Chapter Text
BILLY
JULY 4TH, 1985
He used to imagine what his death would look like.
Always thought it’d be his dad to do him in - maybe with a kick to the head that would crack the bone of his skull or maybe one well-aimed hit to the chest would break a rib and puncture his lung. On one special occasion, when Neil was drunk off his ass and missing his wallet he’d pushed Billy against the counter, kitchen knife at his throat. The slur of the threat sometimes rings in his ears. "I'm gonna ssslice at your thr-oat til you're gagging on the blood. How'd I *hick* end up wi-ith a son like you?"
"Just one more faggot."
Billy didn’t steal the wallet and wasn’t even with Neil when he lost it.
It never mattered.
He was 12.
After that, thoughts of death became more and more common.
He became paranoid that he’d be kidnapped by the men his father told him about. The ones who went around torturing boys like him before throwing them in a river to be found by some poor hiker. Worried that his dad was one of those men.
Then Billy got the Camaro and started having vivid daymares of crashing, rearing around a corner too sharply, and rolling. Shrapnel would lodge itself into his chest and his spine would break (that didn’t mean he stopped driving so recklessly).
Three weeks after he beat Harrington’s face that night at the Byers he sat on the edge of the quarry, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and empty rage in the other. He started at the black abyss of the water below and wondered if it really would be like hitting concrete. Wondered if it’d be fast or if he’d still be alive after the impact and simply drown instead.
But none of it fucking compared.
His lips were numb, vocal cords stunted. He could feel the pressure before the pain, like being hit with blunt objects, but then the weight forced it way past the layers of skin and in through his muscles. Then, millions of splinters coiled out and through the rest of his body. His hands, still holding on to the thing’s fucking tongue, held their grip. Not with his own strength but that of the prongs of the tongue hooking into the bones of his forearms.
He gasped wetly.
He was hit with more of its tendrils before his arms came free, falling to his sides.
Weightless, staring into the open mouth of the monster’s face.
The monster that had been in his head, controlling his thoughts and body for however fucking long, and it was starting back. In the back of his brain, he could feel its anger as well as its own twisted type of hurt as it stabbed into something that was still a part of itself.
He screamed.
For the unfairness of it. The pain of it. The fucking bad shit insanity of it.
Then his chest caved in he could hardly feel anything anymore.
It was like the world had gone quiet, things slowing down. One by one the tendril yanked out of him, pulling the torn bits of himself with it.
“B-Billy - no - you-you’re ok.”
Max. Max was there.
She was… She was grabbing at him. Small hands shaking and voice trembling.
His body wasn’t his own, the blurry neon of the mall lights overtook his vision.
“Billy wake up, Billy get up -”
His body was shaken, and if he had the energy or thought it might’ve made him scream again.
“Billy! No ! - p-please .”
Everyone spoke about how fucking cold it was - to die - but it didn’t do it justice.
“Fuck!- Billy!? Billy !!”
He dreamed of brown eyes and blue waves.
NOVEMBER 1984 - 9 MONTHS EARLIER
“Billy! Wake the fuck up!” Neil’s gruff voice, so loud and grating, rang out in the small house.
Billy couldn’t help but snort roughly. Jokes on him, cause the blonde had been up for hours. It was a nightmare - not that he remembered what the hell it was - but it’d woken him up, heaving in sweat, in the early morning hours.
After the freshness of his dream, he stumbled off the bed, grabbed the cigarettes he kept hidden in the back of his drawer, and burned through 3 of them before his hands finally stopped shaking. He would’ve worried about the smell if his window hadn’t been open.
For the last couple hours, Billy sat with a leg brought up to his chest, on the floor by his mattress. He stared blankly at the broken mirror on his wall.
He could still feel the twinge of the cuts on his back, not stitched up like they probably needed to be and taking a hell of a lot longer to heal because. Sometimes when he shifted it felt like there were still a couple of pieces of glass still shifting underneath his skin.
