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biillys · 2 years

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ehhhh how bout a very vaguely supernatural meets ghost fiIes inspired au

neil being raised in hunting and bringing his wife into it and then his newborn son. his wife leaving eventually, becos she couldn't handle it anymore, and she desperately wanted to take her baby boy with her, but he already knew too much, and she couldn't protect him like neil could. she also couldn't protect him from neil, but there were bigger monsters than humans, and after one too many close calls, she leaves.

billy's left in neil's supernatural capable hands.

life on the road with his dad is rough, jumping around from place to place, never being somewhere long enough to call home, no extended family or old family friends to stay at for long hot summers. just him and his dad, his dads hot and cold temper, and the open road. that's all billy knows.

then one day, they're on a hunt, and there's a freshly divorced mother and her hotheaded stubborn daughter, and billy watches as his dad continues to charm them even after they've eradicated the simple ghost, watches as the mum falls for every word and practiced smile, and suddenly it's the four of them on the road.

susan seems weak, looks awkward with a gun in her hands, still jumps at the slightest bump when they're clearing out a house, but neil's patient with her, repeats the steps on how to fire and clean the gun day after day, holds her fucking hand whenever he notices her tensing up, and billy wants to scream.

neil locked billy in the shed of the place they were renting when he was six becos he fumbled the gun. fucking belted him that one time in texas when he accidentally let a monster get away becos he was scared, like billy actively let the fucking thing get away for fun and not becos he was frozen paralysed, listening to it rattle of things that billy knew he'd never said out loud.

his dad never told him it could get into your head.

max is better about it, but still a fucking pain. at least she doesn't seem to be a baby about everything. if billy's being honest, max has handled the transition from normal suburban life to life on the road and hunting monsters like a champ. too bad neil's basically placed her entire wellbeing and care into billy's hands, and the rope billy's felt around his neck his entire life's went from snug to fucking choking.

life goes on though, and eventually billy's old enough to buy his own car, do his own hunts. max rides with him more often than not, mostly out of habit, but also becos she'd pick being stuck with her asshole older step-brother for weeks at a time over spending even just an hour in close quarters with her piece of shit step-dad.

turns out, life on the road with just billy is good. he's like a completely different person when he can breathe without his dad taking up all the air. he's even fun on occasion. actually talks her through what they're hunting, why they're hunting it, lets her actually help.

(she accidentally tripped on a tree root one time on a hunt with the family when she was younger, and one sprained wrist later, she was banned from coming on anymore. she tried to argue it was a simple tree root, and that billy slipped a disc in his spine getting thrown against a brick wall just last month, but neil put his foot down. said susan was worried, and if susan was worried, neil was worried. billy was a big boy, he could walk it off. max was delicate, she had to be kept safe. billy wouldn't even look at her for at least a week after that fight.)

the time between seeing their parents slowly grows longer and longer between each trip the longer they're away. it started off with just a few days off on a side hunt before reuniting within the week, but then the few-days-hunts turned into few-weeks-hunts, and suddenly it felt like they were only seeing their parents for special occasions.

but the longer they were away, the lighter they became. the first time max hears billy refer to her as his sister, no tone, no stressed step sister, just sister, she does a double take. doesn't dare bring it up 'til they get back to the motel they were crashing at. billy rolls his eyes, bitches about not needing to give some fucking random his entire life story.

they bond over hating neil and hating susan's life choices, get competitive over who can figure out the monster of the week first, and turn the other way when one ~accidentally lets a monster get away.

(the first time billy let a monster get away on purpose, he waited up all night, expecting his dad to burst into the room and knock some sense into him. accuse him of being just as monstrous, just another fucking killer, reckless, letting them get away like that. his dad was 6 states away and deep into a hunt of his own, but billy had second guessed his choice since the second he walked away earlier that evening, refreshing the local news site constantly waiting for another body to drop, to prove the voice in his head that sounded exactly like neil right, that he was a failure of a hunter, falling for the sob story and bullshit the monster spilled and pleaded and promised with on what should have been it's last moments.)

(billy knows real monsters though, and despite what his mother said to him in the last memory he has of her, humans were always worse. most things neil taught billy to hunt were harmless. he's trying so fucking hard to teach this to max. to make sure innocent blood never drips from her hands the way it does his.)

anyway: to the ghost fiIes part of this. i think it would be FUN if, in a big Fuck You And Everything You Stand For to his dad, that one time on a hunt, billy's having a casual joyful yelling match with a ghost, and max whips out her phone and records, uploads it to her insta, and one or two people watch.

then one time, theyre trying to get a demon to fuck off, and billy's trying to fucking sales pitch hell to them, like billy's ever even been there, and max whips out her phone again. a few more people watch.

slowly max builds a following. is always careful to frame every video in such a way that monsters stay the stuff of legends, but make it realistic enough that if you know - you know. starts to gradually add herself to this mix. soon, her and billy are going into legitimately haunted houses just to chat to ghosts, record the whole thing, and chuck the best moments up on youtube.

