Chapter Text
They never came home early.
There were three thoughts, often repeating.
There were three thoughts that crammed themselves into small motel bathrooms with him, that pressed up against his back and wrapped strong arms around his waist, that kissed at his neck and nibbled on his earlobe until it bled. There were three thoughts that slotted into the space where his neck met his shoulder and sighed deeply, that breathed out, mine.
That breathed out, baby.
That breathed out tired and annoyed, do we have to go over this a-fucking-gain?
There were three thoughts like a short fuse.
Three thoughts that spun him around on his socked feet and backed him up against the hard edge of the blue tilted sink. Three thoughts that hissed through sharp teeth and a dangerous downward tilt of the mouth, breath damp against his lips, gulping down his strangled gasp like air.
There were three thoughts that came to him constantly, that ate at him so often that they consumed him with sharp claws and too many teeth, and multicolored motel walls that breathed. They dug out a space inside of him and infected him with their roots so nothing else grew there. There were three thoughts, often repeating, and they fucking screamed.
They shattered against his eardrums. They broke his teeth with reverberation. They blackened up his eye, scratched shallow cuts into his wrists, left a trail of bruised kisses around his neck. They burnt to the touch like ice beneath the skin, like bleach, like heat.
They begged, and they begged, and they begged for an acid washed understanding. They begged for any part of him to take a bat to the fog surrounding him and remember, to never forget, to shatter realization into his bones until he turned to dust with it.
This was real. This was happening.
This was not the Upside Down, it was something worse.
The thoughts repeated, and they repeated, and they repeated, and they repeated like a mantra at the base of his skull, going at a pace so maddening fast that they tangled up his tongue. They made him quiet, silent. Like wallpaper.
They spiraled down over and over, crashing to the floor of his mind one after the other, after the other, after the – And repeat.
His parents never came home early from a business trip. Thought one.
He was supposed to be alone that night. Thought two.
This was not his fault. Thought three.
He got yelled at again. Wear gloves.
He got yelled at, what did I just fucking tell you about touching the knives without wearing gloves? Stand still. Stop fucking crying.
He was being yelled at again and it was hardly a surprise.
He was being yelled at again and it was so loud that the walls shook in the small motel bathroom. Any annoyance that had bitten away at the inside of his cheek had blistered and burst, and drained out from the hand that pressed against his throat, curling in just tight enough to make him feel like he was on the cusp of suffocating.
He was yanked forward and pushed back against the sink, head thumping against the mirror as he was forced backwards. Blunt fingernails digging little halfmoons into the line of his jaw as everything held for a second between them.
Everything compressed into a single breath.
Into one moment.
This moment.
All the potential for violence, for a fight, held between them in grinding teeth and sharp breaths, in strong hands at his throat. It held like a fist in the gut, like a knife in the hand, like that night in October burnt to the insides of his eyelids, but all Steve could really think about was how shitty the bubblegum pink wallpaper looked with this tile.
All he could think about was the red-tinted bleach pooling in the sink, about vinegar on stained shirts and scrubbing out blood with an old toothbrush. All he could think about was the hand at his throat threatening to kill him again.
He thought, do it.
He thought, I fucking want you to.
He thought a lot of things, and he said nothing.
He thought about a lot more than most people ever thought that he did, but his thoughts tended to circle around on themselves. They got rearranged and tangled up, repeating until they blurred to just three thoughts – his parents never came home early, he was supposed to be alone, it was not his fault.
It was not his fault.
He had to force himself to untangle the pieces, to be mindful of the metal handcuff biting at his wrist and the way that it jingled against the towel rack, of the scream wedged between his teeth. He forced himself to think about how much he fucking hated Halloween because that was so much easier than thinking about this, about the hand, and he didn’t a fucking thing.
He did nothing about the hand at his throat.
He did nothing but bear it.
Accept it.
Sometimes, when it got like this.
When they did this song and dance again and everything breathed out into a standoff that Steve didn’t even try to win anymore, when they’re both just standing there waiting for the other to make a move, something inside of him would itch. Something would claw up his insides with want, with need, with instinct.
When he didn’t drop the knife just yet and he was so close that he could feel his breath on his face, his mind would snap awake and say go.
It would turn on and he’d break out of his numb self-imposed monotony of repeating thoughts. He’d get really fucking aware of how fucked up all of this was. He would wake the fuck up to the fact that he had fought monsters with nothing more than a bat, and his mind would snap at him, would demand, do it.
