Archive of Our Own

Billy honestly doesn’t know why he does this to himself. He’s been jealous of Nancy Wheeler since the first time Steve smiled at her in eighth grade. It felt like Steve had already gotten bored of him and his unruly curls and tales of Santa Monica and found something better.

Something…more appropriate for a rich, beautiful boy like Steve Harrington.

He’s waited with bated breath five, six, seven times for Nancy and Steve to break up and make it stick. He thought that Nancy hooking up with that freak Byers during their senior year would be the final straw, but somehow she had convinced Steve that it was “just a moment of weakness” and that Byer’s familiarity as a long time family friend was “comforting” while she and Steve were on the rocks. Billy had wanted to stick her bobblehead into a blender and watch her face turn into soup. Steve, being Steve, had forgiven her instantly.

Now he’s 21 years old watching Nancy Wheeler stare out of the plane window looking bored with Steve sitting between them. Billy knew that Steve wanted to bring her to Tommy’s big 21^st birthday bash. He knew that Steve would pay for her ticket and sit next to her on the flight and hold her stupid frail baby hand and fall asleep with his head leaned against hers. And still, he had opted to sit next to Steve instead of Carol and Tommy and glare at the girl from the corner of his eyes in the hopes that if he glared long enough she would spontaneously combust.

Carol told him he was pathetic. Tommy just looked at him like the freckled boy was constipated, which was Tommy’s version of feeling sympathetic and uncomfortable at the same time. He’d come to accept Billy’s sexuality but still seemed perpetually worried that he was going to say or do something homophobic that would make Billy hate him.

Tommy was pretty dumb so it was a possibility.

Billy had been friends with Steve, Tommy, and Carol within three months of starting sixth grade in Hawkins, Indiana. At first he had hated all three of them, Steve especially. But all it took was one fight with Steve, one sucker punch from Tommy, and one hosing down from Carol for them to further drift into each other’s orbit. Steve noticed the signs of Billy’s father’s abuse on his skin during the fight and had promptly pursued friendship with him until Billy couldn’t help but acknowledge that he thrived off the attention. He didn’t want Steve to give up, so he gave in.

Tommy and Carol came as a package deal with Steve. After Tommy sucker punched him for having hurt Steve in the first place and Carol had literally sent him on his ass into the mud by smacking off the cap off a fire hydrant to keep him from wailing on Tommy with a metal pipe, he couldn’t deny that he was impressed by their loyalty. Carol was mean and a gossip but loved Steve and Tommy with a fierceness that he found himself wanting for himself. Tommy was an idiot with the laugh of an actual jackass but he would die for Steve or Carol without even having to be asked. Billy had never seen two people so dedicated to the people they loved. It felt like a gift to be a given a second chance and be a part of that.

It’s just that Steve was different.

Steve was his first ever friend, even if Tommy and Carol came immediately afterward. Steve gave Billy his coat when all Billy could afford was a ratty jean jacket. He bought Billy lunch when his father refused to give him his wallet. He told Billy he deserved more. He told Billy he could be a good person if he tried. He helped bandage Billy’s wounds with gentle hands and gentler words. He offered his home to Billy so that Billy could have one safe place in the world to fall back on. He taught Billy what love was.

Problem was, he was also fucking gorgeous.

And what is one to do if one has a friend that a) teaches you what love is, b) is the kindest most generous soul that has ever lived, and c) is the hottest fucking thing you’ve ever seen? Fall head over heels in love with them, obviously.

He has been in love with Steve Harrington probably since ninth grade. Ever since Steve shot up by what felt like two feet, started growing out his hair, and joined the swim team and started wearing a speedo. The feelings that he had for Steve before then probably were love but suddenly being struck by wet dream, after wet dream, after crunchy sock, after jerking off in the shower and biting his name so he didn’t cry the other boy’s name out loud, the combination of his sexual attraction and emotional attachment couldn’t be denied as anything other than love.

Because it wasn’t just about how hard Steve made him. It was about the fact that Billy wanted to hold Steve’s hand. He wanted to wear his stupid swim team windbreaker with Steve’s last name on it. He wanted to buy a house and have two dogs and a cat with Steve. He wanted forever with Steve and only Steve.

Except Steve was straight. Straight and dating fucking Nancy Wheeler since the tenth grade.

Steve looked at Nancy like she had hung the moon, the sun, and the stars. He looked at her like she was the creator of the universe. He’d actually cried before he asked her out because he was so afraid that she would reject him and he would lose her; he was that infatuated with her. Over the course of high school, Steve had changed everything about himself for Nancy. He stopped hanging with the popular kids to sit with her at the library. He quit the swim team to focus on his studies so he and Nancy could go to the same college together. At one point, he had even stopped talking to Tommy, Carol, and Billy because they weren’t what Nancy thought of as good people.

All three of them had hated Nancy because she was always trying to change Steve; change who he decided to hang out with, change how he spent his time, change his clothes, change his hobbies, change his dreams. Out of fear of losing Steve, he had convinced Tommy and Carol that they had to play nice with Princess Wheeler. He told them and himself that Nancy wasn’t going to be a permanent component in Steve’s life, that they just had to wait her out until either she or Steve got bored with their vanilla relationship. They’d come back practically on their knees, begging Steve for forgiveness and pledging good behavior.

And Steve? Steve cried and said he missed them. Held Billy the longest in his arms and apologized if he ever made Billy think he didn’t care about him anymore, that he didn’t want to change any of them, but just wasn’t sure how to make Nancy okay with them.

Nancy had broken up with him about it but then had come running back two weeks later because it’s not like anyone was better than Steve anyway. When they’d gotten back together, Billy had gotten high with Carol and Tommy and came out to them, told them he was gay and in love with someone who would never love him back.

Carol had rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah, we know. You’re in love with Steve. Stop being so pathetic about it and go get some dick or something.”

Tommy had spluttered and blushed and apologized for making one gay joke that Billy didn’t even remember him making in eighth grade before asking if it was because Steve had a horse cock like it was written on the girl’s bathroom.

His sheer idiocy had made him laugh so hard that for a while he forgot how much it hurt to watch Steve fall deeper in love with his pretty (woefully inadequate) princess.

But Billy couldn’t forget and he couldn’t stop being so pathetic. He was tied to Steve’s orbit. He couldn’t escape even when he tried. No one could compare. Hook up with a guy? His dick wasn’t as long as Steve’s. His hair wasn’t as soft. His eyes weren’t as pretty. His fingers weren’t as slender. Billy’s heart didn’t race the way it did whenever Steve smiled at him.  

He was permanently bound to an undeniably straight and committed boy that he had loved since he was fifteen. He’d followed Steve to Chicago, roomed with him even though every time Steve and Nancy had sex it made him want to destroy something or sent him drunkenly knocking on the door to Carol’s dorm room at the University of Illinois at Chicago, crying his eyes out as  the redhead rolled her eyes and passed him tissues.

Now he was sitting next to his unrequited love and best friend on a plane as his girlfriend sat beside them while Carol glared at the back of his head from the next row and Tommy snored beside her and an equally unconscious middle aged man.

He fucking hates himself.

“Hey so you know how I started working for my uncle at his art gallery?” Steve interrupts his inner self-deprecating monologue.

Billy turns to look at him and can’t help the smile that spreads across his face. Steve is beautiful in his forest green hoodie and black joggers. A strand of hair is falling into his eyes as he smiles at Billy and Billy wants nothing more than to brush it away and caress his strong jaw with his blunt fingers. “Yeah?”

“Well it looks like I may actually be good at it? Like, my uncle was saying that the artist we just showcased last week really liked the way I was explaining his art to the patrons. He said I was sincere and I really made it about the meaning of the work rather than just trying to sell stuff.” Steve blushes as he talks and rubs his neck in that awkward way he does when he is embarrassed. He’s always embarrassed when he tells anyone a story about something he did well.

“That’s awesome, man. You’re uncle’s a hardass, right? So you must really be killing it.” He tempers his own pride at Steve’s accomplishments for Steve’s sake. The other man is quick to dismiss positive feedback if it comes from people who he thinks like him too much to see his flaws, so Billy has made a point of trying to point out when others who have no “required” affinity for Steve see his competence and potential.

The sparkle in Steve’s eyes makes his gut jump more than the turbulence did. “Yeah. He like, never compliments people, so I think I must have done a decent job.” Steve pulls at the little strand of hair across his forehead in a nervous gesture that has Billy closing his mouth and waiting for the boy to continue. “I actually really like it there. The art is really cool. And like, the artists, I thought they would be kind of standoffish but they are all really cool too. I didn’t think I learned that much whenever I would visit museums with my mom but I guess I know more about art than I realized I did? I like the other people who work there too. There’s these two really kind of punk, grunge lesbian girls named Robin and Kali. They’re really cool to be around.”

Billy nudges Steve gently to keep him talking because his nervousness doesn’t quite match what he has said so far. “And?” he urges.

Steve rolls his eyes at him but is smiling when he says, “I think this might be something I am really interested in doing full time, like, maybe learning how to manage a gallery on my own someday if my uncle will teach me everything.”

His heart swells. Steve has felt so lost since he was rejected from all the colleges he applied to senior year. The brunette has wandered from job to job, selling ice cream, selling coffee, babysitting, and dog walking for so long that Steve had confessed that he was afraid he would never find something he was good at and also enjoyed.

He opens his mouth to encourage Steve to pursue what he likes but is interrupted by what he has decided is the most annoying voice on the planet.

“Steve, I thought you said that you were going to sign up for classes at the community college this year?” Princess Wheeler frowns at both of them from her seat, bundled in a cozy white sweater and black leggings.

Steve immediately looks like a scolded dog, growing smaller in his seat as his shoulders hunch up to his ears. “I mean, yeah but, I really like this so I thought maybe I could hold off until the spring semester?”

Wheeler’s little mouth purses like she’s sucking on a lemon. “Steve, you’re already behind. Do you really want to push it off any longer? Statistically it gets harder and harder to get to college the more time you wait after high school.”

Billy fucking hates her.

“I know but…” Steve bites his lip. “I really like it, Nance, and it seems like maybe I’m good at it?”

“Of course you’re good at it. You’ve had a lot of experience with customer service and selling things. This is pretty much the same thing but now you’re just selling things that are more expensive. Don’t you want more?”

Billy leans back in his seat and closes his eyes to keep from screaming in Wheeler’s face. He already knows what happens when he picks a fight with the princess and he doesn’t want to experience Steve choosing her. Again. He picks out his headphones from the pocket of his black denim jacket and sticks them in his ears, then pulls out his phone and turns on a Metallica song as loud as he can get it without his phone flashing red in warning about going deaf to drown out the sound of Wheeler and Steve’s bickering.

Carol kicks the back of his seat. He reaches around the side of his chair and smacks her on her bare leg in return.

He fucking knows, alright?

He’s pathetic.

-S <3’s N-

They land in Las Vegas at 5:15pm. Tommy is hooting before they’ve even stopped taxiing on the tarmac. “Vegas baby! Time to get wrecked!” The freckled boy shouts from his seat.

A chorus of echoing hollers and laughter comes from the people around them. Figures everyone would be tolerant of an over-excited Midwestern boy overjoyed about getting legally wasted for the first time in a place where you can apparently pet a tiger, fuck a hooker, win at the slot machine, and waste all of your winnings on overpriced cocktails in one night. Still, despite the fact that Tommy’s behavior would normally annoy the shit out of him, even Billy can’t keep himself from smiling.

He’s happy that his crew has finally had a chance to get out of the Midwest and see a little bit more of the world. The wonder in Tommy’s eyes as he presses his nose against the window reminds him of lighter times, when he saw the ocean for the first time and recognized that the world was so much larger and spectacular than he could have even imagined it to be. Carol is quieter, but he can tell the redhead is feeling just as awed and excited as Tommy because she hasn’t said anything since they landed and Billy can count on one hand the amount of times that Carol hasn’t had something to say about something.

