It's been almost a year since Starcourt.
Steve is actually functioning. Doing well, all things considered. Working and stuff. Eating, drinking. Sleeping, on and off.
Not a day passes without him remembering the guy they never shared anything with.
Except this
And this
And that
And .. so much more.
Weird, they shared nothing but moments, and still it was so much.
He made Steve question.
He made him taste this delicious, tantalizing want - what if - making Steve enter the turbulence zone.
And never really getting out of it.
What if.
And then. Hargrove just fucking.. died. Sacrificed himself. Died in an explosion of colours. Such a beautiful sight, such a violent end. Leaving Steve to deal with turbulence and craving, alone.
Leaving a big question mark what could've been swelling in Steve's chest, not letting him be.
Yeah, Steve's okay. He's fine. He's functioning.
***
Until one day he turns on his fancy TV in his fancy living room and sees this
BREAKING NEWS: BILLY HARGROVE, THE STARCOURT HERO, IS ALIVE
Steve can't really hear or understand anything. In the background the phone rings and rings and keeps on ringing. It's Dustin, probably.
Steve can't move. He's staring at the screen, his attention somehow focusing on one single thing. Billy's eyebrow.
The motherfucker comes back from the dead with bleached hair and a slit eyebrow and thinks .. he thinks he can..
Steve spent almost a whole year losing his sleep over the dead guy. The sweet and impossible what could've been.
Whatever Hargrove's thinking standing there looking like that after a year or being fucking dead, Steve has a couple of things to say to him.
Or
To whisper in his ear, looking at that slit eyebrow. Taking it in.
So close. What if has never felt more real.
145 notes
·
View notes
Like, in the tattered, white-hot center of himself, he knows it’s like trying to patch a boat once it collides with the side of a mountain when Billy holds on with everything he has.
And even if Billy’s doing it to save the boats life, the boat is uncaring of the crash and the damage and will hate him, once all is said and done.
Billy knows it. Has watched it happen, because. Neil tried, with his mom, and that wasn’t exactly a fairy-tale ending, but. Look.
He falls in love for the first time, for real, with Steve Harrington and that’s it.
He’s done. Packed up, ready to clean himself of grime and shave his nature down into something soft and pliant. Rounded corners and smooth edges that won’t destroy the velvet lined box of what Steve needs him to be because Billy’s sick with it.
With love. Happiness and good feelings and content, purer than anything he’s ever washed his hands of, and.
Look. The minute Billy spots clouds on the horizon, sees the glimmer of lights from a rival civilization called Munson, he thinks it might fall apart. Crumble to dust in his hands and Billy doesn’t know what to do.
Because Steve’s a queer made of yellow daisies and picnic baskets tucked full of good intentions. He shares all the gentle, kind parts himself with whoever needs a home, and it attracts wanderers. Losers. Stray dogs.
They start feeding Eddie Munson, because he’s lost and hungry and Steve’s an emotional all night buffet and Billy’s sick with fucking.
Jealousy.
Steve swears up and down that he’s got it all wrong. Munson's in love with Billy and Steve’s just collateral, but. It doesn’t feel that way. Feels like rapture. Like the last swell of music at the end of an opera. Like the end.
So they’re a packaged deal at first.
Billy hates it, then starts to hate it less when Munson approaches him first and asks Billy to be his.
Steel toes in the dirt, fiddling with that curly brown mop hat hides his cherub cheeks, “Will you be mine?” Eddie says, and Billy thinks of love songs. Elvis Presly and warnings of charming Devils in Disguise. Blue Hawaii, passion soaked afternoons.
It’s mixed signals, running down his spine like cold water.
Billy doesn’t know how he could ever be anyone’s but Steve’s. Harrington’s got that hold on him. Billy swears up and that Munson sees it, too, but.
Billy’s not a fool.
He recognizes the way Steve looks at Eddie. Feels like his sister, watching how Max used to, always going a little cherry-cheeked when she hung around Steve and Billy for too long, swearing he’s in love with you, dumbass.
It hurts, just a little. Like a bee sting. Like the way Neil’s never soaring at Everest with pride for him.
The way Steve looks at Munson even as he holds Billy’s hand, rubbing soft circles into the scar over his palm, cuts Billy open.
And he knows it’s not something Steve’s doing to hurt him. Steve would never and could never, and there isn’t a thing on God’s green Earth Billy wouldn’t do for Steve, so.
He’s theirs. Both.
And Billy’s not confident he’ll ever relax into it, never convincing or fooling anyone who looks close enough, but he’d by lying if the smile that eclipses Munson’s face didn’t light him up like Times Square.
170 notes
·
View notes
i mean the physiques, the hair, the fashion, the piercings, even the religious iconography are all too similar for it to be a coincidence
I mean... 🤭
@intothedysphoria found another truther bestie
25 notes
·
View notes