His hand readjusted around the handle of the knife, making it an extension of his arm like a bat full of nails, and his mind fucking scream that sometimes monsters were just people. It screamed, do it. Do it. Do it.
His mind snapped at him, you fought monsters, Steve.
His mind pleased, no one is going to save you.
It cried, this will never end.
And then blue eyes blinked at him.
The hand at his throat loosened its tight grip like it had all those other times, pulling fingernails out of his skin. Those blue eyes softened of their anger like every time before it and melted into fondness, into a flimsy forgiveness. That hand dropped from his throat to his shoulder, stroking there as all that anger in blue eyes melted into puddles or oceans, something big enough to get lost in, to think to himself, maybe this is different.
To think, you’re different.
To think, you’re a fucking idiot, Steve Harrington.
Steve thought blankly about Tina’s annual Halloween Bash, about how he didn’t even want to go to that fucking party, but Robin had so he went. He thought about how she had ditched him immediately for a cool girl with a safety pin through her earlobe, and how the beer was watered down and shitty. He thought about how if he was home than he would have had the door locked. He wouldn’t have opened the door. He would have been fine.
He thought about how much weed he smoked, about how he drank so much that the night felt like it had crawled under his skin and bled him. He thought about how he should have been home. How he had wanted to be home. How nothing would have happened if he had just been home.
He thought about his mother, how he had left her that night at home with her runny mascara and her overfilled wineglasses, and how his dad was breaking her heart again, and again, and again. And how he didn’t even fucking care.
He thought about all the fucking times that she would get drunk and cry these big fat movie star tears on the kitchen floor and how they made her look prettier than any amount of makeup would. She took his face between her hands that night like all the other nights before and told him with her wet eyes and drunk vowels about how Dad had come home smelling like some other woman again, it’s happening again, baby boy. What are we going to do?
And Steve thought now, in this claustrophobic bathroom, with the hand from his throat on his shoulder and the knife still in his hand, it’s happening again.
What are we going to do?
It was all the same damn cycle.
It was just repeating old patterns because they were comfortable with it, because it was easier to walk the same path twice than to forge a new one and Steve was just like his mother. He was prettier when he cried. He was easy to manipulate. He wasn’t going anywhere.
He fucked up one of the rules like Mom would fuck up her medication – he washed the knives in a sink full of bleach, but he didn’t wear the gloves. He was supposed to wear gloves and now he was in trouble. The hand at his throat was on his shoulder, blue eyes staring into his eyes as calloused fingers trailed down his arm.
It was going to happen again, and again, and again because his mother never left his father and Steve was never going to get out of this.
Like his father’s soft whispered manipulation and the careful way that Steve had watched his thick fingers uncurl his mother’s bloody hand from the jagged remains of a broken wineglass, Steve didn’t fight the knife being taken from him.
He choked back a noise that wasn’t a sob when it was dropped back into the sink.
He felt burnt by the touch.
He felt dulled to the tear of it.
He felt used.
He knew that he was in danger, but that was where he lived since that stupid Halloween night. It was where he was going to live for the rest of his life because he never fought back, because Tommy was right.
When the going got tough, Steve ran.
He always ran.
He ran away when his parents talked about divorce for the first time. He ran away the first time his father brought home a woman that wasn’t his mother. He ran away, and when he couldn’t run away, he made a home out of it. He wrapped himself up in the things that he couldn’t change and said that he liked it that way.
He messed up all the time and broke so many of the simple rules. The rules that were there to keep the machine running smoothly, to keep them running smoothly, leave no evidence behind.
Is that what you want, baby? You want evidence?
He forgot to lock the door sometimes.
He didn’t remember to put up the do not disturb sign on the door in Branson and the housekeeper had screamed at the handcuffs, at the clothes still wet with vinegar. He didn’t remember to wear gloves when he washed the knives, so there was yelling and there was that hand at the base of his neck, and he deserved it. He really did.
He made himself believe that.
There were the biting words in a vicious mouth, threats between perfect teeth, and Steve couldn’t bring himself to tears anymore because that was what he wanted from him.
It was demanded of him that he stop fucking crying even though there were no tears in his big empty eyes. It was demanded that he grow a pair and stop fucking up, that he stop being such a little bitch about everything, that he listen and stop fucking crying even though he wasn’t crying. There was no response to the violence beyond a short nod and an empty apology, “I’m sorry.”
Steve didn’t have the knife anymore.
“It won’t happen again.”
