Chapter Text
If there was any benefit to Steve’s hot-and-cold soulmate staying for winter break, it was that the house was rarely ever this alive. The kids stayed over sometimes because the large dining room table was ‘perfect’ for their campaigns, but Steve often stayed far out of their way those nights. Having Billy around was different. There was no tip-toeing through his own house the way Steve would when his parents were in town, hoping to sneak out for the day before either of them was downstairs. His days no longer consisted of painfully quiet dinners and nights spent having a glass of whiskey in the office while his dad created his ten-year plan for him.
Billy was alive in all the ways Steve wished he was himself—cooking to fill the air with the feeling of home, playing music near constantly because ‘the house was too fucking quiet’, leaving every light on that Steve asked even when he had no real explanation to give him. He was messy, leaving behind a jacket over the back of the couch and shoes in nearly every room he entered.
The thing was, Steve could get used to it. He could spend every day watching Billy grow more comfortable in this new space, relaxing when there was no threat of retaliation when he broke the strict rules that existed in the Hargrove house.
The first time he wrote on his skin since the incident was an honest-to-God accident.
Billy was showering, which could last anywhere from fifteen to fifty minutes depending on the type of day they were having. The other boy had nearly combusted when Steve showed him the upstairs bathroom, fitted with a walk-in shower and a large tub Steve had never thought to be thankful for. Since the first time Billy had taken a two-minute shower with the explanation he wasn’t allowed more, Steve never rushed him while he indulged.
They were going to have a movie night, and with everything all set up, there was nothing for Steve to do but wait. He pulled himself up onto the kitchen island, the only sound that of popcorn tinging against the lid of a pot on the stove as it cooked. The pen had already been sitting by his thigh, abandoned when he’d made the grocery list for the week earlier in the day.
It was easy to return to his old favorite pastime in this new quiet that hadn’t existed since Billy showed up in the middle of the night, demanding to try again . In school, Steve had found it was easier to concentrate when he was moving his hands. Drawing all over his papers had become the best alternative until the teacher told him he’d start losing marks if he turned another page marred by meaningless doodles. His soulmate hadn’t minded them, back before the worst had happened and he went dark. Steve would fill his arms with doodles of everything from his neighbor’s cat to him in knight-form fighting off imaginary dragons to save his prince in distress.
Lately, the drawings had taken a much different turn. Steve’s mind didn’t really focus on the way his hand moved until the image was nearly complete. By the time he dropped the pen back on the counter, his eyes were roaming over every scratch of the scene recorded on the exposed skin of his thigh below his shorts.
Steve, still wearing the armor and cape of a brave knight, hair billowing around him and sword raised up in threat against the beast. It had flower-like jaws and talons larger than anything that should exist on Earth, towering over Knight Steve when stood at its full height. Behind him were a handful of kids all brandishing their wooden play swords, faces all twisted with the same bravery as Knight Steve bore.
He wanted to clear away the image as soon as he recognized it.
“I won’t have to bother paying for more tattoos if you keep it up.”
The words sent a shock through Steve’s body, causing him to jump and his hands to fly up at the ready. He only relaxed when he saw Billy standing across from him, curls damp and wetting the shoulders of his t-shirt while he leaned against the pantry.
“Sorry,” Steve instinctively spit out, eyes already looking around for the nearest chemical to wash it all off. “I don’t know what—”
“I don’t mind it,” Billy answered, blue eyes averting and cheeks reddening the moment the words cleared his lips. “The art.”
“I just need to get it out of my head sometimes.” Sometimes it was tough to reconcile the Billy Hargrove he knew with the soulmate he’d grown up imagining, but in times like these it was far too easy—eyes still looking away in an attempt to conceal what Billy was thinking, but the fingers tracing idly over where Steve knew the matching drawing was inked into Billy’s thigh giving away everything. “It helps.”
“You should do it more,” Billy replied immediately then immediately scowled, seemingly thinking better of himself as he added, “you’re really fuckin’ loud at night.”
“Oh, I can show you lou—Uh, yeah. Yeah.”
“If I’d known you were scared of the dark, I’d’ve brought over a nightlight,” Billy tried to tease, though seemed to find something in Steve’s expression that made his shoulders drop an inch. “What’s this about then? I’ll guess these kids are the shitheads?”
“You won’t win them over by calling them shitheads,” Steve pointed out, already knowing that was a lost cause. It was easier than focusing on the alternative, the stories and confessions building and pressing against his mouth in an attempt to be vocalized.
“I don’t need to win over anyone but you, pretty boy.”
“You say that now, but it’ll be much easier if you get Dustin on your side.” Steve could laugh at how quickly his life had changed in just a year, now looking for a middle schooler’s approval in his potential partner rather than the two people he’d grown up with.
“You’re avoiding.”
“And you’re pushing.”
