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Billy wakes up. Sometimes he doesn’t, sometimes he stays in that space of dreams where he looks down and all he can see are vines, and trunks, and flowers that are open rows of teeth trying to tear bits of him away while he stands in front of a group of kids he doesn’t even really like to keep them safe while another boy stands against his back and cries cries cries for him to stop. Those are the days where he wishes his dad was still around because no one asks about the bags under his eyes when he’s got a bruised throat, or a black eye. He’s gone though. Gone like most of the town, drank bleach on the orders of some asshole kid that didn’t know better than to get possessed. These are the times that Billy wakes up and feels so young, younger than he felt before was pulled into that barn.
No one tells him why he didn’t die, covered in holes across his body the size of his fist; men in suits that come and take him to a private hospital with no windows or doors and mostly no visitors. He’s put in a coma for two weeks to heal and he wakes up Max is there. She stands in the doorway with another girl that he barely remembers and just looks at him. He thinks about his mother; thinks about the dishes being thrown right before she left but mostly he thinks about how sad she was the last time she looked at him. Max has the same look. He knows what Max sees, what everyone sees. He’s so angry and has no idea what to do with it or where to put it besides in his fists against someone else’s face. Eventually she comes and sits next to him and they talk about things they should have said years ago. She tells him both their parents are dead; victims of circumstances they couldn’t control. Billy looks at her and tries to find blame but only sees sadness.
His other visitor is Hopper. That’s an awkward conversation of long pauses and meaningful looks. He ends up agreeing to move in with him and his daughter and Max. He doesn’t know what else to do, he’s a 17 year old high schooler that’s been orphaned and his mom can’t be found. He thinks he should cry at the news but his eyes stay dry until he dreams that night of ripping open Max’s chest so he could get to the pulsing heart she had hidden behind her ribs, his hands stained red and the taste of copper in his throat. He wakes up crying and vomiting over the side of the bed. He doesn’t sleep again for two days and the nurses finally drug him and he doesn’t dream of anything.
He spends two months in the hospital and walks out with a barely noticeable limp, scars all down his arms and legs, and a buzz cut. He moves into a new room in a new house with a new family and has to get used to the fact that the kids he had terrorized the most now spend every afternoon and weekend in the living room while he sits in his room and thinks about all the reasons they should hate him. It’s the quiet kid that finally makes the first move to talk to him. Two months of listening whispers about him while he pretends not to notice before the boy, Will he finally learns, looks at him with the same eyes he sees late at night while he tries to keep himself awake. He doesn’t know what, exactly, he had done to get their forgiveness but he’s secretly glad. He never really wanted to hurt them before. He mostly wanted Max to stay away from them before his dad found out that her friend group was all boys. He used to dream of his dad’s fists across his face when he found out and while they’ve been eclipsed by things more terrifying he can still remember the look his dad would get when they would cross paths with Lucas and his family in town.
Slowly he warms up to the kids and slowly they warm up to him. He had thought that maybe that would be it. He’d finish school and find some dead end job and wait for Max to be ready to grow up and grow out then one day he would die and maybe she would miss him but maybe she wouldn’t. He was trying to get to a place where he would deserve the love she started giving him after all the terrible things he did. He might have been possessed but he stil made her mom drink the bleach that was the cause of her death. He might not have liked Susan but she didn’t deserve that. No one did really.
The thing he didn’t count on in the mess of moving in with Hopper and slowly making amends with the kids was Steve Harrington. Harrington, who shows up one day to drop off the group of boys and when Billy answers the door he gets a punch in the face for it. He hears the kids yelling in the background but Steve is the first person that looks at him with anything other than pity; a fire in his eyes that Billy grins at when he looks up at the other boy. Blood trickling down his chin from a small cut on his lip. Steve pushes past him into the house and the kids follow him, Max and Dustin screaming at the other boy who just shrugs. He looks Billy up and down then points to a small scar on his hair line from their first fight. Billy knows he deserves this. Billy knows he deserves so much more.
The thing is, after the punch it’s like they had never had a fight. Like Billy never tried to hurt him at all. Steve starts to come over on some of the weekends with the kids, he says he’s their ride but Billy thinks it’s an excuse. Eventually he comes over every weekend with or without the kids. He settles into a pattern. Billy’s nightmares fade from every night to every few to once a month and then to just every so often. He goes back to high school where half his class is dead and the other half act like nothing happens.
He goes to therapy, with Max and without. He goes to anger management and eventually he feels like a whole person again. He graduates from high school and out in the crowd he can hear the whoops and hollers of Steve and Max and Jane. His friendship with Steve goes from being tossed together on the weekends to calling Steve late at night when he has a nightmare. Then he calls him just because. Or Steve calls him late at night when his house echoes with memories he can’t forget.
Billy falls in love with Steve so gradually, it’s like a slow meandering walk down the beach he still loves and longs for. One day he wakes up and looks at Steve; Steve with his bright eyes and easy smiles and he realizes that he never wants to miss him. Billy spends months and years asking for forgiveness for things he keeps being told he’s not responsible for and one day he thinks he’ll feel like he deserves the easy smiles Steve graces him with.
After graduation Billy fades into an easy summer and is the happiest he can remember being since his mom left him behind. He wonders how to tell Steve he loves him. He wonders how to make it so Steve will never leave him while he watches the news and sees nothing but hatred for guys like him and he wonders how Steve would react if he knew. He wonders and wonders and wonders and then one night he gets drunk sitting beside Steve at his pool and he gets caught watching the water as it rolls down his throat.
It’s quick eye contact and then quicker touches and Billy leaves marks down Steve’s throat with his mouth. He leaves bruises on his hips with his hands and they wake up the next morning tangled together in Steve’s bed and Billy laughs at Steve’s hair and they make out in the shower they take together.
Billy gets a job with Steve at Scops Ahoy while he waits for his classes to start in the fall. He goes to a two year community college for nursing and bullies Steve into just taking some general courses with him. He graduates from college and gets a job at the local hospital. He goes from spending the night at Steve’s empty house to a full apartment in town that he shares with Steve and when he wakes up from the few nightmares he still has he gets pulled into a hug from the boy he never thought he’d be with or love. He spent so much of his teenage years thinking he was less than and then trying to fix all the things he felt like he ruined that when he wakes up to Steve’s bright smile he thinks maybe he’s dreaming and the nightmares are his reality. It doesn’t stop him though. He rolls himself into Steve and waits until he feels real again.
(end)