He didn’t have the knife, so he didn’t have the fight. It had all sizzled out inside of him because he didn’t fight monsters anymore. He lived with them. He didn’t give anything away, so it was taken.
It was squeezed until Steve had no choice but to give in.
He had no choice but to struggle against the restraining hand that came up from his shoulder to wrap once more around his throat, digging in its fingernails. He had to go blue at the lips, had to pull panicked noises out of the back of his throat, had to struggle against the hand, and then –
Then there was laughter.
It was a cruel and gross imitation of entertainment as the hand pulled back. Something childish, like a kid at the circus so mystifying that all you could do was laugh at its amazement. Blue eyes were cruel eyes, smiling as Steve slumped back against the sink, gasping.
He smacked Steve’s cheek lightly, “It better not fucking happen again.”
Fingers ran into his hair and then gripped it hard, pulling his head back up until his neck snapped back. It smelt like cigarettes when he leaned in too close, like cheap alcohol and blood between the teeth, “Start fucking listening, pretty.”
Lips against his cheek, biting at the corner of his mouth, “You know what happens when you don’t listen, pretty boy.”
He always called him pretty boy. It was all anybody called him anymore.
Steve couldn’t even remember the last time that somebody had said his real name, said Harrington, or Hair, or Steve Harrington, you idiot.
He reminded himself in the fog of every shitty motel bathroom mirror when he couldn’t see his own face. He reminded himself before he drifted off into a restless unwanted sleep, handcuffed to another headboard like it was a prayer on his lips for no one to hear. And he would remind himself tonight and tomorrow, and every day for the rest of his life – You’re Steve Harrington. Prom King. Babysitter. Monster Hunter. Ice Cream Slinger.
He would remind himself because he was terrified that he might forget – Steve Harrington, son of James and Angelia Harrington. Not smart enough to get into Tech. He would remind himself because Will told him once that after a while, the Upside Down has started to feel like home too and Steve was afraid – Steve Harrington, from Hawkins, Indiana. From Loch Nora. Son of James and Angelia.
He didn’t want to forget that there weren’t always handcuffs around his wrists, that he hadn’t always been made to clean blood off sharp objects or to get stains out of shirts. He didn’t choose this. He didn’t want this. This was not his home – You’re Steve Harrington and Billy Hargrove killed your parents.
You’re Steve Harrington and your parents weren’t supposed to be home.
You’re Steve Harrington and you were supposed to be alone that night.
You’re Steve Harrington and it was supposed to be you.
You’re Steve and you didn’t fight back. You’re Steve, you fucking coward. You’re Steve and it’s your fault that they’re dead.
No. No.
He couldn’t remember the name on the motel’s flickering neon sigh or what state they were even in, or where Billy said he was going when he handcuffed him to the bed, but he remembered the kiss. He remembered the way Billy had leaned in close and licked into his mouth, the way he smiled against his lips and whispered, “Don’t wait up, pretty boy.”
Steve stared at the peeling ceiling and he pressed his toes against the mattress. He pressed his back into an exposed spring until it cut into the skin, until he hurt enough to justify the burning behind his eyes. He forced himself to breathe in the dim flickering light through the window.
It’s not my fault, he reminded himself, breathing in shaky and breathing out. He repeated the action, gasping in breaths that were too fast and too shallow for it to be comforting. He wrapped his tongue around the words and didn’t let them fall from his lips even though Billy wasn’t there.
Whatever Billy does, it’s not your fault, he reminded himself, pulling lightly at the cuffs. It’s Billy’s fault. You’re stuck. You’re a victim too. It’s not your fault that you didn’t stop him.
Billy killed your parents. You couldn’t stop him.
Steve remember the party like an aftertaste.
It soaked on his tongue like US Butterscotch, going sour two days before Tina’s annual Halloween bash when Billy sauntered into Scoop’s Ahoy and stole cherries out of a jar behind the counter.
Billy had smiled at him over the counter with a split lip and a black eye, with fingernails scratches down his open shirt. He had wrapped his tongue around the cherry and grinned with a voice like crushed velvet, “There’s a party at my place tonight. Be there, pretty boy.”
“We’ll definitely not be going, but thanks,” Robin had sneered at him, but Steve had gone.
It wasn’t his intention, not really.
He had planned to drop Dustin off at the Wheeler’s house for D&D and smoke a joint in front of his television, but his parents were just there when he got home when they were supposed to be in Cincinnati for business. His father had laid into him immediately about being a fucking disappointment, about not getting into tech, about getting rejection letters when he reapplied for college, and his mother. She had been crying again, and drinking, and murmuring about how Nancy Reagan said that weed was going to kill them all.