Billy sighed, working the proper words around in his mouth before saying, “It’s eating you up, whatever the fuck this is. I’m not asking for some touchy-feely emotional outpouring, but if you need to get somethin’ off your chest I’m a half-decent ear.”
The forced nonchalance was easy to see around, the early beginnings of fondness expressing themselves in the nervous way Billy picked at the skin around his nails while he offered to listen to Steve’s troubles. He wouldn’t push it any further than Billy was ready, simply nodding and moving to dump out the popcorn into a big enough bowl to share instead of answering.
Steve couldn’t have said one thing that happened in the movie they watched, mind entirely focused on the ink peeking out of his shorts and the promise Billy had offered up so easily. Eventually he would have to know, would have to be aware of what to watch out for. He would be looped in, if only to understand why Steve checked the house’s perimeter every night before bed and still slept with a baseball bat within arm’s reach.
It couldn’t be unheard, this massive secret that haunted a handful of Hawkins’ residents. To share now would be dooming Billy to constantly look over his shoulder, to pay attention to every flickering light and every scratch of an animal’s nails in the earth.
And yet, it would mean Steve wasn’t alone.
Billy’s already offered up a vulnerable piece of him in the snow, and his greatest secret had been in plain view of Steve from the first painful bruise.
It was this idea that made Steve sit up after the movie, setting the nearly empty popcorn bowl on the coffee table so it couldn’t be launched at him in the aftermath. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“What are you on about now?” Billy asked, though he still turned his body to focus entirely on Steve.
“You have to promise not to tell anyone, even if you don’t believe me. It’s dangerous, I shouldn’t even be telling you because I don’t know if an NDA exists after the project is shut down but i—”
“ NDAs? The hell did you get yourself into?” Billy immediately asked, torso leaning forward like he was hanging onto Steve’s every word.
“Well, it’s. Well.” Steve tried to begin, hand tugging harshly as it pulled through the front of his hair. He’d wanted to tell someone, anyone , for so long, and yet as the moment came, he found there were no words good enough to explain. “This? It’s real,” Steve finally chose, fingers tugging at the hem of his shorts to reveal the Demogorgon drawn out in red pen. “It’s real.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Billy immediately answered, words harshened in a way that pulled Steve even further back to the night of the fight at the Byers’ house. “I won’t fall for that kinda shit.”
“No, really. It’s all real,” Steve insisted, eyes focusing on his fairytale version of himself rather than on whatever expression Billy was making. It was better this way, easier as he forced all of the words out. “You know Jonathan’s little brother, Will? He really did go missing back in ‘83, but it wasn’t his dad like everyone says. It was this ,” Steve punctuated the sentence with another insistent point at the inked Demogorgon, finger digging harshly into his skin. “The Party calls it a Demogorgon, and I don’t know what it is really but it took Will into some other freaky world they call the Upside Down. I fought it when it showed up at the Byers’ house.”
“You fought that ,” Billy clarified, reaching out and shoving his own finger into the drawing on Steve’s thigh. Normally the touch would’ve made him flush, but instead, Steve could feel an icy chill far too reminiscent of the tunnels building in his stomach. “You, Steve Harrington. Why the fuck would a thing like that care about the Byers?”
“We don’t know, I don’t know the kids are scary geniuses they probably figured it out.” Steve sighed again, eyes dipping back down to his hands resting in his lap as the chill grew and settled deep in his bones. “He was alone the night he was taken, I know that. And I know its other victim was alone, too, when she was...when Barb was killed.”
“That the redhead from the lab?”
“Yeah, but she was never actually at the lab. The government was running some freaky ass experiments there and opened up a gate to this other world. They were the ones who let the Demogorgon out. At least, that’s what Hopper and Nance said.”
“ Prissy Wheeler fought a monster?”
Steve laughed, the sound coming out airy and weak. “She was the only reason I got involved. Nancy’s more badass than you’d think.”
“You’re not helping the story, Harrington,” Billy answered though the words weren’t quite as harsh as the first response he’d given this story.
It was hard to believe, Steve knew. If he hadn’t walked right into the trap they’d set up, he’s sure he would’ve laughed right in Nancy and Jonathan’s faces if they tried to tell him what they were doing. He would’ve gone to school the next day laughing with Tommy and Carol about how they’d both lost it, most likely.
“We’ve fought them twice now. They keep coming back,” Steve explained as he sat forward on the edge of the couch, fingers gripping the bottom of his shirt. “We keep winning, but it’s tough. They get their hits in.”
Steve heard the sharp intake of breath that sounded Billy’s belief in the story coming to life. Within moments of his shirt being lifted, Billy’s fingers were running along the deep scores across the back of his shoulder. The claw marks began at the top of his shoulder and trailed at an angle where they ended in the center of his back, the scarred tissue still pink and irritated while it healed.
“That’s what we were doing, in November when you showed up. The kids had this wild plan to go help Hop fight ‘em off, and I’d been spending all day trying to keep the little shits alive. Got this nasty scar to prove it,” Steve explained, voice trailing off softly. “I assumed you’d seen it already.”
