#maxine butterfly

[chocorry-ding]

𝗥𝗲𝗱𝗿𝗮𝘄 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘉𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘍𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘉𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘮

—

I don't know how many other characters there are... ( ͡• ͜ʖ ͡• )

I thought I had finished painting the Eclipsa family, but I forgot about Maxine XDDD

I don't know how to draw old people...╯︿╰

[br3akfestattiffanys]

I will not accept a life I do not deserve.

[the-silver-peahen-residence]

||Summoning Chaos 6: Demonic blade meets the dark knight||

Hi guys, Peahen mom here. I just finished reading a pretty funny drabble my amazing friend wrote and thanks to that, I have to add to this! So...here's another part! Lets get right into it.

If you wanna know how this started; chapters are under this:

~~Chapters~~

The first incident in NYC

The second Incident In Japan

Spectator notes version part three/Port Mafia incident report

Spectator notes version part four/Tokyo Jujutsu High report

The fifth incident in the Soul Society

((Your reading part six that takes place in Neo Gotham))

||Drabble summary||

It just seems Wyvern can't stop getting into trouble after the recent events that happened and now it has struck in the Soul Society. Now one could be wondering; did it stop? Well....No. Because now it seems Wyvern has started trouble in Neo Gotham. Lets see how the dark knight feels about this?

~~Guests in Drabble~~

The DBT, Van Ink the dragon and her great sword Wyvern belongs to the amazing and super cool friend of mine @demon-blood-youths

Terry Mcginnis a.k.a Batman, Maxine Gibson a.k.a codename Black cat belongs to me and is from the animated show Batman Beyond. Some others will be seen or mentioned in the drabble.

Seems like the DBT has gotten used to the city of Neo Gotham and it seems Terry was happy about it. Seeing and hearing they have really did well but he was unsure about how they been. Shdwkyz seems to be doing just fine too so they were hanging out together. Maxine was talking with Fosh about some new codes and things and the others chatting and eating like nothing was wrong.

"So then I get why you were so busy. Is that what you were saying?" Fosh asked seeing the new program that Maxine nods.

"Yeah! That way, if you need a back up, you can download this if you wish." she smiled as everyone else was happy about it. However, that's when a phone call happened on both Maxine and Fosh's laptops.

"Huh?" The two looks to open it but saw a video call with head chief Barbara Gordan was in her office but she seemed a bit upset about something.

"Ummm, is something wrong miss Commissioner?" Maxine asked.

"You guys need to come to the downtown station..Now." she said with arms crossed but the hackers blinks but looked nervous. "Ummm okay?"

"Oh, and bring Ink with you. I need to talk to her and her fraction as well." she said before ending the call to leave the hackers quiet. Everyone else blinks wondering what was going on.

"Uhhh what's wrong?" Terry asked but Maxine sighed.

"The chief wants all of us at the station like right now.." she said.

"Huh? But why?" Navarro asked.

"I don't know. She seems a bit upset about something but she means everyone..even Ink too." Maxine said as she tense to blink to Shdwkyz look at her.

"Ink.."

"Ummm..I didn't do it? "She said giggling nervous but Shdwkyz sweatdrops before sighing.

