harringrooves

[harringrooves]

"I've just split up with my girlfriend. Back in my parents' place for a while. Not like they're using it anyways."

Girlfriend. Of course. Billy tries to ignore how something in his gut turns bitter. It doesn't have to mean that there's no hope. It's not like there's any hope for them to be real, anyways.

"Ah. Sorry about the girlfriend." He tries not to spit the word.

"No, it's fine," Steve makes a funny face. "She said I was bullshit."

Billy nearly chokes on his own breath.

"I beg your pardon?"

Steve just shrugs, putting on this specific sort of a fake smile. The one that makes his bambi eyes all sad and helpless.

Billy isn't having it.

"You know, being the Prime Minister, I could just have her murdered."

His words do the trick - Steve's eyes go all wide, and then he bursts into giggles.

"Thank you, sir," he goes towards the doors, still laughing softly. "I'll think about it."

"Do," Billy nods, keeping the serious face and trying to convince himself he really does not want anyone murdered. "The SAS are absolutely charming. Ruthless, trained killers are just a phone call away."

Steve lets out more giggles, nods and exits the office - but not without giving Billy a smile. The special, real one - with a glint in his eyes, a glint that makes Billy's mind and, what's more dangerous, heartbeat go wild.

Oh God.

#oh god #oh god i love it #hg ficlet #hg edit #harringrove

[harringrooves]

Guys please I’m going crazy, do other people use microwave covers?

Tag your zodiac sign and what you cover your food with when you microwave it.

#we use that at home #but our one is legit just the inside basket part of our salad spinner #like. we probably shouldn’t be microwaving it but oh well

[harringrooves]

It's a Monday night and Billy Hargrove finds Steve Harrington working on a car.

Working is a generous estimation of what Harrington is doing, actually. He has the hood up - that's a good step - but when Billy walks over to him, Harrington is yanking his hand back and yelping because, predictably, he's burned himself on something. He also doesn't seem to know Billy's there, so Billy gets to watch him do the exact same thing two more times before he finally clicks his lighter loud enough that Harrington hears him.

Harrington spins around, already throwing a punch, which Billy is really not expecting and so only kind of dodges. Harrington catches his mouth, and Billy drops the cigarette he'd been smoking on the dirt.

He doesn't even hit Harrington. He's that shocked.

Harrington is looking at him and shaking his hand out, looking pretty shocked in the beams of his headlights, too. Billy can't see it in this light, but he knows there's a scar at Harrington's hairline from the first time Harrington ever tried to hit him.

There's silence between them and a lot of shocked stares. Billy finally lights another cigarette. He wishes he didn't sound like he was getting a fat lip when he says, "Most people would say sorry."

And maybe Harrington is asking to get hit, because he says, "I'm not fucking sorry, Billy," and that makes Billy bristle, but Harrington had called him Billy, and that soothes the porcupine part of Billy's whole psyche, just a little.

Which is annoying. It shouldn't be soothing. It should be fucking infuriating.

"You hit me in the goddamn mouth, Steve," Billy says, and it's annoying, too, that Steve rolls off his tongue like that.

"Well you snuck up behind me, Billy!" Harrington says.

"Well you were burning yourself, Steve!" Billy snarls, and it's fucking ridiculous, the two of them out here saying each others names like they're swearing up a storm. Not that they aren't also doing that, but. It's names.

And Billy still feels, a little bit, like they're both trying them on for size, still. "Well you were fucking late," Harrington says, which has nothing to do with Billy burning himself at all.

"I lost my keys," Billy says, and it sucks all the energy out of the moment, really, because lost isn't exactly the right word, but taken away feels like something he doesn't want to say out loud. "I had to walk," Billy says.

"I really didn't mean to hit you," Harrington says. "You just scared me. I don't like--"

"Being snuck up on in the dark," Billy says. "I know."

Harrington raises an eyebrow. "Most people would say sorry," he points out.

