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Sun flickers through the gaps in the curtains, casting the room in an early-morning glow.
In the haze of not yet wakefulness, all Billy feels is warmth. Warmth from the sun shining through the window, warmth at his back, warmth from the arm slung around his bare torso save for a St. Christopher pendant, and warmth from a face buried into the crook of his neck.
“Mm, mornin’ baby,” comes a voice from behind him, words wrapped around a quiet yawn. Billy blinks his eyes open to find himself in a really fucking comfy bed, facing plaid wallpaper that can only belong to his favourite rich bitch.
Lips press to his shoulder, and two hands drift across his body, once across his chest and the other down his hip, soft and sweet and it maybe definitely makes Billy’s lips twitch upwards into something resembling a smile.
He rolls over to meet doe eyes dark as chocolate and a hand coming up to brush a loose curl out of his face. “Were you ogling me?”
Steve laughs without shame, his lips, kissable— so kissable, curling into an infectious smile, his hand resting in Billy’s nape, long fingers splayed wide, “are you kidding? Absolutely.”
Billy just grunts in response, “shut up, Harrington,” even though Steve hasn’t been Harrington in a while now, feeling his cheeks warm under the affection and isn’t quite sure where to put everything he’s feeling and doesn’t want to name. Because naming it means it’s real, and it will only hurt so much more when whatever he and Steve have inevitably meets its end.
“You love it,” Steve continues, and because Billy is selfish and greedy and can’t quit while he’s ahead, he drinks the words from Steve’s mouth and it tastes like heaven.
They’re pressed completely against each other, and despite it being the height of the stifling Indiana summer, neither of them seem to be able part even an inch of skin. Billy knows he would rather overheat tangled up in Steve’s long ass limbs than be separate and cooler.
Steve, never usually one to be up before Billy, and much more accustomed to the humidity of Indiana at this time of year, is content to shut his eyes again and bask in the early morning glow, humming like some sort of content cat.
Billy, on the other hand, can’t seem to close his eyes, as though he might blink and everything will turn to dust and fall apart and he will be unable to do anything but watch as the one thing he loves most in this world disappears.
And that’s the truth of it, isn’t it?
Love.
Even if he refuses to acknowledge it, the truth of the matter is that Billy Hargrove loves Steve Harrington more than he’s ever loved anything. Loves his ridiculous hair, his mole covered skin, and wicked sense of humour. His soft hands and even softer lips and Billy wants to bury himself inside of his skin and make a permanent home there.
But, what is love, really?
Love is— love is—
Love, to six year old Billy is his mama’s smiles, warm and full. Love is her hand in unruly blond ringlets, my little lion with the best mane. you’re so brave. Love is holding her hand as they walk down the beach, sand between their toes, waves lapping in the breeze. Just the two of them. Only ever just the two of them. That’s where his mama is happiest so Billy loves it the most.
Love, when Billy is still a summer child deserving of warmth, is sitting on the counter while his mama cooks for them, singing along to Fleetwood Mac, or Blondie, or ABBA. The music doesn’t matter when his mama sings them all beautifully. Love is the way her enchiladas sit in his tummy after devouring as much as she’ll let him have. Can I have some more, mama? please, pretty please. I’ll do all my chores, mama! to be met with his favourite laugh of hers, a quiet giggle that shines all over her face; hmm, well I suppose my big, strong lion needs fuel, doesn’t he?
Ah— ah, Mama! Don’t tickle me!
Love, to ten year old Billy is his dad staying when everyone else leaves. When she leaves. Packs up and goes, despite the sobbing child clinging to her leg like a barnacle, only placated with a promise of coming back to him.
On the phone (because he hasn’t seen her in person in ages) when he’s home alone (because his dad always listens in whenever his mama calls) she makes him promise that he’ll always be her brave lion. Okay, Mama. Will you come back now? Please? only to be cut off with an urgent promise me, Billy, promise me you’ll be brave, and you’ll be strong. For me, and for yourself. I love you, baby. Never forget that.
So, he promises, and she promises he’ll see her again. Turns out lying is a trait he acquired from her, because Billy never sees her again and he definitely isn’t a lion with a great mane and a ferocious roar. He never has been. Lions are brave. Kings of the jungle. They don’t run and hide in their bedrooms when their mama tells them to because their dad is drunk and spitting again.