"Even so, lets hurry. We shouldn't keep her waiting." Max said seeing everyone getting up to head to the station. Now they were curious to what is happening.

~~~Later that day at the station~~~

Ink was sitting in the chair while seeing the others in shock after being called in a while ago. However, they were not expecting Barbara to be a bit upset while having her arms crossed over her chest. Though, why would she be upset? Well.....

"Okay, I'm going to try to say this as calm as I can..." she said taking a deep breath then speaks: "HOW THE HECK DID ONE SWORD DO ALL THIS DAMAGE IN GOTHAM!?" she said to see Ink tense looking nervous while Sai and Terry blinks to hear this.

"Wait, what do you mean?" he asked but Barbara sighed to look at Terry.

"What do I mean? You mean you haven't heard of the recent reports this week about some demon sword flying around?! I been getting call after call about the same thing: A scary demon sword comes crashing through the streets spreading fear into all!" she said but The DBT, Terry, and Maxine blinks to see her sigh.

"Ummmm...No? I mean, I been busy doing something at the time. I didn't expect anything like that to happen!" Terry said but Barbara sighed.

"If you don't believe me...then look at this." She said seeing one officer walk over with a huge stack of complaints and reports and it was thick! The officer slams it on the desk that it shook startling the group.

"This!" she said hitting the folder, "Is all the reports, work, cases, and other things regarding one thing: THAT SWORD! You can take a look through if you need to." she said as Hellmare did that to open the file and look. She begins showing pictures of destroyed shops, buildings, some streets, even a tower!?"

"Hmmmm...these looks like the same areas we did mission while staying here for a few months to help out." she said camly while Fosh and Maxine looks seeing the damage.

"How the hell!?" Maxine was shocked as Fosh had a deadpanned expression seeing the damaging areas.

"Geez! Not again!" he said but Barbara blinks.

"Wait, again!? this has happened before!" she said.

"Well...yes but not here! It's...How can I explain this? You see, Ink's sword is well....he has a mind of his own and he tends to be a bit.....destructive. He did the same back home, in japan, toyko, yokohoma, and-"

"Now here." she said to look at Navarro who rubs the back of his head.

"And your telling me that Miss Van ink's sword is a living being of it's own that so happens to do all this. How do I know it's not Ink that caused this!?" she said.

"Well, it's not just that! It only happens when Ink tries to summon him!" Maggie said but Barbara was silent.

"........"

"Again, hard to explain." she mutters that the chief pinches the bridge of her nose to try taking this all in before looking at them.

"Uh huh, so this great sword has done all this just by her summoning it or having a mind of it's own. Are you sure about that?" she said.

"Yes!" The DBT said but Barbara sighed.

"So you expect me to believe that her sword did this? The destructive of the buildings, chaos, bad guys running away like girls over a sword?! And now your telling me it is alive!" she said.

"But he is! Look, I can prove it!" Ink said.

"You can't be serious miss van ink." she said.

"No no! It's true just watch!"

"iNK WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?" Navarro said trying to stop her but it was too late.

"WYVERN!" she calls out loud for him to hear as Barbara blinks seeing this and the same for Terry and Maxine. The DBT sweatdrops in silence but Ink opens her eyes to look.

"Oh come on! WYVERN!........WYVERN!..." she shook her had but growls to go to the window and open it. "WYVERN, YOU GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!! STOP BEING A DUMB BUTT!!" she shouted comically.

'God dang it Ink..' Sai thought shaking his head with a face palm that Terry sweat drops not getting this.

"Does...does she always call her sword like this?" he asked.

"Yeahhhhhhhh......we will explain later." Rust said rubbing the back of his head seeing Ink still calling out for the sword. Barbara sighed waiting to stop.

"Okay, I think I've seen enough. You guys will have to let us take her in. If she did this, she caused a lot of property damage." she said.

"Wait, I'm sure we can talk about this!" Opheila said worried seeing the cops about to arrest Ink until....something loud was heard like something smashing and breaking from outside.

"Huh?"

Everyone looks to see something coming and heading right towards the building. "Uhhhh guys?" Maxine said seeing something sending smoke up to the sky and people shouting and moving.

"IT'S THE DEMON SWORD AGAIN! RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"

"PLEASE SPARE US MONSTER SWORD! WHAT DID WE DO THIS TIME!!"

"I JUST GOT THIS DAMN WALL FIXED! CURSE YOU DAMN FUCKING SWORD!"

A few people was shouting from the city but everyone looks to the window before seeing something shot past in a loud boom! Wyvern was flying at high speed to the call of it's owner destroying everything in front or breaking it.

"What...is that?!" one cop said.

"It's a sword....and.." the second one said before everyone begins to move.

"It's coming towards the building! EVERYONE GET OUT OF THE WAY!! MOVE MOVE MOVE!" The cops shouted to see it smash through the building causing a large hole as the DBT's eyes widen seeing that.

"WYVERN! NO DON'T DO THAT!-" ink winces hearing more smashing and cars exploding now from the garage down below. Everyone was shocked even Barbara was.

'A sword..wait, they were telling the truth!? What the hell!?' she said in her mind but hearing more police cars being cut or blowing up as she heard cops screaming and ducking as the sword was smashing through.

"RUN AWAY!! GET OUT OF THE WAY!!" Some scream or some duck from the blade to see it going up and breaking through the ceiling heading towards Barbara's office. The whole building shook but before Barbara can ask, a loud smash was heard seeing her desk breaking in half and shredding the document as pieces of paper was flying everywhere.

Wyvern showed up in all his glory. "Dang it Wyvern! I don't get why you do that! Get down here!" she reaches for him only to see him fly towards Ink quickly and smack her in the forehead. "OW!"

"I........." everyone looks to see her arguing with the sword with a swollen lump on her forehead.

"........"

"Her sword is very violent.....that's a lot of damage." Terry said. "Are you guys sure it's not some sword a gang cursed?" he asked but when Sai tries to explain, Wyvern heard that and quickly goes to hit Terry right in the face through a wall.

"TERRY!" Sai and Maxine rushes to see him but saw him knocked out with stars over his head and swirly eyes. He groans but at least he was not dead. "Owwwwwwwwwww......"

"......."

"....O..Okay....I believe you." Barbara said in shock but Fosh sweatdrops.

"I...we will pay for the damages for this. We are soooo sorry ma'am." he said.

"...........You know what? I....I'm at a lost of words here....I...." she held her head to sigh. "I'm getting too old for this." she sweatdrops as Sai tries to wake terry.

"I'M SORRY SAI!! I REALLY REALLY AM SORRY! I DIDN'T KNOW WYVERN WAS GOING TO ATTACK HIM LIKE THAT!" Ink cries worried but Shdwkyz said nothing.

"We really need to be sure you keep him with you at all times...though I don't think he will stop even if we tried anything." Maggie said with the DBT agreeing. However, Sai was quiet to only sigh.

"Ink.."

"Uhhhhh..y...yeah?" she said but Shdwkyz turns ready to bonk her on the head. Yeah..he was a bit upset.

"Uh oh..."

"........."

"N..Now Sai, come on! I'm sorry! I can fix this!" she said backing up with a sweatdrop.

"I'm sure you can...but I just want to talk first." he said but Ink knew better.

"Ummmmm...I have one thing to say." she said but when she takes a breath to speak, she quickly turns to run out the office.

"HEY! GET BACK HERE INK!"

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I'M SORRY!! WYVERN IS SORRY!!" she screams running from the phantom slasher.

"WE TOLD YOU TO KEEP THE SWORD WITH YOU! HOW LONG AS THIS BEEN GOING ON!?"

"AGAIN, I CAN'T HELP IT! WYVERN DOES THIS AND I CAN'T STOP HIM FROM DOING THAT! DX"

"THAT'S NOT FIXING THE PROBLEM!!!" he said.

"I'M STILL SORRY! PLEASE I DON'T WANNA GET BONKED ON THE HEAD AGAIN!"

"GET OVER HERE INK!" he said still chasing her.

The DBT, Barbara, and Maxine was seeing this but Fosh shook his head to look and sigh. He got right to work on sending money to pay for the damages within Neo Gotham. Though, he asked.

"Second, how badly are we talking of damages?" he asked but Barbara held a total of damages. When he saw it his eyes widen.

"HOW MUCH!?" he screamed only to fall back and pass out. Yeah, it was a lot. "Fosh!? Hey wake up!" Maggie said as he twitched but Maxine sweatdrops.

'Well...this turned out to be one crazy start of the night.' Max said as the chaos was unfolding. Though, at least Neo Gotham got to meet the demon greatsword of Van ink. Sorta.

[maxinewisewrites]

Butterflies make me happy.

I can’t describe why.

Perhaps it’s their beauty

with many colours.

Their swiftness is delightful.

Their mystery intrigues me.

Maybe I long to be

one of them.

Being able to fly gracefully.

Brimming with colour,

leading a more simple existence.

But I know in my heart

that I just want to soar away.

[pedroam-bang]

Life Is Strange Remastered Collection (2022)

[stars4chratt]

Confections

Pairing: Matt x fem!reader

Warnings: pure smut / established relationship / softdom!matt / breeding kink / nipple play / mutual orgasms / cunnilingus / p in v / unprotected sex (do NOT) / creampie / FILTHY kitchen sex / LOTS of praise / pet names (baby, my love, sweetheart, good girl) / aftercare

Summary: The reader walks into her home after a prolonged and stressful day to Matt - her boyfriend - making baked goods in her kitchen. He welcomes her and gives her a taste of the delicious desserts. However, in return for the favour, Matt gets to taste her.

Author’s note: hiii guysss, i love you all for liking and enjoying Pins n’ Needles (there is a part 2 btw) After seeing the most recent Wednesday video, this made my fantasy grow even worse LMAOO. Also, leave a comment if you want to be added onto my taglist! Anyways, i hope you enjoy this one! From Maxine, with love ♡.

“Cause I’m all that you want, boy. All that you can have, boy. Got me spread like a buffet. Bon a– Bon appetit, baby.” - BON APPETIT, KATY PERRY

╔══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══╗

Your shoulders ache and the migraine you have encapsulated in the back of your head feels like it’s going to split your skull in half.

People gave you a lot of shit at work today. Both coworkers and customers. Nagging and berating you and reiterating the same jaw clenching phrase that ‘the customer is always right.’

You close your eyes and let your chest fall as you sigh longly with relief after you arrive home.

The strong and pleasant scent of stiff caster sugar alongside a tangible hint of lemon citrus whiffs through your sinuses.

Ah, Matt’s baking again. You comprehend yourself.

You plop your keys on the marble countertop and set your bag down. The feeling of a thousand weights being lifted off of you as you remove accessory after accessory attached to you.

Peeking around the corner, you see Matt whisking dairy products mashed with madagascan vanilla extract whisked into butter cream. You peer down and see something resting in the oven at exactly 195 degrees celsius.

The peacefulness Matt baking brings you is heavenly. Just him concocting a sugary delight for the simple enjoyment of doing so can’t help but make your cheeks flush bright red and your core ache desperately.

The paternity your boyfriend holds within him orchestrating treats of chocolate frosting and yeasty dough makes you fall for him even more. Not only do his sweet delicacies taste amazing, but he also does it for pure comfort and vindication for you both.

Sometimes you wonder if he would enjoy baking for a family of three, maybe even four.

You sneak up behind him and wrap your arms around his waist. He looks over his shoulder, he has a large piping bag in his grasp. A large grin appears on his face as he sneers. “Hi my love, how was work?”

You let out a fatigued sigh and your clasp around him tightens. “Not great, it was super stressful.”

He turns around to face you and pulls you in by your hips in an act of reassurance.

“Aww, my poor baby. What can I do to make you feel better? Hm?”

Matt’s words make the caterpillars in your stomach hatch into butterflies. You two have been dating for quite a while now and yet you still giggle and squeal like a small child whenever he asserts words of refreshment.

“There may be one thing I have in mind…” You whisper softly into his ear. After the distress of work and the mind blowingly stupid and egotistical customers you dealt with all day, you only wanted one thing that could ease your displeasure. For Matt to fuck your brains out.

As you were about to inform him about your dilemma, a soul-jumping alarm sitting on the table top starts dinging. Blaring across the entire kitchen. 

The migraine you’re suffering from induces even more, spreading through every crevice of your skull.

Matt notices the discomfort of the ear-splitting noise written all over your face and quickly shuts the alarm off.

“One second, sweetheart.” Abruptly, Matt grabs his teal blue oven mitts and crouches down to the oven to release the now strong scent of citric lemon flow through the room.

He takes out the tray and reveals to you that he had baked lemon drizzle cupcakes. Very tasty looking lemon drizzle cupcakes at that.

The glint in Matt’s eye along with his pearly whites framed with his smile presents his joy to you.

“Oh my god… They look delicious”

“Exactly, I’m a fantastic chef.”

“Damn right.” You both giggle together whilst Matt sets down the tray on a heatproof mat.

“What were you saying again, baby?” He twists back around to face you, letting you continue where you left off.

“No, no. It’s fine. I’ll leave it for after you finish off your cupcakes.” Matt’s eyes now glow with anticipation and curiosity.

“What you want won’t be an inconvenience for me at all, I can finish the cupcakes afterwards baby. I don’t wanna make you wait.” Matt crosses his arms patiently waiting for you to respond.

You gently stride over to him and lift your arms up to tug behind his neck over his shoulders.

“Matt..” You whisper softly into his ear. Trying to contain the burning sensation in between your legs. You really wanted to fuck. The intensity of today made you grow greedy with lust, and your boyfriend was the only person who could assist with that.

“Yes, baby?” He returns, completely oblivious to the pent-up arousal you’re experiencing.

You move one of your hands up the back of his head whilst the other tangles in the silver chain of his jewellery. 

You don’t say anything before you rapidly intertwine your lips with Matt’s. Your cravings of thirst for Matt’s touch starts to fester passionately.

He almost immediately reciprocates and swings his arms around your figure, your whole upper body in his grasp. You whine loudly at the sudden action as it makes your entrance leak and his touch makes you tingle like electricity shooting up your spine.

You advance your hands onto his chest and push him up against the wall beside the table top island stranded in the middle of the room.

The bulge throbbing slightly in his grey sweatpants presses against your core. Which makes you both gasp and sob into eachothers mouths.

“I’m so impatient, Matt. I need your dick now. Today has been so shitty and I really want it. Please, baby.” You choke up the words through the desperate whines thickening the air around you.

“Get on the counter then, sweetheart. Let me relieve all that stress for you.” Matt states delicately as he peppers kisses all over you up until he stops at your collarbone. He grips onto your shoulders as he forces you down on the counter until you're fully laying down with your legs spread wide.

“I don’t think we have any more condoms left.” Matt speaks softly whilst he towers over you. There’s a small worry in his pupils before you reassure him.

“Fuck it, we can go without. I need you so badly right now Matt, you don’t understand. Condom or not, I don’t care anymore. Just please fuck me.”

Your constant begging in impatience makes Matt’s prick pulse harshly. He rushes over on top of you to connect his lips with yours again.

The sloppy wetness of the kiss alongside his rock hard cock restricted in his sweats rubbed against your clothed heat has him writhing in a needy haze. His eyes go cloudy and his skin is painted ruby.

Matt viscously tugs at the hem of your work shirt pulling it upwards to reveal your laced bra. Your chest rising and falling heavily underneath Matt’s aggression.

He pulls down your underclothes instantaneously. Your tits spilling out and your nipples are swollen red.

“Oh, fuck yeah… Wait just one second sweetheart.” Matt leaves the enclosure of the space in between your legs but you can still see him in your peripheral. 

You look over to see him grab the piping bag. He races back over to the original position he was just in. His horse pendant jangling about and grazing over his defined collarbones.

“What’re you gonna do with the piping bag..?” You question him hesitantly, feeding your bottom lip into your mouth.

“You taste so good on my tongue baby. I bet you’d taste even better with cream on top of your tits. Hm?”

Matt’s filthy idea makes you tremble and your folds become velvety slick. Who would’ve thought that Matt, your boyfriend, a professional baker would want to fuck you as messily as this.

Matt leans over you and squeezes the piping bag slowly. The cream grazes your skin and the coldness of the substance makes you squirm and your back arches.

He moves the piping bag down and leaves a trail of sugary white down to just above your belly button.

His bottom lip fully concealed under his teeth in concentration before he sets the bag down and reels your hips in so the lower half of your body is hanging off the edge of the counter.

Matt then drops down to your height and starts to suck on your rock hard bud. Fully licking the cream off and nibbling at the centre, his mouth on your fully perched out nipples makes your entrance twitch and soak in your juices.

“You taste so fucking good, I’ve been wanting to do this to you for so long. You don’t understand.” Matt gasps between licks on your tit.

He moves his head up slightly to suckle and nibble on the flesh of your neck. Leaving hickeys and bite marks all over your skin. Making you whimper into the air of the kitchen.

He advances down the thick, sugary trail that stops at your belly button. Licking and consuming the cream off of your now hot and plush flesh.

After all of the cream is gone, Matt brushes against his lip with his tongue and grabs the bag again. 

He hastily undoes the button on your work jeans and rips them off your legs in keenness. He uses his thumb and index finger to push your matching lace panties to the side. Now fully unveiling your bare, bright pink pussy.

Matt repositions his hands and puts the nub of the piping bag on the very peak of your clit.

“Matt, what are you doing?” Your eyebrows furrowed and your breath is still heavy and uneven.

“I’m eating you my love, wasn’t it obvious?” Suddenly, you feel a thick and freezing cold liquid resting on your swollen heat. This kind of filth during intimate times like this really makes you think about what other kind of things Matt is into, and you fucking love it

He throws the bag back onto the counter and crouches down until his face is barely touching your pussy. He blows on your clit gently, making your entire body shiver.

His lips are just slightly touching your soaking wet entrance. Just as you thought he was going to eat you out right then and there, he turns his head to pay his full attention to your thighs. Kissing and sucking on them gently. Whilst his hands have their full grip on them, squeezing them in temptation at relishing at your throbbing core.

“Matt..” You whine in impatience. You were so desperate for him to just consume all of you. His tongue felt amazing on your skin. He knew all of your weak spots and he knew exactly how to take advantage of that.

“Shhh, I’m here. I promise.” He drawls out faintly, his breath brushing over you again.

Matt focuses on your dripping centre again, and gradually sticks his tongue inside your entrance.

His saliva mixing with your silky juices and the cream still laying on your clit makes your head tilt back and your eyes roll back into your skull.

Matt pulls out his tongue straight away after he notices you broke eye contact.

“No, sweetheart. Look at me. Look at me whilst I eat you out like a good girl.”

You whimper at Matt’s mixture of a command and a praise. You turn your head back down to see him staring up at you through his eyelashes with his tongue deep inside you.

He licks a stripe up your folds and fully swallows up the sugary goodness of both the cream and your juices. 

You could not stop trembling under his tongue circling around your throbbing clit. His nose resting slightly above with his irises still dilated onto yours. 

You can feel your body tensing as Matt’s mouth is latched onto your slippery heat.

“Matt.. I-I’m gonna…” You mumble faintly.

“Cum for me. Cum all over my mouth. Let me taste more of you.”

An overwhelming flush or euphoria strikes all through your body in waves. Your breath hitches and you grab onto Matt’s hair, making him hum into your heat.

Your chest rises and falls smoothly whilst coming down from your high and Matt slows the rhythm of his tongue down on your clit.

Suddenly he detaches his mouth from your skin and pulls his sweatpants down.

Matt’s dick comes sprawling out of his garments. The vein that runs down the middle of his length spikes outwards. The very sight of his cock is an aphrodisiac to your senses within itself.

“I’ve always wanted to fuck you raw. I’ve never asked you because I didn’t think you’d like it.” His necklace glints under the artificial light beaming down on the both of you that hangs just above the counter.

“Matt, you really should’ve asked. Fuck a baby into me, fill me up with your cum. Forget about the fucking cream. I want yours.” You sigh out. Your core twitching at the sight of his taffy pink prick fully exposed practically grazing against you.