He hadn’t been able to reach them, tried to before the pain turned into frustration and eventually harsh tears and a desire for a long reckless drive he couldn’t go on.
He scoffed.
He was probably hurting bout' as much as Harrington - if not more.
And didn’t that thought just bust his balls?
He puked his guts out when he thought about how much like his dad he was that night. Billy had never let his rage get the best of him like that before.
He was an asshole, sure, full of anger and aggression born from a shitty home life - but he wasn’t a brutal psychopath.
Ever since he got outta the hospital back in California it had been hit after hit.
The move to this shit town, the extra scrutiny from his dad, a weepy Susan who had realized the man she married was not the one she signed up for, then Max being a general brat.
The kid's mouth was too big and her actions were too loud.
It wasn’t Harrington's face he saw that night but his own. Finally, he was on the other side of the knuckles. He was the one on top. He held power and strength with none of the weaknesses.
..
It didn’t feel at all like how he thought it would.
(Didn't feel like how his dad made it look)
..
After he initially woke up, wondered to the fridge just to find a damn alien dog he thought maybe the entire night was just one fucked up dream. Until the fucking chief of police showed up. A big, burly man that had pulled him close by the front of his shirt with threats of arrest.
Billy swore his heart was in his goddamn throat; and as Hopper spit out threats there was a familiar rage in his eyes. The same that his father had, that Billy had. Yet where he was expecting the smell of scotch or whiskey to be on the chief's breath, he instead smelled the odd scent of maple syrup.
Billy had growled out his defense and ran his mouth about how Steve had his goddam sister and lied about it.
Didn’t fucking matter though.
Not to the chief and definitely not to his dad.
He hadn’t had a beating like that since they moved to town.
The day after was a Sunday.
Billy didn’t (couldn’t) move for the better part of the next day.
Not that his dad wanted his disgraceful son to be seen with his ‘perfect’ family at the morning church service. And after Susan had gone out with Max (even though she was grounded) his dad watched T.V. in the living room.
Bandaging his back was a bitch to do in the early morning of Monday.
He skipped school for the week, hardly having the energy even to take Max to the goddamn middle school. He slept in his car at the Quarry.
He didn’t have the energy for classes and the bullshit social ladder. His head hurt and his body was worse.
And those days were almost peaceful - he’d lie, stomach down, in the back of his car, thin blanket and pillow on the leather seats, autumn air wafting in from the open windows.
At least until he had to leave to pick up Max.
The kid has been quiet.
Not like Billy could fault her.
He hasn’t been a chatterbox either.
But questions on what really went down that night and what the fuck was in that fridge was always on the tip of his tongue.
She was quiet and always fucking staring at him.
Billy would snap, with no heat or energy in his words, for her to ‘fucking quit it’ but found it didn’t have the same effect it once had.
…
“Billy! Get your ass up!” A hard knock on his door had him jolting upright.
“I’m up!” He called back, cringing at the hoarseness of his voice. He staggered to his feet, grabbing the first set of jeans he saw.
Neil grumbled behind the door, his footsteps going down the hall.
He was dressed and out of his room in 10 minutes.
Everyone was in the kitchen.
Max was munching on some of her godforsaken cereal that was more sugar than food, Susan was nursing a coffee with two hands and Neil had that face on him, telling him that he was already in a sour mood as he read the morning paper. Billy held back a grimace.
It hadn’t even been two weeks since the beating and already his dad was in one of his preemptive moods.
There were some apples in the center bowl. He found himself reaching and grabbing one. He hardly ever had breakfast in the morning, preferring to get up, grab Maxine and go. But sometimes sitting down together as a ‘family’ helped to make Neil more docile.
“Good morning Billy.” Susan’s smile was timid.
“Mornin’.” His voice was gruff, face neutral.
“How did you sleep?”
God, he hated small talk.
Especially when it came to Susan. There were times when it would feel like she was trying to make up for her inaction when it came to his dad. Like she was saying, ‘ Hey, I’m sorry your father beats you bloody while I hide in my room, but at least I care about how you’re doing in school.’