And the thing is? Billy is sorry. He didn't want to scare Harrington. Fuck. "I'm not most people," Billy says, which he thinks is a lot less mean than when Harrington said he wasn't sorry for hitting him in the mouth. He looks away.

Harrington looks away, too, but he walks forward and cups Billy's face. His palm is warm and smooth and it's sweet, except he pushes his thumb against where Billy's mouth is already hurting. Billy hisses, but he doesn't pull away.

"I'm sorry," Harrington says quietly, but it's when he kisses Billy that Billy knows he really means it.

#harringrove #hg ficlet #oh my boys

[harringrooves]

#billy hargrove #st

[harringrooves]

Sleepover 🖤

#🥺 #hg fanart #harringrove

[harringrooves]

One night of drunken commiseration about their parents (different but both still bad) financial abuse leads a!Billy and o!Steve to come up with a plan to escape. If Billy gets Steve pregnant, Steve's parents will stop pushing him to work a job he hates and they'll financially support the pair at least long enough for them to figure something else out.

It's the kind of plan that only really makes sense when you're drunk and looking for an excuse to fuck each other without having to admit that that was the real goal all along.

The next day they nurse their hangovers, acknowledge how stupid that plan was, and resolve never to speak of it again.

And they don't, and things are fine. They settle back into their old routine of being sort-of-almost-friends and both ignoring the fact that they both want more.

At least until a few weeks later, when Steve takes three pregnancy tests and they all come back positive and this stupid plan stops being something they can continue to pretend they never even thought of.

#um i like this fic idea. a lot. #like….the mutual pining….the misunderstandings…neither of them taking the leap to tell the other how they rlly feel….AND a baby!!! #i mean what more could u ask for 😫 #hg ficlet #harringrove

[harringrooves]

There were a lot of things that Billy just never could see in his future.

For starters, he could hardly fathom one for himself at all, never really being able to see himself anywhere past the age of eighteen like it was some sort of bad omen, like he was destined to die young. He came close, but at the end of the day, there was a future on the other side of catastrophe, and an even better one at that.

He was a new man, reborn in a way that felt unreal. In a way that didn’t really feel like rebirth, like the clutches of his past were still looming overhead, there to remind him of all of the things he thought he could never had.

He never thought he would find love.

Maybe he did at one point, freshly five years old as seeing the way all those tv couples fell in love on the screen, believing that he would find a girl and fall in love with her and live happily ever after. But by the time he was six and he saw his father slap his mother for the first time right in front of him after dinner, he started to doubt that love was real at all, believing that people only got together in couples to cure their loneliness. Then, by the time he was nine years old, the boy who sat next to him in his art class who painted him a picture of a tree wound up further complicating his feelings about love, and what that meant to him.

Realizing he was gay, and realizing what it meant, he never thought he would find love like he saw in the movies, and yet he did, with Steve.

Steve, who had been there before, through, and after one of the worst moments of his life. He tended to bruises and cuts left by one monster, and held his hand while he healed from the effects of an even larger one, and he was the one to free him from the clutches of both, giving him the chance at a future that he could never see for himself.

And that was when he realized that love wasn’t the only thing he thought he could never have.

When he got his first job, not as a lifeguard, but his first real job that he intended to make a career, he remembers shaking hands with the guy at the auto shop who offered him an apprenticeship. He remembers feeling nothing until he came home that day as it all set in, that he was doing something with his life which meant he had one to live. It wasn’t just another side hustle, it was the real deal. It wasn’t just the job that he never thought he would have, but when Steve came rushing down the stairs asking if he got the job, and cheering when Billy nodded his head, he realized he also never thought he would ever be proud of himself, because for the first time, he was.

He did believe that he would have his own place at some point. He knew he would eventually leave from under the roof of Neil Hargrove, he even saved up for years keeping all of his cash stashed in a tin can under his bed. It wasn’t that he never thought he’d ever get out, it what that he never thought he would live somewhere nice. He anticipated moving to California and setting up camp in the cheapest listing he could find on the market. He was prepared to take the studio apartment on the corner with paint chipped walls and mold filled ceilings, right next door to a meth lab, because it’s all he would have been able to afford, and it was all he felt he would deserve anyway.