The gaze in Matt’s eyes is full to the brim with hot pink lust. He’s practically drooling in admiration at how fuckable you look right now.

He grips onto your thighs again and presses his tip against your slippery entrance. He hisses at the overwhelming thrill of the feeling of your drenched folds.

Matt pushes his length inside of you at a sluggish pace, almost like he’s teasing you by going slow in the beginning.

Your spongy, slick walls squeeze down on his cock and it makes it pulse inside you. He whimpers on top of you while he sits inside of you in and out stagantly.

“Fuck…you’re so tight sweetheart.” Matt stutters, the utmost feeling of your pussy clenched around his dick is like heaven to him. Your breathless whines and moans are like harmonic symphonies ringing and humming in his ears. His visual stimuli are more than satisfactory from your tender and curvaceous figure that he has held in his hands at this very moment.

Matt’s pace starts to quicken and becomes more rapid inside you. Every single time he rams into you, he slightly grazes that sweet spot that drives you absolutely fucking insane. It’s like his cock was made for you. “I want to fuck you so good your pussy turns into the shape of my dick baby. It’s so perfect. I can’t wait to fuck my cum into you.”

“Please do it Matt… cum inside me.” His dick is slightly bulging out of your stomach. He sees this as an opportunity to use his two fingers and press on your abdomen slightly. “This is where my babies are gonna be, sweetheart. All for you. Taking it all like such a good girl.” He huffs out smugly.

The sound of your skin clapping and beating against each other every single time he pounds his dick into you and his waist clashes into your thighs and ass cheeks almost hypnotises you. “M-Matt… I’m gonna cum again…”

“Fuck… me too baby. I’m s-so close..” The rhythm of Matt fucking his cock into you starts to slow down and you can feel his lower body start to stutter and his member pulses thickly inside of you.

“Oh f-fuck… take all of my cum sweetheart…I’m gonna cum…c-cumming…” His arms give in and he loses all balance as he feeds his cum into your hole. His and your juices swirl and mix together inside you.

Suddenly, your stomach starts to feel warm. The feeling of Matt’s hot and thick load spilling inside all the way through your cervix pulls and twists at your neurons, especially alongside your soul-shattering orgasm Matt just gave you.

He drops his whole weight on you completely and hides his head in the crook of your neck. His heavy breath brushes on your skin while his prick still rests inside you, you can’t tell if he’s too tired to take it out or he wants all of his cum to stay inside.

Either way you both savour the moment while you lay still on top of each other. Catching your breath and coming down from your second high.

Matt raises his head up and reaches out for the cloth laying next to the piping bag. He balls it up and wipes at the skin with small spots of butter cream from earlier.

“I wasn’t too rough on you this time, was I?” He enquires. He looks down on you, still swiping away the white mess all over you.

“No, of course not baby. I loved it.” You respond, giggling exhaustedly. “We should do this again, sometime.”

“I’d love to, sweetheart.” Matt smiles before pecking your cheek and rests his head on your collarbone once more.

“A-are you still inside me?” 

“Pfft, yeah.” 

╚══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══╝

Author’s Note No.2: MY GOD THIS WAS ANNOYING TO WRITE. Sorry for the slight delay, I was incredibly tired and fell asleep and I got preoccupied with school. Anyways. Again, thank you so much for enjoying Pins n’ Needles. I WILL be making a part 2 very soon! :)

༝༚༝༚, Maxine.

Taglist: @gamermattsgf @luverboychris @worldlxvlys @chrissystur @chaosisalwayscrying @bellasfavbisexual

[themuse-if]

DEMO (TBA) | Cast Profiles | Cast Interviews

The Muse is a 18+ slice of life interactive fiction novel set at NYU focusing mostly on the art departments in the Steinhardt and Tisch schools. Inspired by my love for shows and movies like Felicity, Fame (the show), Skins UK, and Center Stage. This will not be an accurate depiction of school life at NYU, I'll be taking lots of creative liberties.

Content Warnings: explicit language, sexual themes, substance use, violence, mention of SA

You come from a family of artists and art lovers. Your mother is a passionate curator for a small gallery in the city and your father is a sculptor and painter with a very dedicated cult following. They met when they were just starting out and have built a lovely life for themselves and their two children, you and your older brother Cameron.

Your parents have always been super supportive of you and your brother’s dreams and ambitions. They were a great source of encouragement and guidance for your brother on his path to discovering his goal to become a game designer and you on your path to become whatever you choose.

Growing up surrounded by such creativity just so happened to inspired you to want to create something of your own.

Now that you’ve graduated high school it’s time for you to head off to university! You’ve decided to leave the mid sized city that you call your hometown, and go to the big city NYC! You’ll be attending NYU more specifically, but you won’t be making this move alone you’ll be attending with your best friend Maxine!

What will you discover in your university life?

Will you solely focus on schoolwork or wind up in the raging party scene?

Will you explore new creative endeavors or solely focus on honing your craft?

With so much going on will you even have the time to possibly find your muse, or maybe even become someone else’s?

Design your mc from clothing style to physical appearance to pronouns, gender identity, name, looks, and more.

Choose 1 of 9 majors that grant you different classes with new students and professors: (Studio Arts, Dance, Drama, Photography and Imaging, Jazz Studies, Songwriting, Recorded Music, Collaborative Arts, Dramatic Writing )

Curate your MCs personality and how they react to all the drama and excitement university life has to offer. Style your MC’s dorm room and their aesthetic style.

Navigate the cliques and scenes to figure out where your MC fits in. Maybe you're a social butterfly and you just float from one social group to another!

Engage in a romance with 1 of 10 characters. 5 female/male gender selectable and 5 gender set characters. And 2 poly routes one with The Rebel Rejects and on with The Exes.

Choose one of three part time jobs to give you a little extra spending money for things like spring break and birthday gifts for your new friends.

Follow The Muse through your MC’s freshman and sophomore years. Junior and senior year will come much later in Book Two of The Muse. The third and final book in The Muse series will cover the start of MC's new life after graduation.

Roxanne/Robbie Sawyer: (f/m) The lead singer and guitarist of The Rebel Rejects. Ro is everything you would want in a lead singer cool, charismatic, and super talented. Don’t let their dazzling aura intimidate you though because though they may have a raging wild side they can also be extremely down to earth.

Joleen/Johnny Nielsen: (f/m) The drummer of The Rebel Rejects. Jo is the oddball of the band with a sunny exterior and twisted flower child past. They may be a sweet boho bimbo with a heart of gold, but there’s a lot more that lies behind those blue green eyes.

Delphine/Desmond Hartley: (f/m) The bassist for The Rebel Rejects. De is the super glue propelling the group forward. With high expectations from her parent, and dreams that soar even higher, success is the only option.

Rina/Ren Fukushi: (f/m) R is the best ballet dancer in this incoming freshman class, and no one would ever think to say otherwise. They’re cold and closed off, if it isn’t about ballet then they don’t want to hear it.

Everly/Everett Thompson: (f/m) Eve is a triple threat. Singing, dancing, acting they can do it all. They hope to complete their EGOT before they turn 40.

Karla Reyes: (she/her) Karla is a sophomore at NYU studying Studio Arts. Their favorite medium is watercolor on canvas. They’ve dabbled with sculpting and ceramics...until they broke up with their ex, Faye, and can’t stand to be in the same studio with them.

Faye Winters: (she/they) Fae is every bit the ethereal being they seem to be, and just as flighty. She is a sophomore majoring in dance with a minor in studio arts. She has this effortless charm and beauty that extends to her art whether its her dancing or her sculptures.

Sebastien Auclair: (he/him) Sebastien is in his third year of university, he’s an exchange student from the Paris College of Art. He is studying photography and imaging. Sebastian loves Paris, but he is excited for this change of scenery.

Maxine Matthews: (she/her)Max is your best friend in the world! Your parents are friends so you were destined to best pals since birth, thank god you actually like each other or all those shared family functions would have been really awkward. Max is funny and always has great commentary for every show or movie that you watch together. Which is why you weren’t surprised when they decided to major in dramatic writing. Some people think that you’re too close. They wonder how is it possible that you could be just friends.

Silas Walker: (he/him) Silas is your RA. As your Resident Advisor he's super helpful and friendly. You have question about the best study spots, bad professors, how to use the subway, well he's got answers. He keeps all his advisees at arms length because everyone knows RAs can't canoodle with their advisees. And that just makes it all the more enticing.

[theflamingredwolfarts]

Made a traditional artwork of Maxine Caulfield, better known as Max as played by Hannah Telle in Life Is Strange using Graphite and Colored Pencils in the span of 31hrs! :)

Finally after exactly a month of working on this, I present to you my first ever colored traditional artwork & with it, so begins a new era of portraits by yours truly!!

The butterflies were originally going to be colored in digitally as I wanted to keep & portray the significance of their color but my parents ended up surprising me with the colored pencils & you can see the rest!

I love how the artwork has turned out, not to toot my own horn or anything but I am sooooo happy & proud of the coloring, the butterflies aren't very detailed cause my goal rn was to understand the pencils & get a feel for them. I love how Max has turned out, I'm very happy how the artstyle looks like a more realistic version of the game's style & her eyes have to be the best I've drawn, the way they look so glassy & the way I've drawn her eye makeup! I also love the composite of this, the way Max is "frozen" in black & white whilst the colored butterflies surround her & moving whilst it all looks like a photograph, it's just *chef's kiss*!!!

Oh, & this is my first time drawing a landscape traditionally, which was very cool!

[passivenovember]

Night Shift (for @catharrington )

--

The first thing he sees when he comes to is Max. 

She’s crying in her sleep, the liquid timbre of it slipping loosely in time with a heart monitor, somewhere to the left, fading in and out of view as the steady drip of morphine fights to drag Billy under.

He realizes, that. The heart monitor is his. He’s plugged into it and he hurts. More than Neil. More than anything.

What’s left of his mind is liquified, sloshing around in a body strapped to a bed. It turns the memory of Maxine over in his hands like a rubber duck in an ocean of guilt.

She’s alive. Billy made sure of it, so. She’s alright. She’s okay–

It aches to breathe, burns so bad that his vision blacks out and Billy thinks, eyes glued to the grounding shock of red hair on his sister’s head, that he’s too young to die. 

–

The first time Billy’s strong enough to crash awake and stay there, he wishes for death. 

Fuck being too young. 

Everything burns, and then he’s gasping around a pain unlike any he’s ever felt as warm amber light filters through his eyelashes. He’s bleeding, from the very center of his chest, watercolor seeping through a cloth. He watches red bloom, bloom, bloom over white gauze and thinks. He should call for help. 

But then someone snuffles, deep in sleep and Billy flinches toward the sound, teeth on edge. 

Maxine looks like she hasn’t moved or showered or eaten in days, and Billy grunts. Her angry, cave-man big brother even knocking on death’s door. He tries to sit but something else escapes him, a fucking. Whine. 

More blood.

He’s crying. He doesn't know when he starts crying, but he’s fighting to get to Max, he’s wading through shit and fire and and then someone says, “Don’t move, Hargrove, you’ll rip yourself open again.”

Steve Harrington looks like he went three rounds with a meat grinder. Like someone tried to kill him. Like Billy–

“Shh, it’s alright,” Steve’s fingers are soft, through the searing pain, gentle as butterfly wings on the caps of Billy’s shoulders. “Lay back,” Steve tells him, blue and black and purple, like spilled paint, “Lay down, okay?”

Billy gets lost in the fat bulge of Steve’s bottom lip. Thinks. 

He probably did that to Steve. Everything’s fuzzy, he doesn’t remember anything but he remembers wanting. Steve. Everyone dead. Everyone and then himself. 

He didn’t think everyone included Steve Harrington.

“It’s alright,” Steve cards those soft, sweet fingers through Billy’s hair. “Lay down,” He says, “Rest.”

Billy does.

–

The next time he wakes it’s because Maxine is throwing a temper tantrum. 

Billy would know the sound of her voice in death. The shrill, ear-splitting soprano of Max’s screams could yank him out of hell and catapult his body through the lid of his coffin, startled lips gathering earth between his gums until he’s awake, again. 

Alive.

A man in a white lab coat tells Max to calm down. 

She spits, instead, phlegmy and gross and just like Billy taught her, in the Doc’s face, “You’re not moving him.”

It’s half-way unintelligible. Billy squints, like there’s sunlight streaming bright and relentless from his sister’s throat and he’ll go blind if he doesn’t protect himself. 

“Kid,” The Doctor says, “He’s not awake. He’s not getting any better–”

“If you take him to Chicago I’ll kill myself,” Maxine declares. Stubborn bitch. “If you take him, I’ll. I’ll chain myself to the bottom of the helicopter. I’ll stop eating. I’ll starve myself–”

She will. She’s a man of her word, the fuckin’ loser. 

“A hunger strike?” The Doc frowns, regretful. “You can try, kid. Won’t bring your brother back.”

Billy smirks. Almost. It hurts and his head splits open and across the room, on his feet and ready to restrain Billy’s very own red-headed tornado from punching a hole through the Doctor’s sternum, Steve Harrington watches Billy. 

His face looks normal now. 

Almost. 

He’s yellowing, sort of, like an old photograph, but. He’s beautiful. 

Billy’s chest aches. 

“--His entire life is here,” Maxine says, voice wobbling dangerously. Billy knows she’s about two seconds from decapitating this Doctor with her bare hands, “His family. I’m his family, you’re not just going to take him away from–”

“--Kid–”

“--Don’t call me kid, you fucking asshole,” Max says, “Don’t–”

“--If we can’t get him somewhere he’ll wake up, he’ll die.” The Doctor says. Not a teensy bit regretful.

Billy doesn’t exactly blame him. 

But you’d think a bomb has gone off. You’d think society’s on the brink of collapse, by the way Maxine goes shocked still, and then.

She moves. 

Or, She tries to move, screaming and screaming as Steve holds her back, never once taking his eyes off of Billy. “Max,” Steve says. His lip’s not bulging anymore. 

Maxine wails against the Doctor, anyway, her tiny fists not packing much force because the fucker just looks sad, about it. For her. Max will break her thumb, doing that. 

Billy tries to call her a dumb fucker and fails.

Tries to sit up and fails.  

“Max,” Steve tells her, putting himself in front of the Doc, “Look.”

Her eyes are blue, like his.

Somehow Billy forgot about that while he was treading water in the sea of everything else. Billy and Max stare at each other for ten long, breathless seconds. 

And.

All Billy can think is that he should’ve stayed dead. He should’ve followed his mother’s voice into the pits of hell, like she wanted him to, he should’ve stopped fighting and in that stretch of breathless anticipation, he knows. 

Maxine is going to open her mouth and tell him that he fucked it up. Again. Die, she’s thinking. If you’re not going to do it, I’ll kill you myself.

Max blinks and then she opens her mouth. Makes a terrible noise. It’s the worst fuckin’ thing Billy’s ever heard, and turns out he was right, her fists don’t pack much force but she knocks him one across the jaw, anyway. Maybe an accident, but then again. Maybe not.

“You fucking asshole,” She says, scratching and clawing until Steve Harrinton grabs her around the chest in a barrel hug, lifting her off the hospital bed like she weighs nothing. 

It’s alright, Billy wants to say, I deserve it. It’s the least of what I deserve. And besides. It’s the only place on Billy’s entire body that isn’t screaming in pain, so. 

Small victories.

“Let me go,” Max shouts, but Steve doesn’t. He holds her tight, watching Billy. 

The Doctor stares, too, like he’s witnessing a miracle. Like he isn’t sure what to make of all this. Like he’s going to run screaming into the halls and take all the credit even though he was ready to ship a corpse off to Chicago this morning.

Immediately, Billy hates him. 

Max elbows Steve Harrington in the gut. He drops to the floor, groaning, and Billy has the nerve to feel proud as his sister climbs over the lip of the bed with a fire in her eyes, unlike anything Billy’s ever seen, and.

He was standing at the mouth of hell, once. 

Billy notes, distantly, that he shouldn’t have worried so much about her. Shouldn’t have risen from the dead to make sure she’d be, not. Alright, but. Something. Maxine can take care of herself and Billy never should’e doubted it. She’s gearing up to take care of him, now, let the trash out to roost, but.

But.

Maxine collapses on top of him, instead. Billy thinks, distantly, that she might be trying to suffocate him because she’s laying flat across his oxygen tube. 

But. 

She’s crying. Her body shakes hard enough to rumble the bed and the linoleum floor and the entire building beneath that. It hurts. Billy wants to lift his arms and hold her to him, but he can’t. He can’t feel his arms, he can’t–

“I’m sorry,” Maxine says, clutching at his neck, “I’m so sorry, Billy.”

Steve Harrington and the Doctor are gone before Billy thinks to ask about the hole in his chest. When the door slams shut behind them, Maxine sits up and O2 hisses through the plastic around his nose. 

Billy can breathe, again.

–

“What did it feel like?”

Billy’s grateful that his room has a window. The trees have been good to him.

Maxine knocks her sneaker into the hospital bed, shooting pain up Billy’s left side. He ignores it, biting against the fleshy patch of his cheek until blood drips on his tongue. “Billy.”

Billy shakes his head.

Steve Harrington stands watching, backlit with bright September skies. He’s been perched under the window for hours with his arms across his chest, holding vitriol in the birdcage of his ribs, just. Watching. Billy and Max together.

“Dipshit,” Max says, “I know you can hear me. You’re mute, not deaf,” Max kicks him, ignoring his wince of pain, “What the fuck happened to you while you were–”

“Max,” Steve tells her, coming to life, “He can’t talk.”

Or think, Or move. 

“I know.”

“You’re stressing him out.”

“How the fuck do you know, Harrington?”

Billy smirks, a little, watching the roll of Steve’s neck muscles. Irritated, like Billy. Like a brother. “Look at him,” Steve says, “He’s begging me with those big blue eyes, Harrington, she’s stressing me out, make her stop.”

Billy wants to smile. He tries to, but.

“I can’t stress him out,” Maxine says, kicking at him again. “He’s not even doing anything.”

It’s lighthearted. As bright as things can be when Billy’s still on a respirator, but he knows she’s pissed. Out of everything, he knows that. The shape of Maxine’s rage. 

“Jesus Christ, Mayfield,” Steve exhales, exhausted, and every tree branch outside the window moves with him. “You have to give him time.”

Maxine kicks the bed again, hard and insistent until Billy has to look at her otherwise his lungs will explode with the pain. He doesn’t want to. He manages, anyway, and. Maxine deflates. A wilted red balloon.

She’s crying. Suddenly. 

He frowns at her, like. What, shitbird? 

Max seems to hear him. “What happened to you?”

Blue eyes, blue like his. Their anger falls the same way, like a sledgehammer against tempered glass. Pain spiderwebs out from him, varicose veins devouring all the light and warmth from the room with guilt.

Max’s face wrinkles, a raisin in the September glow, and Billy forces air through his lips. I’m sorry, he wants to say, I’m sorry I can’t put words to it right now. I’m sorry I can’t make sense of it for you. I’m sorry you have to carry it on your shoulders like a backpack full of algebra homework. I’m sorry–

Her fingers are cold when they curl into the palm of Billy’s hand. He’s sorry this is happening to them. To her, so.

“See,” Harrington says, “You stop flapping your gums for five seconds and he’ll give you what you want.”

Billy rolls his eyes and holds her fingers tightly, trying to press every syllable into Max’s thundering pulse. Billy hopes she understands, knows she does, and when he turns back to the window Steve Harrington is there. 

Watching Billy with pink cheeks, a pink nose. Not sepia at all anymore. 

Healed. 

–

“We have to change your linens,” The nurse says. 

Billy doesn’t know what a fucking linen is. He wrinkles his nose, waiting for Maxine or Steve Harrington to jump in and gather context clues, but they’re useless. Basically wallpaper, anytime the nurses come in. 

He’s never seen two storybook heroes more squeamish at the sight of blood or the sound of discomfort.

The nurse raises her eyebrows at them, already pissed off. “Bedsheets,” She says. “We need to change them so he doesn’t get sores.”

“Sores?” Maxine says, finally serving as Billy’s voice box.

“Yes, he hasn’t learned to walk yet–”

“--What if he never learns to walk again?” Max wonders, “Will he get sores from laying around all the time–”