Wheeler, despite her prissy princess exterior is even looking more excited, mouth upturned in a small smile as she watches the crew speed around outside preparing for them to disembark. And Steve? Steve looks beautiful as he tries to peer over Wheeler’s curly head, mouth open as he stares at the dry, towering mountains in the distance.

His best friend looks back at him, eyes wide and sparkling in his gorgeous fucking head, completely unaware of how his blinding grin makes Billy’s heart palpitate in his chest. “This is amazing already!” Steve exclaims. “I’m so glad Tommy’s aunt was able to get us all these discounted tickets.”

“You think this is amazing, pretty boy? Wait till you see the Strip,” Billy smirks.

“You’ve been here before?” Steve asks, head cocked to the side like the world’s most adorable puppy.

The smirk falls off Billy’s face as he clears his throat. “Yeah um…My mom…Sometimes she would drive us out here to just get away for a while.” To get away from Neil and his fists and stacks of hospital bills they couldn’t pay and walk Billy around the Strip, laughing at street performers, and getting caricatures made with matching mops of curly blonde hair. They would forget about the bruises covering their bodies and the black eye that was hidden beneath his mother’s concealer and drive around looking at houses in the neighborhoods closer to Reno and imagine what their lives could be inside of them without Neil. And every time after a few days spent in a moldy motel room with questionable stains marring the carpets and walls, sometime when Billy was showering, or sleeping, or leaving to buy a soda, his mother would break and call Neil, and somehow the bastard would convince her to pack up their meager belongings and drive back to Santa Monica with tears in both of their eyes.

Nevada had been a dream once.

Billy had learned a long time ago that dreams don’t come true.

Didn’t mean he didn’t have them though.

Steve places his warm palm over his hand and squeezes once. His smile has grown smaller but is warmer than the world outside. “Sounds like you had a good time together,” he says softly. “Let’s make sure that we have a good time this weekend too.”

His dream is sitting right next to him with the reason why it will never come true one seat away. But he can’t let it go. “I always have a good time with you, Harrington.”

“This weekend ain’t about Harrington, Hargrove! It’s the Tommy show and you better not forget it,” Tommy flicks the back of his head while Carol cackles.

Billy slaps Tommy’s hand away with a roll of his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, Hagan. We all know we have to pretend we love you for the next 3 days,” Billy teases.

“It’ll be a challenge, but we did promise we would be nice to you to your mother just for this weekend,” Steve adds with a smirk.

“Speak for yourself,” Carol says with her arms wrapped around Tommy’s neck. “I don’t have to pretend.”

Tommy kisses her, wet and sloppy, right in front of Billy, Steve, and Wheeler’s mildly disgusted faces. “Thanks, babe.”

The dinging of the seatbelt sign switching off has all of them rising to stretch out their limbs and grab their carry-ons before they begin their descent back down the aisle. Billy lets Steve and Nancy go ahead of him, his excitement stifled slightly as he watches Steve slip an arm across the tops of Wheeler’s bony shoulders. Tommy leaps on his back, making him stumble before he rights himself and slips his hands under the bulky boy’s knees. “Onward, gay boy! Dicks and drinks are ahead!” Tommy hollers to Carol’s resounding cheer.

“I would fucking drop you if it wasn’t your birthday, Hagan,” Billy lies through his teeth.

“Nah, you love me. Not as much as some people but pretty close,” Tommy taunts.

“Shut up.”

-T <3’s C-

The plan is for Steve and Nancy to room together and Tommy and Carol to do the same, leaving Billy on his own. Steve clearly looks guilty about it, but Billy would rather stab glass through his eyes than have to see Steve and Nancy cuddled up together in bed like they’re an old married couple instead of insatiable, slutty young adults. Staying with Tommy and Carol is an absolute no for the opposite reason. He’s slept in the same room with Carol and Tommy once and once was enough to learn that the two of them got off on having sex when someone else could see them. He still has nightmares of Tommy’s pale dick driving into Carol’s fire crotch.

Never again.

He feels a wealth of satisfaction as he watches Tommy, Carol, Wheeler, and Steve go completely speechless as they taxi through the strip. They’re all pointing out of the window and trying to take a thousand pictures on their cellphones like little kids on a field trip. When their taxi driver suggests that they stop at a liquor store and stock up to save money, Tommy and Carol almost throw themselves out of the car before he has even come to a complete stop.

Wheeler tells them she will wait with the cab driver, and Steve, being the gentleman he is and the pussy whipped bitch he won’t admit to being, offers to stay with her. “Bring back the good stuff, Billy!” Steve says as he hold’s Wheeler’s dainty little hand in his.

A dark part of him considers bringing back some arsenic and putting it into Wheeler’s Moscow mule before he remembers that Steve would never forgive him for that shit.  He’s sullen as he wanders through the various aisles of the liquor store. He wishes Nancy weren’t here. Steve would be having more fun if she wasn’t. Steve would be having more fun with Billy if she had just stayed the fuck at home.

Billy has no idea why she’s come to Vegas in the first place. She can’t stand Billy. She and Carol get into an argument if they so much as try to speak to each other for more than three minutes at a time. She thinks Tommy is an idiot. Why spend a weekend with people you don’t like? Just to keep your boyfriend from actually having fun for once?

He’s being petty, he knows, but it’s hard for him to see Nancy Wheeler in any sort of positive light. She gets everything that Billy doesn’t. A mom that cares and sticks around. A dad that provides for her without holding it against her or beating her just because he can. Siblings that never looked at her like she’s a ticking time bomb. Although that one is really Billy’s fault and Billy’s alone. On top of that, she gets Steve, the only guy that Billy has ever loved. Maybe he could like Nancy if he thought that she appreciated it but he had only ever seen her find fault with her family and with Steve, as if she hadn’t been gifted this perfect life that someone like Billy would die for.

“Stupid bitch,” he mumbles under his breath.

“Are you going to be a total sad sack this entire weekend? I seriously cannot handle your angst for three days,” Carol says as she sidles up beside him with a cart filled with liquor.

“Get off my back, Carol. You agree it sucks that she’s here,” Billy huffs.

“I don’t like Wheeler. I have said it many times. I have said it out loud, in writing, on Instagram, but no matter what I say, she’s still with Steve and I want Steve to be here with us this weekend. Sometimes friendship means you have to compromise. I get that’s it harder for you because you want her pussy off Steve’s dick so you can get your ass on it instead, but I want to have a good time this weekend. I want us to have a good time this weekend. So here is what we are going to do,” Carol says while handing him two jugs of neon colored margarita mix. “You’re going to choose between this classic or strawberry margarita mix. We’re going to celebrate Tommy’s birthday and get fucking wasted and you’re going to forget how much your little gay heart yearns for Steve so that you can get fucked by a stranger or multiple strangers in your hotel room. When we get back to Chicago, I’ll get you a bag of ice to sit your sore ass on and you can pour me a cranberry-vodka for the UTI I’m gonna have by the end of this weekend.”

He hates Carol sometimes but she’s one of the only people who can make him laugh in that way that makes him sound like his mouth is pressed against the microphone at a stadium concert, loud and cackling and unabashed in its delight. “Shut the fuck up, bitch,” he says between snickers.

Carol looks pleased with herself as she punches him in the shoulder. “Pick a flavor, bitch.”

Because he’s still an asshole despite Steve and Max’s best efforts, he puts the classic mix up on a random shelf behind him. “Strawberry’s where it’s at, Perkins.”

“You better hope so,” Carol says with a pop of her gum. “I only want the best for my Thomas.”

Tommy pops around the corner of the aisle with a grin on his face and a green bottle in his hand. “Guys! They have absinthe!”

Carol and Billy meet eyes. They’re both clearly thinking about the one time they did hallucinogens with Tommy when they were seventeen. “Put it back,” they both say at the same time.

“But it’s my birthday!” Tommy whines.

“Put it back,” they repeat.

Tommy complains about how he has the worst friend and girlfriend ever as he drags his feet back to wherever he picked up the absinthe from.

Billy grabs a random box of hostess cupcakes and throws them into the cart before turning to Carol and saying in the most serious voice he can, “Reparations.”

Carol laughs all the way up to the cash register.

-C <3’s T-

They have an ungodly amount of alcohol to drag through the lobby with their carry-ons when they get to the hotel. Steve ends up paying for a bellhop to cart it to their rooms for them when the handles of the bags look too close to breaking for his tastes.  

“Put your party clothes on, bitches! Pregame in my room!” Tommy yells.

Wheeler frowns. “It’s not even seven. You want to start already?”

“Hell yeah! We’re in Vegas. We’re supposed to party from sunrise to sunrise! It won’t be a real 21^st birthday party unless we hardly remember it.”

“Amen,” Billy deadpans.

“I was hoping to have some time to walk around the hotel and take some pictures. Mike was asking me to send him some to show to Jane,” Nancy explains.

“He can look up pictures of the hotel online, Wheeler,” Carol says with a roll of her eyes.

Nancy glares at Carol and judging by the stink face that comes over her features, she is about to say something scathing that might lead to pulled hair and ear splitting screeching before Steve cuts in. “Why don’t you three go ahead and start? Nance and I can take some pictures and we’ll meet up in your room in a bit. I want to take a quick shower anyway. I feel gross from being on the plane so long.”

Billy can tell Tommy and Carol aren’t happy about Steve’s response but it’s way too early for any of them to set a damper on Tommy’s birthday. Billy steps up and claps Tommy across the shoulders. “You clean up, princess. I’ll show these two a good time till you get back.”

“If we have to wait, I’m doing your makeup too, Billy,” Carol says around another pop of her gum.

Billy has no idea why Carol’s so obsessed with putting makeup on him, but he’ll indulge her if it means that they can avoid her popping off on Nancy before the first drink has even been had. “Fine, just don’t go too crazy. If I look any hotter I’ll eclipse the birthday boy.”

“Whatever, I’ve already got the hottest girl in the US of A. You can be hotter than me, Hargrove.”

“Sounds like you guys are set. We’ll see you soon!” Steve waves them a quick goodbye as he steers Wheeler deeper into the hotel.

Watching him walk away with her always hurts, but he pushes it back for Tommy’s sake. This isn’t about Billy and his stupid pining heart. The three of them find the elevator and their prospective rooms. Tommy and Carol end up across from Billy and Steve and Nancy are next door. Billy inwardly says a word of thanks to Tommy’s aunt for arranging the rooms and being mindful of how fucking loud Carol and Tommy can be when they're fucking. Hopefully the bit of distance makes it less likely that he will have to hear Carol scream throughout the day and night.

His room is simple. There’s a queen-sized bed with grey linens in the middle of the room, two nightstands, and a small desk and chair for him to sit at. A door length window in the furthest wall from the door is covered in matching grey blackout curtains. It’s still a nicer room than any place he lived in as a kid and much cleaner than his room in Chicago probably ever will be.

He ends up changing into a lightweight blood red button up that he only buttons up to his navel and his tightest pair of dark blue jeans. He’s gonna sweat his ass off as soon as they leave the hotel, but he’s beginning to embrace breaking his vow of celibacy like Carol suggested and he figures as soon as he makes eye contact with a hot enough guy his jeans will be down to his ankles, if not flung across his room, before midnight hits.

Winking at himself in the mirror, he adjusts one last curl to fall across his forehead enticingly before heading to Carol and Tommy’s room across the hall. There’s music blasting from the room already and the door isn’t even closed when he gives it a quick shove. Tommy and Carol are jumping on their bed, dripping margarita mix all over their sheets as they howl out the lyrics to The Box. Carol’s changed into a real slutty number; a neon orange, one shouldered tiger print bodycon dress that barely covers her cooch. Tommy’s outfit makes no sense but seems to be themed to match Carol somewhat. He’s wearing what looks like a black silk, short sleeved shirt with roaring tigers all across it and a pair of the most horrific lime green shorts Billy has ever seen.