He moved into Steve’s house, or rather, Steve’s parents house, although they were rarely there, and that felt like home for a while, but they both knew that it was never truly theirs, and that ache for a place of his own just never really disappeared.

And then Steve came into the kitchen one day with a newspaper in hand and pointed to a listing for a two bedroom house in town that, just by looking in Steve’s eyes, he could tell he was excited about. It was going for just under 30k, and Billy didn’t hesitate after just feeling a sliver of Steve’s excitement that was radiating off of him to tell him to go make an offer. Fortunately, Steve’s mom was actually a realtor back before she retired, and was able to help them talk the price down to 25k, as well as ensure that they weren’t turned away for being two men looking to live with one another.

That was another thing. He never, ever, once thought that he could have that. Support. He was used to an abusive father and a mother who abandoned him with said father. As far back as he could remember, there was never anyone there to look after him. He didn’t dare believe in a future where he could be his authentic self, because it had always been too dangerous, and thinking about it would just make him sad.

Steve’s parents were far from perfect parents. He knew of the turmoil they put their son through by never being there, missing games and birthdays and holidays and making him feel truly alone for so many years, but one thing Steve always prided them on was that they would always be there for him when he needed them most. They were absent aside from the moments when it truly mattered, and in those moments, a few missed Thanksgiving’s felt like nothing.

When Steve brought Billy back home to his house from the hospital, he stopped at the front door to tell him that his parents were inside. Billy remembers his gut sinking to the floor until he looked up at Steve and saw the subtle smile on his lips. “I told them about you,” Steve said, “and they’re really excited to meet you.”

Billy never thought he’d have loving parents. But that was only because he didn’t entertain the idea that loving parents didn’t have to involve Neil Hargrove.

Billy watched his future unfold before him, surprises at every corner, but there was one thing, one thing that surprised him to his very core and brought him to tears because the realization was just so sudden.

He and Steve had been together for nearly fifteen years which was a feat in itself. They still lived in that little house they first bought, but they were packing ups the loving boxes already, finally making good on that promise made all those years ago that Billy would show Steve the ocean.

Billy remembers the moment clearly. They were in the kitchen, and Steve was packing up all the dish ware and appliances into neatly marked boxes while Billy held a baby in his arms. She was barely six months old. So much of those past two years felt like a blur in the grand scheme of things and Billy didn’t for a moment stop to think about how crazy it all was they he was going to have a kid. He just remembers the excitement of it all when one drunken night Heather offered to be a surrogate and somehow she still wanted to go through with it sober, and just over a year later after that night, Billy was holding his own child in his arms. He was far too engulfed in her to think about anything else.

Until that moment in the kitchen, while he watched Steve pack boxes while he fed their daughter the bottle of formula when he looked down into those big brown eyes staring back up at him when she said “dada.”

The whole room froze and fell completely silent, waiting a few moments to decide if they heard it right. Steve was paused halfway hunched over with a toaster in his hands, looking over at the two with the biggest smile on his face, and meanwhile, Billy was just staring right back down at his daughter, brushing the skin of her cheek gently with the back of his finger trying to hold back his tears.

Because that was it. Of all of the things he thought he could never have, this was the one that held the most weight. Billy not only never thought he would be a father, but he actively never wanted to be. Because he didn’t want to end up just like his own, he was so afraid that he would, and somehow none of that had crossed his mind up until that moment, because in that moment, he knew that just like all those other times before, he was wrong, he was so completely wrong.

He was older, he was smarter, and he was more himself than he had ever been before. He was happy, something Neil Hargrove could never say about himself. He knew then that anything Neil Hargrove had ever taught him was all forgotten, and the love the Steve taught him took over entirely.