“--He’ll learn,” The nurse says, done deal. She’s a bitch. Billy’s favorite, so.

He knows right away that it’s going to hurt. Makes a noise like a fork caught in a garbage disposal, completely involuntary, and his backup helper snaps out of it. “How do we change his bedsheets?” Steve asks. Which. 

Douses Billy in cold water. 

He would rather die than let Steve see that. And he has. He almost stayed dead, too, and now–

“Little girl,” The nurse says to Maxine, “Wait in the hall.”

“No way,” Max says, crossing her arms, “No fucking way I’m leaving you in here with my brother, alone–”

“--I’m here–” Steve says.

“--Little girl, do you want to watch your brother thrash in agony and wet himself?”

The nurse waits, her eyebrows disappearing into her hairline while Max comes to terms with losing the bitch-off in a hospital room, of all places.

“No ma’am,” Maxine says finally.

“Perfect. do as I say.”

Max nods, pinning Billy with a flat stare. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

He nods.

The second the door shuts behind her, the nurse tears the blanket from Billy’s legs, “You hold him still while I jimmy the sheet out from under him.”

Steve Harrington looks nervous. Comical. “Isn’t there another nurse who can help–”

Billy’s torso lights on fire when the nurse yanks on his bed sheet and one of the elastic corners snaps around his foot like a claw. She’s not gentle but she’s fast. The linen drags him into a sea of pain, Billy’s arms move independent of the rest of his body, yanking the I.V. out of his arm, and he’s embarrassed but he can’t stop. 

Humiliated when the nurse says, “Lay still, sweetheart,” Like his chest isn’t a gaping wound. “You’ll just make it worse for yourself.” 

Billy screams as best he can. Thrashes. Tries to center himself in the reality that Steve Harrington is watching him, nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Billy’s asshole nurse shouts, “Come hold him down, alright?”

Harrington has the nerve to look terrified.

“Alright,” Steve says. “Okay. Yeah.” His jaw squares with determination and then he’s leaning over Billy, palms white-hot and stubborn against Billy’s shoulder caps. 

He smells good, like pine needles.

“Hey,” Steve says, smiling softly, “You’re alright–”

Billy’s nurse yanks the sheets out from under him, jostling Billy up and back down again on the lumpy fucking horrible mattress.

He must scream. 

It must be awful, because Steve rubs his palms up and down, up and down, trying to soothe him, “There we go, Malibu, doing so fuckin’ fantastic,” He says, “Just a little bit longer, right nurse?”

Malibu.

Malibumalibumalibu–

“We still have to sit him up to put the new sheet on the bed,” Billy’s nurse says, just to spite him.

He won’t survive it. He’s being torn apart. Billy thrashes in Steve’s hold. Can’t take it. Won’t–

“Hey. Look at me, Hargrove.”

Billy. Gets lost in the expression on Steve’s face. It reminds him of the court, of a time when Billy wasn’t this pathetic, whimpering mess of torn skin and bones. 

Steve rubs his thumbs, gently, over Billy’s jawline, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here with you, yeah?”

Billy nods, blinking against tears. 

“Good,” Steve says. He turns to the nurse, “Alright, when do we–”

Billy bends at the waist, sitting heavily in Steve’s arms. 

And.

Death smells like pine. Feels like warm hands, rubbing circles into his back.

–

He lives.

–

It’s like the flood gates open. Steve touches Billy whenever he wants, after that, and when Billy goes into surgery to replace the tattered skin on his ribcage, Steve’s there.

Holding Billy’s hand when he falls asleep. Holding Billy’s hand when he wakes up.

–

Eventually, Steve starts talking.

He brings up high school, which has disappeared into the rear-view of where they are now. Rivalries and broken plates and bloody knuckles don’t matter, anymore, in retro-spect. 

Maybe they never did.

Steve helps him learn to use his vocal cords, again. He waits with patient, sparkling brown eyes, stubbornly insisting Billy can answer small questions.

When it finally happens, Steve calls him a hero.

They share stories, dreams, pudding cups and cold lasagna from the hospital cafeteria. 

Steve Harrington is funny. 

Billy never gave the possibility much thought. Steve’s earnest and loyal and beautiful, but Billy never considered that Steve would say and do things that make Billy laugh so hard his stitches nearly pop. 

The hospital staff hate Steve as much as they adore him, and when Billy learns to sit again, Steve Harrington is right there, holding Billy’s hand. Rubbing circles into his wrist that Billy senses like lightning in the heartland. 

Steve. Has tears clinging to his lashes, looks like he’s never been more proud of anything in all his life, and Billy thinks. He could be worth something, again. Someday.

Worth Steve.

–

“I’m so fucking proud of you,” Steve says that night, when they’re alone, in the dark. “You’re not what I thought you’d be, you’re. Billy; you’re amazing.”

Billy can talk, again. He thinks he should say something, but the words won’t come.

–

Maxine has to go home at the end of the day. That’s the deal. 

The hospital Billy’s staying in may know about monsters and dimensional tears but they still make preteens go home to sleep in their own bed once their brothers are out of the woods. It’s the worst part of Billy’s recovery. The dark.

Max fights it, tooth and nail. They both do. 

Round and round she goes with the Doc. She’s his sister. She can’t leave him alone because she doesn’t want to leave him alone, blah-blah-blah, and. 

Maxine screams and cries so much that, eventually, Owens and his goons make an exception. Steve Harrington volunteers to serve as Billy’s discount little sister because he doesn’t have school or a job or a girlfriend. No one to miss his body like Billy does, so.

He's always at the hospital. 

Not much changes, in retrospect, because Steve was there on that first afternoon and he’s there always, day and night and back again, Billy blinks and then suddenly he can’t remember a time when Steve Harrington wasn’t two feet away from him, complaining about whatever cassette tape Max brings from home that week. 

Steve’s only ever gone for an hour at a time. He disappears in the early morning to go home and shower, change his clothes, and then he’s back, again, to keep Max’s cot warm for her while she’s playing Only Child.

Neil never comes to the hospital. Like Billy said. Small victories.

–

Will Byers is the first to notice that Billy’s a faggot.

Well.

He’s not the first but he’s definitely the most gentle. 

Billy clocks that about him the first time someone knocks on his hospital door and he has to do a double take because Maxine is doing her calculus homework on the cot next to him, and Steve’s the one that pulls himself away from Billy’s dinner long enough to swallow a hunk of cold lasagna to open the door.

Everyone in the entire world who cares about him is already here, but Will Byers leads a group of doe-eyed, worried looking people behind him, all bundled up in winter coats because it’s February. Somehow. 

Billy slept through most of 1985 so he’s shocked when Little Boy Byers is tall enough that his mom looks like a munchkin when she bullies her way into the room. Joyce, Billy thinks she’s called. 

Mrs. Byers introduces herself while she drapes a blanket over the foot of Billy’s hospital bed and scolds Steve Harrington for picking at Billy’s dinner. Freak Byers stands next to his brother looking high and uncomfortable.

Mostly high.

“Waa?” Steve demands, Bambi through and through with a roll sticking out of his mouth, “But. Joyce, Billy said–”

“It’s alright, Mrs. Byers,” Billy tells her, wary when the Chief of Police lumbers over to clap a huge, concerned paw onto Max’s shoulder, “I don’t like the hospital food, anyway–”

“You have to eat, honey,” Joyce says.

Honey. 

Honey feels like Malibu but tastes so, so different.

When Bill doesn’t say anything, Mrs. Byers nods. “I’ll bring you something. And. It’s Joyce.”

“No, that’s alright,” Billy tries to sit, wincing when his chest bandage tugs at the tender, curling pieces of raw across his pecks. Steve leans forward with the lip of a putting cup in his mouth and helps him settle against the pillows, hands warm where they stay, sleeping against his stomach. 

Like he’s worried Billy might stand up and run away.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mrs. Byers says, piling another blanket onto the foot of Billy’s bed, “If you’re going to get out of here, you need your strength. You need your food,” Mrs. Byers says, yanking the pudding cup from Steve’s teeth.

She tosses it to him and Steve grabs it from the air.

“Alright, open up, hero,” Steve tears it pop tab loose with his teeth and feeds it to Billy, one spoon full at a time. A little gets on Billy’s nose and Steve uses his thumb to wipe it away, lingering.

“Your nose,” Steve says quietly, voice thick with vanilla, “You’ve got a cute nose. Like a goddamn rabbit.”

Billy smiles. They smile at each other, big and dumb like always, only.

Across the room, Little Boy Byers watches them. 

Billy thinks he might catch on fire.

–

“I want to take you out of here,” Steve says in the dark. 

It’s late. So late the sky has started to turn silver. 

Steve’s thumb rubs circles into Billy’s wrist, where they’re stuck like paper dolls. It’s the only way Billy can sleep, but. He’s awake, streaming with consciousness when Steve says, “You have to get strong. You have to get better, for me.”

Billy. Feels the press of lips against his hand. Thinks.

He’d crawl if he had to.

Wherever Steve wanted to go, he’d crawl.

–

He learns to walk. Has to get out of here, someday.

—

Steve Harrington asks what Billy’s going to do when he gets out of here. 

Doesn’t know that Billy was awake, that night.

Doesn’t realize–

Billy just got the clear to ditch his oxygen tube and it’s got them both giddy. Smiling at each other and the Doc when he says, “Almost home free, son.”

It’s the closest Billy’s felt to joy in longer than he can remember. Steve’s laugh soothes a part of Billy that’s been aching since before the monster made a home inside of him, and the question fills him with an unfamiliar kind of hope.

Steve’s eyes sparkle when he says it. “What are you doing after this?” Like they’re finishing up an afternoon of basketball practice and Steve’s been trying to work up the nerve to ask Billy. Not on a date, but. Something. 

Billy feels naked without his oxygen tube. Exposed. “What do you mean?”

“When you’re strong enough to go home,” Steve says, sinking lower onto Maxine’s cot. She’s at school, and they’re both graduated, so. Steve takes up residence in the daytime, eating Billy’s hospital food and listening to him read whatever books Max leaves behind. 

Usually, they sit close together, thighs pressed close together, but.

Not today.

Billy without an oxygen tube is unstoppable. Free. He almost misses it. Thinks. Can’t be worth it if Steve’s not holding him together.

“I dunno. Maybe I’ll go back to California.”

“Can’t do that,” Steve says, like. Done deal.

“Why not?”

“Because,” Steve says, searching for the words. His nose scrunches like it does when he’s deep in thought and Billy fills in the blanks for him. You can’t leave because we’re friends now, Ghost Steve says, even though they’ll never admit it. You can’t leave because I want to play basketball with you, again, even though Billy’s still about an inch from blowing a fuse when his legs pick up speed. You can’t leave because. 

I love you.

Steve hums, still searching for the words. Billy sits on his hospital bed and waits for him to sort through, heart pounding, until Steve grins at him. “You can’t leave because I need a roommate, Malibu.” Steve decides.

It’s a relief and it’s not. It’s death. 

Billy’s dying. “What?”

“My parents never use the house,” Steve tells him, sitting forward so his elbows leave little indents on his thighs. Billy’s always thinking about Steve’s thighs. “I have a million empty rooms. Empty beds.”

“Plural,” Billy teases.

“Yeah. I was born with a silver fuckin’ spoon in my mouth, sue me.”

“I’m not a charity case.”

“You’re not a charity case,” Steve says, grinning, “You’re my roommate.”

Billy imagines it, as those brown eyes pin him to the hospital bed. Steve Harrington in his space, or Billy in his, always. Forever. 

Billy shrugs. Nothing hurts so much he can’t breathe, anymore. Not in the physical sense. “I can’t.”

“Why not? Better offer?”

“No. I’m an invalid.”

“So am I,” Steve says, “Mentally.”

“You’re not, you’re–” Perfect. Billy ignores Steve’s eyes as the go soft and gooey, cookies fresh from the oven. “I can’t make you take care of me.”

“I want to,” Steve says loudly. Stubborn like Billy. Like Max. “I like taking care of you–”

“We weren’t friends before.”

“That doesn’t matter, I didn’t know you before.”

Billy smirks, “And you know me now?”

“Yeah,” Steve pokes at him with one cold index finger and leaves it there, “Yeah, I. C’mon. Move in with me. Let take you out of here.”

–

In the middle of night sometime just after May Day, 1986, Steve Harrington has a nightmare. Maybe he was always having them.

Billy wakes slowly and then all at once, surprised that the pain doesn’t knock him out cold, anymore. Apparently. Steve is a shaking meld of blanket on the cot next to the hospital bed. Billy can just make out the pad of Steve’s foot where it vibrates, toes flexing the cotton expanse of his sock like he’s climbing something, in never-never land.

Billy lies awake and counts the steady beep-beep-beep of his heart monitor, too afraid to get up because Steve’s monsters might eat his head and crawl out of the mass of him, plopping wet and slimy onto the hospital floor.

But.

Steve thrashes violently, and Billy can’t take it anymore.

“Harrington—”

Steve huddles away from the sound of Billy’s voice and it’s a war, not to take it personally, to harness his bravery and toss his blanket to the side, to shuffle off of his lumpy and uncomfortable mattress and stand over the cot, thinking he’s not afraid of me. We’re friends now. Steve–

“Steve,” Billy tries again, teeth clenched against the sound Harrington makes in the throes of his nightmare. Like he’s being chased. Hunted. He twists under the blanket, and the dull, eerie light from Billy’s health monitor catches the sweat on Steve’s forehead, and. The fuckin’ look on his face–

“Please,” Billy says thickly, “Please, Harrington, wake up–” 

Steve jolts, ripped out of dreaming by Billy’s hand on his shoulder. The usual calm, sugary warmth of his eyes has disappeared and he zero’s in on Billy, face contorted with rage and fear. 

Steve swings wildly, shoving until Billy falls back onto the hospital bed. Harrington watches the fall, coming back to himself just as the air knocks loose from Billy’s lungs.

He hurts, again. Like last summer. Like he always has, the beautiful boy in front of him flashing like lightning, and. 

For just a moment. Looks like Billy’s father.

“Billy,” Steve says, cheeks dripping with emotion, “Billy, I’m so–”

Billy flinches away from him on impulse, and.

Steve cracks. Breaks. Before Billy can tell him that it’s okay, it was accident, Billy’s stronger than he used to be–

Harrington bolts from the room, door slamming shut behind him.

–

Freak Byers starts driving Max to the hospital.

–

Billy can’t say he’s surprised when the only people who come to see him are his sister and her stupid little friends, riding their bikes to spend all day at the hospital when the weather is nice enough. 

They’re loud and annoying but Billy likes them. Will, at least. 

Steve vanishes, so.

It hurts and it doesn’t. They were on to something good, before that night, something Billy wants with the same intensity that he needs air and water. He’s grateful, in a way, that the possibility of roommates has died before it ever began. 

Less he can fuck up. Less that can make him bleed.

Bygones. All that.

–

On July 20th, a year after death, Billy moves into Joyce Byers’ house because he has nowhere else to go.

It’s as simple as Will Byers helping Billy into the clothes he brings from Jonathan’s closet, clutching Billy’s elbow until Joyce’s tiny brown car swings into view. “Let’s go home,” Will says.

So they do.

Steve never comes to visit.

–

Two months after moving into the Byers’, his Camaro appears in the driveway good as fuckin’ new. On the windshield they’ve taped a check for five hundred thousand dollars and a note that says, sorry for your loss.

Billy watched a monster tear his only friend in half, dozens of people in half, and all of them were carted around in this fuckin’ car like lambs to the slaughter. 

He had to learn to walk again.

It’s good to know what their lives are worth, Billy guesses. What Big Brother is willing do to keep him quiet.

–

“I saw you, once,” Will says, not long after Billy settles onto the couch. 

The Byers’ place smells like pancakes and cigarettes all the time and it’s fuckin’ weird. Joyce is trying to quit for Billy and so is Hopper even though they don’t know that Freak Byers rolls joints for him, and the whole thing is huge and uncomfortable. Like how kids hide things from their parents to protect them.

Billy’s starts to think of the living room as his. 

All that time he hid on Cherry Lane in that fuckin’ room and all it takes is the soft care of Joyce Byers and a beer from Jim Hopper and Billy’s home. The safest he’s ever felt even though he’s out in the open and vulnerable to Will Byers’ soft declarations. Eleven’s wide, staring eyes.

Billy looks up from the book he was reading, startled, “Huh?”

Will fidgets in the doorway, dressed and ready for the first day of school. Billy resists the urge to snap at him, spit it the fuck out. Will’s not tough like Maxine. He’d melt, probably. Keel over, and. Billy likes the kid. 

Sue him. 

So he waits, fiddling with the worn edge of his library book, until Will exhales everything all at once. “I saw Steve Harrington feed you pudding at the hospital that day, when you were just learning to talk and walk again–”

The book falls shut.

“--He said you were cute. That you have a nose like a rabbit. And. I was just wondering,” Will says, choking on his words, “I was just thinking. That.”

“Don’t think about it,” Billy says. “Steve and I–”

“--I just–”

“Will,” He says softly. Thinks he should probably be afraid. Hopper’s in the kitchen. Joyce is at work, and. She won’t be able to stop him if Hop gets the wrong idea about Billy. Or the right one. 

But.

He knows he’s safe. In the pit of his stomach, curling like warmth through his bones, Billy knows it.

They’re safe, here.

Will shakes his head. Afraid of other things, himself maybe, so. He shakes his whole body. “Billy, I think I might. I might be–”

“I’m driving you to school,” Billy stands up, his blanket falling to the ground. 

–

It’s hot enough now that Billy’s arms stick to the leather in the Camaro. 

He doesn’t let anyone ride with him, but not for the reasons he used to pull out of his ass pre-’85. Now it’s wrapped in bodies, the skin of dozens and dozens of people who will never make it home because–

Will is silent most of the way, fingers white-knuckle on his knee caps.

Billy loosens his hands on the wheel and it feels like his knuckles are breaking. He itches for a cigarette. Plays Eagles instead. Waits for the other shoe to drop.

They’re parked in front of the high school, watching the excitement of everyone’s first day, when Will says, “I think I like boys,” and. 

His voice cracks under a pressure unlike anything Billy’s ever heard.

He gets it. And he doesn’t. 

In his own life it was never news. Neil let him know what was happening right away. Three letters thrown back at him, sharp enough to leave scars in their wake.

This is supposed to be news, for Will Byers. The end of the world. Billy’s supposed to look over at the kid and call him a faggot, tell him he’s an abomination, fuckin’. Whatever. He won’t, though. Pot calling the kettle, right?

Billy watches hundreds of teenagers on their path toward a higher education. “Me too,” He says. Life goes on.

Will turns to him, shocked. “You do?”

Billy’s closet is glass. Always was. “Thought you saw me and Steve.”

“I didn’t know Steve likes–”

“He doesn’t,” Billy replies, not. Swallowing. His throat might click with unshed tears. Break and split open, so. “He’s just. Good. A good person, to me.”

“I understand,” Will tells him, “My friend, Mike, is. He’s like that, too. Not like us.”

Us. 

Billy breaks for him. Didn’t think he was capable of it, but. 

He breaks, anyway.

–

In November, Billy opens the door to his bedroom and Steve Harrington is sitting on the couch right where Billy sets his pillow every night. He jumps to his feet, hands balled at his sides as if caught. Guilty of something else, and all Billy can think about is burning his hand-me-down pillow and sleepin’ with his nose pressed to the place Harrington was sat, watching the front door.

“Billy–”

“I’ve been calling all day,” Maxine says, steamrolling him. She grins at Billy, planted firmly in Hopper’s chair. Queen of the castle. 

Neil doesn’t like them to see each other, so. 

Billy’s chest expands like a springtime rose at the sound of her voice. He doesn’t take his eyes off of Steve, “I don’t sit around waiting for you to call me, Max, I’m not glued to the phone.”

Steve flushes red. Spilled paint.

“You should be, it’s the only way I can ever get a hold of you,” Steve’s bright yellow sweater is eclipsed by red when Max pulls Billy into a hug, crushing him. “How are you?”

He doesn’t take his eyes off of Steve, “I’m fine.”

“Good, is Will home?”

Billy looks at her, then. “I thought you were here to see me?”

“No. We’re starting a new campaign and you happen to live here, now, I figured,” Maxine pinches him, “Two birds one stone.”

“Great, thanks,” Billy rolls his eyes, padding toward the kitchen, “He’s probably over at the Wheeler’s. Did you check there?”

“No,” Max says, “Steve–”

“Fuck Steve,” Billy says, not caring. Caring so, so much. “They’ll be back soon. If the station wagon’s gone that means Joyce went to grab him.”

Max hovers in the doorway, frowning when Billy digs through the refrigerator for a beer. 

Her eyes are blue like his, judgmental like his. “You’re not supposed to drink that shit,” Max tells him, wrinkling her nose.

Billy cracks the pop top. “And you’re not supposed to play DND on a school night.”

“Things are different, now.”