“Jesus, Hagan. You sneak that absinthe back in the cart when we weren’t looking?” Billy says with a sneer. He’d mock Carol too, but the years have taught him that a drunken Carol never forgets and a drunken Carol never hesitates to throw a drink in his face and cuss him out in front of everyone. Twice was enough.

Tommy laughs obnoxiously, already red in the face as he spills more of his margarita onto the bed. “You’d get it if you would just watch Tiger King, man!”

“I’ve been white trash. Don’t need to see a documentary on it,” Billy says for the fortieth time.

“Been? Oh William, you still are. Only need to look at that mullet on your head to realize that,” Carol mocks before putting her margarita on the side table and leaping off the bed, flashing Billy her whole ass vulva in the process.

“Bitch put some panties on! The fuck? I’m too gay for that shit,” Billy grimaces.

“Thought you should see the real thing before you die,” Carol chimes as Tommy starts laughing even harder at Billy’s visible disgust. She pours another margarita into a red Solo cup and shoves it into Billy’s chest. “Now get fucked up with us so you don’t cry about Steve the whole trip.”

“Bossy,” he counters before chugging down half the cup, coughing as he comes up for air. “Christ, is there mix in this or did you just put some fucking food coloring in the tequila?”

“Pussy,” Carol and Tommy scoff at him in unison.

Growling, Billy chugs down the rest of the world’s worst strawberry margarita and launches himself at Tommy’s gut, knocking the other boy down with a sharp cry of surprise. Tommy’s drink spills across the floor, splattering Carol’s pasty legs and the girl throws herself on top of Billy in retribution, slamming the heels of her palms across his back as he cackles at the squirming Tommy underneath him. “Who’s the pussy now, Hagan?”

“Tommy’s not a pussy anymore?” Steve’s voice interrupts their revelry. “I guess turning 21 really does change a guy.”

The three of them turn to see Steve in the doorway, a cake laden with candles in his hands, and his brown hair coifed into perfection. Nancy stands beside him in a baby blue, lace dress. The girl looks utterly unimpressed with all of them.

Carol springs up from the bed, her dress riding higher up her cooch and judging by Nancy and Steve’s mildly terrified faces, probably showing them that curtains do match the drapes too. “Stevie! You got a cake!”

Steve looks down at the ground, strangely shy whenever he does something kind like this. “Yeah, I mean once we bought the tickets I put in an order at this bakery that’s inside the hotel. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

Carol crashes toward Steve and puts her greedy hands underneath the cake to lift it out of his arms and run it back toward Billy and Tommy on the bed. “Blow out your candles before it melts, babe!”

Billy rolls off of Tommy as the other boy sits up with a smile. It’s not the usual, toothy grin that the other man dons when he is joking with his friends. It’s small and genuine and it makes it look like Tommy is a kid again, shyly approaching Billy and Steve on the playground and asking if they were all friends now. They were. They’ll always be, so long as Billy can help it.

“Blow out your candles, man,” Billy says, propped up on his elbow, his own small smile grazing his lips.

“I gotta think of a wish first!” Tommy huffs. The freckle faced birthday boy takes a moment and looks at all of them, Billy at his side, Carol in front of him, Steve approaching Carol on her side, and Nancy still standing by the doorway. He smiles that same, contented happy smile again. “Got it.”

Tommy closes his eyes and blows out the candle.

-B <3’s T-

They’re all smashed before they even leave the hotel room. Wheeler had been smart enough to order room service for them all, but even three plates of fries and chicken tenders couldn’t compete with Carol’s heavy pour and she had an empty handle and a half to prove it.

Most of the night is a blur. Tommy drags them to club, after club, after club. They all take jello shots from a stupidly long plastic syringe. Some girl who was also 21 forced all of them to take birthday cake shots on her dime before kissing Carol soundly on the mouth since Tommy is off limits.

Steve attempts to do the worm at some point and just ends up plastered to the floor until Carol and Nancy drag him back him up onto his feet, Tommy and Billy too busy capturing the hot mess on Snapchat to be of any help. At some point walking from one club to another they meet a man dressed like a pirate on the street and Tommy gets a picture with him like he’s six years old, all red faced and red rimmed eyes as he throws up a peace sign and purses his lips in a duck face.

Tommy wants to end the night at a blackout party where all of them with get covered in fluorescent body paint but by the time Tommy drags them to club number 5…or 6, Billy really doesn’t fucking know anymore, he knows none of them are going to make it. Billy is having a harder and harder time pretending that he’s not looking at Steve’s ass every chance he gets. Carol and Tommy look to be fused together at the mouth at this point. Even Princess Wheeler is fucked up, stumbling in her kitten heels as she holds onto Steve’s arm.

Steve’s looking at Wheeler with a dopey, lovesick smile as he bobs around with her on the dancefloor. He’s graceless, all limbs like a baby deer on a patch of ice. Wheeler is laughing at him, twirling around in her little baby blue dress, face mottled and lips stained red from the margaritas.

Billy hates the back and forth, the way they can go from cold and frigid to the perfect little couple. It makes his head spin and his heart get broken, over and over, again.

Fuck this.

He and Carol made a promise that he wouldn’t let his feelings for Steve ruin this weekend. He was going to go all out, get some dick, and he could pine and cry about his stupid unrequited love once he got back home to Chicago. Tommy and Carol were having a good time, pressed against some wall with Tommy’s hand reaching between Carol’s legs. Steve and Nancy were dancing and weren’t even thinking about Billy. He should be making the most out of this too.

A quick glance around the writhing bodies around him found a good prospect for Billy to forget his woes with. Dancing near the DJ booth was a man who had to be 6’4 on a bad day, dressed only in a chest harness and skin tight leather pants that hung off the top of his ass. His dark hair was buzzed short and there was glitter dappled across his pale skin. The man’s dark eyes met Billy’s electric blue gaze. He smiled at Billy before licking his lips and turning around to show more of the pale globes of his ass.

He was the perfect distraction.

They collided on the dance floor, neither of them in the mood to be coy. It seemed they both wanted a release tonight. The man slid his large hands over Billy’s ass possessively, squeezing hard as he captured Billy’s lips in a searing kiss. Billy’s hands roam over the man’s exposed torso, sliding over the ridges of his abs as the kiss turns dirty quickly, both of their tongues battling for dominance as they glided together.

The guy’s hand starts slipping into the back of jeans, which is an impressive feat in and of itself given how fucking tight Billy’s pants are. His long fingers glide toward the crack of Billy’s ass. He bites at Billy’s mouth with a huff of a laugh. They’re both covered in sweat from the amount of bodies pressed in all around them.

Billy slips his leg between the stranger’s thighs, feels the other man’s erection straining against the leather of his pants, a warmth pressed against him even as his heart grows cold.

This should feel better. This should be easy. The guy wants it as much as Billy does. His kisses are hungry and eager. His breath smells like gin and his mouth is hot and wet against his own. Billy can tell this isn’t his first rodeo from how confident the guy is in shifting Billy’s knee downward and pressing more of their fronts together and the easy way he makes Billy’s arms lope around his shoulders.

He’s hot. He’s hot and he’s interested. That should be all that matters. The guy Billy wants isn’t interested. He can’t have Steve, but he can have this. He can have someone who looks at him with his pupils blown with lust, someone who pulls back from kissing him and licks his lips to keep the taste of him fresh in his mind before going in for more. All he has to do is take the guy’s hand, take him back to the hotel room, and he can get fucked into the mattress. He can blow off some steam and get the attention that all of his other friends are getting.

But it just doesn’t feel like it’s enough.

He’s not getting hard, despite the other man rolling his hips into his. He’s not eager to see this man’s lips stretched wide around his cock. He doesn’t want to go to sleep next to stranger.

What Billy wants is somewhere behind him. Who Billy wants is dancing with the girl of his dreams.

It makes his stomach churn.

He pulls away when the stranger comes back in for a kiss. The other man looks confused as his hands shift to grasp Billy by his waist. “Something wrong?” The man asks, all gin breath underneath an Australian accent.

Billy looks away from him and turns to Steve, like he always does, but his pretty boy doesn’t look like he’s having fun. Wheeler has a huge red stain down the front of her dress. She’s gesturing at Steve angrily, as Steve stares at her with hurt in his eyes.

Something’s wrong.

“I gotta go. I’m sorry,” Billy say, breaking out of the man’s embrace and pushing through various bodies to get to Steve. He hears the other man yell out, “Well fuck you too then, mate!” But all he can see is the way Wheeler rips her arm out of Steve’s grasp and hisses something at him that makes Steve’s face fall.

“This whole thing is bullshit!” Wheeler shrieks. “You're bullshit. All your friends are bullshit.”

“Nancy, please, let’s just go back to the hotel room,” Steve pleads.

“No! You’re bullshit!” Wheeler howls.

“Fuck is going on here?” Billy asks.

Steve startles a bit at his sudden arrival at his side, his body lurching away from him for a moment before he stands straight up again. “It’s nothing, Billy. Nancy just had too much to drink and we’re gonna go back to the hotel room. Come on, Nance. Let’s go.” Steve reaches for her again only to get his hand slapped away.

“I don’t even want to be here!” Nancy wails. “You’re always do-doing this! You’re always making me pretend that everything is ok. You’re always pretending you’re so happy. You’re so fake. Everything about you is fake.”

Steve looks about two seconds from crying so Billy steps in and tries to grab Wheeler’s thin little wrist himself. “Alright princess, we get it. You hate us all, we know. Let’s just go back and get some water in you.”

She slaps his hand away too. “No! I don’t want to go with you! I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be with you!”

Billy is pretty done with Wheeler’s bullshit. “Yeah, trust me, I don’t want to be here with you either, but the sooner we get back to the hotel the sooner we won’t be together anymore, capiche?”

“Nancy, please. Please let’s just go back to the hotel and we can talk about this there.” Steve pleads.

“You’re not listening to me!” Nancy screams as mascara starts trailing down her pale face. “I don’t want to be here! I don’t want you!”

Steve looks like he’s been slapped. “You don’t…you don’t want me?”

“No! You’re bullshit and I want…I want a real person!”

“Okay, I’m done,” Billy declares. He grabs Wheeler by the arm, even as she screams and slaps at him before he throws her over his shoulder. Her bony little fist strikes him over and over again as he carries her easily through the mass of bodies in the club. “We’re taking you back to the hotel.”

“Put me down!” Nancy kicks at him, heel scraping against his thighs as he walks.

“No can do, princess. You have been banned from fun for the rest of this evening,” Billy says lightly, adjusting her on his shoulder as he strides into the warm Las Vegas air. Steve stumbles in behind him, brow furrowed as he watches his girlfriend continue to have a meltdown atop Billy’s shoulder.

Billy barely even knows where the fuck they are at this point, but he knows their hotel is near the Luxor and it’s hard to miss a giant pyramid even if he’s still kind of drunk. Wheeler suddenly stops moving on his shoulder and Billy doesn’t even get the chance to ask if she is done tantrumming before she is throwing up over his shoulder onto Steve’s shoes. Great.

“Billy, put her down!” Steve suddenly snaps at him, grabbing Billy’s bicep and spinning him around.

Steve looks properly angry at this point, his jaw jutting forward as he grinds his teeth. The bottom of his khakis are stained with Wheeler’s mostly liquid vomit. His shoes look like they’re near filled with the stuff. Steve’s face is red with embarrassment and his hair is askew as they come to a standstill in front of the fountains in front of the Bellagio.

Wheeler moans pitifully at the sudden stop, sniffling on tears and vomit.

