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magniloquent-raven · 10 months

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I am once again plagued with thoughts that aren't 100% coherent so imma just ramble for a bit, pls gather 'round for some stuff about Billy and body image issues cuz I'm in my feels rn.

Billy spends a lot of time staring at Nancy.

Enough that Tommy's noticed and he starts ribbing him about it. "That's one thing of Steve's you might want to stay away from," bitter and pointed. Enough that Jonathan Byers gives him the stink eye whenever he's within glaring distance. Enough that a handful of the more desperate chicks still high off the fumes of his New Kid smell have started dressing like fucking librarians in hopes of catching his eye.

He doesn't give a shit about any of it, if anything the rumour mill is helping him out for once. Less work involved in keeping up appearances if everyone just assumes he isn't sleeping around because he's too busy sniffing Wheeler's granny panties.

As long as no one guesses the real reason, it's fine. It's fucking peachy. It's one silver lining in this shitstorm of a situation.

He's so tired of his eyes inevitably being drawn to her barely-there tits and tiny waist. Every time he's bored at lunch, his gaze wanders. When he's in the library pretending to study, there she fucking is, even smaller when she's hunched over a pile of cue cards.

The longer he looks at her the more sure he is that Steve will never really want him.

Steve's slept with plenty of girls. A variety of girls. He probably couldn't afford to be too picky in this shitty little town. But he's only fallen in love once. One time. The only time it mattered what he was sticking his dick in was when it was in Nancy Wheeler.

And Billy...will never be her. Not even close.

He'll only ever be a warm mouth and a convenient hand, he'll never matter.

She's flat, and thin. Willowy, narrow-shouldered. Petite. Inches shorter than him and nearly half as broad. Thin fingers and delicate wrists. She fit comfortably under Steve's arm, she could nestle safely into his side.

And it was all so fucking easy for her. She never had to try.

She never had to piss off her dad so she'd be forced to skip meals. She never did laps around her neighbourhood until she was lightheaded and doubled over, dry-heaving in someone's hedge. She was never forced to sign up for baseball as a child, poked and prodded and guilted into it because a couple shirts were starting to get tight across the stomach, and being a momma's boy was bad enough, being a fat, lazy piece of shit too was unacceptable.

He used to think he'd done well, maintaining the physique he has. He's worked hard for it. Scraping together his savings for a weight set and keeping careful track of his calorie intake and never skipping a single fucking day of exercise, hangovers and broken bones be damned. And it's fucking useful, truth be told. More than keeping away the echo of old insults bouncing around in his head, it's made flirting that much easier.

But the more he looks at Nancy Wheeler, the more he hates the things he can't change. It gets into his head. Digs in deep, leaving scars on its way down.

He thinks Steve might've noticed.

He knows Steve has heard the stupid rumours about Wheeler, and probably chalked it up to Billy being an asshole, as usual. But it's harder to explain away his sudden tendency to go extremely still whenever Steve puts his hands anywhere on his torso. A palm pressed to his chest, slipped under his shirt, or fingertips digging into his back, or a casual fucking pat on the shoulder—whatever it is, he can't help freezing up, if only for a second, a sick feeling twisting his stomach, cold and shameful and clawing at his lungs.

And then, eventually, they argue.

It's over nothing. And everything. Billy can't explain what his fucking damage is, and Steve can't stop needling in the wrong places. They scream at each other until their throats are raw and Billy leaves when his knuckles start to itch.

He cries all the way home and doesn't eat for four days. Not on purpose. Not consciously. He's just. Fucking. Busy. He's busy. He's always gotta drive Max somewhere or dodge Neil's thinly veiled threats or lock himself in his room when bile starts to bubble up in the back of his throat and his head pounds and he doesn't think about why he's snapping at everyone constantly, he just pounds back a couple beers and goes to sleep. And then it's four days later, and he's flying off the handle at Neil, too sluggish and lightheaded to see the hit coming, and...

Steve comes to see him at the hospital. He hasn't told anyone anything but they've got him hooked up to a banana bag and the nurses keep making sad eyes at him when they come to check his stitches.

He hates it, sitting around doing nothing, being closely monitored every fucking second, it make his skin crawl, and he hates it even more when Steve's standing in the doorway looking at him.

Not for the first time, he's overwhelmed wondering what exactly Steve sees.

He's a fucking mess right now. Greasy hair tangled at the back, bruises peeking out from under the collar of his gross papery hospital gown, one eye swollen shut and a dark tangle of thread holding his eyebrow together. It feels stupid to get stressed about all the shit that usually bothers him when there's so many other things to worry about, but he still finds himself shifting in place, hunching his shoulders, hiding his hands in the crooks of his elbows.

It's sort of a disaster. Worse than last time they saw each other. Billy's not in the mood for Steve's apologies and Steve's at a loss for what else to say.

They don't see each other again for months. Steve graduates. Billy avoids anywhere he thinks Steve might be, and lies awake at night haunted by stolen touches.

He catches a glimpse of Steve through the red haze of storm clouds and cold lightning, tears blurring his vision, the Mind Flayer wearing him like a suit. Their cars collide, and everything whites out for a second.

He's in the hospital again when they finally talk. Billy rolls his eyes at "We've gotta stop meeting like this," and tries not to think about last time he was here. Steve seems more than willing to ignore it. Move forward. Guess demonic possession puts some things into a different perspective.

When Billy's released from the hospital he's seventeen pounds heavier than he was a few months ago. Every time the nurses did their check-ups and put him on the scale they'd pat his elbow, smiling encouragingly, telling him how good he was doing while he watched his stomach get softer, his biceps get less defined, watched himself disappear beneath a layer of fat.

The first thing he does when he gets home is throw up.