They watch each other, silent, until the front door swings open and a hundred teenagers swarm the living room. Max hugs him once, right around the middle, before following their voices to Will's room. The door slams shut and all the fuckin’ racket gives way to muffled silence.

Different.

Things are different now.

Billy leans against the sink and sips his beer. Waits for Joyce or Freak Byers to round the corner into the kitchen until he remembers that they’ve both got work tonight and Hop’s at the cabin.

Joyce does that. Carts teenagers around in between shifts at the general store because she’s a good mom. Good person. 

Steve Harrington appears, arms crossed over his chest. “Fuck Steve, huh?”

Billy’s heart thunders in his chest. It’s been months, and. 

He shrugs.

The air rushes from Steve’s lungs. “Don’t have to be an asshole about it.”

“That’s just what I am,” Billy says, “An asshole.”

“Maybe.”

Billy holds his can out, “Want a beer?”

Steve stares at him. Then the slick rim of the can. Then at Billy. “No.”

“Suit yourself,” Billy says. “Where’ve you been?”

“Playing chauffeur, I guess.”

“Couldn’t stop to say hi in between shifts?”

Steve flushes. “Billy–”

“You never came to see me again,” Billy says, “You disappeared. I made it out of the hospital and–”

“I shoved you, Billy.”

“It was a nightmare.”

“Right. Exactly,” Steve shakes his head, like. It doesn’t matter. But the thing is, Billy knows shoving with intent. He knows men who plot to draw blood, and he knows monsters and Steve, just. 

Isn’t that.

He is an asshole, though. “Maxine couldn’t ride her bike over?” 

And Steve folds like a house of cards. “C’mon, you know Neil doesn’t let her ride that thing around, especially when it’s cold like this.”

“I know Neil. He was my dad.”

Steve looks ready for a fight. Poised to run at any second. 

Billy’s never been more exhausted in his entire life. “Glad you can be her big brother, now.”

“Billy–”

“No, they’re some huge fuckin’ shoes to fill. I’m dead, anyway.”

“You’re not dead–”

Billy tosses the can into Joyce’s recycling bin. It clatters and causes a scene and Billy wants to take it back. Steve deflates like a balloon. “Shouldn't you rinse that before you throw it away?”

“Yeah well. I make a shitty roommate.”

Steve watches, spooked, as Billy shoves past him and disappears.

–

Christmas 1986 and January, 1987 come and go. 

Joyce gets him a sweater. 

Billy wonders if he’ll ever feel alive again.

–

In April, he starts to miss the sea. 

Conscious enough to think of home.

–

“I think–”

Max stares at him, a cigarette pinched between two fingers. 

“--I think I want to see California.”

She cut her hair over spring break so it twists, too lazy to be called a curl, under the determined jut over her chin. It’s what girls are doing, in 1987. Cutting all their hair off. Max looks older, all of a sudden, and Billy doesn’t know when he missed it. 

She hands him the cigarette because he’s comin’ up on two years post recovery and, dramatics aside, he could shave a couple years off the impending decades. The smoke burns through his lungs pleasantly, paints the sky purple when he lets it go. 

“You want to see California,” Max repeats, staring out across the quarry as the words settle on her tongue, “Like–”

“--I think I could stand a change of scenery.”

She takes the cigarette from him. “That’s not a change, you’ve lived there for most of your life.”

“I’m not looking for LBC, I want–”

“--Mountains?”

Billy thinks about it. Really, he wants two-thousand miles between him and everything, but. “Yeah,” he says, because it’s simple. Low stakes. “Mountains could be good, like. A cure.”

“Like tuberculosis victims?”

“Sure. Claws aren’t that different.”

Maxine snorts. They smoke for an eternity in silence, basking in the sunset, and Billy thinks she’s on board. She’s okay with it, because she’s older now, but then she throws the lit cherry at him and it scathes his jaw. Sears him to the bone. 

“Ow, Maxine, what the fuck–”

“You’re pathetic,” She says, full of venom.

“Probably.”

“Why are you always running away?” Max slides off the car hood and gets in his face, and Billy.

Two years ago he would’ve–

He can’t think that way anymore. 

“Max–”

“So, what? You save everyone and become the hero and fuckin’. Sulk around for two years like a dickbag and now you want to run away? Just when everyone’s starting to love–”

“No one fuckin’ loves me,” Billy says. A non answer. Tastes like a lie, but. It’s the truth. He clears his throat. “I don’t want to run away.”

Max shoves him, “I love you. Asshole.”

“I know. Love you too.”

“Don’t I count?”

Billy grabs her hand, “Of course you do, dipshit. The most.” Maxine’s crying for real, now. Billy hates it so fuckin’ much. 

“Can I come?”

“Your a minor,” Billy supplies. Regrets it more than anything that he’s got to leave her behind, but. “Don’t worry. Not about anything, alright? Steve’ll–”

Max shoves him again, “This is about Steve Harrington, isn’t it?”

“No.” Billy lies.

“Steve’s going to–”

“--He’s not gonna do anything,” Billy snarls, “He’s not. We haven’t spoken in months.”

“He always asks about you,” Max says simply, and. 

Billy’s got a flat tire. It lets all the air out of the sky. It shouldn’t matter, shouldn’t put his brakes on, but. 

He blinks. “Okay.”

“You’re so fucking stupid,” Max says. “He’s not going to let you leave, Billy. Not without–”

“--He doesn’t get a say, in this.”

Maxine stares at him, eyes polished like Riverstone. “Are you going to say goodbye to him? At least?” 

“No.”

“Alright,” Max says. She shoves him again, “Dumbass. I hate you. I hate you so much–”

Billy hugs her. 

Loves her, just. So much his chest aches and burns like he’s back in the hospital, day one, July 20th, 1985, and. 

He thinks.

Worries about how many people he knows he can’t say goodbye to.

–

Will takes it the hardest. June just makes the pain turn raspberry on his cheeks and Billy hates to see him cry, so. He isn’t surprised when Little William locks himself in his bedroom to make shit easier on the both of them.

Freak Byers hugs Billy, slips a joint in his pocket, ruffles his hair.

Hopper gives him a beer. The last they’ll share in all the world. Maxine tells him to call. El tells him to write, and.

Joyce Byers slips a sheet of paper in his glove compartment. 

It sits funny, in retrospect. He took his hush-money and ran off to the sea and she left him something to remember her by, and that’s death. Burial. It’s her fault and it’s not. It’s the thing that breaks the dam. The last straw and suddenly the weight of everything is too much. 

Really, it starts before that. With the rumble of truck tires into the cracked driveway of a new home, thousands of miles from the sea. It begins with the pier, months before that. A boy with beautiful brown eyes that could only ever raise suspicion in Neil’s gut because he was right about this. Everything. Billy. 

Truthfully, it starts with a phone call and a shitty, half-baked apology from a woman Billy would never see again. 

He isn’t smart enough to keep track, though. 

So he almost dies and then doesn’t, and decides pretty quickly that it's Joyce. It starts and ends with summer air licking at the tender, still-healing pink of a hole punched through his chest 630 days ago. It begins with the glove box, and a note that’s gotta weigh less than an ounce.

It starts with Joyce Fuckin’ Byers.

Billy figures maybe Hop did the dirty work for her. That he took a rolled-down window as an invitation, once Billy caved on the beer he was always offering and let it spill that he was leaving so they thought. Now is the time for action. Hop slipped the thing in between Billy’s vehicle registration and insurance proof when he wasn’t looking. He played his part.

The paper is definitely from Joyce, though. 

He’s seen her handwriting, before, all over the fuckin’ place, swooping, swirling cursive that reminds her to get milk the next time she’s at Melvalds. Billy’s seen it pinned to the fridge in sappy, sweet-sick notes that she leaves for Hop and Freak Byers and Byers’ little brother, telling them to eat something while she’s gone, to remember to take out the trash, fuckin’. Whatever.

Point is, Billy knows it was her. And when he finally digs it out of the glove box, when he runs into it looking for an old pack of smokes somewhere outside of Nebraska, it’s folded in half three times and stamped with his name and feels like an attack.

Billy. 

Only, Joyce calls him William when it’s something heavy and important, so. William. Might as well be, as far as Billy’s concerned. 

Billy, she starts. Good a place as any, sparking a fuse she isn’t equipped to monitor. He doesn’t deserve shared beers and hidden notes.

Billy, Joyce says, with all the weight of William. I know that you’re having a hard time adjusting. I should’ve checked on you but I wasn’t sure what to say and now you’re gone. I wasn’t always the best mother to my own kids, and sometimes old habits die hard. I know you’ve had a hard life, even though you never talk about it, and I know all of this shit must hurt like hell, but you have to know that I’m proud of you for everything. Making it out of the hospital in one piece. Especially that–

His palms sweat, smearing the page when he flattens it against the wheel, smoothing its surface in the moonlight so he can read it, and can’t, because Hop insisted they have one more beer before Billy took off for the coast, and now–

We should’ve checked on you before. That’s all I want to say. You’re a good kid, Billy. You pretend not to be, but you are, and seeing you with Hop, how he loves you like a son…I’m here for you. We all are. I’ve included a list of phone numbers you can call any time. We’re here to help–

Phone numbers for both Wheeler kids. And Lucas Sinclair. And Dustin Henderson. And the Byers’ place. 

Call anytime, Joyce says. 

Anyone. Anytime.

Seeing you with Hop, how he loves you like a son–

Billy sniffs and chokes on a sudden, violent wave of emotion. Joyce Byers doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about.

–

He should’ve said goodbye to the one person that came second to mattering the most.

It eats at him, tearing away chunks of his flesh with small, sharp teeth. He moves into his new apartment by the sea and thinks about drowning himself in it.

–

A month after landing in California things are different.

Worse.

–

He tries not to think about Steve Harrington, who he hasn’t spoken to since that cold, shitty night in November when they shed each other’s apologies like old winter coats.

Everyone else came to say goodbye, but. 

Not Steve. Should be a clear enough answer that what they had was nothing but that doesn’t matter to Billy. Could never matter. Steve’s memory comes up like gray water in the bathroom sink. Not there one day, and then. 

There.

Sits like a ghost in the corner in the same outfit he wore the last time Billy saw him, delivering Maxine to a brand new campaign. Soft yellow sweater like swallowing canyons in the morning light.

“You look like shit,” Billy tells him. The Doctors said it could happen, off and on, for the rest of his life. Seeing the dead and the left behind, it’s the cruel result of playing bitch to an interdimensional monster. Taking a claw through the chest and surviving an IV drip of internal bleeding that still acts up when Billy takes a fist to the head.

It never happened, when he was in Hawkins, but. 

That’s just Bill’s luck. It’s a punishment. He’s in hell. No two ways about it, because.

Ghost Steve Harrington shrugs his yellow shoulders and everything looks worse, here. Drab. Billy thinks California wasn’t made for gray weather but since it’s November, the sea foam has scrubbed the color from everything until only acid remains.

Ghost Steve’s sweater looks brown in Billy’s bedroom. 

Billy gets used to him, more or less. Ghost Steve never says anything, but he watches Billy fall into bed every night and his eyes spell judgment. Why don’t you unpack these boxes? Why haven’t you used any of that green to buy a half-decent setup? Why don’t you call Joyce, you know she worries–

Once, Billy throws a pillow at Ghost Steve Harrington’s head. “Go away, already.”

Billy wonders if the real Steve, alive Steve, is as pretty as his memory makes out for him. 

He is. Always was.

Billy hates himself. “You’re not real, you know. You’re alive. Most of you is alive, back in Hawkins.”

Ghost Steve just smiles at him, slow and terrible as if to say I’m dead here and so are you. 

It fucking sucks. Billy tugs the blanket over his head and ignores Steve Harrington the Ghost. He ignores everything until it starts coming up like sludge in the bathroom sink.

–

Billy writes a letter to the only person in the world who understands what it feels like to harbor shit for a man who never once noticed him, until they had each other’s blood under their nails. 

So.

As soon as the landline is installed, Billy breaks his rule and scribbles the number down, addressing the envelope to Little William Byers, Who Can Always Hold His Water.

415. 667. 8224. For Emergencies only.

From, Big William Hargrove. 

Will can be trusted. Billy worries about him and it’s a roiling, sore-spot weakness. He’s terrified that Will’s made up his mind to never speak to Billy again.

He sends the letter, anyway. 

–

Billy starts seeing other people, too. In his house. On the street. 

Ghost Steve Harrington isn’t too thrilled with all the extra company, but the only other memory in the world brave enough to stand in his bedroom used to tuck him into his He-Man pajamas at night, so. Nothing Martha Hargrove hasn’t seen before. 

Billy starts to wonder if he’s going crazy.

Heather’s got dominion over the bathroom. Looks exactly like the last time Billy saw her, in that dumb-fucker Lifeguard uniform, except her arm is gone. Torn away. Little bits of her blood get on Billy’s cheek when she turns from her reflection in the mirror, eyes brimming with vitriol and lost potential as if to say, you fed me to that thing. We were friends, Billy, I was your only friend–

“You’re not real,” Billy tells her. Pisses in the toilet bowl, as if to prove his point. 

Heather’s not real. 

None of it’s real. 

–

A week before Thanksgiving Billy calls to tell Joyce he’s suffocating. To tell her that he misses Freak Byers and his little brother so much that Billy can’t breathe sometimes, and it’s Joyce’s fuckin’ fault. She’s a bitch, and Hop’s a loser, and he misses them both so much that he���s packed and unpacked and repacked his apartment four times because California doesn’t feel like home anymore. 

He misses the couch. He wants the dead to stay buried. He wants to go home.

So Billy drinks a bottle of schnapps and calls to say that Joyce can go fuck herself hard, Billy hates her for turning him into this, but Steve Harrington answers the phone.

It’s two o’clock in the morning Hawkins time, so Billy hangs up.

Steve calls back immediately, “Everyone’s asleep,” He says, voice rough with unuse. “Make it quick.”

Billy’s killed himself thinking about Steve, like this. Fresh from sleep. Warm. “Uh,” He says intelligently, “Sorry.”

“Who is this?”

He wonders if Ghost Steve is still in the bedroom, or if he went back to Hawkins. Floating on the clouds. “This is, uh. This is Billy.”

“Billy Hargrove?” Like he didn’t spend months in Billy’s hospital room. Didn’t cry when Billy learned to walk again.

“Yes.”

“Hi,” Steve says, soft. 

So warm and fleece-lined with emotion that Billy wants to curl up inside of it and never, ever leave. Something ruffles as Steve shifts his weight, waking up a little bit. “Hold on, Bill, let me–”

“No,” Billy says, “She’s asleep. You don’t need to wake her up.”

“You called.”

“I know.”

“She won’t want to miss you, you never call.”

“I know, alright? I just. I don’t want to wake her up,” Billy says, swallowing against the threat of tears. He hates Joyce but he doesn’t want to make anything worse than he already has by just. Living.

“Are you serious?” Steve snorts like Billy’s the most ridiculous, stupid fucker on the planet. “You called at two o’clock in the morning and you don’t want to wake her up?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“That’s so weird.”

Billy sniffs, exhausted, “Who asked you?”

“Nobody,” Steve tells him easily, “No one, I just think–”

“Why the fuck do you care enough to think about it or me or Joyce?” Billy snaps. The receiver groans a little in his fist, “It’s not any of your business–”

“--You know I care about you, Billy.”

“Do I?” Billy sips at his bottle, angry enough to see red, “You say shit in the dark. When you’re tired. When–”

“Hey, dickshit, you woke me up.”

“It’s not dickshit, it’s dip shit–”

“--Okay–”

“Fuckin’ Einstein.”

Steve doesn’t hang up. Billy considers it, seething until he takes another swig, and then Steve asks, “Are you alright?” 

The world comes to a sudden, screeching halt. The tender pink and still-healing parts of himself inflate with vulnerability, which only makes him angry. “I’m fine.”

“Really?”

“Yes, asshole.” 

“You’re drunk and it’s two in the morning–”

“--It’s only midnight where I am–”

“--Well, people who are actually fine don’t drink schnapps at midnight on a fuckin’ Tuesday.”

Billy freezes, back going ram-rod straight against the drywall. “How. How’d you know–”

“Only schnapps gets you slurring like that,” Steve says. Then, catching himself, “I mean ‘you,’ as in. The royal you.”

They partied in high school. Never together, but near. Billy–

It feels like a lie. He lets it go.

“I don’t know what schnapps does to you, as in. Billy Hargrove.”

I miss the way you say my name, Billy doesn’t tell him. He tosses the bottle back, swallowing fire as it bubbles up the lining of his throat. “Kay, well. Tell Joyce I called.”

“You could call back tomorrow and tell her yourself.”

“No,” Billy says, fiddling with the hole in his jeans. 

“Why not?”

“Because it’s none of your fucking business, Harrington, that’s why.”

“She worries about you,” Steve says, fully awake now. Sitting, probably. 

Billy tries not to get caught up in the mental image of Steve Harrington with bed-head and pillow lines on his cheeks and blankets pooling around his hips. 

Fails. 

Steve says, “Joyce loves–”

“--Why are you sleeping at her house?” Billy demands. Remembering himself. Remembering that the couch used to be his, before he ran away. 

“I get nightmares,” Steve says. Billy knows that. Billy knows– 

“Bullshit,” He’s angry about it. What tore them apart. “What’s there to be afraid of, anymore?”

“I saw you get punched through the chest,” Steve says, “On July Fourth. I was up there in the rafters, and I just. Saw. Does something to a nineteen year old, you know?”

He was there after, too. Until he wasn’t.

Billy’s palms grow wet and clammy against the bottle.

He has the sudden and familiar urge to apologize. Sorry Steve had to see that. Sorry the image of it meant nothing, in the long run. Nickels and dimes. He lived and, really, what was the trauma for?

Billy opens his mouth, chin wobbling and–

“Is that why you. The hospital. Why you–”

“Shit, it’s late,” Steve yawns. “I’ll tell her you called.”

“Sure,” Billy says, scrubbing the wet on his cheeks. “Thanks. Appreciate it.”

“No problem.”

–

Max sends him letters. Another thing he caves into, later on.

For Emergencies only. 

From, Billy Hargrove. 

She writes immediately. The envelopes are always crinkled by fingertips and nails, the ink always smudged with tears and grief. He has to imagine that they get that way, dilapidated because a journey across six states can’t be easy on them.

He can’t imagine Max crying as she writes to him. Can’t imagine her crying at all. 

He thinks about her in that house, sometimes. 

He hopes. Prays. The guilt swallows him whole.

– 

Billy develops a system for determining if the person he’s talking to is real. 

“You’re a beach bum,” The guy says. All tanned skin and small, curved lips. No black sludge leaks from his eyes, so. 

Real. Things have gotten worse on the coast.

Billy stares up at him from the sand, counting the seconds. He doesn’t have a towel. Joyce tried to get him to take some, one, but Billy is the spitting image of his father. Old habits die hard, so. He’s got minerals seeping through the holes in his pants and his hands feel grimy, covered in sea stuff for his pride.

“I see you here,” The guy says, “Every day.”

“Sure.”

“Ain’t you got a job, man?”

Billy turns his attention back to the waves. The foam.

“Guess not,” The guy shifts his weight, blocking dull gray sunlight. “You from around here?”

“LBC, originally,” Billy says, surprising himself. He pulls his knees to his chest with a burst of salty, stinging wind off the shore. Somewhere, about a mile into the deep past Manila landing, something massive is rotting in the waves. Feeding the ecosystem. Circle of life, and all that.

The guy nods, “What brings you to Arcata?”

“Just moved back from the midwest.”

“Mm, Chicago?”

“No, Indiana.” Billy says, not in the mood for conversation.

“Got used to small and shitty, then?”

Billy laughs, surprising himself. It's the first noise he’s made in weeks with a person who’s not caught in a ten-second delay over his landline. Feels okay. Weird. “Yeah,” Billy determines, “I like that Arcata’s on the bay and not wide open. Out there, you know?” Billy gestures to the ocean with his sleeve cuff.

Can’t see the other side of it. Landlocked or not.

The guy seems to understand. He watches the shoreline for a long while and then he says, “What’s in Indiana?”

Monsters. My sister. Shadows. “Nothing,” Billy says. “That’s why I’m on the beach.”

“Nothing here either, amigo,” The guy says, grinning slow and easy, “Looks like you traded shit for shit.”

“Alright. Thanks.”

“I’m Argyle,” Argyle says. 

“Billy,” He lifts his hand toward the sky for a shake, just like his daddy taught him. 

Argyle just nods at him, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Billy’s palm falls, dejected, to the sand. 

They watch the shoreline. They watch a seagull try and swallow a crab and then laugh when its throat is nearly torn open from the inside. It’s good to laugh. Weird. Dark thing to find humor in.

“I own a surf place,” Argyle says when the seagull takes flight. “Ever heard of it?”

There are a million out here. “Sure.”

“Not really a surf place, in the conventional sense. I do longboards too. And Mary Jane. Pizza, for Miss Mary’s lovers.”

Billy nods, pulling his knees close again, watching sand tumble from the grip of his leg hair. 

Argyle sparks something that looks like a cigarette and smells like a joint. “You need a job?”

“What kinda job is it?”

“Selling surf supplies. Longboards and weed and pizza–”