They definitely don’t hide under the covers, curled up, hands over their ears, wet tears staining the pillow case like a scaredy-cat, because getting involved leads to hand-shaped bruises on his arms and mama shouting at dad to leave him out of this, Neil! and Billy, Billy, baby, go to your room. His seven year old hands wailing into his dad’s chest, stop it, Daddy! You’re hurting her! He learned it was easier to hide in his bed, shielded by his animal covered duvet, and do nothing but wait until screaming gave way to heavy thuds of his dad’s work boots retreating to his bedroom and his mama’s quiet sniffles from where she remained in the kitchen-living room.
Even when she’s gone, Billy doesn’t do anything when his dad gets drunk and mad and starts cursing her name for leaving him, but especially for leaving him with such a terror of a son. He just cries in his room. Silently — his dad doesn’t like to hear him at all, but most of all when he sobs like a crybaby.
It hurts to think about her, and his dad tells him not to, because he loves him, because it hurts him, too. He reprimands Billy for crying over her, when she doesn’t deserve it— never cared for ya, Billy, not like I do.
His mama never picks up the phone again, the line going dead before it even rings through, and his dad doesn’t like seeing him at the phone, crying tears onto the landline like his mama will magically pick up— pick him up like she promised. Come back, or take him with her he doesn’t care he just wants his mama bac— love is his dads determination to make a man of him, even when billy is too much, too needy, too emotional, too much like his mother in every which way. To nip that sissy behaviour right in the bud, son. you aren’t a faggot, are you? and your mother was far too soft on you, wasn’t she? that’s alright, billy boy, you’re still young, there’s time to fix that right up.
His dad loves him maybe more than his mama did, because I wouldn’t leave you, boy. not my son. not like that bitch did.
Love is his dad letting him quit baseball because he was fucking useless with a bat, huh, William? and instead join the middle school basketball team when he starts the 6th grade.
And Billy loves playing basketball. Comes alive on the pitch, the ball an extension of his limbs as he drives forward to make basket after basket. An unstoppable force who quickly becomes a star player, despite being scrawny and one of the smallest on the team. And the team love him. They lift him up when he scores the winning basket at the inter-school championships, Billy! Billy! Billy!, and clap him on the back and congratulate him and his dad looks proud from where he sits on the bleachers after taking time off work to watch Billy play the best he’s ever played.
He even gets ice-cream on the way home, and it tastes so good he no longer feels the fading bruises from the last time he broke the ever-changing rules.
Sixth grade becomes Seventh, Billy turns twelve, and wants to become the biggest and strongest and scariest to be better at basketball, better at standing up to the other kids at school who tease him for his mom leaving, better at pleasing his dad, making him proud. The latter is something he is scarce to achieve, and it never lasts long, but if Billy is one thing he is stubborn, and if he gets knocked down (and he does) he never stays down for long.
His brand new step-sister that came package deal with the new woman his dad married has no such troubles. Apparently, she is an angel who can do no wrong, but Billy thinks otherwise. He turns fourteen, and has to share a room with said girl with hair like a bonfire who he barely knows but is supposed to love like family. Billy barely knows what that word means, either.
His dad loves her, different than how he loves Billy. But she isn’t built wrong like how Billy is, so his dad doesn’t have to fix her too.
His wants him to call this new woman mom, but Billy refuses. She’s not his mom, she never will be. She’s just the woman who is now Mrs. Hargrove but not the real Mrs. Hargrove, who ignores the bruises on her husband’s son and the way he cowers beneath his father’s steel stare. She’s just like all the other women who’ve been around since his mom left, only they never stayed for long, and definitely not long enough to wind up with a ring, so on principle Billy wants nothing to do with her. At least he’s no longer responsible for keeping himself fed whenever his dad is too busy or too drunk to do it.
He doesn’t think his new fake-mom loves him, and he definitely doesn’t love her. She loves his dad, and she loves her daughter, but Billy is a troubled child that can’t keep on the right side of his father’s temper for the life of him and deserves the discipline he receives because without it he’d be worse.
His step-sister— it’s Max, not Maxine, Mom— and he share a room in the small, shabby house they move into. It’s further away from the beach he used to frequent as a kid, but their old one-story was too small for four people. She’s loud, and annoying, and snores in her sleep even though she vehemently denies it, but Billy finds that he likes feeling less alone.
Love, then, is his dad making sure Billy doesn’t turn out soft and sissy and instead learns respect and responsibility, son. So, even though at first he doesn’t mind taking her to the arcade to waste away hours playing Dig Dug, becoming his sisters keeper for getting too big for his boots is something he begins to resent. If she steps out of line (like running away to find her goddamn dad) Billy is the one who gets punished for it, for not being responsible. Is punched and kicked and beaten down for daring to not be constantly monitoring exactly where is she is, for not acting like a good older brother and for teaching her this treacherous behaviour. Because it could only possibly come from Billy, and not the darling little princess herself.