“It’s fine, Steve. I can carry her back. She weighs about fifty pounds soaking wet as it is,” Billy offers easily. He can do reps with one hand that are heavier than Wheeler. Carrying her feels about the same as carrying Max around when she was a teenager and Max definitely kicked harder.

“I didn’t ask you to carry her back, Billy! She’s my girlfriend, I can take care of her, okay? I’m not an invalid, so just put her down and I’ll take her home.”

Steve is mad…at Billy? Seriously? He was just trying to help. He wasn’t the one ruining their night out and calling Steve bullshit and throwing up on him in a public street. “What the fuck, Steve? It’s not like I’m trying to steal your girl, here. I’m just trying to help.”

Steve loses it then. “I didn’t ask for your fucking help, Billy! I’m fine. We’re fine. I can get back to the hotel without you, so why don’t you just go back to the club and stick your tongue back down that random guy’s throat like you were doing before?” The brunette shouts at him.

The exhaustion hits him then. He’s tired of Wheeler’s bullshit. He’s tired of Steve acting like a brat right now. Tired of Tommy and Carol being too caught up in each other to even notice their best friend since grade school and his prissy bitch girlfriend were having a breakdown in the middle of a nightclub. Honestly, he’s even just physically tired. His feet have started to ache in his shoes and his stomach feels too empty from maxing out on booze and forgetting to eat anything beside a slice of birthday cake and chicken tenders. He just wants to go home. “Fine, Steve,” he says with a sigh before leaning over and putting Wheeler on her feet. She falls to the floor almost immediately, legs buckling as another burst of vomit shoots out of her mouth across the sidewalk. Steve runs to her and cradles her like she’s something precious, using his shirt sleeve to rub the vomit off her face even as she weakly attempts to push him away. “You don’t want my help, that’s fine. But I’m not the one who fucked shit up tonight. I’ve been blamed enough for other people’s shit in my life to know that you taking this out on me is fucked up.”

“I didn’t-I didn’t mean it like that, Billy,” Steve whispers, immediately regretful.

“I don’t care how you meant it. I just want to go back to the hotel. You wanna be the one to carry your girlfriend there? Be my guest. I’m going to bed.” He doesn’t wait to see if Steve is following as he shoves his hands in his pockets and stalks off toward the hotel.

He really is an idiot. Or maybe he’s just insane. That’s what they say is the definition of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, right? Insanity.

He’s insane for thinking that Steve is ever going to choose him over Nancy.

There’s some sort of cap on the happiness of Billy Hargrove. Clearly he’s gone over the limit for today.

-B <3’s C-

He’d finally fallen asleep when there is a knock on his door. It’d taken another 20 minutes of walking in silence, only interrupted by Wheeler occasionally having to stop and vomit again, before they had made it to the hotel. Billy hadn’t even looked at the two of them when he opened the door to his room and slammed the door shut behind him.

A blurry glance at the alarm clock on the hotel nightstand tells him it’s 3:53 in the morning. Jesus Christ. Not even two hours have passed since that bitch Wheeler’s drunken breakdown. He hopes she is still hurling her guts up on the bathroom floor; hopes it hasn’t been cleaned properly and she gets some kind of incurable fungus on her ass. It’s the least she deserves.

Rolling onto his back, Billy contemplated whether he is actually going to answer the door. He’s not sure he’s ready to see Steve pretend that everything that happened tonight was okay. He’s also not sure he’s feeling up to being bombarded by a drunken Tommy and Carol finally noticing he and Steve had gone missing. It sure as fuck wouldn’t be the first time that he had ignored his friends when he was in a bad mood and it was better for all of them if Billy could just get some time to cool down. He didn’t want to be like his dad, but sometimes that Hargrove rage surged up in his blood and he could be nasty. Hell, he could be downright cruel. He didn’t want to keep doing that to people he loved. He didn’t want to be the reason why anyone left him ever again.

Something makes him get up though; a groan punching through his chest as he forces himself to rise up in his bed, his jeans stiff and uncomfortable from sleeping in them. It takes him a minute to realize that whoever was at his door had only knocked once, meaning it had to be Steve. Tommy and Carol were more prone to knock the door down than be conscientious about sleeping neighbors.

His stomach churns at the idea of seeing Steve outside his door with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. He can already see it—the blush of embarrassment on his pale cheeks, the awkward clenching of his hand behind his neck as he apologizes for ruining Billy’s night, Steve’s inability to meet his eyes. He’s so tired of watching his pretty boy apologize for everyone else treating him like he’s garbage but he also knows that if he shows any irritation or frustration right now Steve will blame himself and he’ll be damned if he adds to the fucking shit show that’s been Steve’s first night in Vegas.

With that thought in mind, Billy tries to force the scowl growing on his face into something neutral before Steve sees him. He hopes he just looks tired because he has been woken up and not because he’s tired of all Wheeler’s bullshit. He pulls his door open quickly in order to make what will be a stilted, anger inducing conversation go faster but as soon as he sees Steve standing in the hallway he knows that all of his assumptions have just made an ass out of him and Steve.

Steve is clenching his bare arms to himself as he stares at the floor. There are huge crocodile tears streaming down his face onto the carpet. His chocolate brown hair is disheveled on his head—sticking out on the sides like he’s been pulling at it. The man Billy has been in love with since the 9^th grade is hunched in on himself in attempt to make himself smaller, hiccupping with sobs that he can’t hold in.

It’s a sight that Billy has never seen before.

It breaks his heart.

“Steve,” Billy whispers in alarm. “What happened? Are you okay?” All the anger in him is quieted for a moment as takes in the broken man before him. All he can see is Steve. All he wants is to take away his pain.

“Can I…Can I stay here?” Steve whispers, voice breaking in the middle of his request. “I can’t…I can’t stay there right now. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, pretty boy,” he responds immediately. “Of course you can stay. Come on, let’s get you inside and out of the hallway. It’s cold out here,” Billy speaks softly, gently prying Steve’s hand away from his arms to pull him away into the safety of Billy’s bedroom.

Steve goes with him easily; seems like he needs Billy to tell him what to do and move him how he wants him. His eyes are vacant when Billy flips the light on with his free hand, his brown gaze still staring into the nothingness of the carpet with hardly a blink.

Billy clears his throat to try and get those eyes on him but Steve just keeps staring at the floor. “Why don’t we lie down, pretty-”

“She doesn’t love me.” Steve cuts him off.

“What? Nancy?” Billy asks.

Steve nods but still won’t look up at him. “She told me I was bullshit. She told me we were bullshit. She said…she said we were just pretending to be in love because that’s what everyone expects us to be. We’re just pretending because we don’t want to be any more of a disappointment.”

“That’s bullshit!” Billy snaps, wincing when his choice of words sends a mighty flinch through Steve’s whole body. “That’s a bunch of fucking crap, Steve.”

“Is it?” Steve asks, looking up at Billy with red rimmed doe eyes and tears glistening across his face. “Everyone thinks I’m bullshit, Billy. My parents are ashamed of me. My dad practically hates me. My mom prefers to pretend I don’t exist. I couldn’t even get into college when I really, really tried. I’m bad at math. I’m bad at reading. I’m bad at writing. The only reason I even have a job right now is because my uncle pities me. The only reason Dustin and the kids give me the time of day is because I drive them around places when I’m in Hawkins or if they come to Chicago, and soon they won’t even need me for that. You and Tommy and Carol were supposed to have a good time this weekend and I ruined it. I’m always ruining stuff for you guys because of my bullshit. You don’t even like Chicago. You only came with me because you know I’m too pathetic to make it on my own. You should be in California, in the sun, by the ocean, with all of your friends who are just as smart and cool as you are. I’ve ruined your life. I’ve made you give up all your dreams and-“

“Stop it!” Billy chides in a hushed voice, tears in his own eyes. Steve’s words feel like spears in his chest. He can’t stand them, can’t stand Steve talking about himself like he hates himself and like Billy should hate him too.

Billy steps forward and cups Steve’s wet cheeks in his hands. Steve is convulsing in his grip, horrible heartbreaking sobs being ripped from his beautiful throat. “Stop it,” he repeats. “None of that is true. Your parents are self-centered assholes. They always have been and you know what, your dad may never have beat the shit out of you like mine did, but if words were bruises you and I would have looked the same all throughout high school. They’re abusive, Steve. They’re the ones who don’t deserve you.”

Steve shakes his head, another mournful sound leaving his throat as he squeezes his eyes shut, unable to face Billy or his words.

“It’s true, Steve. You deserve so much better than them. God, you think my life has been good because I’m good at school? You think it matters that I can read a book in a day? That doesn’t mean shit. It sure as shit didn’t mean anything to my dad. Some people just aren’t capable of loving the way they should and that’s true of both our parents, do you understand me?” He can’t help but shake Steve a little. He wants to shake the doubt right off of him and for his words to dig under his skin and burrow out all of the self-hate that Wheeler and his parents have put inside him.

All Steve does is grab his wrists with both his hands, his skin cold and clammy against Billy’s still sleep warm flesh. His slender fingers dig into the golden skin of Billy’s arms but Billy is so angry with Paul and Donna Harrington and with Nancy Wheeler and everyone else that ever made Steve feel small and insignificant that he can barely feel the touch.

“You think college matters? You think some piece of paper telling you you’re smart matters? What matters is that you made that Dustin kid and Max and all those little losers feel so safe that even though we’re hundreds of miles away they still call you for advice and force you to come back for the holidays. They love you. You make them feel seen. You make them feel like they matter and you want to know the reason that they ask you for rides all the time when Max has known how to drive since she was thirteen? Because they want to spend time with you. Because you make them feel special. Because you’re special to them.”

 “And since when have I ever done shit that I don’t want to do? Nobody tells me what to do, Harrington,” Billy quips just to see Steve’s lips tremble in an almost smile reminiscing that fight at the beginning of sixth grade that made them friends forever.

His next words feel heavy in his chest. Just thinking of saying them out loud feels too much like a confession, but Billy will be damned if he leaves Steve feeling like this, even if it means he has to embarrass himself. He needs Steve to know how much he means to him, how much this beautiful boy with a kind heart has changed him and made him better. “Don’t ever say that you’ve ruined things for me, Stevie. I…I don’t even know if I’d still be here if it wasn’t for you.”

Steve’s gorgeous brown eyes open again at that, a look of shock and pain marring his beautiful features. “Billy,” he whispers.

“No. Don’t. Just-just let me finish.” Billy pleads, forcing his own eyes shut this time as Steve’s thumb gently caresses the inside of his wrist. “I don’t have much, Steve. My mom abandoned me. My dad has almost killed me. Susan would rather spend hours cleaning blood out of the carpet than lift a finger to help me. And I was so angry. I was so angry and I hated everything and everyone. I was horrible to Max. I wanted her to feel the same hatred and fear that I did and I was so mad that someone loved her. I was so mad that she had someone that wanted to stay and protect her and liked her and was proud of her. I wanted to burn the whole world down and if I died too? I didn’t even care. No one would miss me anyway.”

“That’s not true, Billy,” Steve says beyond Billy’s closed eyes.

He laughs at that, even as his own eyes begin to sting with building tears. “You’re right, pretty boy. It’s not true. And the only reason it’s not true is because of you. You got beat up by an angry twelve year old boy that was so jealous of your fancy clothes and your smile. I thought you had everything I didn’t have, money, a family that loved you, friends. I beat you up because you told me to stop being an asshole to Barbara Holland in the sixth grade and instead of hating me and telling me I was nothing like everyone else did, you were the first person who ever noticed the bruises underneath my shirt. And you-you didn’t give up on asking me who was hurting me even when I kept pushing you away. You started forcing your nanny to ask Susan and my dad to have me over for sleepovers when you figured it out. You protected me and tried to keep me away from that house the way that nobody else had ever-”

God, he tried to hold it together but he can’t. His voice breaks just thinking about how Steve had been so persistent in trying to protect Billy when his own mother wouldn’t do the same. Steve had shown him unconditional love when he didn’t even know that was something people could actually do. He’d given Billy everything and he had hardly ever asked for anything in return. To think that he could think that Billy resented him? That he could regret knowing and being friends and being in love with Steve Harrington? It wasn’t even a possibility in Billy’s universe because Steve was his universe.