“Is that legal?”

“Not yet. Legalize gluten,” Argyle says, with a triumphant fist.

Billy shrugs so Argyle shrugs, casting shadows. Teasing. “If you ain’t got a job, how’d you afford to leave LBC for Indiana, and then bum-fuck for Arcata?”

“Big Brother hush-money,” Billy says, serious as a heart attack but Argyle laughs, and like. 

The skies, fuckin’. Break. Open and pour. 

It’s the best thing Billy’s ever heard. The timbre of it licks at the pink, still-healing skin on Billy’s chest through his jumper. Argyle’s lilting, chaotic beat lights him up and magically casts itself out of Billy’s lungs until they’re laughing at each other. Laughing together. 

It’s weird. Good.

“You’re a bizarre fuckin’ guy, beach bum.”

Billy shrugs, again, self-conscious. “Where’s your shop?”

Argyle points over Billy’s shoulder at a small, driftwood shack he hadn’t noticed today, or yesterday, or last week. The sign looks brand new. Says, Surfer Boy Pizza, In bright, shining letters.

“That’s her,” Argyle says, in love.

Billy stares at the shoreline. “That’s a dump.”

“Hey, I’ve had to hoard money from the Government. We’re not all as lucky as you,” Argyle grins, slow and easy, “You want the job or not? Could use a little silence in the shop. The other guy I work with, Eddie, he’ll talk your fuckin’ ear off about nothing if you give him the chance. Look to me like you won’t give anyone a chance.”

Billy feels like he’s been doused in cold water. 

He rocks back and forth, breathing in and out until the feeling passes, “Maybe,” He says. The best he can do. A non-answer. A remedy.

“Alright, well. Stop in sometime, if you get bored staring at the ocean,” Argyle grins at him, beaming itself onto Billy’s face until they’re mirror images. “Freak.”

–

Billy watches a lot of T.V. 

His living room is cast in a permanent silver hue, painting his hair gray and his lips purple. All that money rotting in his bank account and he’s only pitched together enough to buy a standard television box, and a place for her to sit, and a place for him to sit. 

His apartment is functional, like a prison. His kitchen is made of one bowl, one cup, one spoon (because he can saw into things with its blunt edge, should anything ever come to that), and a hot plate. He doesn’t have a skillet or a soup pot or anything so the shit is practically useless.

He eats dollar tacos from the hut. 

He starves. 

He drinks enough water and beer to send fluid leaking from his pores, and he watches T.V. 

Always. Blue.

This close to Christmas, all three stations are swamped with targeted Ads. Can’t go half a beer without enduring another fuckin’ commercial, selling sneakers and Atari game consoles and brand new VW station wagons. 

Billy chugs another PBR and thinks he could buy a hundred VW station wagons, thanks to Big Brother. He could buy a private plane, and an eight-bedroom house on the coast, and if he ever runs out of green there’ll be more where that came from. That’s the perk of getting possessed by a monster, so. 

Billy finds a scrap of newspaper border and jots down the number that flashes across the screen. Thinks, he could probably visit VW tomorrow. Could pay for the entire thing in cash. Could pack a bag and drive back to the Midwest–

Hallway through an ad for hair plugs, the phone starts to ring. Billy ignores the shrill ding of the bell until it stops. Starts up again. Stops. Starts.

Eventually he yanks his telephone off the hook, swallowing a mouthful of beer. “What.”

“That’s not how you’re supposed to answer the phone.”

Billy pulls away, staring at the receiver. “Who is this?”

“Steve.”

“Steve Harrington?” Billy asks, a mockery of their first phone call. Like Steve didn’t take care of him in the hospital. Wasn’t there when Billy learned to walk again. When Steve doesn’t say anything back, Billy swallows. “It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

“You were kind enough to call at two my time, thought I’d return the favor.”

His stomach swoops, low and dangerous. “That was weeks ago, now.”

“You never called Joyce.”

“So?”

“So, I promised I’d do a wellness check.” 

Billy mutes the T.V., his arms breaking out in goose pimples with Steve’s next inhale. Feeling warm breath against his cheek from two thousand miles away. 

“Well. I’m alive.”

“Barely. Tell Joyce that.” Steve Harrington exhales into the phone. Billy imagines cigarette smoke and fire. 

Wishes it could burn him to the ground. “Look, I appreciate you reaching out or whatever, looking me up in the phone book so I can apologize to Joyce for being the shittiest of all her adopted children–”

“--I didn’t look for you in the phone book–”

Billy’s mouth dries up, tacky and uncomfortable. 

“--No one could look for you in the phone book. Way you run your life, you don’t exist, Hargrove.”

Billy stands. His knees crack. “How’d you get this number?” Sounds like a shitty, drunken cop in a shitty, dark thriller/drama about his shitty, shitty life.

“I asked Joyce.” Steve says easily. The hero.

“Where did she get this number?”

“From Max.”

Billy’s stomach swoops. “That’s bullshit. Max knows my address, not my phone number.”

“Maybe Joyce got it from someone else, maybe she didn’t, maybe she found it on a crumpled piece of paper that was thrown into the trash,” Steve says, “Does it really matter?”

“Yes. You had no right to do that,” Billy says, voice shaking. He wonders if Will threw his note away. If he’s angry. “None of you have any right to do this to me–”

“Totally,” Steve says, “Your sister has no right to know where you are. Joyce, who put a roof over your head for a year after you left the hospital, is supposed to stop worrying and missing you because you want it. Screwed that we care about you, the asshole who saved the town and all our lives and the fuckin’ world, on top of that.” 

We. 

Screwed that we care about you.

Billy’s stomach is full of rocks, roiling and knocking into one another. They throw him off balance and send river water pulsing up his throat. He’s drowning, he–

“You can’t save everyone and then disappear.”

Billy swallows. “I didn’t.”

“You didn’t even say goodbye, Billy.”

“Neither did you,” Billy says, furious. “Before that. At the hospital–”

“I don’t want to hurt you, okay? I. When I pushed–”

“Stop,” Billy says, “Please. Stop.”

“Sure,” Steve Harrington scoffs, full of rage. “My bad. Forgot you can’t accept that you’re a regular fuckin’ hometown hero and I’m a piece of shit.”

Billy hates this. He left Hawkins, to. To get away from this, and. He ran.

Might as well admit that, now.

Billy must make a noise, must fall apart, because. Steve’s stubble scrapes against the phone. “Billy. Look, I–”

“What do you want?” Billy’s voice shakes. Sounds weak. 

Harrington doesn’t seem to hear. “I just called to check on you.”

“Feels more like you’re beating me over the head with a rock.”

“Funny,” Steve says, “Cain and Abel, right?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Not really,” Steve tells him. An awkward silence yawns between them, stretching on until Billy thinks the call must’ve dropped, and then; “I didn’t call to check on you.”

Billy snorts. “And after all the steam you put into that speech?” He’s grateful that they’re even, now. Neither looking down their nose at the other. Liars and crooks, two of a kind. “Jesus Christ, what will Joyce say?” 

“I haven’t slept in two days. I’ve tried everything, but. I keep thinking about Starcourt.”

It takes the air out of Billy’s lungs. 

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” Steve mumbles. Soft enough that Billy isn’t sure he heard it right, but then, “Billy. I just. I needed to hear your voice. Are you okay?”

Billy can’t say anything back. He’s learning to speak, again, he can’t walk, he’s on the brink of death–

“Malibu? You there?”

Not a damn thing can be funny, anymore. “I’m sorry, Steve.”

“It’s alright.”

“If I hadn’t been at Starcourt, you’d be asleep right now.”

Steve snorts, “Don’t be stupid.”

“It’s true,” Billy mutters, sick, “In a roundabout way, if I hadn’t been on the road that night, if that. Thing had never crawled inside of me–”

“If that hadn’t happened we wouldn’t be together now,” Steve says. 

The weight of the world, on their shoulders.

Billy cracks. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. You. Hargrove, you’re the only person left who doesn’t have to apologize,” Steve Harrington breathes deeply, into the receiver, and Billy swallows it. Fills his own lungs to taste cigarette smoke. “I called because I knew you’d be up. I just. Knew you would be. Cain and Abel, right?”

“Brothers’ keeper,” Billy says. The television screen flickers. The world is blue, and Billy is. Cast in its light.

“Can you sit with me? Just until I fall asleep.” Steve sounds like he’s drowning.

Billy can’t help but to jump in and save him.

–

Surfer Boy Pizza is even uglier on the inside. 

Argyle wasn’t kidding about the surf supplies plus description. From the moment the door shuts behind him, Billy’s at a loss trying to figure out what anyone would stop in here to buy since it seems like the kind of place people are exiled to.

The air is stale. Beach salt and sweat permeate the air as the result of a broken cooling unit, leaking onto the ground that hasn’t been scrubbed clean in months.

“Hello?” Billy asks, barely above a mumble, “Anyone home?”

“Back here!”

Billy tugs his flannel closer, cherry-picking his way through piles of useless shit and garbage. Surfer Boy’s walls are messy with knickknacks and shitty wire shelves pushed haphazardly against white and red checkered tile. Piles of fishing nets, lead-bellied life preservers, and vintage scuba gear mark the landing of the main desk, which has to be a repurposed McDonald’s check-out counter.

Behind it, covered in swirling, snaking tattoos, a man stares at him. 

He’s cute. His fist turns white around a water-spotted glass jar that says, Eddie’s Homemade Fishing Bait. The H has been drawn to look like the devil. 

“Uh,” The guy says smartly. 

“I’m Billy,” He puts his hand out but the guy doesn’t take it, he just stares. Stares and Stares.

“Okay. I’m here to see Argyle,” Billy points to the jar, “I’m guessing you’re Eddie?”

“I’m Eddie,” He says, cheeks turning bright pink. 

Great.

“Okay, uh,” Billy fiddles with the cuffs of his flannel. “I sit on the beach, sometimes.”

“Every day,” Eddie tells him, still not moving, “I see you out there sometimes.”

“Every day, uh. Yeah. Is Argyle–”

“Are you here for a job?” Eddie asks, tacking his jar behind a sign that says the exact same thing. Eddie’s Homemade Fishing Bait, like maybe he’ll lose one or the other if he doesn’t keep track. “If you’re sniffing around for a job–”

“--Look, man, Argyle asked me to come and work for him.”

“Right, yeah, but I’m his partner,” Eddie says, scrubbing his hands on his jeans. “I’m his silent partner. Do you know anything about crabbing?”

Billy frowns, “Crabbing? I thought this was a surf shack.”

“And a fishing place, we sell longboards, too. Contraband t-shirts, homemade banana bread and vintage earrings, bait–”

“--And weed–”

Eddie jumps over the counter, slapping a damp, smelly hand over Billy’s mouth, “Dude, what the fuck? That’s private. That’s a private–”

Billy shoves him off, chest heaving like he’s just been chased. He’s been caught.

Eddie tracks him, eyes wide and afraid. Big eyes. Brown. Pretty.

“Don’t touch me.” Billy says, moving away.

“Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Your fingers taste like fishing bait,” Billy spits, scrubbing his own hand over his mouth. 

“Sorry, I was making–”

“--Sure–”

“--Weed brownies,” Eddie says, wagging his eyebrows. 

“Weed brownies,” Billy repeats, tasting fish on his tongue. “Why the fuck do they taste like pond scum?”

“That’s my special ingredient,” Eddie says, and. He cackles. High and bright and frightening, like a man brandishing a knife who knows something Billy doesn’t. 

It’s strange.

It startles a laugh out of Billy, anyway. Weird and good but terrifying. Argyle in another font, scribbled in the shape of swirling tattoos and pretty brown eyes. 

Eddie watches him. 

“What?” Billy says. He rubs a palm over his face, suddenly self-conscious.

“Nothing,” When Billy stares at him, wide-eyed and confused, Eddie grins. “When you laugh, you’re just. You’re beautiful. Know that?”

Billy scoffs, “You’re a fuckin’ weirdo.” He says, but his stomach swoops. The Bastard.

“Yeah. When can you start?”

–

“I got a job,” Billy says, instead of hello when Steve calls on Friday. It’s warm, for late January, California finally giving up her quest toward the unfamiliar.

Steve chuckles. “Got a job as, what, a government spy?” 

“No.”

“Supermodel, then. Undercover CIA ops, government supermodel–”

“--Like Nixon?”

“No, what the fuck? Have you seen yourself in the mirror, Malibu? You’re more JFK,” Steve says, sleepy and warm.

“I’m working at a surf place,” Billy tells him. It’s no fun to make Harrington guess when he sounds a minute from sleep.

“No shit? Didn’t know you surfed.”

“Used to,” Billy says, grinning when Steve makes a low, impressed noise. “Don’t get excited, I stopped when Neil moved us to corncob hell.”

“Maybe you’ll get back into it. Being around that stuff all the time, y’know.”

“Maybe,” Billy says. His belly flutters with possibility. He’s strong enough to run now. Hopeful enough to work. “It’s more than just surf stuff, actually. We do fishing bait, and crabbing and long boards–”

“--They sell hand blown Christmas ornaments too?” 

“Probably,” Billy can hear the smile in Steve’s voice, dawning over his perfect pink lips. “High people love interior design.”

“What’s high got to do with it?”

“We sell Miss Mary.”

“Criminal,” Steve says, “I leave you alone for two minutes–”

“Eight months,” Billy tells him. A pin drops. “Not that I’ve been counting.”

Billy prepares himself for something, though he can’t put a finger on what’s got him ready to pace the fuckin’ floor, geared up for the deafening click! Of Harrington’s receiver as it hits the cradle. 

They’ve never hung up on each other, but. Then again, they’ve never held a conversation this long either. Usually Steve just calls so he can fall asleep to the sounds of Billy swishing beer around in a can, pissing into the toilet bowl, blowing his nose when the weather’s cold enough.

But.

There’s a first time for everything. 

“Has it been that long?” Steve wonders, surprising him. 

“Yeah,” Billy says. Lying, because it’s more than that. Two Novembers and a New year, a cut and dry four-hundred days trying to acclimate to all of the rot they’ve been dealt. But who’s counting? 

“When do you start your new job?”

“Sunday,”

“Got the whole weekend to, fuckin’. Skinny dip, rollerblade on the pier, and hike in the mountains.”

“I don’t live in the mountains.”

“Huh. Maxine said–”

“Jesus. Girl runs her fuckin’ mouth too much.”

“She’s just excited,” Steve tells him. Sounds like a big brother, a proud mom. “She talks all the time about joining you out there.”

“She’d hate it.”

Steve snorts. “Kid was born for the ocean. Like you, you know? Your eyes.” When Bilyl doesn’t say anything back, Steve yawns. “I’m sure you’ve got your reasons. Bay Watch not her scene anymore?”

Billy shrugs, “Not as beachy, where I am. LBC was quintessential California.”

“Where are you?” Steve asks, voice full of wonder. “Hold on, lemme get a pen and paper–”

“Not falling for that, Harrington.”

“Why not?” Steve demands, pouting. “I’m not gonna show up at your apartment door one day, y’know–”

“You might. With your pen and fuckin’ paper.”

“You’re right, I might,” Steve sing-songs, “I was able to bully your phone number out of the Byers’.”

“Hah!” Billy says, leaning forward. His beer’s almost gone so it doesn’t slosh when he jabs an accusatory finger at Steve from two thousand miles away, “I knew Will was the one who gave you my phone number. Little shit.”

“It’s not his fault, I wasn’t eating or sleeping, after you left, so. Joyce took pity on me.”

Billy almost cracks with the weight of his heart battering against his ribs. “Joyce?”

“She. Gave it to me.”

Billy swallows, throat clicking with emotion. “She had it the whole time?”

“They all did. Do, I guess,” Steve tells him. Then, after a beat, “You’re not mad, are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Please don’t change your fuckin’ number because of this.”

“Dunno. Might,” Billy lifts the can to his lips, sad to find it empty. “Should probably move, too, before Maxine tells everyone where my apartment is and you’re all pissed to find that the beach here sucks and we can’t even climb a fuckin’ mountain.”

Steve laughs. “But the other stuff?”

“Totally,” Billy says. He stands, pulling the phone as far as it will go until he gets his hand around the refrigerator door.

Steve lights a cigarette, inhaling sweetly into the phone. “Why didn’t you move to the mountains, anyway?”

“Room and board is expensive up there.”

“Didn’t the government shell out some money for your trouble?”

“Yeah,” Billy says, “Not enough.”

“We could combine our shit,” Steve says suddenly, “Y’know. Merge our assets and get someplace real nice.”

Billy drops his beer can. It gushes over kitchen linoleum like an unleashed tidal wave and he swears, stooping to mop it up with a dish rag. “Shit—”

“--Did I say something–”

“--No it’s. Nothing more stupid than the shit you usually say,” Billy tells him. Because. Combine our shit and merge our assets feels like something else. Grows teeth to chew and lips to say remember what tore you apart?

“Billy? You there?”

“I’m here,” Billy says. He dumps the dishrag into the sink, throat drier than it’s ever been in his life. 

He clears it. 

Says, “You want me to be your roommate,” and the words taste like lead. Burn like poison. 

“I want you to be my roommate,” Steve admits. 

It’s dark, through the kitchen window. Arcata sleeps and dreams outward, in every direction, and it makes Billy brave. Stupid. 

“Alright,” He says, playing along.

“Done deal,” Steve says, grinning, “Pack your bag, baby. I’m coming to get you.”

Billy’s heart swells, ignorant to the pain that will come in the morning when he comes to. “You work at Family Video, now?” Can’t. Stand the pressure of the moment.

“Yeah,” Steve says, “The mall burned down, so. Not a ton of other options unless I want to work at the General Store.”

“And you’re gonna come get me on a Disk Jockey’s salary?” Billy leans forward, fingers scrambling for his pack of smokes. “You could open your own ice cream parlor.”

“I don’t have–that’s not what I want to do with my life.”

“Really? Being a lifeguard is what I want to do with mine.” Billy quips. Steve laughs suddenly, smooth as marmalade on fresh toast. Warm. Billy wants to make him do it again. “Rescuing screaming brats from themselves as they run around the edge of the pool and stub their toes and crack chins on wet cement–”

“--Jesus Christ–”

“--Sunburns,” Billy admits. “The lis goes on.”

“That’s bullshit,” Steve says, ruffling the couch face as he sits straighter. “The chicks never shut up about you, that summer. You tanned.”

“Yeah, over my burns.”

“Is that even possible?”

Billy exhales a cloud of pale purple smoke, basking in the light from the television. “Sure, if you know the right elixir of sunscreen, tanning oil, and bomb-pops. Anything’s possible.”

“Another load of bullshit,” Steve tsks lightly, “Y’know, I was held prisoner in that fuckin’ sailor uniform all summer and I never saw you come through. Not once.” He says. Regretful, like it’s a goddamn shame Steve never got to see him in his slutty little shorts.

“Yeah,” Billy grumbles, “Never saw me once and now I’m damaged goods.”

“You’re Clark Kent,” Steve tells him, “You’ve got, like. Superhero good looks.”

Billy chuckles, “Thought I was a CIA Government Plant, Spy–”

“You’re beautiful,” Steve says suddenly. 

Billy stalls. The air escapes from his tires and he’s, fuckin’. Trapped. Stranded in this endless, horrible moment where all the shit he never thinks about lathers like soap suds, tasting bitter on the back of his tongue.

“Needa get your eyes checked, Bambi Boy.”

“Eyes are fine,” Steve grumbles. “How’d you get a bomb pop if you never–”

“--Max would get them for me.”

“Oh! Makes sense, I guess. She was always pink-cheeked and pissed off. Buying two of whatever she wanted that day. Guess I always assumed it was for Sinclair and not–”

“--Her bull-dog brother?”

“Her lifeguard,” Silence yawns again but doesn’t get to settle as Steve lights his cigarette. “Why’d you never come in yourself? Why send the kid?”

“You really gotta ask that?” Billy demands, grinning, “C’mon. Wouldn’t be caught dead in an ice cream parlor before work, pretty boy.”

“Not even for a bomb pop?”

“Not a chance,” Billy says easily, not. Wanting to tell the truth. 

Steve seems to understand, anyway. “I lied.”

“--Yeah?”

“I saw you around. That summer, before. Everything,” Steve says. He’s out there alone, making these swooping declarations, and he always has been, if Billy thinks back on it. If he’s honest with himself, so. 

“I was carryin’ a torch for you, before that summer,” Billy says. Figures. He probably owes Steve the truth after. Everything. 

Harrington sucks in a breath, “Billy–”

“I was scared. Always was.” Steve doesn’t say anything so Billy exhales everything, “Look, you don’t. It’s not–”

“--I didn’t know,” Steve says thickly. “I had a feeling, maybe, sometimes, but. Billy, if I had known–”

“--Then, what, you would’ve dumped your girlfriend sooner? Sucked me off after basketball practice?”

“Maybe.”

Billy’s vision blacks out for a second. Like a hard reset to make room for this new information. Whole machine’s fucked so they’ve gotta restructure, figure something else out. 

It’s whiplash. 

“I wound't have let you,” Billy’s skin is pink and tender, at his core. Not for monsters, for once. “My dad, and. Everything. I wasn’t a good guy, Steve.”

“Neither was I.”

“No, you don’t get it. I deserved what I got, Steve. Everything I did to my sister, and. To all those people–”

“--That wasn’t you.”

“Maybe,” Billy spits, “The shit in the summertime was fueled by a monster, but. Before? Steve, I–”

“--You’ve only ever been around monsters,” Harrington tells him. It sits for a moment, on Billy’s sternum. Weight. Eventually, Steve clears his throat, “I know more than I probably should, but. Max and I have talked.”

“Yeah, she fuckin’. She told me, right before I left Hawkins. Said that you ask about me. All the time.”

“You’re interesting,” Steve says, like, “Even before Starcourt I was interested in you. Understanding you.”