Sometimes he’d send her a look, glare at her until she looked away and stopped trying. But he couldn’t risk Neil seeing anything - not while he was still hurtin’.
“Fine.”
“How about you Maxine?”
And that was the end of the conversation.
He didn’t talk in the car, only grumbled a quiet ‘get out ’ when they arrived at the middle school.
He played with the idea of ditching again that day but, knowing his luck, it would’ve been the day his dad started caring about the absent calls from the school.
When he got to the high school, he parked in his usual spot and cut the radio. Billy drifted in the silence for a bit, watching the little nobodies from Hawkins walk to the front entrance.
Billy sighed and leaned forward til’ his head rested on the steering wheel.
“Fuck.”
Frustration rose up to his throat. He had the urge to hit something but the motivation to do so was dulled by the pain in his back. So instead he took a deep inhale and got outta the car.
He didn’t grab his bag. Didn’t give two flying fucks.
Between the school and his car, he had gone through a cigarette. Puffing up a cloud as he walked.
The cold made him shiver.
It also made him more frustrated.
He went through the hallways in a habitual haze; leering at the girls he knows want to get in his pants and shoving past the guys giving him dirty looks because of it. If his back hurt like a bitch he pointedly ignored it. Everything was superficial. Bullshit.
At lunch, he chain-smoked in his car - forgoing the sad excuse for a lunch Susan had made.
It wasn’t until he was walking to his last class, with Tommy and Carol following him - talking about some party he was sure would be shit that Tiffany Rangler was having that weekend - that the haze was disturbed.
And of course; Steve fucking Harrington.
It was the first time he’d seen him since the fight.
And pretty boy was standing there, talking to Wheeler and Byers (which was such a weird fucking thing - to talk with the guy who took your girl) with a hunched stance and some school books held loosely between his arm and hip. The bruises on his face were healing, more of a gross yellow/green than the deep swollen black and blue it was before.
There were butterfly bandages holding together the thick cut on his forehead. Billy guessed it was from the plate.
Wheeler noticed him first with a scowl and a glare that Billy found laughable.
Byers glanced at him - but continued to fiddle with something in his locker.
Then Harrington looked over, the auburn of his vivid eyes a sharp contrast to the dark bags underneath them.
Billy simply gave a sultry smirk and put up the middle finger.
Steve responded with a deadpan expression.
And just.. looked away. Nodding to whatever the hell Byers had said.
And didn’t that just throw him the fuck off.
He expected anger; some sort of sign that the brunette hated his guts now. Maybe even annoyance or a condescending look - cause he had gotten his ass kicked by his kid sister (part of him was scared that Steve would flinch and cower, unable to meet his eyes or push back.)
But it was like Harrington couldn’t give two fucks.
And shit.
Billy couldn’t decide if that was better or worse.
“Oh hey, it’s Harrington and the bitch!” Tommy’s ear grating voice called out. “How’s it feel to be one-upped by a creep like Byers?”
Carol snickered next to them.
He could see the tick in Harrington’s jaw, the way his fists clenched on his notebook. If Wheeler was a cartoon there would be steam comin’ outta her nose.
“Just ignore em.” Byers murmured from halfway in his locker.
Billy wished he could let shit go like Byers; which wasn’t a thought he ever thought he’d have.
“Fuck off Tommy.” Steve snapped.
Hagan looked like he was going to reply with something nasty, his body moving forward like he was gonna try to get in Harrington’s face or some shit. Before that shit could happen, he grabbed the lanky teen by his shoulder and roughly pushed him forward. “Hagan, keep movin’.”
“What? No, he-” He started, an affronted look on his face, like a child told no to a toy they wanted. Billy growled out a “fuckin’ now .”
He didn’t bother to see the other’s reactions, just moved forward until they were almost to the end of the hallway. Tommy threw a bitch fit that Billy ignored.
…
Just -
Whatever.
It didn’t matter anyways.