta by the pool outside, trading stories about their days at work. Steve likes hearing about the little kids Billy teaches at the pool, because he’s a sap, and Billy cracks up whenever Steve tells him about the way Robin’s always on his ass.
When Steve comes back with more beers for them, Billy can’t put it off anymore. He has to get it over with, even it feels like he’s stabbing himself in the chest.
“I gotta talk to you about something,” Billy says as Steve sits down facing him.
Steve’s face is open, trusting. “Yeah?”
“I, uh… I’m leaving Hawkins, at the end of the summer. I’m going back to California.”
Billy looks Steve in the eye as he says it. He’s no coward. So he watches Steve’s eyes dim and his lips go slack, curling around the soft “oh” that comes out of his mouth, dipping at the end in disappointment.
“I thought…” Steve starts, and Billy can’t let him finish, can’t let him say whatever it is he was about to. If Steve gets worked up this might turn into a fight.
“I can’t stay,” He forces out. Looks down at the beer can he hasn’t taken a sip of yet. “Not with- I can’t stay.”
“Billy-”
“But I thought maybe,” Billy stops, licks his lips. Takes a breath. This is scarier than the demodogs, the thought that Steve might say no, “I thought, maybe, you could come with me.”
His heart is pounding in his chest and the anthill has woken up, making Billy feel like he’s gotta get up and run to the Camaro and speed out of here, but he bugs his fingers into his knees and stares blankly ahead.
“You mean it?” There’s an edge to Steve’s voice that Billy hasn’t heard before. “You’re not saying that cause you think I’m gonna say no?”
Billy rears back, tries to make sense of what Steve just said and comes up empty.
“What the fuck, Steve,” He snaps. “Of course not.”
Whatever Steve hears in his voice seems to settle him, because his shoulders relax and he grins that big, goofy smile of his.
“Okay,” He laughs, giddy. “Okay, yeah.”
It takes Billy a second to get it, then he can only laugh with Steve.
“Yeah?”
Steve nods, and barely sets his beer aside before pouncing on Billy, laying him back on the patio floor and laying all his weight on Billy just to lay a searing kiss on his lips. The heat of Steve’s mouth is familiar and comforting, and Billy lets himself sink into the kiss like he’s done a hundred times before, lets it melt his spine and warm his chest like it always does. Let it call him home.
“I love you,” Steve says against his mouth, and Billy closes his eyes tight, nudges his nose against Steve’s.
“Love you,” Billy’s voice is barely a murmur, but Steve hears it anyway.
Billy’s heart is pounding for a different reason, now. There was no need to be scared at all. Nothing else feels scary, or like he can’t get through it, when Steve’s there. So they’re getting through this summer, together. And when it ends, they’re leaving Hawkins in the rearview mirror, together.
When you get yourself into a argument with some jerk in a random comment section:
Old Joe’s story
He put a sticker of heart-shaped glasses on Dacre
I think there should be a fic of Billy and Steve spending a lot of time learning how to paint their nails. They're both terrible at it because painting with your nondominant hand is horrible. So who do they turn to for help?
None other than Erica Sinclair. She has sparkles for days, fifteen different shades, and no time for excuses.
Ok now I want one
every single person who reblogs this
every
single
person
will get “doot doot” in their ask box
I’m just gonna put this here
🙂
I GOT YOU
Billy in the upside down and Steve brings him back.
(I did this before vol 2 but I couldn’t finish it before vol 2 released LOL)
I feel like as a fandom we recognize that Billy is all alone in Hawkins but what about Steve. When Billy arrives in Hawkins Steve is coming out of a break up, he lost his best friend, and from what we all believe he doesn’t have active parents who care about him.
Steve has the kids but he is 17 years old he needs someone his own age to hang out with. Input Billy (after they decide to put the fight behind them). Billy who has about zero chill and very little will to live. Shows Steve a side to having fun he never knew was possible. With Tommy it always felt like he had to prove something.
But with Billy it’s random rocks being thrown at his window to go for an endless drive to no where. Sneaking into clubs in Chicago and dancing like no one there cares who Steve is. Billy convincing Steve to get a fancy hotel on his Dads credit card just to rack up the room service bill because this is what “sticking it to the man is pretty boy”. Long nights high on California weed that Steve refuses to admit is actually better than the Indiana shit. Weekends spent in thrift stores with Billy begging Steve to ditch the polos, milkshakes at the only diner in town at 2am, and laughing. A lot of laughing.
Steve finds himself throughout his friendship with Billy. And if he happens to discover he is in love with him too. Well who better to love than your best friend.
reblog if you’re on team “I acknowledge that Billy Hargrove is a highly flawed individual and in no way condone the shit he’s done, but I strongly believe he was deserving of a redemption arc and it hurts my soul that The Duffers chose not to explore that”
(X)
Billy in a documentary narrator voice: the bottom is soft
Steve in the middle of bandaging up his kids: Hargrove I swear to god!