He doesn't make it happen. It just happens. And he blames it on the meds they have him on. It's a plausible enough reason, and it means he doesn't have to interrogate the tiny spark of satisfaction he got from losing his lunch.

His second day back home Neil asks him when he's going to start exercising again. His expression is pinched. Cold. His eyes are ice chips freezing Billy's skin wherever they touch, lingering on the softness under his chin, and where the hem of his sleeve pinches his skin.

He pushes his dinner away and grits out an answer from between clenched teeth.

He doesn't need the reminder that he's gotten weak while he was trapped in a hospital bed, but Neil gives it to him anyways. Tells him all about everything he should do to get things back to normal. Push past the pain. Work harder. He tunes it out after a while, and watches grease congeal on his meatloaf.

Eddie Munson is the first person to bring up the things Billy's never known how to talk about.

They started hanging out after Billy's most recent brush with death. Billy's not sure exactly how the got here, from buying the occasional painkiller and letting the guy wax poetic about his dumb band, to spending weekends getting high together at the trailer park. But as weird things in his life go, it's barely worth questioning.

This particular conversation starts with Chrissy Cunningham.

Specifically, Eddie's massive boner for her.

Billy's been noticing it for a while. He hasn't been letting it bother him.

He hasn't.

Maybe he likes the way Eddie smiles at him when they pass a joint back and forth, lazily stretched out and wearing three less layers than usual, and maybe he thinks about closing the distance between them when Eddie offers to shotgun, but it doesn't fucking matter. Just like it doesn't matter that Steve hasn't touched him since before the Mind Flayer and things are fucking weird now that they're on speaking terms again. None of it matters, he's just a fucking idiot.

Because Steve and his new best friend Robin are attached at the hip lately and everyone can see where that's going, and Eddie won't stop talking about tiny, pretty, perfect fucking Chrissy and her stupid ponytail.

And Billy...Billy gets winded walking up the porch steps at his house now. And he pulled a muscle in his back trying to lift half the weight he used to press. And last week he burned three pairs of jeans in the backyard because he kept grabbing them out of his laundry pile, not realizing they don't fit anymore until he was struggling to pull them up past his knees.

He's lost the one thing people used to actually like about him. Never the people he wanted, he was never enough for that, but it was something. Now he's just...

Now he's just listening to a guy he likes talk about some goddamn cheerleader like she personally hung the moon just for him.

And he's drunk. They're both drunk. Eddie in a soppy, embarrassing way, with a sparkle in his eye and a flush on his cheeks, an arm across the back of the couch, outstretched far enough that the tips of his fingers almost brush Billy's shoulder.

He wants to move closer. Thinks about shuffling into Eddie's space, curling into the warmth at his side. But it twists in his guts, sours, sickens—he couldn't, he can't. And he hates himself for wanting to.

"What do you see in her?" spills out of his mouth, bitter on his tongue and sharpened by anger he has no right to feel.

She's pretty. He expects it. She's pretty, she's perfect. She's a fucking angel even though her and Eddie only know each other because she buys drugs off of him. But she can do no wrong because she looks like a little china doll with sad eyes and everyone would be devastated if a single hair on her tiny delicate head was harmed.

Eddie only looks thrown off for a second. A moment. But he shrugs it off, leans his head back against the couch cushions and grins at the ceiling. "She likes my music."

Since fucking when.

"So, what, it's just an ego stroking thing then."

"Nah, man. I mean. Like. She's got this whole good-girl thing going on, but you should see her when I pull out my guitar, it's fuckin'...magic. When she lets herself just. Live." He wiggles his fingers in the air, arms spread, then drops them back down.

Billy's heart clenches, squeezes. It hurts and he doesn't know why. "Bullshit."

"Nah, nah. Seriously. The guy she's dating is a fucking asshole. And her mom..." he trails off, and rubs his eye. "She's just got all this pressure to be perfect, act a certain way, look a certain way, be a certain way, and I hate seeing what it does to her, man. I hate it. No one should have to deal with all that. So. I dunno. I like helping her cut loose. Sorta, find herself, I guess." He cracks a crooked smile, casting a glance in Billy's direction.

And his smile drops.

"Billy?" He sits up, cautious, eyebrows up and his eyes wide.

Billy turns away, shocked into motion, wiping at his face with his sleeve. "I'm fine. Fuck off."

He didn't notice he was crying until Eddie looked at him like he'd seen a ghost.

"Yeah, obviously."

"Fuck you."

Eddie doesn't get much more out of him that night. But he starts watching Billy like a hawk after that. Checking in on him at random. Calling if they haven't seen each other in a few days. It should be irritating as fuck, and he acts like it is, but he still basks in the attention.

Doesn't hurt that it seems to annoy Steve to no end.

Especially doesn't hurt when, in a fit of apparent jealousy, Steve shoves Billy into a wall and kisses him like his life depends on it.

The hurt comes when Steve starts to unbutton Billy's shirt and Billy reflexively shoves him away, when he wants to keep going but wants it to stop and can't tell Steve either of those things because he doesn't have the words.

So he gets angry. At Steve, for pushing it, crossing lines he can't even see. But mostly at himself, because it might be easier than standing there heartbroken but he knows it's the worst thing he could do.

And at Steve, again, when the he doesn't respond the way he should. Doesn't punish Billy for doing the wrong thing, reacting wrong, being wrong. He doesn't withdraw and save himself, he tries to understand, tries to talk it out, like this is something Billy can just say out loud and it'll all be fixed.

He doesn't explain. Not that day. But he lets Steve hold him while he cries, ugly gasping sobs into the front of Steve's shirt, curled up in his lap, collapsed on the floor and tangled together. Because despite everything he's told himself, he does fit comfortably in Steve's arms.

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#stranger things #billy hargrove #harringrove #mungrove #a raven's writing desk #tw disordered eating #tw body issues #body image issues

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