He looked down at her and smiled, a few tears streaming down his face and dripping onto her onesie. Steve walked over and wrapped his hands around him from behind, placing a soft kiss to the top of his head.

Billy was all of the things he never thought he would be. He was successful, he was a lover, he was free, and…

“Yeah baby, I’m your dada.”

#crying. i’m crying #hg ficlet #harringrove

[harringrooves]

#😈😈😈 #the tags on this post are phenomenal #billy hargrove #st

[harringrooves]

billy never got to figure out what healthy sexual attraction feels like so when he sees steve and his heart starts pounding he's like thats how it feels when i fight, guess i gotta fight this guy. he's never wanted to fight a girl so he doesnt feel that way around them. he blushes around steve and is like oh that is me getting hot-headed from my anger at this man. it happened in cali too and the lines blurred btwn his understanding of fighting and being sexually aroused 1/

so he has this mental list of guys he thinks about fighting all the time (later he realizes this is just a list of crushes he's had). nothing gets his blood pumping quite like manhandling some hotshot and showing him who's boss. he is bullying steve as normal and afterwards he gets in his car and masturbates which is very normal for him, it's just what happens after he fights, and steve comes up to the camaro and bangs on his window 2/

and steve is like :O and billy rolls his window down with the hand not holding his dick and is like what the fuck do you want harrington and steves like uhhh I wanted to finish our discussion and billys like little busy here bruh. steves like did you just... shove me around and then come here to jerk off. billy is like uh yeah? duh? anyway he finds out this is Not Normal (steve gives him a helping hand of course) and then they live happily ever after the end

I fucking love this oh my god i LOVE THIS. You are speaking my language. Billy, completely oblivious, repressed and angry and searching out the only kind of interaction with other boys he knows and understands - violence.

To add to your story because I am LIVING FOR IT - Steve sees Billy jerking off in his car. Billy rolls his window down, hand on his dick, annoyed at being interrupted, Steve does what any sane person would - he leans on the car's roof and tells Billy to keep going, don't let me interrupt or anything, and suddenly Billy's blushing and flustered and closer to the edge and when he's done and has a mess all over the front of his shirt, Steve pats the camaro. Tells him to ice his black eye and leaves.

And Billy.

Steve's shoved him over the line and things start clicking.

#i’m screamingggggg #hg ficlet #harringrove

[harringrooves]

animal instinct

It’s almost embarrassing how much Steve indulges Billy.

Can’t say no to him, never outright, only ever able to whine and pout and grumble. But never say no.

And so here’s Steve, held under Billy’s steady weight across his legs and the sharp Stay put from earlier, pressed face first into the bed and dying slowly. There’s teeth scraping down his shoulder.

“Billy,” he murmurs, voice shaking out against the sheets. He turns his head to the side, craning it back as much as he dares, and catches only a glimpse of the top of a blond head of curls. “Baby, c’mon-”

The teeth sink into the ball of his shoulder and Steve shudders. “Quiet.”

Read on AO3

#harringrove #harringrove fic #not sfw #billy hargrove #steve harrington #mack's fic #please read the tags/warning for this one #some sm_t practice i actually finished lol #baby's first pwp i'm so proud of myself hehe

[harringrooves]

🌅 sunset

#so gorgeousssss #billy hargrove #st fanart

[harringrooves]

this second dose has knocked me tf out so have some sick!harringrove hcs from the mountain of blankets and pillows i've stuffed myself into!

billy was 100% the kid who cried out of frustration when they were sick, and he 100% brought that habit into adulthood

steve is very unprepared when they get together for the first time billy gets sick and spends the whole day weeping in bed like some Victorian maiden jilted by her suitor

billy demands all the cuddles, and makes steve lie on his back so he can wrap himself around him and sniffle into his neck

he has zero appetite when he's sick, and only wants to eat sweet, sugary pastries that steve refuses to buy him on account of their complete lack of nutritional value

billy hates vomit, so anytime he's sick enough to throw up, he always cries to steve to take him to the hospital so he can be "sedated" and "sleep through this bullshit". steve does not comply.