“You saw me. You saw past all of this anger and hate and jealousy that I had and gave me the chance to try to be more when I didn’t even think that I could be more. You gave me a reason to want to be better. I don’t need California. It’s not my home anymore.” He feels his ears go red with embarrassment as he forces out the next words. “You’re my home. You’re all I need.”

You’re my dream, he wants to say but he’s never felt those feelings for Steve would be welcome before and it certainly doesn’t seem like they would be now.

When Billy forces his eyes open, a few tears drip down the bridge of his nose. Steve is staring at him, awestruck and so hopeful that it makes Billy want to march into Steve and Nancy’s room and pull Nancy up by the hair and throw her out the sixteenth floor. He pulls Steve to him instead until their foreheads are touching, Steve’s fingers skimming across his forearms at the movement before grabbing at his elbows.

“I don’t give a fuck about Nancy Wheeler or what she has to say. You are not bullshit. You mean everything to me, to Tommy, to Carol, to Max and those dweebs. Don’t you ever fucking believe that you aren’t loved, Steve. You’re so fucking loved.”

“Billy,” Steve breathes out his name like it’s a prayer. Billy can feel the other man’s breath against his lips. If he was brave, he’d just have to lean forward a few inches and press his mouth against Steve’s. But he’s never been brave. Angry, hateful, self-injurious, violent, brash, and vulgar, yes. But years of abuse had made him afraid and even though it’s been a few years since he drove away from his father’s house with Steve in the passenger’s seat and his middle finger raised in the air, the fear has never left him.

He can’t lose Steve, no matter how much it hurts him to watch him hold Wheeler’s hand or smile at her with lovesick fondness. No matter how much he wants to kiss his pastel pink lips and trace every beauty mark that dapples across his flesh with his callused fingers. No matter how much he wants to lose himself under Steve’s long, careful fingers and wrap their bodies together until they are just one being.

He can’t lose Steve.

“I’m sorry,” Steve whispers, pale fingers rubbing under Billy’s wet eyes to wipe his tears away.

Billy pulls away from him even though it feels like his skin is screaming for them to come back together and never stop touching. “Don’t be sorry, pretty boy. You got nothing to be sorry for. Wheeler’s drunk and she’s wrong. She’ll probably come begging for forgiveness tomorrow morning.”

At least she will if she knows what’s good for her.

Steve frowns, his fingers opening and closing in the empty air where Billy’s skin used to be before his hands fall to his sides. “Yeah,” the man says quietly as he crosses his arms across his chest. “Yeah, maybe she didn’t mean it.”

“Course she didn’t. She’d be crazy otherwise.” He wants to punch himself in the face. He wants to support Steve but goddamn if it didn’t hurt like a bitch every time he had to give Wheeler the benefit of the doubt for Steve’s sake. “I’m sure by morning she’ll be crazy for you all over again.”

“Yeah,” Steve nods absently. “Yeah, maybe.”

“I’m sure of it.” Because if seven times breaking up didn’t do it, Billy seriously doubted the eighth one would be any different. Even if he wanted it to.

Steve bites his lip in that nervous way that makes Billy crazy, makes him want to put those pink lips between his own lips and abuse them for Steve’s pleasure. “Is it…Can I still stay here tonight? It’s just, maybe she didn’t mean it, but I don’t really think that I can sleep in the same room with her right now.” There is a flush of embarrassment across his cheeks that makes him look younger and even sweeter than he is. It makes something inside of Billy melt like he’s back in high school again, sneaking pictures of men’s cologne ads into a rip in his mattress.

“Yeah. I can take the couch,” he says easily but Steve just twists uncomfortably at his response, his abuse of his lips doubling in its intensity. “Steve?”

Steve’s whole face turns pink. His brown eyes dart around Billy’s hotel room like he’s looking for the shadows on the walls to come alive and try to eat them both. He’s nervous as he tightens his arms across his chest, his pecs pressed against his forearms in a way that makes Billy have to pretend he’s scratching his nose to close his eyes and look away before he starts chubbing up in his jeans like he’s fourteen years old again. “Well uh, I was hoping maybe, uh…Maybe uh…I could stay in the bed, like, with…you?”

Billy’s brain short circuits. “What?”

“I know it’s kind of weird but…you know how sometimes we would sleep in my bed when you came to my house after a hard night with your dad?” Billy nods stupidly, not following where this is going because no one has punched Billy or kicked him in the ribs tonight. “Well, I always…I always really liked it when that happened because it made me feel…you made me feel safe and I, uh, I felt like I made you feel safe too?”

His ears are starting to heat up again. “You did,” Billy says quietly. The nights Steve let Billy hold him and press his tear covered face against his shoulder were some of the only nights that Billy truly felt safe.

A small smile breaks through Steve’s bitten lips as brown eyes meet his own blue. “Tonight I’m having a pretty rough night and I was hoping maybe it would be ok to…do that again?”

If Billy could be held by and hold Steve Harrington every second of his life, that would be his ideal universe. He can’t hold back his smile. “Yeah, Steve. We can do that.”

Steve’s small smile grows bigger as he approaches Billy again, the two of them moving in tandem until Billy is in front of the bed, his back facing the slightly rumpled comforter he had fallen asleep on top of. “Do you want to take your pants off?” Steve asks.

“What?” Because this was starting to turn into a very familiar sex dream he’d had before, except Steve’s face wasn’t usually bloated and covered in tear tracks in those.

“You’re still wearing your jeans from the club,” Steve giggles, like he didn’t just reduce Billy’s lifespan by ten years.

“Oh,” he says dumbly. Because of course that’s what Steve was talking about. It was weird to sleep in jeans, but he had been too annoyed to change when Steve had all but abandoned him to take care of Princess Wheeler. “If you wanted me naked, you could have just said so,” he forces out a laugh to try and reduce his own awkwardness in the room.

It makes Steve roll his eyes in that familiar, fond way he typically only reserves for Billy and the kids. “Uh-huh, not at all because I want to save your balls so you don’t come crying to me tomorrow morning or anything.”

“Didn’t know my balls were so important to you,” Billy laughs for real this time.

Rolling his eyes, Steve moves around Billy to crawl into the bed on the side furthest away from the door, his t-shirt riding up slightly as he lifts up the covers and making Billy turn away. “Shut up and come to bed,” the gorgeous man grouses.

If Steve only knew how long Billy had been waiting to hear those words, he might have understood how quickly Billy yanked his belt out of his jeans, shimmied out of his pants, and ripped his button up off his head. He grabbed one side of the comforter to slide in in his boxer briefs before he stopped at Steve’s rapidly blinking, flushed face. “What?”

“You’re…in your underwear.” Steve mumbles.

Billy turns as red as the shirt he just threw to the floor. “Oh. Uh, this is how I sleep?” He says it like a question, more embarrassed than he has been in some time. “Do you want me to…put my clothes back on?”

“No!” Steve says quickly. “I just meant…I want you to be comfortable and all and I was sort of planning to like…” His face goes redder. “I was hoping we could like spoon?”

When in doubt, years of trying to be a better person still couldn’t quite stop Billy from using his own sexual charisma to mask uncertainty or embarrassment. He put on his sleaziest grin as he crawled into the bed, his eyebrows wiggling as his heart beat overtime in his chest. “Scared a little skin to skin contact is gonna make you bat for my team, Harrington?” he teased despite knowing that if Steve said yes it would blow his fucking mind.

His sleaziness is something Steve is fortunately all too familiar with and (unfortunately) immune to. The pretty boy rolls his eyes as he fluffs the pillow behind his head. “Shut up and let me spoon you, Hargrove.”

“Sir, yes, sir.” Billy smiled, flipping onto his side and pulling the covers over his body. His treacherous (thirsty) heart was still racing and he tried to tell it to stop, that it was being ridiculous, that this didn’t mean anything but comfort to Steve but it wouldn’t listen. This wasn’t two teenage boys who didn’t know any better falling asleep next to each other due to exhaustion or fear. This was two grown men, choosing to spoon each other, and Billy’s little gay heart was unable to get over the fact that it was the guy he was madly in love with that was initiating the spooning.

He held his breath as Steve slipped in close behind him until his knees were tucked into the back of Billy’s knees and his soft brown hair was tickling Billy’s ear. Steve had his hands pressed into the middle of Billy’s back as if he was scared of where to put them and he was squirming uncomfortably as a result.

Exhaling loudly through his nose, Billy thought back to all the times before that he had said fuck it and taken a risk. There were too many to count. From his tattoos to his immense amount of speeding tickets, Billy Hargrove prided himself on taking the things that he wanted. This might be the last time that he ever has Steve in his bed. This might be the last time that they hold each other. Would it be so bad to take just one, small risk after everything they had already been through tonight? One that might make Steve feel more comfortable even if it also gave Billy a little slice of what he craved for?

Fuck it.

He reached back with his left hand and found Steve’s, pulling the other man's hand over his waist until it was settled over his navel. Slowly, gently, so Steve could pull away if he wanted, he pressed the palm of his hand against the back of Steve’s and laced their fingers together on top of his belly and waited.

A small, shaky breath came out of Steve’s mouth before he scooted in even closer, his chest now molded to Billy’s back. He squeezed Billy’s hand before he tightened his grip in Billy’s own. His lips tickled the back of Billy’s neck as he whispered, “Thank you, Billy. I really mean it.”

His own breath was stilted as he rubbed his thumb gently across the length of Steve’s finger. “I know you do, Steve.”

After several minutes the sounds of Steve’s gentle breathing and the feeling of his soft hand in his own rough one made him close his eyes and his heart slow. He drifted into a dreamless sleep.

-B <3’s S-

Billy hasn’t had sex in three months, two weeks, and two days. He’s been counting the days to determine if he can manage to live as a celibate hermit if he can’t have Steve. It hasn’t been too hard, if he’s being honest. Most people annoy him and several times in his life he’s found that he’s better with his own fingers than most guys are with their dicks. He doesn’t really miss sex the way that he thought he would but then again maybe he just doesn’t want sex if it doesn’t mean anything anymore.

Because he’s hard as a rock with Steve pressed up behind him.

He squirms uncomfortably underneath Steve’s prone arm, willing his erection to go down. He tries thinking about gross shit, like the hair growing out of the mole on his boss’s face, or the time Carol made him watch a documentary about worms that grew out of people’s eyes to try and get him to stop eating sushi. No image works to control his dick when he can feel Steve’s moist breath tickling the back of his ear.

 It’s 5:39 in the morning according to the alarm clock. He’d woken up because his dick was so hard it was throbbing between his legs. He can’t help but wonder if he would have been able to control himself better if he hadn’t tried to make himself a martyr and just had some good old fashioned, anonymous sex with that rando from the club. But this is Steve and they haven’t done this since they were in high school and it was hard enough to avoid a chubby back then when he wasn’t touch starved and had an additional three years of unrequited love and lust under his belt.

Maybe he can sneak away for just a few minutes, jack off in the bathroom and pretend he was pissing. Steve might not even notice. Steve had always been a heavy sleeper, the type that could snore right through a thunderstorm, but Billy felt guilty at even thinking of leaving Steve for a moment when the other man was feeling this broken and vulnerable. Steve needed him right now, his own dick be damned.