“There was nothing to understand. You didn’t know me, before–”

“Yeah, but I know you now,” Steve tells him. Because it’s enough. In his world, good’s always going to win out in the end, “And, like. I’m just thinking if there are monsters and Russians under the mall and little girls who can throw shit with their minds, it just. Doesn’t matter. I’m thinking it shouldn’t fuckin’ matter that I didn’t know you before you almost died because I was there for the bad shit. I saw you, Billy. I know you taught yourself to walk again, and I know you make me laugh, and I know that I can’t sleep unless I hear your voice, and I know that they night I pushed you down I ruined something. Good.”

Billy scrubs at his cheek. I comes away wet. 

“I’m serious about combining our shit,” Steve tells him, “Merging our assets, or whatever.”

“No you’re not. You haven’t really thought about it–”

“Fuck you, baby, all I do is sit here and fuckin. Think.” 

About you. All I fuckin’ do is sit here and think about you, Billy fills in the blanks for him. Figures, they shouldn’t have to spell everything out after everything they’ve barely lived through–

Billy clears his throat. It scrapes and burns. “What about Hawkins?”

“What about it.”

“I dunno, wouldn’t. Everyone miss you? Max and that curly haired, freaky little boy genius, and–”

“--I can’t sleep without you, Billy,” Steve says. Sounds like he’s drowning, like that first night, when he said– “Everything that’s happened, and it’s like. We’re just animals, you know? Caught up in trying to stand on two feet and we get so fuckin’ consumed by the specifics of everything. What you had to do to survive, the shit I don’t know about, the kids, the mosnters, just. Everything.” 

Speeches. Billy had to sit through so many speeches, when he wouldn’t fuckin’ die already, and. 

Never thought he’d want to listen. 

Never thought Steve–

“All I know is I want to be with you, Billy.”

Outside the window, the sky is turning silver. 

“Let me be with you. Any way I can.”

–

It’s nice to be around people who don’t know where Billy came from. To the boys at the Surf Ship, he is a ghost, born in some long ego era. 

Whoever he was before doesn’t matter.

Argyle and Eddie bring him back to life.

–

Neil Hargrove tries to kill him.

Just after Valentine’s Day, just after we’re animals, let me be with you, all i know is I want to be with you–

Maxine calls to tell Billy that Neil shot himself. 

Yeah. Calls, like. The telephone. Billy can’t find it in himself to be angry about that, because he’s missed her and then she says, something happened.

She says, Dad ate a bullet for his first meal of 1988. And then she says, Your dad. Neil did, like Billy would ever forget. Would ever need reminding. Then she says, he didn’t survive.  

Billy. 

He’s got all sorts of fucked up feelings about it, right away. He folds in half three times until he’s on the floor, marking the way his legs throw shadows on the carpet, large enough to cast doubt over everything Billy thought was true.

He cries. 

Neil is dead and Billy cries, already forgetting the sound of his voice.

–

At two o’clock in the morning the phone rings, again.

His neck hurts from laying on the carpet. The frayed edges of Maxine’s notebook paper plant like tiny, insignificant seeds. They catch and take hold and Billy thinks, distantly, that he should do something before grief roots itself in the apartment, where it was never really allowed to before.

The phone stops ringing. Starts. Stops. 

Another letter has taken control of his life, and that makes him angry. He cries about it, and the phone starts to ring again.

Billy holds the receiver to his face, watching the note flutter when he says, “My dad died.”

“I know,” Steve tells him. “I meant to call sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“I wanted Max to be the one to tell you. And she doesn’t have your landline–”

“--I know you gave it to her,” Billy says. Thinks, if Maxine had sent him a goddamn letter through the fuckin’ mail to tell him the last monster is dead, he would’ve lost what’s left of his marbles, he would’ve–

“--Neil ate a bullet,” Billy says. He sounds like himself, but. He doesn’t. Steve holds his breath on the other end of the line, so Billy says, “I’ve never seen someone get shot, before. I’ve seen them get ripped apart.”

“Billy–”

“I shouldn’t have left,” He tells the ceiling. 

Steve goes quiet. It’s terrible, not hearing the cigarette smoke leave his lungs, not sensing his laugh where it blooms and grows like springtime flowers. They don’t deserve this. They’ve never deserved any of this, but. Who fuckin’ cares.

“You had to get out of here,” Steve tells him. The real Steve, alive and unwell in Hawkins, Indiana. “Billy, this place is–”

“Neil’s dead.”

“Maybe he deserved it.”

“And maybe I should be there for Maxine, for once,” Billy says. Aches to see her. Burns to hold her close. 

Steve snorts, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I just. I think that if anyone here was supposed to die–”

“--Stop–”

“--There’s a hole in my chest,” Billy admits. He can feel it, sometimes, rising like tree bark to scrape and tear at the air around him. A monster aiming to carve a place on him.

It’s so late. It’s so goddamn early–

“I’ll patch it up,” Steve says valiantly. The hero. The prince. 

Everything’s so easy for him. Simple.

“Maybe you’re right,” Billy says after a minute. After catching his breath.

“Maybe I’m right about what?”

“None of it matters,” Billy tells him. “Nothing matters so much that I can’t just. Tell you–”

But that’s a half-truth, funny in retrospect. Because almost three years ago, Billy died. Nearly. And he never expected that anything would matter to him ever again, but things happen all the time that have nothing to do with anything. That’s the beauty. They help him live. Will and Joyce and Freak Byers and Maxine and–

“Steve. I,” Billy swallows, throat clicking, “I lo–”

“--I want to see you,” Steve says in a rush, “Just. Tell me where you are. I can be there in a few days.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Maybe but that’s what I want. You. I want you–”

“You’re insane,” Billy scrambles, trying to grasp whatever excuses keep eluding him. “Like you don’t already know my address. Like Max didn’t fuckin’ tell you.”

“You’re right. I still need you to say the word, though,” Steve sounds like he’s moving, on the other end of the line. Bouncing on the balls of his feet in anticipation. “I’m serious. Tell me you want me and I’ll leave right now. If I drive through the night I can be there in a day.”

Billy’s heart soars, emotion flapping like wings in his chest. 

But.

“You can’t leave Maxine. Not with all this shit happening in Hawkins with Neil, and–”

“I’ll bring her with me,” Steve says, “We can take turns driving.”

Tears slide down Billy’s cheeks, full of hope. “She’s a bitch in the car."

"So am I, I only want to listen to Wham."

"She's only got a permit. What if a cop–”

“--We’ll go on a high-speed chase. I’ll get to you sooner.” Harrington says. 

Billy exhales a laugh. 

Thinks about the years spent wondering what he deserves. What he wants. Never imagining the line between them would whittle away and disappear until their weight could kiss like reunited lovers. 

Thinks of death and life. Of Max.

"Y'know, I usually sit on the beach, first thing. Watch the sunrise."

Steve hums. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Billy scrubs away the tears on his face, shuddering as more slide to take up their mantle. “Got something to write with?”

–

The answering machine gets him. 

"Argyle," Billy says, standing over his kitchen sink. "You're not in. Uh. I just wanted to let you know that Steve's coming to town. Steve Harrington. He's on his way and I don't know what this means, I sorta feel like I'm drowning a little bit, but. In a good way. A really good way."

Billy rinses his stomach bile, watching as it swirls and disappears. 

"I don't think I'm going back to Hawkins, but. I also don't know if I'm staying here. My dad died, and Steve's brining my sister to see me, 'cause. I have a sister, I think I told you about her, and. I have a Steve. You know about him, so."

Billy swallows, wondering how many fuckin' goodbyes he will have to live through. 

What he will have to live through, now until forever. 

"Just," Billy says, voice cracking, "Thank you. For talking to me on the beach that day, and asking me to come work for you, and just. You brought me back to life. That's it. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow. Maybe I won't, but. Give Eddie a punch goodbye, for me. See ya around." Billy sucks a mouthful of air, scrubbing at his eyes, "This is Billy, by the way."

--

Billy's grateful Arcata has a shoreline. The ocean has been good to him, his first true sanctuary. Makes him think of the trees back home, in Hawkins. Has him wondering if it's okay, now that home is a person. People.

It's warm, for February. 

He watches the sunrise with a lump in his throat, knowing that any minute a car will pull into the lot behind him and love will walk back into his life. Maybe it never left. Maybe it's not something he's ever had to work for. 

He counts the minutes. He adjusts his blanket, the very same one Joyce draped over his hospital bed all those months ago, and then a car approaches. Two doors open and shut, one right after the other, and then.

Dawn breaks, driving a knife through the dark.

[somewosoloverrr]

Please make a max mayfield x fem reader where they makeout after they’ve been together for a while

of course here it is, hope you like it. <33

Hot in here

Max Mayfield x fem!r

Tw- making out, heavy kissing

You had no idea how you fell so quickly for her, was it the red fiery hair, or the way she confidently makes her way around, her ocean blue eyes that were prettier than the ocean…

But since that moment she walked inside the science classroom, Maxine or better said Max had completely awed you.

Soon enough you were good friends, the tension between you being way too obvious, and finally at the snowball dance, you were making your way back home when suddenly and arm pulled you behind. You turned around, and the girl planted her lips on yours, you immediately recognized her and quickly kissed her back.

You spent almost the whole summer together growing closer and closer.

And one day, your relationship took a step up. Both of you where at your house, cuddling while watching a movie, something very usual. Except your parents where out of town so you where all alone, so you didn’t have to worry about kissing her.

You were cuddled against her, your head in the crook of her neck, a position you very much liked.

At a certain point, you were getting bored of the movie, it was too slow , absolutely no action. Naturally you sighed at the shit joke, that shouldn’t even be called a joke that one of the characters made.

The red head quickly noticed your bored state so she kissed your temple, “bored much?” she asked.

“Yeah” you smiled at her, feeling butterflies from the kiss, you kissed her back in the neck, which sent a chill down her spine, ‘must’ve hit that spot’, you thought.

So you kissed her neck again, biting her neck a little bit trying to find the spot once again. Max moved her head up to give you more access.

Then you heard a light moan coming from her mouth, making you melt for a second. You knew you found that spot and proceeded to bite it and nib it. Max grabbed your head gently, liking the feeling.

After most likely leaving a hickey you looked up cheekily at her and she guided your head to hers, and your lips met. It was cut short as you pulled away “it’s getting kinda hot in here…” you stated while getting on your knees to take off your sweater. “Don’t you think so?” You added as You put your hands on your girlfriends sweater lightly tugging it looking at her for permission.

“Yeah, I think the temperature rose a whole lot” max replied while helping you to take off her sweater.

You didn’t know were you had gotten this confidence, yeah you and Max had dated quite a while but you had never ever made out. You only shared long kisses but nothing like this.

After the girl took of her sweater both of your lips connected once again, at first it was a slow movement, both of your grasping each second of the kiss.

But then the red head flipped you, your back now on the couch as she straddled your waist, you let out a gasp not expecting it. Max then put both of her hands beside your head as you gripped her waist with both of her hands and pulled her down for another kiss.

This one was fast, lips on lips, moving roughly against each other. And soon enough Max’s lips traveled down, she kissed your chin, then your jawline and finally your neck.

She sloppily moved her lips against trying to find your spot, which she did pretty quickly, you were officially on cloud fucking nine. “Fuck yes” you muttered as she kept attacking your neck.

After a while both of you stopped, kinda tired. And where now cuddled against each other having now put a better movie. “You know..” max trailed off out of nowhere.

“What?” You questioned as you looked at her, noticing a strand of her orange hair on her face so you quickly put it behind her ear.

The girl lovingly smiled at the action putting her hand on your cheek looking into your eyes. “That was the first time we’ve ever made out”

You opened your mouth letting out a gasp of realization “oh, wow yeah it was… and it was freaking amazing”

Max giggled and kissed your cheek “I agree, I really love you y/n”

“I really love you too Max” you smiled at her pecking her lips quickly but lovingly.

[billys-pretty-babe]

The Ceremony

Pairing : Billy Hargrove x Fem!Reader

Summary : Six months after your engagement, it's finally time to marry Billy and well, his reaction isn't what you expected whatsoever.

Warnings : Swearing, illusions to smut at the end, one mention of Neil's abuse

Word count : 2,738

A/N : Part 2 to The Proposal

April 1986

The bridal suite was busy, people working around you to do your makeup, your hair already having been in its style since early in the morning. Max huffed and puffed as she fixed her dress. "Why'd I have to be the flower girl?" You glanced at her, "Because Billy wanted you to be." Her face softened, "Oh, never mind, I love the dress, even the itchiness." Everyone in the room laughed.

You looked down at the ring on your finger, different from what Billy proposed with back in October. He had upgraded it, taking more hours at the garage he worked at. Now, it was a two and a half carat princess cut diamond ring with smaller diamonds on the band. You stared at the silver band you had bought for him with a custom engraving of the wedding date along with both of your initials, except your surname was exchanged with an H.

"Ready for the dress," Susan asked from across the room. You were reluctant to let her come to the wedding, but Billy was insistent, she was the only 'mother' figure he had but you held a grudge against her for letting Neil beat his son. You took a deep breath and nodded. Max sat in your chair, picking up the ring box. "Can I look at this?" You nodded, "Just don't take it out of the box." She nodded, studying the ring in the box as Susan helped you with the dress and you looked in the three mirrors, one directly in front of you, and two to the sides of you.

She bent down and fixed the train of the dress as you looked at the dress, seeing the way it clung to you. The dress wasn't over the top, something nice and simple for the intimate ceremony. Max put the ring box down and your mom walked into the room, smiling as she saw you. Mac hugged her and your mom smiled and hugged her back, fixing a piece of her red hair.

"Where's dad?" She smiled, "With Billy." You nodded, "Is he okay?" Your mom nodded. "More than okay, he's ready to get out there." You laughed, twisting your ring. "Getting cold feet?" You shook your head, "What if I put his ring on the wrong finger or I accidentally say I don't, you know I stutter when I get nervous." Your mom rubbed your shoulder. "It'll be okay, I promise." You nodded, pressing a hand to your stomach to calm the butterflies.

"Are you pregnant?" Everyone's eyes moved to Max and Susan gently scolded her. "Maxine, that's not a question you ask." You softly laughed, "I'm just nervous." Max hummed, lips pursed, "So, no niece or nephew yet?" You shook your head, "Not for a while." She nodded, looking in one of the full body mirrors as she fixed her dress.

"He better know I love him if I'm wearing this." Everyone laughed at her and there was a knock on the large wooden door. Your father peaked his head in, "Bridesmaids and maid of honor, the men are ready." They all nodded and left, Max staying with you. You grabbed the white basket and filled it with petals. "Aren't they supposed to be fake?" You shrugged, "All of these came from flowers he's gotten me, that's why they're all different, he's never done repeat flowers." She nodded and you gently mixed them and handed her the basket.

"Hey Max." She hummed and looked at you, "You can keep some if you want." She nodded and picked out a few petals for herself, setting them on the vanity. Your dad peaked his head back inside, "Max, they're ready for you, honey." She nodded and quickly hugged you before leaving the room. You joined your dad and he hooked his elbow with yours.

"Ready?" You nodded, "Don't let me fall." He smiled, "Never." The large doors to the church, the only way Neil would attend, opened and everyone stood up. Your eyes snapped forward to Billy at the front, one of his childhood friends right behind him as his best man, patting his right shoulder. You walked with your dad, keeping at the same pace and the closer you got, you could see the tears on Billy's cheeks.

Your dad placed your hand in Billy's before taking his seat next to your mother. You stood before Billy, smiling at him. "Thought you weren't gonna cry?" He softly laughed, whispering back to you, "I have allergies, dust is in my eyes." You quietly laughed, holding his hand. The priest went through the opening of the wedding and Billy's friend jokingly yawned and he elbowed him, making you quietly laugh, the photographer catching the moment.

The priest looked at Billy before asking him a question. "William, do you take this woman to be your wife, to live together in holy matrimony, to love her, to honor her, to comfort her, and to keep her in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, for as long as you both shall live?" Billy looked down at you, a soft smile on his lips, "I do." His old basketball friends cheered in the crowd and he looked over and laughed before looking at you.

The priest looked at you, before asking you the same question and with no hesitation, you answered, "I do." He gently squeezed your hand. "Thank God," he whispered to you and you bit back your laugh. "What? Did you think I was gonna be a runaway bride," you whispered and he shrugged, "Maybe." You both laughed. The priest had you both repeat after him, everyone cheering after each of you recited the few sentences of the pre-made vows.

The priest looked up, "May we have the rings?" Billy's aunt, guided a boy, no older than four, with the pillow with the rings. People in the crowd cooed and she lifted him up and you took Billy's band and he took your band. The boy looked at you, waving his tiny fingers as his mother took him away and Billy softly laughed.

The priest looked at Billy, instructing him to place the band on your finger. He slid your engagement ring off, placing the silver band on you before replacing the engagement ring. "Now repeat after me." He said the phrase as Billy repeated it. "I give you this ring as a token and pledge of our constant faith and abiding love."

The priest looked at you once more, instructing you to place the ring on Billy. Your fingers shook gently and Billy softly talked to you, "It's okay baby, take your time." You slid the ring onto his finger, fixing it. You were instructed to repeat the same phrase as Billy. "I give you this ring as a token and pledge of our constant faith and abiding love."

The priest shut the Bible he was holding. "I would ask you two to join hands but you've been holding hands this entire time." The room was filled with laughter from everyone, including the priest. He looked out before declaring, "By virtue of the authority vested in me under the laws of the State of California, I now pronounce you husband and wife." He looked at Billy before saying, "You may kiss the bride."

Billy smiled, "Apologies to your parents and grandparents," he whispered to you before moving his hands away from yours, using them to dip your body, right hand resting at the back of your hip, his left hand on your cheek as he leaned down and kissed you, your left hand coming up to brace his cheek as you kissed him back. "Jeez," you heard Max exclaim at the back of the church and Billy laughed against your lips, pulling away an inch or two, his blue eyes teary.

"I love you." You smiled, gently stroking his cheek with your thumb, "I love you too, B." He smiled, "Can I kiss you again?" You nodded and he kissed you once more, this kiss was less intense, filled with the same amount of love as the first but it was also shorter. He pulled you back up. "Ready, Missus Hargrove?" You smiled, "Always, Mister Hargrove." He smiled, walking down the aisle with you as everyone stood up, clapping for the two of you.

The reception was hours long, your second bouquet ending up in Max's hands, your garter remaining on, choosing to not put your parents in an uncomfortable position. The first dance was everything you thought it would be. The father-daughter, son-mother dance involved you and your father and Billy and your mother. Tommy chanted for the cake cutting, making everyone laugh as you and Billy made it to the large cake. "Holy shit." You laughed at him. Your mother gave you the knife and Billy placed His hand over yours. "How big of a piece are we cutting?" Billy shrugged, "Big enough that I won't crash later." You nodded and you both cut a big enough slice to feed each other a bite for the pictures and memories.

Instead of using a fork, he cut the small piece with his finger, making you laugh. "Open wide," you snickered, "I've heard that one before." He laughed before taking a piece between his index and his thumb, placing the piece on your tongue. The chocolate practically melted on your tongue, your teeth gently scraping the pads of his fingers and he visibly shivered at the feeling. "Cold," you jokingly questioned and he laughed. "Quite warm, actually. I think I need to take my clothes off." You laughed, gently pinching his side, "Hush, we'll get to that part later." He laughed and you grabbed the other piece of cake. "Open." He opened his mouth and you fed him the piece, wiping the icing from the corner of his lip.