(the reason billy always cries when he's sick is bc neil never hit him when he was laid up with fever or illness. he ignored billy, mostly, which was the best part and billy could learn to take advantage of the free pass. sometimes neil would even put a damp hand towel over billy’s forehead, scowling but not saying anything, and billy could never kid himself into thinking neils hand would linger softly on his face but it was the gentlest touch his father ever gave him)

steve, on the other hand, is so chill about being sick. distressingly so.

he's a frequent self medicator, and even has the terrible habit of double dosing on pain meds or anti-inflammatories and even sleeping pills, though he refuses to go to the doctor and get actual medication because he's "totally fine, bill, jesus stop worrying"

steve is usually not totally fine bc he never rests or slows down when the first signs of a cold or other sickness comes on, so he ends up making it all worse and forcefully being bedbound

steve hates physical contact when he's ill in bed, especially when he's feverish and skin feels like it’s got needles running over it, so as much as billy wants to cuddle him better, steve almost always relegates him to the couch in the living room.

billy also has to get the soft, worn cotton sheets out of the cupboard and change the bed because the ones they normally use haven't been washed down into soft t-shirt textures yet

somehow, being bedbound doesn't actually mean steve lets himself rest. oh no.

he believes in the restorative power of fresh air, gentle activity and orange juice. litres and litres of orange juice and frequent ill advised treks to the park across the street, in slow, shuffling steps

many, many times when steve's sick does billy have a heart attack when he gets back to the apartment complex to find steve shining with sweat and dozing on the bench out the front, having walked down the stairs to "sit outside, so i don't go stale and mouldy in that stupid bed!"

the worst is when they're both sick, bc that's when robin comes over and force feeds them her herbal teas and remedies that violently clear their sinuses and leave their mouths tingling for days afterwards. it works, though, which is even more annoying.

#harringrove #vomit mention #i feel like shit rn but hopefully it’ll clear up by tomorrow! #i’m probably just gonna read fic in bed all day lol

[harringrooves]

Day eleven of the Horror on Cherry Lane Challenge!! today’s prompt is decay!

Billy’s been dead for, how long has it even been at this point? Probably at least a decade by now. He hasn’t asked permission to visit the overworld since then at least.

It’s alright though. He likes being dead. After all, there are no societal concepts in the underworld. Nobody around to tell him who to love and where he’s allowed to go. He can drink all day with whoever the hell he wants to, and being trapped down here means his handsome face hasn’t even rotted away to nothing yet, excuse the stupid maggot in his head.

And it isn’t like he’s lonely. His best friend jumped off the town bridge a month after his own death and a day after his girlfriend was killed by a jealous man she was arranged to marry with. The only other person he really missed was his little sister, and she popped up a year and a half after he died too. Poor girl froze to death sitting out at his grave.

He was never erected a real headstone, mostly because nobody but her cared when he died. See, Billy had a reputation. Everyone in town knew the real reason he turned away all the pretty young women his father hand picked for him. That little secret was what got him killed after all.

The best thing he got memorial wise was a handmade marker that his sister and a friend of hers made. They placed it in the woods, though far away from his body, mostly so nobody would find and destroy the little marker, or worse, his corpse.

It’s a touching thought.

But it means Billy isn’t as unbreakable as he thinks he is. When the never ending party that is purgatory gets to be too much, he returns to the spot where he was killed. Sometimes he visits the hand painted stone, and sometimes he doesn’t. His excuse being that he has nothing else to do to get away, but Max and everyone else can probably read him better. They know he doesn’t cope well with being dead.

And maybe Billy did lie about being lonely before. Because he has Tommy and Carol and Max, but simply put, they’re dead. Nothing ever changes and it’s depressing, even more so when he has to wake up every damn night and face the sickly bluish-pale skin and gaping wounds and decay on all the people around him. He isn’t alone, but he misses when he had freedom and a future and a life to look forward to.