Love is his dad uprooting his entire life, Billy’s entire life to move halfway across the country in a last ditch effort to save his son from his own mistakes, his faggot behaviour, once he gets out of the hospital, of course.
Love is beaches and boardwalks in the sun and seven-foot waves becoming dark forests and leaf covered roads and locks on the wrong side of doors.
It doesn’t feel like love, but it is, because what else could it be? It’s his dad sacrificing everything to make Billy into a real man, a real man who likes girls and isn’t caught with a hand down another boys swim trunks in the secluded area beneath the pier.
(He knows it was that smug redheaded snitch of a step-sister than ran right to his daddy, Billy left me to go be with a boy— revenge for whatever he did to her that week. Like Billy isn’t always in trouble for something or other).
Love is his dad scaring away the boy, Daniel who always preferred Danny but preferred it most when whispered against his lips, before dragging Billy home by the nape of his neck. Love is his dad beating the faggot out of him but ultimately failing, because Billy will always be his greatest failure. But he never gives up, he never gives up on Billy. He’s the only one who stuck around long enough to see Billy for what he really is (a mangy mutt that really ought to be put down, for it’s sake and those around it) and not run for the hills.
Sixteen year old Billy thought love was what he felt towards Danny, that warmth in his chest whenever he felt the piercing green gaze of the other boy, the electric buzz in his veins when they touched, be it as simple as their fingers brushing while they ate fries, or their knees knocking together when they sat at the edge of the pier, sat on top of the world.
But sixteen year old Billy knew nothing.
Seventeen year old Billy, the starved dog who now has his own room (but it comes with a lock on the outside and window nailed partially shut to allow in a permanent, breeze of winter Indiana air, too cold to be anything but uncomfortable, and no means of escape) knows that two men cannot love each other, and that those that think they do are diseased. Wrong. Filth who need to be corrected.
Seventeen year old Billy keeps the Playboys underneath his mattress, where he knows his dad likes to search, see, dad, I’m normal, you fixed me, and the much more worn, dog-eared pages of Playgirls hidden beneath a floorboard. Because he should know better than to keep them at all, but he has always been built wrong. I try so hard for you, William. Why’d the Lord curse me with a fuckup, huh?
Love is getting the house to himself on Sunday mornings when the three respectable members of the family go to Church (or maybe it’s the entire family— Billy isn’t in any of the pictures decorating the mantle), because he would burst into flames stepping on holy ground, or something.
Love, on his dad’s good days (there are fewer and fewer as the years pass) now means telling Billy to grab two beers instead of one from the fridge, and letting him sit on the couch next to his armchair. He feels bulletproof, sat on that couch, watching old westerns, or baseball or even the news, with one of his dad’s beers in hand. His dad asks him about his life, about school, basketball, friends, girls, and Billy tells him, because his dad cares and he calls him Billy, instead of the usual William and those nights are the best nights.
But Billy is not bulletproof, and his dad always keeps his gun loaded, no matter his mood. The good days give way to bad days, which leave Billy denied a seat at the dinner table, or sometimes told to leave entirely and to not reappear until the next morning to drive Max to school.
Love, on his dad’s bad days ends with Billy curled atop his mattress, tear stains on his pillow (because he always has and he always will be a crybaby), too sore to do anything but wallow in his own misery.
He has known for a long time that his dad doesn’t like him, but he doesn’t know exactly when it started. Whether he looked at the newborn crying in it’s mother’s arms and just knew he would grow up into a degenerate, or whether his mislike grew when his child grew into the exact copy of his mother in all areas aside from the nasty temper and steely blue eyes that could only be explained with Hargrove DNA. The best of his mother and the worst of his father.
It wasn’t until Billy learned what love truly was, and experienced it firsthand to understand that his dad never loved him, but instead loved the control of it all, loved how he could hurt his son, so easily, so effortlessly. Neil claimed that hurting Billy hurt him too, hurt him more, but that it was necessary to mold Billy into the future man of the house. Now, Billy knows its complete and utter horseshit.
This love came unexpectedly with reluctantly shared cigarettes by the school bleachers with a guy who Billy beat half to death a month or so prior on their shared lunch break when neither of them wanted to face the cafeteria.
It came when Billy was dodging and weaving through a crowd of girls asking to be his New Years Kiss, far too sober for his own liking, where he came across former King-of-the-Castle Harrington moping out in the front yard, red solo cup in hand.
What’s got your panties in a twist huh, Harrington? It’s goddamn 1985!
Not quite yet, Hargrove. What are you doing out here? Don’t have long left to find a girl to kiss.
