#Steve's Bi Panic has its own real estate in my head right now

[fizzigigsimmer]

Modern Au. Steve spends that summer watching Billy Hargrove. It starts when Billy gets a job at the pool, and Steve is worried about him giving the kids a hard time, Max and her friends especially. But to his surprise, Billy doesn't pay the party much mind and he seems to be a big hit with the younger kids. At first he thinks it's in order to flirt with their big sisters and the moms, but no. Billy's just good with them, and then Steve learns that Billy teaches their swim classes and it kind of blows his mind a little. He struggles to picture it but there's no mistaking Billy's name listed as Swim Instructor on the flyer on the bulletin board.

Billy makes a friend that summer. He and Heather are the type of besties that just amp each other up. When they're together they just keep getting progressively louder and sillier with their antics the longer they're in the same space, until they dissolve into full blown hysterics. He's talking wheezing snotty laughter. Kill me now for it hurts to breathe laughter.

Steve kind of gets it because he and Robin are like that and quickly becoming the best part of each other's lives. But he is wary of the whole Billy &Heather thing. A little enthralled too maybe, because Hargrove is so different with Heather than he is with anyone else. In the corners of that bright smile and veracious laughter he keeps looking for the guy who used to shove him around on the court and broke a plate over his head once. But he keeps finding new versions of Billy instead. Sitting in a booth at Scoops, grinning teeth and rosey lips licking up drippy vanilla ice cream in the aftermath of an assault with an ice cream cone that ends with him and Heather taking a selfie instead of violence.

It puzzles Steve. Irritates him for reasons he can't quite understand and that Robin is tired of hearing about. He's not upset that Billy found a friend - a real friend and not the popular crowd that had propped him up on the abdicated throne - it was just simpler, somehow, when Billy was an asshole who didn't make them. Steve didn't have to think about Billy's (or himself thinking about Billy) when Billy was just some jerk.

Steve spends so much time looking at Billy Hargrove, but it's not until the lifeguards at the Hawkins Community Pool upload a TikTok that he finally realizes why. It's captioned 'We're ready to back you up Adele!' And features Billy and Heather front and center, the unapologetic ring leaders of this circus act full of flapping arms and legs and wagging butts.

The thing is, Billy looks good. A smile in his eyes even as he pretends at seriousness, smooth movements juxtaposed against the goofy flailing of this peers, broad hands slapping thick thighs, the tip of his tongue resting in the corner of this mouth turning his grin just a little bit wicked as he and Heather turn and shake their assess for the camera to the delight of the others.

Steve's face goes hot at the way his dick twitches in interest. 'Oh' he thinks for the first time. He wouldn't have thought anything about it at all, watching Heather dance that way in her red bathing suit. But Steve's eyes aren't on her; they're where they've been all summer long. With Billy.

#harringrove #short fics #modern aus #tiktok #I saw a video of a pair of nurses doing this and just thought this is tottally what Billy and Heather would do #lol and they would eat that shit up no crumbs #Steve's Bi Panic has its own real estate in my head right now