He’s bored of death. So as he does, he goes and pouts under his tree. On the anniversary of some date he can’t remember, is when that finally changes.

Just before he’s about to give up his sulking and return to the inevitable, a pretty boy stumbles into his woods. He’s out too late and wearing a crumpled suit. Gleaming in the moonlight, he carries a small silver ring, a wedding band more specifically.

The boy holds it delicately between slender fingers, and pours his heart out into the nothingness. His voice echoes off the dying trees, the silent air of a snowy night.

Billy listens just because he can, pities the boy because he knows the feeling of forcing himself to fall in love with someone. Knows even better what happened when he tried to break out of that.

It sounds like wedding vows he’s practicing. Something about the whole scenario makes the suit Billy stole from his father and hand-altered, the shining brooch and the gloves and little crown of flowers as dead as he is all from his mother, even more ironic. Makes his chest feel tight in a way that is definitely not just from the bleeding hole in his ribs.

And then the pretty boy slips the ring, presumably meant for his belle, whoever she is, onto Billy’s finger.

For Billy, that’s everything he ever wanted. He died trying to get that. Let his guard down and ended up moping in the dirt, half decayed and trapped in between his happiness and suffering.

He hasn’t even seen the boy's face, but his voice is lovely, airy and thick like honey. He sounds like he’s from around here, whereas Billy came from out of state, maybe from old money. It doesn’t really matter. It’s a nice break from the monotony of death to hear such sweet words from such an even sweeter voice.

Not that Billy’s naive enough (though perhaps he is heartbroken enough) to really think those passionate declarations were meant for him, but he’s not dumb enough to let the moment pass either. Not after his last beau stabbed him in lieu of such affections.

When the boy tries to take his ring back, Billy literally takes the opportunity by the wrist, bony fingers digging into warm, living flesh, and he doesn’t let go.

#a corpse bride au???? literally everything i’ve ever wanted!!!! #beautiful beautiful #hg fic #-let #harringrove

[harringrooves]

Don't think about underachiever, part time, dyslexic, minimum wage employee Steve being married to super achiever (let's say hot shot engineer or architect) Billy not knowing what his purpose outside of the relationship is.

And definitely don't think of Steve hyperfixating on a hobby that Billy FULLY supports.

Don't think about Billy actively listening to Steve explain his model aircrafts that he paints and uploads videos onto YouTube about his models. "Hi Guys, you would not guess what the hubby bought for me ! My new video camera so now I can do super close ups for you all, Billy wave to the viewers!" (His most viewed video comes in at 300, to which Billy takes him out for a celebratory dinner.) Or Billy helping Steve with the editing and spell checking his descriptions (" Baby, Didn't we agree to use more commas?" "Billy, my fans know that not using commas is a signature of mine.") Or Billy making his colleagues create YouTube accounts to subscribe to Steve incognito.

And definitely don't imagine Steve's parents coming to visit, in which a networking event is hosted at the house for Billy's important job and Steve's dad shits all over his sons hobby ("My son in law is a saint for putting up with Stephen. I couldn't get through five minutes of One of His YouTube Videos without laughing! He's always been slow, but we never thought he'd be this open about his issues!")

And don't fast forward to Billy overhearing, and shutting it down. But it being too late, and then coming home one day to find a red eyed Steve throwing away all of his creations.

🙃Am I projecting? Yes🙃 feel free to add to this, I don't know how to make it happy but I want to make it happy 😂

#prev tags YES blogger steve 🥺 #harringrove

[harringrooves]

Pride & Prejudice & Harringrove! ;) Heard this piano cover [x] of the Stranger Things theme that sounds like it came from the 2005 P&P soundtrack [x], & next thing you know this happened, haha! It was really only a matter of time… [x] [x]

#YES!!!! #hg fanart #harringrove

[harringrooves]

Sigh. I want Billy and Max dressing up as each other for Halloween. Max in a leather jacket and sunglasses. Billy wearing a striped shirt with slightly too-short shorts that make Steve go 👀

#we stay losing 😔 #st

[harringrooves]

Day 14. Shadow

When Billy comes back he brings a Shadow with him.