What about you? I don’t see any girls.
That’s not my sorta thing.
Not what I heard, King Steve.
You’re literally the only one who calls me that.
C’mon, pretty boy, let’s find ya another drink.
It came when he spent the first few minutes of 1985 outside of the house— Tina or Tracy’s, he can’t remember— sat next to Harrington, drinking some disgustingly strong punch in comfortable silence.
It came through apologies uttered through gritted teeth, cigarette smoke curling around the words, though no less meaningful. Through said apologies being accepted with an offer to not talk about that night in November 1894, but to instead shoot some hoops.
It came through more shared cigarettes outside the arcade when their respective children were playing inside, tentative silence replaced with conversation about school, or the movies, or the book Harrington saw in his car (one that lives there because Billy could never take it back to Cherry) and, in a teasing tone I didn’t know you could read and what’s it about?much more genuine.
It came one night when Billy was banished from the house on Cherry Lane without his car on a cold February evening. His usual plan to sleep at the Quarry squandered by his lack of wheels, so instead he takes to wandering the streets with only his peeling leather jacket to keep him warm. It came when a cherry red BMW— the foreign made car only possibly belonging to one Steve Harrington— pulling up beside him and demanding he get in; you’re gonna freeze to death out here Hargrove. You can’t be out here, it’s not safe; to be met with I’m the most dangerous thing on these streets, Harrington uttered through chattering teeth.
It came when, instead of questioning why Billy couldn’t go home, he drives back to Loch Nora and lets Billy crash in one of the guest rooms; they never get used anyway. And so, Billy doesn’t question why Harrington doesn’t turn the lights off and keeps a nail-studded bat in his footwell.
It came when every time Billy couldn’t go to the cage on Cherry Lane for the night since, he would go to the unusually quiet McMansion in Loch Nora. He would knock bruised and bloodied, embarrassed and scared, and Harrington would let him in every time. Sometimes they would order a pizza to share (he never questioned why Billy would hoard his slices) and watch a movie, sometimes he would sit Billy down in the bathroom with his oversized first aid kit, and wipe Billy’s cuts without any real complaint.
It came when tentative friendship gradually shifted into something more. Something unnamed but undeniably real, simmering beneath the surface, unaddressed despite being unignorable. When Harrington became Steve and sleeping in the guest room became sharing Steve’s bed because they both have nightmares and it’s easier that way.
It came when Billy slept through the night for the first time in a long time, and woke up pressed against Steve’s chest in the early hours of the morning (they’d fallen asleep on opposite sides of the queen sized bed), still fast asleep, chest rising and falling softly. It came when Billy knew he really ought to untangle himself from the other boy, but ultimately decides to ignore the voice in his head calling him a dirty faggot because it sounds exactly like his dad, and remains in place until he feels Steve stir (he is still the same scardey-cat that won’t let Steve see him like this).
It came when Steve insisted and insisted that Billy read to him because the letters jump around on the page, Billy, please?until Billy caved because he can never deny those Bambi eyes and wandering hands. It came when Steve lay against Billy’s chest like he trusts him not to hurt him and listened when Billy read The Picture of Dorian Gray aloud, and asked questions like he cares about Billy’s taste in books.
It came when Steve knew Billy would try to push him away (for his own sake; everything Billy touches turns to ash) and never gave him the chance; wrapped him up in loving arms and held on tight like some sort of overgrown monkey.
It came through cigarettes and basketball and New Years Eve parties and queer literature and babysitting and drinking at the quarry and listening to metal and hard rock tapes from the overflowing box in the footwell in the backseat of the Camaro and cooking in Steve’s kitchen in his no longer empty house and tending to wounds and sharing clothes and sleeping in the same bed most night’s a week.
It came when Billy became a brave lion (not for his mother, but for himself and for Steve) to muster up the courage and finally make a move. When, on the bathroom floor with Steve fussing over a cut on his temple lips drawn into that ever-kissable pout, Billy kissed him. And Steve kissed him back. Seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and years of lips on lips passed until they pulled apart, still on the cold tile, but Billy burned under Steve’s touch, Steve’s stare, Steve.
Love is something that bloomed between the two teenage boys over the course of several months. And now, in the height of summer, when Billy is eighteen years old, he finally understands it is to love, and to be loved.
And true love, to forty eight year old Billy Harrington, is finally, finally saying ‘I do’ to the boy turned man (that he has been married to since they were nineteen, exchanging rings on a beach in California) who showed him what it truly means to be loved wholly, unequivocally, unconditionally, with his sister (hair still like a bonfire, not blood but real nonetheless) cheering from the front row.