Just as Billy is thinking that he should be initiated into the sainthood for his incredible self-control throughout the whole damn weekend, he feels it. Steve’s cock is rutting against the crack of his ass, trying to slide between his cheeks to garner more friction. Steve’s even breaths have turned into gentle little pants in his ear as the arm across his chest pulls him even closer to Steve’s front.

A soft moan breaks free of Steve’s mouth as his rutting intensifies.

This is how Billy dies.

“Jesus Christ,” Billy can’t help but whisper aloud.

At least, he thought he had whispered, but as soon as the words leave his mouth, Steve startles awake behind him. “Wha? What’s wrong?” The brunette slurs.

Billy freezes in Steve’s arms, hopes that if he doesn’t answer Steve will just go back to sleep and they can both just pretend this never happened. Although his balls have probably never been as blue as they are with Steve’s cock still nestled against his ass.

It takes a minute for Steve to realize that he’s hard and pressed up against Billy’s ass, but once he does the gangly man quickly tries to pull away from Billy. His arm starts sliding across Billy’s stomach and side and something in him just…just can’t let go.

He grabs at Steve’s hand at the last minute and hears Steve stop breathing at the action. Steve’s leaned away from him and the feeling of his shirt pulling away from Billy’s sleep heated flesh leaves something frigid in its wake. “You’re okay, pretty boy,” Billy swallows around the gravel of his own arousal. “I don’t…I don’t mind.”

The words feel like a confession in the quiet of the room.

“You don’t?” Steve asks, settling back on his side and pulling Billy closer, until the hard line of his cock is resting against the small of Billy’s back.

He has to play this cool, he reasons. He doesn’t want Steve to feel uncomfortable around him. Morning wood makes total sense for a young, virile man. It doesn’t matter that it’s Billy. It probably could have been anyone and Steve would have rutted against their ass too. Somehow trying to rationalize things doesn’t stop this traitorous little voice in his head from squealing like a girl at the fact that he has Steve Harrington, hard, in his bed while Princess Nancy Wheeler is probably passed out on the bathroom floor.

“Yeah, it’s fine. Just morning wood, Harrington. I’m hard too, it’s not a big deal.” Billy says around a cough.

This is somehow the most awkward and the most tantalizing experience of his entire life.

“You are?” Steve asks in what sounds like awe.

“Yeah, it’s normal-”

“Can I see?”

There is no way this is happening right now. Billy has to be dreaming. But if he’s dreaming, it’s too good of a dream to stop now.

His heart feels like it’s going to burst out of his chest as he grasps Steve’s warm hand in his and guides it to press against the aching stiffness in his boxers. Steve gasps against his ear and Billy’s cock give a twitch at the sound, his own lips falling open to let out a shaky exhale.

“Can I?” Steve asks again. His slender fingers gently grip at the bulge Billy has guided him too.

“Yeah,” Billy lets out. Everything he was belonged to Steve already. His body was the only thing he had yet to give explicitly and he would give every inch of it to Steve if asked.

The room seemed too small as Billy held his breath and waited for Steve to make a choice. His head was buzzing and the buzzing felt like it was spreading throughout his skin, threatening to burst his capillaries and spread his pining heart across the bedspread for Steve to catch in his nimble hands.

Steve’s touch was shy and uncertain as he carefully gripped the base of Billy’s cock in his hands. His slender fingers slid down to cradle Billy’s balls in his hand in nervous exploration. This had to be the first time Steve had ever had another man’s cock in his hand and it must have felt very different given that Billy was uncut and wasn’t trying to fit a fucking python into chinos every day. He wondered what Steve thought as precum began to seep out of the head of his dick and dampen the thin fabric of his boxers. Did he like the feeling of Billy’s shorter, girthier cock in his uncalloused hands? Did he like Billy as more than a friend or was this just some type of experiment?

Uncertainty began to trickle under his skin, making him squirm under Steve’s hands. Steve’s mouth descends to the junction of his neck and shoulder, pressing a soft kiss against the skin he finds.

Somehow that small gesture of intimacy feels like lightning bolt. He spasms in an effort to get his arm from under his head, tips his whole body back to give Steve more access, and fists his hand in the soft, unruly strands of Steve’s hair. “Steve,” he pants out.

The fingers he’s dreamt about for so long slip beneath the band of his boxers before pausing. “Is this ok?” Steve asks and somehow he sounds just as wrecked as Billy, just as wanton and desperate. It’s everything he could have ever wanted.

“Fuck, don’t stop. Please,” Billy pleads, pulling at that gorgeous hair until Steve hisses and bucks against him.

Any hesitation Steve must have had seems to wear off as something like a growl escapes from his throat. He shoves Billy’s boxers down to his thighs and fists Billy’s cock in his hand. His pace is brutal, almost animalistic as he bites and kisses at Billy’s neck. It shouldn’t feel as good as it does. Steve’s palm is too dry and the friction is close to becoming painful, but Billy has never been more wet. Pre dribbles from the tip of his cock and dribbles onto Steve’s hand. The sensation makes Steve pause, makes him groan against Billy’s shoulder, scraping his teeth down his trap in a way that makes Billy shiver.

“Fuck, Billy. You’re so fucking hot,” Steve pants. “You’ve got no idea what you’re doing to me.”

His ears go hot hearing that. No matter how many times he has imagined Steve saying something like this, it’s never been as good as hearing it out loud for real. “You’ve got no idea how much I want to get my mouth on you. How long I’ve wanted to,” Billy whispers.

Steve lets out a strangled sound behind him and Billy doesn’t imagine the kick he feels against his ass as Steve’s cock lets its interest be known. “Fuck, Billy. Fuck, please. Please.”

That’s all Billy needs to hear before he breaks out of Steve’s grasp and rips his boxers off his legs and across the room. He leans over Steve, caging him under his body, and stares into Steve’s dark eyes. He can barely see the outline of those honey-brown, Bambi eyes; Steve’s pupils are blown as he stares back at him.

He wants to wreck Steve. He wants to make it so Wheeler can never compare, so no bitch can ever take him from Billy ever again. He wants to make it so good that it’s all Steve can think about or dream about. He wants Steve to never be able to look at his mouth again without thinking of how good his lips had felt on his cock, for this uncontrolled Steve to re-emerge every time their alone together, until he’s slammed Billy against the wall or across the table because he’s just as addicted to Billy as Billy is to Steve.

God, Billy wants.

He wastes no time dragging Steve’s shirt up and over his raised arms. His pale skin seems to glow in the darkened room. He wants to taste every inch of Steve’s unmarred skin. Wants to carve name into Steve’s flesh with his lips and teeth.

He presses his face into the hair on Steve’s chest, groans as he allows himself to take in the heady scent of Steve’s sweat and arousal. Steve’s hands cradle the back of his head as he travels downward, pressing kisses against the softer flesh of Steve’ stomach. Steve lets out a hiss when a kiss on his navel becomes a bite, groans when Billy comes back around to nip at the pert pink nipples desperate for his attention. He lathes his tongue around the stiff flesh to soothe the sensation before biting it anew and sucking it into his mouth.

Steve lets out a sweet little cry that goes straight to Billy’s dick, makes him shift his hips down to rut against the mattress between Steve’s legs. Long fingers tighten in his curls, pulling hard enough for his scalp to sting sweetly.

Steve’s body trembles underneath his rough hands when he caresses his sides and teases at the soft skin between his thighs. “Billy,” Steve stutters out. “Please.”

He doesn’t need to be asked twice. He shifts down, can’t help but glance up at Steve’s sweaty face with a wicked smirk as he licks at the underside of his balls. A whine breaks free of Steve’s throat at his teasing but dissolves into a shout when Billy goes from licking him from root to tip to deep throating Steve’s cock in one fell swoop.

Steve nearly screams at the sensation, his whole body jerking upwards and fucking the back of Billy’s throat. “Jesus, fuck!”

And well, Billy just has to make a comment after that. “Nah, still just Billy Hargrove,” he winks.

“Billy if you don’t shut up and keep sucking my dick I’m going to- Ah!”

Billy sucks dick like a porn star. He’s been told so many different times. He’s also been practicing since he learned what a blowjob was and he would be lying if he told you that he hadn’t practiced with even larger objects and dildos and actual fucking dicks after he saw the sheer size of  Steve’s cock. When Steve cants his hips up and devolves into a series of broken off curses and moans, Billy has to remember he has a cock in his mouth to keep himself from smirking. Nancy Wheeler can’t compare.

He’s going to make Steve come back to him after this. This is his chance, maybe his only chance, to prove that there is something that he can provide to Steve that Nancy never can. The thought brings a fervor to his movements, head bobbing, fingers rolling Steve’s heavy balls in his hand, while drool dribbles from the sides of his mouth.

Steve slowly starts fucking up into his throat, the tip of his dick dragging against the back of Billy’s throat. Tears start running down his face as his throat closes around the head of Steve’s cock before releasing again and again. Billy is a mess at this point, pre and drool and tears wetting Steve’s thighs and the sheets below. His own dick is smashed against the bed, beating in time with his racing heart, and ready to pop off at what feels like a moments notice.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Steve keeps repeating, alternating between holding Billy’s head where he needs it to fuck into his tight throat and petting at his curls in apology for being so rough. He doesn’t know that Billy loves this, loves this animalistic, uncontrolled Steve. He loves that he is finally seeing the old King in his prime, making his subjects bend to his will and worship him like the god he is.

Billy stares up at Steve with a watery gaze, pins his pretty boy’s eyes to his and watches the rapture painted across his face. He wants to see what Steve looks like when he has completely lost control; he wants the taste of his cum to linger in his mouth for hours, maybe days.

Steve looks back at him with a red face, his brown hair stuck to his forehead as he quakes beneath Billy’s  hands, hips canting up and up and up as Billy takes him down with ease. His hands suddenly pull at Billy’s shoulders instead of his hair, trying to drag him away from his cock while Billy embarrasses himself by whining at the loss and the sudden emptiness in his mouth. “Come here,” Steve pants, pulling him further up Steve’s body until they’re eye to eye.

Steve brushes the tears off his cheeks. He cradles Billy’s face in his slender hands and smiles at him with such tenderness that Billy has to close his eyes and nuzzle into his touch for fear of crying for real. “Look at me,” Steve says, the words so gentle that Billy can hardly believe they’re for him.

He opens his eyes to look into Steve’s and feels his breath catch. There are crinkles at the edges of Steve’s beautiful eyes as the other man smiles at him. He holds Billy’s face like he’s something precious, like he’s something worth keeping and protecting. His eyes are filled with warmth and desire.

He looks like he could love Billy. He looks like maybe he already does.

A hand smooths over Billy’s curls. Fingers caress his full lips. “You’re beautiful,” Steve says.

A sound escapes Billy, the same one he makes after he’s been punched in the gut. He hates how quick he is to cry. It’s something that he still feels ashamed about sometimes, even when he hasn’t had to hear his father’s voice in years. He starts crying then, lip quivering as warm tears slide between Steve’s fingers. He squeezes his eyes shut again to try and stop the flow but somehow the tears keep coming.

It’s all too much. He’s wanted this for so long. He’s wanted Steve for so long. Since when does Billy get what he wants?

Steve is too good to be true. Always has been.

For him to call Billy beautiful? Crass, angry, bullheaded, fucking jackass, Billy? It’s more than he deserves.

“I don’t deserve you,” Billy confesses.

Steve makes a disgruntled, angry sound beneath him. “Billy, you deserve everything. Everything.”

And then Steve is kissing him in spite of his tears. It’s a chaste thing, barely a brush of lips before Steve places a kiss on the apples of his cheeks, his nose, his forehead, his brows. Every kiss feels like a balm; Billy didn’t even know how wounded he still was until he finally knew what it felt like to have the person he loved cherish him.