He had to get away, Steve remembered. He remembered it itching under his skin, itching behind his eyes, and he remembered driving out to Cherry Lane to witness Billy led the charge in destroying his own fucking house.
He had walked over the carnage, stepping over broken furniture and passed damaged walls, and he’d locked Max’s bedroom door from the outside. He drank every drink shoved into his hand, nodded every time someone stopped him to say this is so crazy, man, because it was crazy.
He had felt sick with vodka, and whiskey, and too much beer sloshing around inside of him, tilting him like an ocean rocking beneath his skin. He had felt sick as a desert with the dry taste of marijuana on his tongue. He had stumbled and hands had grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, had pulled him, and dragged him, and grinned at him with sharp, sharp teeth as all the noise was left behind a door, “Drink up, babe.”
He remembered the closed door and the tight space, and the heavy cold press of a bottle pressed into his hand. He remembered the engraving on the glass bottle, Neil W. Hargrove – Vietnam Veteran.
He remembered the slow unhurried way that Billy had come into focus in front of him, the way that he purred his words when he told him that the blood on the towel crumbled on the floor must have been from some trashy cow’s period. He remembered twisting his face up in disgust and making Billy laugh when he told him that he was, “Udder-ly disgusting.”
It had made Steve smile.
It made him feel good to make someone laugh, to make Billy’s face split open and his head to fall back. It made him feel like he was good at something, like he was worth something.
He remembered telling Billy that he didn’t want to be there, but he didn’t want to be home. He remembered just slipping out everything about his asshole dad and his crazy mom, and how everything just made him feel miserable. They were right to call him a disappointment. They were right to call him stupid, and dumb, and useless.
He couldn’t even get into Tech for Christ’s fucking sake.
“I’m good at things,” He had spat in drunken vowels, slurring out the words and crying, and drinking so much that it didn’t hurt that no one would ever know. He saved the world, and he made three bucks an hour, and he was never going to make his parents respect him. “I – I just, wished they’d all g’way, for – forever. ‘m special, you know? You know. They don’t know.”
“I know, pretty boy,” Billy had smiled, something soft. He had covered his complaint with his lips, had licked the alcohol from the corner of his mouth and then into it, and Steve didn’t stop him. He didn’t stop him from stroking up his thighs or from biting his lip, or holding him so close that Steve couldn’t move if he wanted too.
His mind had stalled, had flipped over and went Upside Down, and Steve kissed back because it was polite, and Billy didn’t stop. He didn’t stop until his lips were bitten bloody at one of the corners and kiss bruised, smiling like Steve was a little dumb for trying to pretend like they weren’t basically making out when he frowned at the bottle they were sharing, “Won’t your dad be mad that we drank this?”
“Nah, don’t worry about it.”
“Kay.”
Looking back, Steve was pretty sure that nah just meant that Neil Hargrove was dead in some ditch somewhere, just like he was pretty sure that the whole party was just an alibi for what would happen on Halloween night because he could still remember it like it was fresh. Billy standing on the kitchen counter, red plastic cup held high above their heads and how he declared that he was getting the fuck out of this shithole.
Billy got behind the wheel of his car that night. He’d revved the engines and put on his sunglasses, turning up the music so loud that Steve could still hear the Scorpion’s echoing inside his bones, and then he drove straight out of town.
Billy was gone. He was supposed to stay gone.
But Steve remembered Halloween.
He remembered Robin convincing him to go to Tina’s, remembered feeling like shit. He remembered stumbling home and shoving the door open, and everything blurring like too much alcohol and someone’s mom’s pills, and he remembered blood on white rugs.
That night pressed against the back of his eyelids, coloring every restless sleep with a tangible nightmare – with sharp knives, and dead eyes, and hands, and blood.
When the morning light started to pool in under the closed blinds and he woke up in the same empty room, damp with sweat and arms aching, he forced himself to breathe in, to remember – they weren’t supposed to be home, you were supposed to be there, it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault.
He woke up still handcuffed to the bed. With dead parents. With Hawkins a thousand miles behind him and Billy Hargrove a thousand miles too close. He woke up alone, with the only sigh that Billy had returned was the pile of dirty clothes on the floor.
It’s not your fault.
Steve sighed.