Not that thing that lines the scorching pavement behind you, but the shapeless form that peels itself away from your body with just a little bit of your soul.

It follows him everywhere. It whispers in his ear.

You took them. You killed them. You enjoyed it. You made yourself into it. It was easy for the monster, too easy. Neil saw it in you, all those years ago, that's why he did what he did. He was the real hero, protecting everyone else from you.

On his bravest days, Billy ignores it. On those days, he can smile and he can laugh, he can bat his eyes and flash his smile at the nurses at his physical therapist's office, he can skim his fingers down the bare skin of Steve's mole-spotted back, he can make himself big enough and loud enough to drown out the things he doesn't want to hear. It's an old trick, from even before all this possessed bullshit, but it works.

Mostly.

When he's feeling weaker, Billy whispers back. He tries to argue, uses logic and recycled arguments from Steve and Max and Mrs Byers (it's not your fault, you're just kid, you didn't know) and curls himself up in Steve's wardrobe, where he's boxed in safe and sound, cushioned by the heavy downing of winter coats and old jeans. He sits in the dark and he mumbles his rebuttals.

It's useless, though. Once it knows it's got his attention, the Shadow doesn't waste anytime. It digs it's tendrils into his skin like fishhooks made of frost bitten steel, and it latches on hard.

The Shadow always wins, always. It somehow knows the truth every time, no matter what Billy hisses back at it, and it delights in holding Billy's face up to it, forcing him to watch the blackened, grotesque knot of things he doesn't want to know as it grows and grows in his head like a tumour.

He has just enough left of himself on those days, though, to beat it down, shove the Shadow into one of Steve's many empty shoeboxes and lever himself out of the closet when he hears Steve banging around down in the kitchen ready to leave for work. He acts likes nothing's happened, but Steve can always tell and on those days he presses his chest to Billy's, arms in a purposefully loose circle around his shoulders, and rubs his cheek over the frizzy top of Billy's head.

The knot doesn't dissolve immediately, but it goes away eventually if he has enough good days in between his bad ones, enough time to rebuild the shaky frame he puts up around him, all shiny, big, bold colours with nothing inside to prop it up. And usually, he has enough time.

But there's some days where there's more Shadow than Billy, more dark and whispered truth than there is of his puffed up, airy bravado of a golden man reborn. It leaves him crashing in on himself, quietly and motionlessly, like an earthquake at the centre of the world.

Those days when Billy's at his weakest, laying as noiseless and unmoving as a corpse, it's Steve who whispers to him and drowns out the relentless gnawing voice of the Shadow. How brave Billy is, how strong, how beautiful, how gentle. He goes through endless lists of things he loves about Billy, never saying the things Billy expects him to. Steve doesn't talk about the mall, or high school. Instead, he talks about Billy dancing along to the Madonna records he swears he only tolerates for Steve, about Billy dropping by on the days Robin's not working to have lunch together because he knows eating alone reminds Steve of his years without his parents, about Billy climbing onto the roof to get a ball down for the neighbour's kid, about Billy teaching Max to throw a punch and line her lips so her gloss doesn't smudge over her chin, about Billy telling California stories of endless beach and lit up boardwalks to Mrs Byers as they sit and fold washing together on the couch.

It's an endless and ever-growing list, and there are bad bad days where Billy still hasn't so much as wriggled his toes even by the time the sun dips low on the horizon, and still Steve whispers until his voice is hoarse and cracking. And then, when he can't whisper anymore, Steve will crowd himself up against Billy's prone body and breathe slow and steady beside his ear, so that the only thing Billy can feel and hear and know is Steve alive and in love right beside him.

#harringrove #cherrylanechallenge #bit closer to being on theme?? #billy hargrove #harringrove fic #mack's fic