“I don’t look too hard,” Billy answered. Steve understood, having once spent nights trailing fingers over every scar on his body he knew had been given to his soulmate by a monster far more sinister than any interdimensional monster Steve had fought off.
Steve rucked down his shirt again, sitting back to find Billy pressed as close to him on the couch as possible, blue eyes wide as he studied him. “Max, she knows about this shit?”
“She found out that day,” Steve explained. “Lucas got our emergency message when he was with her, I guess. I don’t how she got involved, but that’s why she was at the house that night. It wasn’t...it wasn’t what you thought it was. I was trying to help.”
“You could’ve said that,” Billy reminded him again.
“And what, tell you we had a dead demodog in the fridge and we were prepping to go out fighting another dozen of ‘em? Yeah, that would’ve gone over well.”
“You’re really not fuckin’ with me? I’ll knock your face in if you are.”
Steve scoffed, rolling his eyes without any real menace behind them as he answered, “Been there done that. I’m not fucking with you, Billy. You don’t have to believe me, just don’t tell anyone. It’s too dangerous, there’s...the people from the lab? They weren’t good, I know that much.”
Billy didn’t answer for so long that Steve half-thought he didn’t believe him after all. It would have stung in a way that echoed shouts of ‘bullshit’ , but at least then Steve would know. He could move on, knowing he’d done the best he could while this Upside Down shit ruined yet another good thing. It wouldn’t have been his fault if all of this crumbled to dust before him.
Except that never happened, because suddenly Billy was muttering a “Shit, Harrington,” and wrapped his arms around Steve tightly, pulling him into the warmest hug Steve had felt in years. Steve was taller, but Billy’s broader shoulders meant he could practically engulf Steve in the embrace, squeezing so tightly it almost hurt. The constant pressure and the smell of Steve’s own soap on Billy’s skin when he tucked his nose into the other boy’s neck knocked something loose in him, something he’d been trying to shove down deep with each passing day since the first time he picked up the bat of nails.
The first sob was a shock to Steve too, but with it came a release of everything he’d fought not to feel for a year. “Fuck,” Steve ground out against Billy’s neck, fingers digging tightly into his shirt as the tears continued to flow. They wracked his body harshly, chest jerking roughly with each sob that was forced out of him. For all his criticisms of touchy-feely moments, Billy never once made fun of him. He simply maintained that tight pressure around Steve, holding on tightly through his cries. “I almost died. A lot. It wasn’t once it was, fuck . Fuck!”
“Hey, hey, I know, I know,” Billy was telling him, his voice as gentle as Steve had ever heard it. It was like he was talking to a wounded animal, promising a bright future even when one could not be immediately seen. “I’ve got you.”
He’s not sure how long the crying continued, but Steve did know by the time his breathing settled and the tears grew tacky on his cheeks, he was more bone-deep exhausted than he’d ever been in his life. It was like running an emotional marathon, unleashing everything he’d kept down to help the others. Nancy had been drowning after the loss of Barb so he’d tried to stay his normal bright Steve for her, and then he became the kids’ de facto babysitter and he knew he couldn’t act upset around them lest it opens the door for more conversations than he was ready for.
It felt right though, being held by Billy, trusting him with this much.
“I’m sorry,” Steve told him when he finally broke the hug, sitting back on the couch and wiping roughly at the leftover tears with the sleeve of his shirt. “I don’t know where that came from, I don’t.”
“This town is fucked up more than I thought it was.”
The words were so out of place, so blunt in a way that would’ve made most of the townspeople gasp that Steve couldn’t help but laugh. The sound was slightly scratchy as it came out, evidence of the damage the tears had wrecked on his throat.
“Yeah, it is pretty fucked up,” Steve admitted. “There’s more, but...”
“Little at a time,” Billy told him, “We have time for the rest.”
Steve could only nod, lips no longer working now that the worst of it was out. All he wanted to do was pass out, and it seemed like Billy could read that straight off of his face because the other boy was already getting to his feet, and clearing the remnants of their movie night away.
“I’m beat, think I’ll crash early tonight,” Billy told him as if this wasn’t all a ruse to allow Steve the sleep he needed. “That alright with you?”
“Yeah,” Steve breathed out, mind already conjuring up images of his bed. “Yeah, ‘s alright with me.”
So they would head to their own rooms after their nightly routine—Billy picking up whatever mess they’d created earlier that day while Steve checked each and every lock on the windows and doors of the house. Steve would have a thankfully dreamless sleep that night, passing out nearly the second his head fell against the pillow, shoulders feeling lighter with the release of the weight bearing down on them. He still didn’t miss the sound of Billy coming by and checking on him soon after they’d split for the night though—door opening and closing again with the quiet whispers of “Goodnight, pretty boy,” echoing through the air and wrapping around Steve better than a warm blanket ever could.