the first time neil sees a clip, sees his son terrorising a ghost - but not in a hunt-to-kill sort of way, but just for jokes, for a laugh sort of way - he drives for three days straight to sort him out in person. gets him up and crowded against the paper thin wall, asking if he thinks it's funny, what ghosts are capable of doing, if he thinks it's a joke, all those people they were too late to save. if he thinks his mother left him, all over a laugh. billy wishes he didn't buckle under the weight, wishes his voice didn't shake when he answered, but he caught max's eye over his dad's shoulder, and she had a gun in one hand, and her knife in the other, and billy's seen her look at poltergeists that have threatened her life more kindly than the way she's looking at neil in the moment. billy gathers what little strength he can pull, juts his chin out and glares as dirty as possible. finds his voice and kicks his dad out of the motel room, managing to shake his dad off in the split second of shock neil has over billy not instantly caving. max echoing billy's demands, telling neil to get the fuck out. to go protect her mother, since he trapped her into a life she'll never be able to survive on her own, and to keep her safe, and to stay the fuck out of theirs.

basically BASICALLY i'm watching ghost fiIes and i just think billy and max in a supernatural world but like, in a fun way, would be GOOD SHIT. and i want billy to still be lowkey scared of ghosts and demons becos he has seen the havoc they can create first hand, the families they can destroy in just a heartbeat, so he's always a little tense attending a haunting, but he goes in every time, becos its all he's ever done, becos max told him on a bad night once that she thought he was brave, and he talks (and yells and screams and mocks and, occasionally, cries) to them and slowly he starts to find himself and get his life together, helping all these fucking trapped and usually scared and also so so so angry ghosts. helps them to the best of his ability. listens to them when they wail. talks to them when they cry. he starts to heal.

max grows, too, having watched something invisible, with no physical form whatsoever, tear her father to shreds, just weeks after the divorce, to driving around the country with her brother, spending nights in houses so haunted it would scare a priest, adjusting to loving her mother from a distance, cos she'll never understand why she fell for the shit neil was offering, why she stuck around, gripping his hand tight, that first time neil lost his shit at billy in front of them. why she continued to hold his hand, going as far as to look the other way, the first time neil laid into her for not getting detailed enough research for a case, blaming her for his broken ribs and her mother's dislocated shoulder. billy silently offering her an ice pack that night in the darkness, wordlessly passing over some pills and a glass of water.

billy made a point to look over her research from then on out, just in case.

max thinks her life could've turned out a whole lot better if her dad never died, if neil and billy never entered it. but she's pretty sure that out of every option she could've had, that the way it is now, her and billy making some silly youtube show, confronting their own nightmares night after night, saving monsters, hunting things, this is the best option.

OKAY literally none of this captured my original thought of billy and max just fucking around in haunted houses and annoying the dead.

max knowing shits real but billy would swear with the way she acts and talks that she thinks it's all horseshit. billy wouldn't even call her brave, she genuinely just doesn't seem to give a fuck. she's got a fuck with Me attitude and billy gets it, okay, if he were already dead, be wouldn't try anything on her either, imagine dying once by falling down an elevator shaft then getting fucking slayed again by a seventeen yr old who failed her learners permit, not once, but twice. billy'd back the fuck off, too.

billy being a lil scared in a extremely fucking haunted houses, knowing full well that demons were real and they were here, in this very room, and max telling him to shut the fuck up whilst pushing him into the portal, aka the closet, and telling him to turn his light off and talk to it. billy, bitching under his breath, you talk to it, but still standing there, light off, stupid little camera on, opening a line of communication. his usual tactic for getting through the night being to raise absolute hell. if he's gonna chill with demons, the dead, and inter-dimensional freaks all night, he was gonna make sure they were just as fucked up about him as he was them.

feel like this STILL doesn't capture what i was originally going for but anyway if u watch ghost fiIes you Know. thank you for reading if you've made it this far also sincerest apologies for whatever the fuck this is

#i do NOT know.#i just think ghost fiIes is fun and itd be funner if we ever found out that they DID have a full on encounter #they just decided not to air it to KeEp iT LiGhT etc #and also i just think that spinning the wheel on what backstory of childhood trauma we can bend to shape around billy and max is Necessary #billy hating his father but also. its his dad. and he had an isolated childhood that kept him relient. so he hates his dad but his dad #really is all he's ever known. hard to hate somewhere with the full feeling when you don't really know any different #someone*#he resents his mother. mainly for leaving. for using the excuse that it wasnt safe for her to stay but it wasnt safe for him to go.#resents her for trying to convince him that neil wasnt the scariest thing in the world. that there was more to fear.#when he KNOWS that thats not true. it took him a while to see it. took a hellva lot of growing up and wising uo #wising up*#but eventually he finally fucking got what his mum was trying to say. and realised she was fucking wrong.#MAX being just as fucked up about everything as billy is except shes better at processing it. doesnt have an entire childhood to drag #her down and fuck her up. alls she knows is that her parents got divorced. the custody battle got messy. then suddenly her dad was dead #blood everywhere and her mum was a wreck and terrified.#then suddenly the world got a whole lot bigger yet shrunk down to just one car and four passengers #and life was never the same again #(she was never as brave as billy thought she was. she just never got to experience the horrors he had. never been walked away from #a sprained wrist here and a cut to the cheek there. some nasty bruises every other week. but she was never in any real danger.#im too tired now and none of this is what im trying to say ugh Anyway. stream ghost fiIes. stan billy & max. thanku #m #nqff #text

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