He blinked until the motel walls came into focus in this hellish floral printed prison, and he breathed out at the emptiness of it all. He told himself to pull on the cuffs, to pull and pull, and pull until he escaped or bled to death. He told himself to open his mouth and start screaming, and don’t stop until someone came to save him.
He told himself, you used to fight monsters.
He told himself, you saved people.
He told himself, it’s not your fault that your parents are dead.
And he didn’t make a goddamn sound.
“We’re leaving soon,” Billy said as way of greeting as he pushed the door open and kicked it shut with his boot. He dropped a plastic bag onto the bed before flipping the lock on the door. He barely acknowledged Steve at all when he said, “Got breakfast from that shitty diner you were staring at on the way into town, baby.”
Steve wanted to ask, who did you kill this time?
He wanted to ask, why are you doing this?
He didn’t ask anything as Billy rounded the bed, unhooking his keys from his belt and undoing the cuffs. He didn’t say anything when Billy rubbed at the bruises on his wrists or when he pressed his chapped lips against his temple, murmuring soft in his ear about the thrift shop with the hot chick down the road, about how he caught her of guard when she was closing for the night and how he dragged her back inside.
How he took his time. How powerful he felt.
She begged that he spare her life, he said.
Said she had a kid back home, he said.
“Got you a little something, baby,” Billy murmured, petting Steve’s hair back. “Got you a present for being so good for me, princess.”
Steve gritted his teeth at the stupid nickname and didn’t say a fucking thing about it, but he couldn’t stop the glare he sent to Billy. The one that Billy grinned at like he fucking loved it, that made him smack his cheek like Steve didn’t want him to drop fucking dead.
Billy upturned the plastic bag onto the bed, dumping out a ratty paperback on fingerprints, a newspaper called the Missouri State Times, a pair of cheap earrings, a jean jacket, and a sweater with the tags still on from Thrifty Shopping: One Stop Shop.
Steve felt sick.
“Got you something special, baby,” Billy told him in that crushed velvet voice, pulling on Steve until he was sat at the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor. Steve watched dully as Billy played out a tired routine, getting down on one knee in front of him and taking his hand.
Billy fumbled with a cheap silver ring that he pulled out of his pocket, sliding it onto Steve’s finger. Steve watched it like he watched Billy do the same thing all the other mornings that he came back with dirty clothes and a terrible story, watching the ring streak its owner’s blood down his finger.
Billy swore under his breath, licking at his thumb and scrubbing at the blood. He shot him a grin before asking, “It’s pretty, ain’t it, baby?”
He waited a beat and when he got no answer, demanded, “What do you say when someone gives you gift, pretty boy?”
“…Thanks.”
“That’s right,” Billy grinned, kissing his cheek and then his mouth, licking over his bottom lip before dipping his head down to sink his teeth into the pulse on his neck. Billy smiled into it, voice all soft and velvety like it always was when he had blood under his fingernails, “Clean the knives before you eat, baby.”
Steve nodded, whispering, “Okay.”
Steve rubbed the stiffness out of his bruised wrists and his sore shoulders, stiffening when he stood and Billy slapped him on the ass. Billy grinned like he was taking a bite out of the world when he said, “Don’t forget the gloves this time.”
Steve gritted his teeth.
He ignored the sting of bleach in his nose and how dry his eyes felt. He ignored Billy on the bed, Billy sauntering across the room into the small bathroom, Billy at his back, kissing his neck. He ignored Billy talking about how quickly that bitch bled out.
Billy curled his fingers into Steve’s messy hair so tight that it pulled at the root and smiled, rocking his hips up into the cleft of his ass. He dragged his hand low down the front of Steve’s shirt, letting it rest over the drawstring of his sweats before he pulled Steve back into the room with a demand, “Eat.”
Steve ripped his shoulder out of his grip, putting distance between them, and Billy’s eyes flickered down to the knife still in Steve’s hand, grinning like they were just playing a game. He grinned like he wasn’t a murderer, like Steve wasn’t his captive, like that girl deserved any of this.
He licked over his bottom lip like they were still in a standoff outside of the Byers’ house, like this knife wasn’t used to kill some innocent eighteen year old girl, like Steve didn’t want to fucking stab him over and over, and over again until Billy got it.
Steve wasn’t the Bonnie to his Claude. He was never going to be.
“Behave, pretty boy,” Billy said with a raise eyebrow, almost challenging him. “Better put that down before you get yourself hurt.”
“You didn’t have to kill anybody,” Steve croaked.
