#heghfdvsdnfv

[nancywrote]

“i love you”

Billy says I love you, Steve looks at him cold. He swears, it’s just a joke.

But maybe it isn’t really.

(angst with a happy ending :D)

It was just… a joke.

That’s what it was.

It wasn’t true, it was a lie. Completely thrust in the moment, but with no meaning at all.

But then Steve looked at him like it wasn’t, or maybe like it was.

With furrowed brows, a smile, and this look in his eyes that said what did you just say?

He really, really didn’t mean to say it. But the moment seemed so perfect, them stargazing in a nice place not too far in the woods after sneaking into the school to vandalise some poor kid’s locker who looked at them wrong.

It was a moment of serenity, freedom, and Billy felt like he could breathe. Like maybe something was supposed to happen in the silence that followed the bittersweet laughter.

And like the laughter, the response was just as bitter.

I love you.

And Steve, leaning against a tree, looked at him with that same smile that looked more stretched and thin now, no longer reaching his eyes.

And Steve, smoking a cigarette, chuckled awkwardly and nodded, grinding the cig into the ground and looking away.

And Steve, with pretty brown hair and gorgeous matching eyes, with a lovely laugh and a prettier smile and a much too working charm, got up and said he had to go.

And Billy, with his stupid butterscotch, blonde hair and vacant blue eyes, nodded and grit his teeth and said bye.

And Billy had to watch Steve go, watch him leave adjusting his shirt and never looking back.

And Billy, with a weak heart and a neverending mantra of what ifs echoing in his head, stayed there until morning time looking at the clearing Steve escaped to and formed new tough loving bruises and burns when he came back to his home.

The pain had never felt so numb before.

It wasn’t supposed to go that way.

It was wrong, it was a joke, it didn’t mean anything.

Right?

When he’s back at school, it all feels far too big and sketched. Black and white, a rough draft of something incomplete, with an endless blank canvas outside the lines.

And he feels like he’s trapped, but all at once he feels like he’s been freed.

Because now, there’s nothing to care about anymore.

The bruises forming on his back meant nothing, the reopened scar on his shoulder held no value and the uncovered bags under his eyes made him feel naked. But not scared.

Not anymore.

He closes his locker delicately, stares at the red (or blue? he’s far too dizzy and sick-feeling to trust himself) for minutes until something slams into his back and snaps him out of his haze.

When he turns his head with an inkling of hope, there stands Tommy H.

The boy rambles about something, but all his words drop out of his mouth and onto the ground. Billy catches nothing.

Tommy shrugs and nods, says something about Carol then walks past Billy. Bumps his shoulder on the way.

Feels like air just breezed past his shoulder.

Class starts, and Billy’s back in the corner again. Far from his friends to avoid talking, and close to the windows to try and bring some dimension back to the world again.

I love you.

What if he didn’t?

What if he didn’t say that, or feel that, or… or what if he didn’t know Steve?

That would’ve been so much easier.

But he feels far too fortunate to have known the pretty boy, because Steve’s just so sweet and…

And he got up seconds after and said he had to go.

Minutes pass, and the teacher’s loudly pointing at things on the board. Billy doesn’t look.

Steve comes late.

Stumbles in with messy hair, bags under his eyes and a nervous expression. Billy sees him spare a glance at him. A short one that he catches too easily.

Then the bell goes off, and Billy storms out. But he hears footsteps and they don’t belong to a herd of students, just one. And in the light way they travel, it’s far too familiar.

He doesn’t want this, he doesn’t want to hear it, he’d rather his world just stay an incomplete work in progress and leave it at that forever.

Until he’s suddenly shoved through a door, and he finds himself in the old boy’s bathroom all alone with…

With Steve.

Billy flinches, backs himself up next to the sinks and not too far from the door. “What do you want?”

His voice shakes. It’s weak. It hurts.

Steve crosses his arms, huffing.

“Did you mean it?”

His heart drops to the pit of his stomach, a knot forms in his throat. He wants to break, he wants to cry, he wants to bleed and get out.

“No,” he says through a clenched jaw.

Steve closes in, walks until he’s trapped Billy against the sink and blocks the only escape. “Billy.”

Why does he want to know?

It’s useless.

It was a joke.

It wasn’t true.

It was---

“I’m sorry,” he whispers like a whistle and bows his head. Slumps his shoulders in defeat.

The tears come out far too easy, he puffs his chest counting the seconds until his inevitable rejection or beating or mocking or something.

He’s ready, he’s already still aching and sore from his father, he’ll take it all again. The words won’t mean as much, they weren’t the ones who raised him and knew his habits well. Even if Steve noticed more about him than his father ever will, even if Steve taught him how to be kind when his father wouldn’t and how to do things he never knew he could, that all meant nothing.

The words will hurt so much.

His wet cheeks keep him in reality. He feels his tears pour down and drop off his cheeks, but they don’t drop.

Because suddenly, when he opens his eyes and sucks up some ugly snot, he feels Steve’s hand on his cheek, rubbing his cheekbone. His heart won’t work, his brain can’t catch up.

“Steve…” he chokes, tries not to break down sobbing from just that little bit of contact. He doesn’t want to… doesn’t want to look, at Steve. Doesn’t want to know what’s going on in that head of his.

But he looks up anyways, and Steve’s looking at his lips and is red-nosed and puffy-lipped and biting his bottom lip and, and Billy’s disgusted by that inescapable thought that always enters his mind in moments like these where he wants to be the one to bite Steve’s lips.

Steve’s face is far too close, far too within reach.

He doesn’t want to fuck it up again.

Please.

Go.

You’re gonna leave again, right?

You’ll have to go now?

It’s time, right?

Please.

And Steve is the one to lean in and press his lips against Billy’s.

His chest tightens.

His breath catches.

All at once, he feels so many things mix together and he doesn’t know what to make of it.

But he’s not kissing back, and he feels that’s wrong but Steve never said I love you back so what should he do here?

When Steve pulls back though, looks darkly at the ground, Billy grabs him by the hair and crashes his lips against his.

But it’s so gentle and soft and delicate, and they’re both kissing each other and it’s not just one sided anymore.

“I made a mistake,” Steve says when they pull back for air.

Make up your fucking mind, Harrington.

Billy thinks with venom, angry and hurt all over again and pissed.

He starts, “You--”

“-- I should have said it back.”

Just as quickly as it came, the anger left. The tears are coming to the surface again, even if they never really left.

Steve breathes, looks at Billy and rubs his cheek again. “I was confused, Billy. I was -- really scared. I didn’t know if you were joking or not, I didn’t know if I liked you the same and I was so scared of what I was feeling and that was stupid and I-- I,”

He takes a deep breath of air, closes his eyes.

“That was a mistake, not saying it back.”

He opens his eyes and looks into Billy’s, wipes his tears gently with his thumb.

“Because I, I feel the same too. I’m so sorry I hurt you, Billy, I’m so fucking sorry.”

Billy hiccups, feels the sob rising in his throat and whines, throws himself into Steve’s arms crying. His shoulders shake with every sound he makes, and Steve holds him so tight.

He’s so happy and hurt and cured and safe and okay because nobody’s ever done things like this for him, nobody’s ever cared about him like Steve has and nobody’s ever… nobody’s ever loved him, or said sorry to him and meant it.

Steve’s arms keep him safe, they’re locked around him like a close blanket and this time Billy knows he won’t go. He doesn’t want to go.

“I love you,” Billy sobs into his neck, fear tugging at his heart that maybe he still shouldn’t say that but he says it anyways because… because he does.

And Steve chuckles wetly, mutters an insult to himself and squeezes Billy tighter.

“I love you too.”