He kisses Steve messily. His face is still wet from tears and his mouth must taste like precum but Steve kisses back eagerly. They are a mess of tongues and teeth. Billy wants to explore Steve from the inside out, press his tongue against every molecule that makes up Steve Harrington’s beautiful mouth. Steve seems to want the same, the suave pretty boy reduced to a series of moans and sighs as he laps up Billy’s desperate whines.

They kiss for what feels like ages, long intervals of tongues touching and lips smacking before coming up for breath and starting all over again. Billy loses his ability to hold himself up at some point to slip both hands behind Steve’s head and play with the hair at the nape of neck and massage the skin behind his ear. Steve shivers beneath him, lets out this keening little sound of bliss, before rocking his hips up into Billy. Their cocks are aligned perfectly, both of them gasping at the sensation of skin touching skin for the first time. And Billy wants more. He needs more.

He breaks their kiss, smiling as Steve attempts to follow his lips as he pulls away. “Steve,” he says. “I want…” The words are hard to say. Because Billy wants everything, everything that Steve will give him.

“I want you too,” Steve whispers. “I want all of you.”

He leans back, pushing his palms down on the bed, until he is kneeling between Steve’s thighs. “I want you to fuck me,” he says, staring into Steve’s eyes. “Do you want that too, pretty boy?”

Steve pushes himself up onto his elbows and stares at him like he’s something worth worshipping. “Yeah, I-I want to,” he replies, licking his kiss-swollen lips. “But I don’t have anything and I don’t want to hurt you, Billy.”

“I know,” Billy smiles. “You’re the only person in my life who hasn’t wanted to hurt me. It’s why I trust you, Steve. Do you trust me?”

“Of course I do, Billy. I trust you with my life.”

And it’s life that Billy wants. He wants to share his life with Steve, share his body, heart, and mind with him and only him for as long as the other man will let him. Will never look away from Steve even if the other man doesn’t look back at him.

“Then trust me now,” Billy says before pressing three fingers against Steve’s lips. “Suck,” he orders.

Although Steve has never mentioned being with a man before, he takes to it like a fish to water. He opens his mouth for Billy’s digits eagerly, swirling his tongue around them, and lathing them with spit. Steve looks at Billy the whole time, eyes hooded with desire, looking all around too pleased with himself when Billy groans at the enthusiasm Steve shows to sucking his thick fingers. “Jesus, baby. You’re gonna kill me before I even get you inside of me.”

Steve releases his fingers with a pop, a look of mischief on his face. “Guess we’ll have to hurry up then,” he quips.

Billy presses a quick biting kiss to his lips in response. “Smart ass,” he chuckles, reaching behind him to circle his rim before slipping the tip of his index finger inside. He hisses a little at the sensation. It’s been a while since he even played with himself, too worried he would accidentally say something at the height of his orgasm that Steve could hear through the thin walls of their apartment. The initial discomfort fades quickly, his body sucking in the digit almost greedily. Adding a second finger only seems to increase his body’s desire to be filled, the scissoring motion he creates making his cock twitch against his stomach.  

He crooks his fingers, searching for his prostate, but finds it’s surprisingly more difficult from this angle. He leans back and collapses onto the end of the bed, legs splayed and fingers still searching. Steve hovers over him, memorized it seems by the sight of Billy’s fingers disappearing into his hole.

“Fuck, Billy. You’re so beautiful,” Steve praises above him, skimming his hands across Billy’s abdominals.

A gasp comes out of his mouth when he finally hits the mass of nerves inside himself, his cock jumping and spurting out a glob of precum over his swollen cockhead. He adds a third finger and can’t help but wince at the slight burn he feels. It’s tough to go without any sort of real lubricant and his lack of practice doesn’t help things.

Unfortunately, Steve seems to notice his discomfort, as the pretty boy suddenly looks more concerned than aroused. “Does it hurt?” he asks.

“Been a while,” Billy admits. “Would go smoother with lube but I didn’t bring any with me.”

Steve frowns down at him, absently blowing a strand of hair out of his face. “Billy,” he mumbles.

And no, just no. There is no way in hell he’s not getting Steve inside of him, whether it hurts or not. “It’s fine. It’s fine, baby, I promise. Nothing I can’t handle,” he attempts.

“Billy, I’m not going to hurt you the first time we fuck. We have to…” A smile suddenly blossomed onto Steve’s face. “Wait! I have an idea. Stay right there! Don’t hurt yourself!” He said, bouncing off the bed and into the in-suite bathroom, giving Billy a great view of his pale, perfect little ass.

Billy barely gets to blink before Steve is rushing back into the room, cock heavy between his legs, and a tiny bottle in his hand.  He jumps back onto the bed and pulls Billy’s hand away from his ass, eagerly pouring a white liquid onto his own fingers.

“Fuck is that?” Billy asks a bit warily. He wasn’t really into the idea of shampoo being shoved into his asshole.

“Unscented lotion,” Steve replies with another smile. “They always give a few bottles at hotels like these. Should help.” He presses a long finger into Billy’s hole and something about the way that Steve gently prods inside of him, or maybe just the fact that it’s Steve that is doing the prodding, makes Billy’s toes curl.

“Fuck, pretty boy. Already feel so fucking good inside me.”

Steve adds in a second finger, scissoring the same way that Billy had. “You’re so tight,” he says almost in awe. He curves his fingers and seems to find that spot inside of Billy that has him seeing stars almost instantly, like he’s already memorized Billy’s body before they’ve even made love. “So perfect,” Steve whispers.

He adds a third finger and the burn is manageable with the slide of the lotion. Steve keeps pressing the tips of his fingers against his prostrate with every stroke, leaving Billy a whining mess beneath him. At around the seventh pass of those perfect fingers, Billy can’t take it anymore and lets out a whimper that should probably be embarrassing if not for the fact that his whole body feels like it’s on fire with how badly he needs Steve inside of him.

“Stop. Stop. I’m ready. Please, get inside of me pretty boy. I need it. I need you,” Billy half sobs.

Steve kisses away his tears, strokes over his jaw with a feather light touch, and looks at him with such affection in his eyes that it feels like nothing else exists but the two of them. He pours lotion over his cock, fisting it a few times until it bobs towards Billy’s ass like it’s just been signaled by some sort of beacon. He pulls Billy’s legs up until they are hooked over his shoulders before pressing in slowly.

This feeling of elation washes over him. He feels complete for the first time in his life. All of his jagged edges have been smoothed and remolded into something worthy of Steve’s heart. He’s exactly where he is supposed to be.

Steve thrusts into him with a bitten off curse, mouth open in bliss as Billy’s tight heat surrounds him and pulls him in. It’s not long before the thrusts grow wilder, Steve’s cock nearly slipping out of him entirely before slamming back inside and jolting them both closer and closer to ecstasy.  Billy’s hand skim over Steve’s thighs, trying to bring him deeper inside of him, and Steve accepts him by pressing closer, his face hovering over Billy’s as beads of sweat drip down across Billy’s pecs.

“You’re so perfect, Billy. It’s like you were made for me. Can’t believe you’re really here. Can’t believe you want me like this,” Steve rambles above him, fingers tightening around the muscles of Billy’s thighs as he thrusts deeper, striking that spot inside of Billy again and again.

Billy’s hands end up clenching in the folds of the duvet, back arching as he feels his balls begin to tighten. He’s surprised he didn’t blow his fucking load as soon as Steve breached him. Everything with Steve feels magnified in a way that sex has never felt before. All at once it feels like coming home and finding some new, unexpected treasure. “Steve, I’m gonna-I’m gonna fucking come.”

“Come for me baby, want to see it, want to feel you,” Steve pants, his thrusts becoming more erratic.

 It’s the desperation, the need in Steve’s voice that does it, makes him come, untouched for the first time in his damn life. He comes so hard it splatters underneath his chin from the force and spurts across his stomach and chest. His mouth stays open in a silent plead, veins bulging and face red at the intensity of his orgasm.

Steve thrusts into him at a near manic pace, fingernails leaving half moon crescents in his thigh as his climax mounts. “So tight. So fucking good. Billy, Billy, Billy. Fuck, Billy!” He shouts, cock pulsing inside of Billy’s ass, thick cum oozing into the tight confines of Billy’s hole.

Steve trembles above him before collapsing, his face nestled in the crook of Billy’s neck. His cock twitching feebly inside of Billy as cum begins to dribble from hole he’s come to rest in. Billy strokes Steve’s hair and lets out a breathless laugh as his heart finally begins to slow. “You’re good, pretty boy. I’ve got you,” he says with a kiss to Steve’s forehead.

Steve shuffles to look up at him, slipping free from Billy’s hole as gently as possible. The beautiful boy presses his forehead against Billy’s, nuzzles their noses together in what strangely feels like the most intimate thing they’ve done tonight. “I know you do,” Steve says gently before pressing a soft kiss to Billy’s lips. They kiss for a long time after that, legs entwined, and a haze of pleasure hanging over them, holding each other for as long as they can before the sun rises.

B </3 N

It shouldn’t come as a surprise when Billy wakes up to the sensation of Steve putting what feels like a mile of space between them, ungluing his sticky chest covered in Billy’s cum from Billy’s still damp back and crowding over to the other edge of the bed. Billy knew that Steve just needed a release, that the other man had probably pretended Billy’s ass was Wheeler’s perfect shaved pussy as he whispered sweet, nonsensical words into Billy’s ear.  He’d probably imaged Billy’s curls were a dull chocolate brown when he’d fisted them in his hands, made Billy’s electric blue eyes seem pale in the dark to assuage his guilt.

He knew Steve was straight.

He knew Steve was in love with Nancy Wheeler.

Feeling Steve move away and get out of bed, listening to the other man start fumbling around for his discarded pajama pants and t-shirt as he prepared to run back to a woman that would never love him as much as Billy did still hurt though. It hurt more than any wound his father had ever inflicted, hurt worse than finding his mom on Facebook and seeing the description “proud mother of two” written in her bio with a photo of her squeezed between two blonde haired twin girls on top. He had no one to blame but himself for this. He knew the sex couldn’t mean anything. Steve was in a committed relationship with a woman from a good middle-class family with a college education and no trauma to speak of. Billy was just a white trash faggot whose daddy beat him and whose mother left him. Even if he had the right parts, he could never beat Nancy.

 Still, for a moment he managed to trick himself into thinking maybe he could finally be the one who ended up with the happy ending this time. Looking into Steve’s dark, lustful eyes and watching those perfect pale lips part and moan out his name, he thought that maybe, maybe Steve was really seeing him and not Nancy. Maybe he wanted Billy too.

Wishful thinking often led to disappointment.

He can feel something inside of him shatter as he hears the sound of Steve pulling on his pants behind him. He squeezes his eyes shut to keep the tears from falling onto his pillow.

Steve sighs loudly and Billy doesn’t need to imagine that there is a tone of exhaustion and regret in the noise. Steve hates himself for cheating on Wheeler, may even hate Billy for encouraging it.

The thought sends panic racing through him. He can’t lose Steve. He can’t. Billy knows that, has known that from the moment Steve extended a hand to him as a child. Steve is the best thing he will ever have in his life and now he’s put their whole relationship at risk. If he weren’t so pathetic and in love and gluttonous for punishment, he’d force himself to turn around and face Steve, make a joke about last night, tell him to go remind Wheeler what she’s missing. Maybe then Steve would feel less awkward about it and they could make everything between them feel right again. But he can’t find it in him to keep pretending, not when he can still feel the slickness of Steve’s cum between his cheeks, and the phantom sensation of his pianist’s fingers digging into his thighs, when his heart is breaking in a way it never has before.

If he turns over and looks at Steve, he’ll beg the other man to stay. He’ll end up forcing Steve to choose between him and Nancy Wheeler and he knows who Steve will choose. Billy can’t be alone again. He doesn’t know how to be alone now. He’s forgotten how to be strong without Steve beside him.