Soon, it was time for the speeches, deciding to save them for the end of the night. Friends and family, besides Neil, gave speeches. Billy grabbed the mic, looking in his blazer as he grabbed a piece of notebook paper that you recognized came out of his journal from the garage. Max snuck over to you, giving you your paper and you quickly thanked her and she went back to her seat. He unfolded the paper and looked out.

"I'm young, I just turned nineteen last month." Tommy cheered and Billy laughed, making you smile. "We met in October 1984, when I arrived in Hawkins and it took me until January 1985 to ask her to be my girlfriend. We actually didn't have a lot in common at first but the more we were around each other, I saw pieces of her in me, and she was the same. I remember the exact night I kissed her, it was after a party, it was a drunken kiss but one to remember nonetheless. I knew I wanted to marry her early on, I had the ring picked out four months into dating and I received it the first week of August. We have a lot of growing to do but at least it will be together from here until our last days together decades from now." He turned to you, putting his paper down, "Thank you for loving me like I deserved, showing me it was okay to be vulnerable, showing me how to love you gently, how to care for you when you needed it most, and most of all, thank you for sticking by my side even through the times it felt like we were in Hell."

You smiled, lower lip quivering and he leaned down and kissed you softly, sweetly and you held his hair gently. "I love you," you murmured against his lips. "I love you more," he murmured back before sitting down and you grabbed the mic. "I remember the first day I saw Billy, it was the first day of school for him. He made this big entrance, the car actually caught my eye first." Everyone laughed and you smiled. "We were polar opposites, I was taught to stay away from the stuff he did but I felt so drawn to him almost instantly and I wasn't sure why. In November 1984, we had our first kiss after one of Tommy's infamous parties." Tommy cheered, "You're welcome!" Everyone laughed again. "Before Billy, there was no one else. He was and always will be my first love, my first everything. I'll admit, we're extremely young but I knew the night he kissed me that I never wanted a day to go where I didn't get to kiss him and so far, it hasn't happened."

You turned to Billy, a soft smile on your face. "My love," you addressed him, "Thank you for loving me like no one else ever will, for being gentle with me when I need it, for giving me the chance to love you, thank you for letting me be there during the hard times, and more importantly thank you for being you because if you would've had that hard ass persona that you had when we met in high school, I don't think we would be here right now. You showed me your true personality, you didn't show me Billy, you showed me who William was and for that, I'll be eternally grateful." You finished your speech and everyone clapped and you looked at Billy, his nostrils flaring, trying to keep himself from crying but nonetheless, two tiny tears fell directly onto his black pants.

Soon, it was nearing midnight and you leaned on Billy. "My feet hurt." He nodded, excusing himself from talking to Tommy's dad, taking your hand and escorting you to the bridal suite at the reception venue. You took your heels off, looking in the mirror at the two of you and Billy did the same, smile on his face. "Wanna leave? I bet they won't even know we're not here." You laughed, "Can we do that?" he pursed his lips, "It's our wedding, of course we can." You nodded. "Okay." You went to put your heels back on and Billy stopped you, picking you up bridal style, taking your heels in his other hand, making sure he had the keys to his Camaro and he left out of a side door and you laughed as you held onto his neck.

He placed you into the car, putting your heels on the floorboard, stealing a quick kiss from you before getting into the driver's side and he drove out of the parking lot. "So, what do you say we get back to the apartment and consummate this marriage?" You laughed, holding his right hand. "I was just about to pitch that idea." He laughed, bringing your hand up and kissing the knuckle of your ring finger.

It wasn't long before he was pulling into the apartment and he parked beside your car, carrying you up the cement stairs carefully as you held onto him, still laughing at him. "See, all those hours at the gym weren't pointless." You hummed, "You work on cars everyday too." He laughed, "Exactly." He unlocked the front door, carrying you over the threshold, shutting the door with his foot, dropping the keys to the ground as he beelined to the bedroom.

He set you down, leaving the room to lock the front door before coming back, blazer off, his shirt partially unbuttoned. He held your hips, looking at you in the full body mirror that was propped near the window. "This dress is pretty, but I do think it would look pretty on the floor too." You laughed, "You can take it off but be gentle, I wanna be able to wear it again when we renew our vows in a decade." He nodded, kissing your neck once before gently unzipping the back of the dress.

The thick shoulder straps fell to your arms as he stripped the dress off of you, leaving a white puddle of fabric at your feet. His jaw dropped as he saw you in the white lingerie, garter on your thigh. "You are in for a very long night, hope you got all of the sleep you wanted last night," and with that, he kept his word, filling your night with love, compassion and a mix of many other things that would leave you incredibly sore the following morning.

[deancasbigbang]

Title: Soft and Slow

Author: Maxine

Artist: Reverie

Rating: Teen

Pairings: Dean/Cas

Length: 45000

Warnings: Mental health issues, mentions of alcohol abuse

Tags: Fake relationship, mutual pining, bad dancing, idiots in love, light humour, mild angst, canonverse, season 14

Posting Date: October 18, 2023

Summary: Team Free Will is dealing with the aftermath of Dean’s recent possession by Michael and the massacre at the bunker, when they are faced with yet another case. It’s right at home in Lebanon and seems uncomplicated at face value. However, things unravel when it turns out that investigation is at a dance studio, requiring Dean and Cas to pretend to be a couple and take dancing lessons together.   Takes place in season 14: a story of bad dancing, love, cat adoption, and Dean being a complete himbo. Loosely based on the Bollywood movie, ‘Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi’.

Excerpt: The music starts up again, slower and deeper than the tunes they’d had for the open embrace. Dean starts to rock to it with Cas, their bodies entangled in ways that Dean is just starting to notice. There are butterflies in his stomach, and he tries to ignore them as he clutches at the back of Cas’s t-shirt, their faces too close for comfort — so close that Dean can see each shade of blue in Cas’s eyes.   There’s silence between them, and even though the room is full of chatter from everywhere else, Dean feels like his and Cas’s world is at a standstill. He turns away from Cas’s gaze, unable to continue looking there any longer, and the silence stretches on, until Cas eventually breaks it to speak.   “Your reluctance to let me rest my forehead against your cheek,” Cas says, “is this another one of your issues with trying to look as heterosexual as possible?”   “No,” Dean snaps at him, “it’s just weird, okay? We’re friends. Don’t make it weird.”   Cas sighs. “I thought our years of friendship would mean that you felt secure enough to do things like this without finding it strange.”   Dean blinks at him, then realises what Cas is doing. “You’re fucking with me, aren’t you? You don’t care either way.”   Cas smiles just a little, and Dean feels something deep in his chest, like his heart is fluttering. Then the butterflies are back, flying around in his gut with gusto. There’s something about seeing Cas like this — relaxed and a little playful, that is so endearing to Dean, even if it’s at his own expense.   “I was just having some fun,” Cas replies at long last. “It is a little hilarious that being here makes you so uncomfortable.”   “Why me, though?” Dean asks him. “Sammy wasn’t happy to be here either.”   “Yes,” says Cas. “However,” he pauses, seemingly gauging Dean’s reaction to everything that has already been said, “you and I do share a more profound bond.”   The snort is out of Dean before he can control himself. A chuckle — relief that Cas is no longer as distant as he has been over the past few weeks, and Dean shakes his head.   “You know what, Cas?” he asks.   “What?”   “Fuck you.”

DCBB 2023 Posting Schedule

[strangerthingsreversebigbang]

In case you missed them, here are the next ten works posted from the Stranger Things Reverse Big Bang!

---

One Last Hawkins Summer by @sparklyslug | Art by @janie-bean

Rating: Explicit

Warning(s): No Archive Warnings Apply

Character(s): Eddie Munson, Nancy Wheeler, Wayne Munson, Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson, Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley, Corroded Coffin (Stranger Things), The Party (Stranger Things)

Relationship(s):Eddie Munson/Nancy Wheeler

Summary:

“Uh,” Eddie says. “Hey Wheeler.”

“I’m leaving Hawkins at the end of the summer,” she says fiercely. “And I’m not coming back.”

“Oh,” Eddie clears his throat. “Good for you.” It’s a very popular sentiment around town these days, personally Eddie thinks it should be put into practice across the board.

“You’re coming with me,” Nancy says, in a tone that doesn’t really invite discussion or argument.

“Um. Okay?”

Seriously? That’s all you got, man? But before Eddie can get through fully kicking his own ass for that weak response, Wheeler’s giving him a tight nod and a flash of a satisfied smile, before getting back in the car and onto the road without so much as another word or glance at him.

The Things She Does For Her Kids by @marsetta | Art by @anaccidentwaitingtohappen

Rating: General

Warning(s): No Archive Warnings Apply

Character(s): Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson, Chrissy Cunningham, Hellfire Club, The Party, Robin Buckley

Pairing(s): Steddie, hints Robin/Chrissy, hints Robin/Chrissy/Jason

Summary: Stevie Harrington decides to confront Eddie Munson about the kids she babysits and what his intentions are with them. That changes a few things for everyone.

We Made Quite A Mess, Babe by @sourwolfs | Art by @inflomora-art

Rating: Explicit

Warning(s): No Archive Warnings Apply

Character(s): Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson, Robin Buckley, Chrissy Cunningham, Gareth (Stranger Things), Jeff (Stranger Things), Unnamed Freak (Stranger Things), Heather Holloway (mentioned), Benny Hammond (mentioned)

Relationship(s): Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson

Summary:

Starting with a new client should have stopped being so nerve-wracking five years ago, but Steve can’t help the anxious butterflies fluttering around his stomach as he hits the end call button. It’s his first job since… well, everything, and he can’t help but be a little anxious. There’s something scary about just being him now instead of them. Even if they never really were them in the first place. Not when it came to work.

OR: The one where Steve is a traveling personal chef working for Corroded Coffin

Long Live by @paceprompting | Art by @staymagical

Rating: Explicit

Warning(s): No Archive Warnings Apply

Character(s): Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson

Relationship(s): Eddie Munson/Steve Harrington

Summary:

Steve Harrington was a pitiful excuse for a crown prince, and he would be an even worse disappointment as a king. Only worthy enough to sire the next heirs and hope they lived up the expectations of the throne.

Until one little thing comes along in the middle of the night and upends everything Steve has ever known--leaving him on the run, with no one to trust. Then comes along a man, with chaos in his blood and enrapturing eyes that Steve finds himself following first as an ally...and then something much more.

Steve Harrington was never meant to be a crown prince, but instead, perhaps he could be a man of his own making.

Find What Was Lost by ChaosDweller | Art by @peachypurr

Rating: Teen

Warning(s): Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings

Character(s): Max Mayfield, Eleven | Jane Hopper

Relationship(s): Eleven | Jane Hopper/Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Will Byers/Dustin Henderson, Will Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper

Summary:

A year ago El disappeared into thin air and max hasn’t seen her since not until one night when she gets lost in the woods and comes across a monsterpus sight.

Will they be able to return her to who she once was or is she forever stuck a monster.

Fuck. I Think I Love You by @oh-stars | Art by @imfinereallyy

Rating: Mature

Warning(s): Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings

Character(s): Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson, Robin Buckley, Original Male Character(s), Nancy Wheeler, Corroded Coffin (Stranger Things), Chrissy Cunningham, The Party (Stranger Things), Jonathan Byers

Relationships: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, Steve Harrington/Original Male Character(s)

Summary:

Steve's happy! He's exploring who he is now that he's sort of out and dating a man for the first time with his newfound freedom. He's having fun and he's in love!!

Or so he thought. Turns out, love doesn't always give as much as it gets?

It's a good thing Eddie Munson is ready to help get him through this break up. He's just being a good friend to his new, totally straight, friend Steve while he gets over his last relationship. Totally has nothing to do with his crush on the guy or the devastating smile Steve gives him across the table at study group. It's not like he has a chance.

Or does he?

Jurassic Disaster by @it-gets-worse-at-night | Art by @alicetallula

Rating: Mature

Warning(s): Graphic Depictions of Violence

Character(s): Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley, Martin Brenner, Sam Owens, Connie Frazier, Billy Hargrove, Dustin Henderson, Max Mayfield, Will Byers, Eleven "Jane" Hopper

Relationship(s): Steve harrington/ edide munson, Steve harrington & robin buckley

Summary:

With the EPA breathing down Dr. Brenner's neck about the safety and legitimacy of his island, Ted Wheeler, Brenner's lawyer, thinks it would be best to bring some experts on board to evaluate the efficacy of the island, as well as it's safety. Despite having worked for Brenner for several years and knowing what was going on, Ted had yet to visit the island himself, and figured that this was as good a time as any. Dr. Brenner makes the call to Steve Harrington and Robin Buckley, pulling them out of their Montana dig site with the promise of enough money to finance several more digs. Meanwhile, Ted invites Eddie Munson, someone consulted early on in the project. Having sentenced the island to doom from the outset, Eddie rejoices in his chance to prove to Brenner that he is not the smartest person in the room. With money and his reputation on the line, Henry Creel will go to great lengths to steal Brenner's science, but in doing so, will he doom everyone on the island to gruesome deaths?

To Fall to Such A Little Thing by @kallisto-k | Art by @alicetallula

Rating: Explicit

Warning(s): Graphic Depictions of Violence

Character(s): Billy Hargrove, Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson, Tommy Hagan, Heather Holloway, Nancy Wheeler, Dustin Henderson, Chrissy Cunningham, Jason Carver

Relationship(s): past billy hargrove/chrissy cunningham, Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, Tommy Hagan/Steve Harrington, background Eddie Munson/Jason Carver

Summary: Louisiana wasn’t Billy’s first choice but after everything that had happened back in California, he needed to get away. He thought the more rural state would be quieter, but when a body is found staged in a tree, Billy and his partner Steve get dragged all around Louisiana on a hunt he couldn’t put out of his mind no matter how much he wanted to.

Driving Princess Daisy by @marsetta | Art by @hereforanepilogue

Rating: General

Warning(s): No Archive Warnings Apply

Character(s): Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson, Wayne Munson

Relationship(s): Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, Eddie Munson & Wayne Munson

Summary: Steve Harrington just got kicked out of college, again, and decides to visit his horse. Eddie Munson is not ready to hand over the reins of the horse he'd taken under his care. They fall in love.

The Ballad of Eddie Munson's Vest by @hawkinsleather | Art by @artbean

Rating: Teen

Warning(s): No Archive Warnings Apply

Character(s): Eddie Munson, Wayne Munson, Ronnie Ecker (Stranger Things), Al Munson

Relationship(s): Eddie Munson & Wayne Munson, Ronnie Ecker & Eddie Munson, Al Munson & Eddie Munson

Summary:

"Thought you'd like to make one of those cut off vests I've seen your heavy metal heroes wear. I need a new jacket, so I thought you could use my old one. You just need to cut the sleeves off," he lifts the jacket up by the shoulders. "An' Benny donated his old shirt for the back."

Eddie knows Wayne likes to make do and mend, find new use for old things, never throw away anything that's still functional in some way, and he does not mind a second hand present that's a work in progress. He likes to do things with his hands. There's just one big problem with this one.

"Thank you, Wayne," he hugs the older man. "But I don't know how to sew," he continues as he lets go of his uncle and looks at him with his big sad puppy dog eyes.

- - - -

It’s Eddie’s 13th birthday and his Uncle Wayne has a special present for him with some assembly required, and he’s going to teach him how to do it. But first Eddie has some plans with his best friend Ronnie.

---

Stay tuned for more incredible works from the Stranger Things Reverse Big Bang!

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[pedroam-bang]

Life Is Strange Remastered Collection (2022)

[steddie-fanfic-recs]

and it all comes down to you

by heartofwinterfell

Rating: Mature Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, Dustin Henderson & Eddie Munson, Maxine "Max" Mayfield & Eddie Munson, Lucas Sinclair & Eddie Munson Characters: Eddie Munson, Steve Harrington, Dustin Henderson, Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Lucas Sinclair, Erica Sinclair, Robin Buckley, Nancy Wheeler Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Temporary Character Death, Fix-It of Sorts, Angst with a Happy Ending, Time Loop, Butterfly Effect, save a metalhead save the world Words: 18,638 Chapters: 1/1

Summary

Eddie Munson’s no hero. Too bad the universe—or whatever’s gonna be left of it—didn’t get the memo. [or, eddie is going to save himself and his friends or die trying. many, many times.]

[misseviehyde]

DIVIDE AND CONQUER (F2F)

Holly was sick of being picked on by the popular girls, especially that bitch Jessie. She’d be happy to stand her ground but there were just too many of them to fight all at once. Accuse them of bullying and they would provide alibis for each other and attack as a group, pulling the rest of the year group along with their twisted opinions. That’s why Holly decided she would have to find a way to break up their group and leave them all isolated and alone.

It was simple and enjoyable to do it with the help of a little shape-changing potion Holly learned to make. Dropping a strand of Jessie’s long blonde hair into the potion, Holly watched it sizzle and dissolve, the liquid turning pink as it took effect. Then taking a deep breath Holly drank the sweet syrup and waited.

It started in her tummy, an excited tingling feeling like butterflies fluttering before a big event and she groaned as the sensation spread into her skin. Holly felt hot… both with a sudden flush of arousal and also physically. Her scalp itched and her teeth began to ache as bones shifted and she felt her body change. She groaned as the buttons on her blouse popped open and Jessies big creamy tits swelled out of her increasingly slender frame. Her brown hair was lightening at the roots and her bitten nails were lengthening into an expensive manicure. “Oooohhhh fuck, these tits feel amazing” she purred, playing with the big sensitive nipples on her new fun bags, and biting her soft pink lip sexily.  She tossed back her long blonde hair, giggling as her voice rose slightly in pitch to become just like Jessie’s.  As her face finished morphing into an exact copy of her enemies, she moaned like a porn star and ran her hands over herself, loving the feel of her tight new body.

Holly giggled as she slipped into one of Jessie’s stolen uniforms. The potion would last a few hours, more then long enough to find Jessie’s best-friends boyfriend and bounce up and down on his big cock. Sure enough she encountered him in a class room and it proved all too easy to seduce him.

“Ohhhh fuck Jessie… I’ve wanted to fuck you for months, but you were always such a cold bitch and loyal to Amy.  I can’t believe I finally get to fuck your tight pussy…”

“Ooooh, I’m just a nasty cheating whore Brett,” moaned Holly loving the feeling of a jocks big cock in her exciting new pussy, “use me… make me feel like a bitch, I love it!”

Holly was already enjoying the thought of what was coming next.  Once she’d finished riding this big boy to her satisfaction, she’d tell Maxine all about her little fling.  Maxine was the biggest gossip at school.  Amy would be sure to find out about all this and that would begin to put the wedge in their relationship… especially as Brett was such a terrible liar.

“Ooooh, hurry up and cum in me,” moaned Holly…

She was already looking forward to using the potion again to turn into Nadia and fuck another girls boyfriend.  By the time she’d finished, these bitches would all be enemies and her life would be back to normal.  Sometimes you had to be bad to be good.