Billy just grinned a little wider, showing all his sharp teeth as he ran his tongue over them. He didn’t speak again until he put an unlit cigarette between them, voice so matter of fact, so joyous to get to vocalize it, “I don’t have to do anything, baby. I want to.”
Billy spoke like a threat and a promise, and the truth breathed out breathy. He spoke in the same velvet voice that he used that Halloween night, I was going to kill you, baby. I was going to sneak into your room and slit your throat. He said it like a kiss, vicious and bloody, biting into his mouth, you’re all mine.
Billy uncurled Steve’s shaking fingers from the handle of the knife and twirled the blade between his fingers, and he shoved Steve back. He knocked him onto the bed and he climbed on top of him, demanding with that knife in his hand, “Stop fucking crying or I’ll gut you like a fish.”
Steve’s eyes were dry, but it didn’t really matter because it wasn’t about crying. It was about power. It was about them both knowing who held it and who welded it like a sharp-edged knife because this only really worked if Billy kept it.
Billy laughed in the silence between them, laughed because that fire that he had been so keen on lighting up inside of Steve that night at the Byers’ had extinguished in a puddle of blood on his mother’s pristine white carpet. Billy laughed more, laughed meanly as he leaned in so close that Steve could feel the erratic beat of his heart.
He pressed the tip of the knife against the collar of Steve’s shirt and bit at the shell of his ear, “It’s a fucking joke, baby. Take a fucking joke. I’m not going to hurt you unless you make me.”
He pulled back when he didn’t get a response and tilted Steve’s head towards him. He let the knife linger right where it was before he demanded from him that he say it. He demanded, “Tell me this isn’t what you wanted.”
He dared him. He threatened him.
Steve didn’t respond.
He didn’t do that. Not anymore.
It used to make Billy smile, sharp teeth carving out an upward curve into his face like a warning sigh of a fast approaching danger, in those first weeks. It used to make him laugh when Steve stopped giving in so readily, stopped being so complicit in his own hostage situation.
It made him lick across his lip and grin like they were outside the Byers’ house again because Billy liked defiance. He liked to feel the heat of the fire right before he stomped it out. He liked to run his tongue over his teeth and grab at Steve hard, liked to pull him close until he got what he wanted, or he took it.
It gave Billy something to break, and he liked that more.
Billy dropped the knife down on the table, and he dug his fingernails into Steve’s scalp, repeating the demand without amusement. He repeated it like the threat that it was, like the game was over, “Tell me you don’t want this, pretty boy. Tell me you didn’t ask for this.”
Steve stayed quiet until his eyes misted over as his hair pulled from the root. He stayed quiet when Billy wedged his hand up under his chin and curled his fingers in tight. He stayed quiet even when his ears started to ring and his eyes started to lose focus, as his breath came out uneven and then nothing at all, but he didn’t cry. He barely made a sound when Billy let go, but he still called him a bitch and a baby anyways.
He was still so close that the smell of cigarettes and vinegar, and bleach consumed every part of Steve, dissolved him, and Billy whispered with his dry chapped lips against his, “Say it, baby. Tell me the truth.”
It meant too much – the meaning of it.
Say, you told me about your dad because you wanted me to kill him.
Say, you hated your parents and you wanted them dead.
Say, you love me, you want to be with me.
Say, we’re the same.
Eventually, Steve would choke on the words that Billy wanted to hear.
Each word felt like carving out a piece of himself and feeding it to dogs. Each word felt like hacking at his soul until it was just pieces, until Steve Harrington – Prom King, Monster Hunter, Angie and Jamie’s son – was just baby, and princess, and mine.
“I want – I wanted this.”
The words rung hollow, but it didn’t matter because Billy got what he wanted. He got those words like they were the confirmation that he so desperately wanted it to be, like Steve was whispering a prayer. He got those words out of him like he believed that if Steve said them enough times than they wouldn’t taste so awful, or be so hollowing, that one of them might actually start believing them.
“I want this,” Steve repeated when Billy told him to. He said it over and over again, and Billy smiled like it was all that it took for Steve to be perfect, like if he said it enough – if he said I’m yours, Billy. I love you, Billy. Let me help you, Billy – than Steve would remember to always wear the gloves and always lock the doors.
It was like a stab in the chest, like a fate so much worse than death between sharp teeth that Billy’s smile got so soft. He kissed him even softer, breathing out a soft awful, “Good boy, baby.”
Steve thought, they never came home early. He thought, it was supposed to be me. He thought, I wish it was me.
“Now eat, pretty boy,” Billy said. “We leave in an hour.”