He forces himself to regulate his breathing even though he feels like he wants to hyperventilate. He keeps squeezing his eyes to keep them shut, imagines sucking his tears back into their ducts so they don’t fall, not while Steve is still here. Billy has had much worse than a broken heart in his lifetime. He can manage this just the same as he’s managed every other painful moment in his life. If he lies to himself enough, he can pretend that this is just the same as a cracked rib or four broken fingers. Nothing he can’t recover from. Nothing that will kill him.

Steve moves away from the bed for a moment only for Billy to hear him freeze. A long moment passes as Billy pretends that he’s sleeping and oblivious to Steve walking out on him. Then Billy feels a weight on the bed, feels Steve’s breath on the side of his face as Steve gently brushes his blonde curls behind his ear before the other man retreats and quickly leaves the room, closing the door gently behind him.

In the wake of Steve’s departure, a sob breaks free of Billy’s constricted throat. He knows Steve Harrington better than he knows himself. He knows what that touch means and what the gentleness of it conveyed.

It was an apology.

A sorry I can’t love you, Billy. Sorry I’m not gay, Billy. Sorry that I’m going back to Nancy, Billy. Sorry I won’t choose you, Billy. Sorry things won’t ever be the same, Billy. Sorry I regret this, Billy. Sorry that I have to leave you, Billy. Sorry I may never come back.

It’s an ending.

Billy makes a noise that he hasn’t made since he was eight years old and he realized that his mother had packed all her things and left without him. It’s a sound of agony, like a dying animal.

He knows what it means too as he finally lets his tears break free.

Another little piece of him has died and this time, it’s his fault.

-S <3’s B-

It’s about 7:00 am when Billy manages to pull himself together and stop sobbing into his pillow like a teenage girl. His eyes burn and his nose is stuffed with snot.  When he manages to get up, he grimaces at the feeling of Steve’s cum dribbling out of his ass. It feels less like a victory now and more of an indication of what a dumb piece of shit Billy is.

Looking at the mirror, he looks like shit. His hair is a tangled mess on top of his head. His eyes are bloodshot and his face is covered in red indentations from his pillow and a white crust from his tears. He doesn’t think he’s ever looked as unattractive as he does right now. Just another reason it was probably better for Steve to leave.

His stomach heaves as a bout of anxiety induced nausea strikes.

No, he can’t think about Steve like that right now. He has to get his shit together so that he can fix things and make sure that Steve remains a permanent fixture in his life.

The only consistent comfort he’s ever had in his life is water. From surfing for hours with his mom watching him on the sand, to swimming the ocean and letting the waves crash over his head, to long showers spent avoiding his father and everyone else in his tragic family, being in any type of water has always helped to clear his mind. Fuck knows he needs it to be as clear as possible to recover from the bullshit he’s gotten himself into this time.

The hotel has a pool that’s open 24 hours a day. It’s easy to seek it out for comfort, to stomp into the bathroom and throw some water over his face, change into his swim shorts, and run a hurried wet washcloth in between his cheeks. He’s outside of his room with a towel thrown over his shoulder, plodding down the carpet in flip flops faster than he may have ever moved in his life.

The water is calling to him when he reaches the first floor and sees the aqua colored surface of the pool glimmer in the early morning light. There’s no one else there other than a bored looking lifeguard scrolling through his cell on his stand. This must be the easiest shift of the day. Everyone else is probably too hungover to be in the pool at this time of the morning.

Billy wishes he was hungover instead of just being a sad sack of shit.

The lifeguard doesn’t even look up from his phone when Billy throws his towels and room key onto a lounger and flings his flip flops somewhere nearby before diving into the cool water. It’s a shock to his system with how warm it is outside and he couldn’t be more grateful for it. He can never stop being grateful for this sensation—the way the water glides over the top of his head and deafens everything around him until there’s nothing but the hushed sound of his limbs gliding through the water. He loves how his lungs burn the longer he stays under until all his other mental and physical pains pale in comparison.

He sits at the bottom of the pool until his lungs feel like they're on fire before pumping his legs up to the surface and emerging with a loud gasp, pushing his blonde curls away from his face. The lifeguard continues to fiddle with his cell phone, but takes a quick second to look up at his emergence before going to back on whatever the hell app he’s on.

Billy freestyles until time melts away, his skin pruning and the scent of chlorine all he can smell in his nose. God he wishes there was a place he could swim in Chicago. He needs water like he needs air. Nothing is better for clearing his mind. Maybe he should ask Carol if he can borrow her school ID and sneak into the university’s pool from time to time? It might help with all of his pining, especially now that he’s finally had a taste of what he could have.

“Billy!”

Billy comes to a halt mid lap as he hears Steve call his name. Speak of the devil and he shall come, his crazy fundamentalist grandfather used to say. Apparently you can just think about him now and that’s just as good.

Steve is freshly showered, hair coiffed to perfection, and stunning in a loose white button down and linen pants. He looks nervous as he approaches the edge of the pool, but he’s smiling awkwardly down at Billy behind a pair of vintage Ray Bans. “I went to your room but, uh, you weren’t there,” the brunette says softly.

There is a nasty part of Billy that wants to say, yeah you went to my room after you abandoned me and probably fucked and made up with your bitch after you were screaming my name last night. But that voice hasn’t won out when it comes to Steve before and surprisingly, even given the circumstances, it doesn’t win today either. “Yeah,” Billy says around a lump of anxiety as he treads over to Steve at the ledge of the pool. “I kind of needed to clear my head.”

“Oh,” Steve replies, scratching at his nose as his cheeks start to turn pink.

An awkward silence falls between them.

This has never happened before. They’ve never not known how to talk to each other, even it was just to tease one another. It hurts in a way that Billy didn’t expect. He knew things would probably change no matter how he reacted to what happened between them last night, but somehow he didn’t expect it to happen instantly. He’d kind of hoped that Steve would pretend nothing was wrong and ignore what happened so he could try to do the same and worst case scenario Billy would have until Wheeler and Steve shacked up together and got married before an awkward distance would develop between them.

None of the things he’s hoped for seem to be working out this weekend.

Maybe if he just rips off the bandaid it won’t have to get any worse than this. So even though he feels like he might vomit in a pristine pool in Vegas, he forces his mouth open and asks, “How’s Wheeler?” And fuck if he doesn’t sound petulant as Max on her worst day when he asks.

Steve stares at him through his Ray Bans and it drives Billy crazy that he can’t read his expression when Steve says, “Gone.”

“Gone?” What the hell does that mean? “What do you mean gone?”

“I went to check on her this morning and we talked for a while. We decided it would be better if she just went back home to Chicago. I bought her a flight for this afternoon and paid for an Uber back to the airport.” Steve says calmly.

And how the fuck is he so calm when Billy has no fucking idea what that means. Did Steve and Wheeler break up? Were they just on a break? What the hell was happening?

“I told her we slept together last night.” Steve says nonchalantly and sits cross legged in front of Billy on the tiled floor, casual as he lets water drip from Billy’s hair onto his boat shoes.

Billy is livid. “What the fuck? What the fuck did you do that for, Steve?”

Somehow Steve looks surprised at his reaction, like Billy is the one being crazy when Steve has literally ruined any chance of the two of them getting past this. Steve could maybe forgive and forget. Wheeler despised Billy on a good day and there was no way she was going to let her boyfriend hang out with the guy he’d slept with.

“I wanted to tell her the truth, Billy. We slept together. She deserved to know that.”

Normally Billy loves the little wrinkle that forms between Steve’s brows when he is upset. Right now he just wants to shake the other boy for being so fucking clueless. “She’s never going to let me get near you again! She’s never going to trust me with you ever again, Steve!”

All the worst case scenarios are popping into his head. Nancy will demand Steve kick Billy out of their apartment as soon as they get back. He’ll be lucky if Tommy’s meathead roommates let him stay for a couple days before he’s out on the streets. Billy doesn’t have enough money to put down a deposit right now—not with how things have been slower at the repair shop with people switching to public transportation as the winter ramps up. Steve is his emergency contact—who is he going to have to change it to? Carol and Tommy can’t be trusted in an emergency and Max is still too young to be someone’s emergency contact. Who can he ask? His boss at the shop? The man already has five kids—can he really afford to be another emergency contact?

And how is he going to live without Steve? Without his smile? Without his dumb texts and stupid memes? How is he going to tolerate never seeing Steve’s sleepy smile in the mornings? How can he survive without his stupid dad jokes?

Billy’s built his whole life around Steve. Without Steve at the center of his world, everything feels hollow and meaningless.

He’s panicking again. He can already feel the scream building in throat. Why the fuck hadn’t he just stayed under the water? What was the point of fighting against dying if his life was going to end anyway?

“Billy, calm down a second, okay?”

“Don’t tell me to calm down, Steve!” He snaps. How could Steve be so stupid? How could Billy be so stupid?

Steve immediately looks contrite. “You’re right. Sorry. Just…just, can I just tell you something really quick? Please?”

He doesn’t really want to hear it but given that this may be one of the last times Steve ever talks to him again, he can’t help the tiny nod that escapes him in spite of his clenched teeth and fists.

“A couple months ago, I went into a jewelry store to try and find a ring for Nancy. I thought maybe it would fix things in our relationship if we had something to look forward to.”

The world spins off its axis. Steve was going to propose? He was going to propose and he didn’t even tell Billy? Of course he would never choose Billy over her. He’d decided he wanted to spend his whole life with Nancy. Billy was expendable. He’d probably been working up the courage to ask Billy to move out this whole time. Now Billy had fucked up enough to give him an excuse.

“I was in that store for hours but I couldn’t find anything that I thought she would like. Everything I picked up didn’t seem right. The jeweler tried to help me but I couldn’t pull the trigger on anything. He asked me what I thought Nancy would like and I realized that I had absolutely no idea. I’ve spent nearly six years with this person and I didn’t know what suited her. I felt like a total failure. But there was one thing in the store that I kept turning back to, over and over again. Something that I knew was right.” Steve arched his back as he dug his hand into the pocket of his pants, pulling out a small blue velvet box and setting it on the ground in front of Billy.

“Steve,” Billy protested weakly. He really didn’t want to see this.

“Billy, please. Just open it, okay? Please.” The other man was begging.

Even now he couldn’t say no to Steve, even when the other boy was openly choosing to break his heart. He pulled himself closer to the ledge and reached out with his left hand, grimacing as his wet fingers touched the velvet of the box. Steve had a soft, sad smile on his face as gestured for Billy to open the box.

Billy pulled the box open like a flurry of man-eating creatures was going to come out of it, grimace growing wider and wider until the box sprung open and revealed a single earring. It was the most beautiful piece of jewelry Billy had ever seen, a thin silver dagger with a garnet pommel inside a black and crimson hilt. There was a silver spiral wrapped around it that fanned out into what looked like an angel’s wing. The jewelry glimmered as soon as the sunlight hit it, nearly blinding him as Billy stared in confusion at the box.

“Wheeler doesn’t have her ears pierced,” Billy says slowly.

Steve’s smile grows a little wider. “No, she doesn’t,” he agrees. “I couldn’t find anything for Nancy, but within two minutes of seeing that in the shop I knew that it would be perfect for you. When I asked the jeweler to unlock it, he asked me who it was for and I told him it was for my best friend.”

 A blush blooms across Steve’s whole face, into his neck, and erupts over his collarbone. “The jeweler asked me how long it took me to pick the earrings for you and I told him I knew immediately but that I had come in for an engagement ring. He told me that I was trying to marry the wrong girl because my heart had already made the choice for me. He said, “Your heart knows who it is that you want to make happy and it’s not the girl that you came in to buy a ring for.” I told him he was crazy but he started bringing out all of the rings again and I don’t know, maybe by the earring he could tell you weren’t a girl or something, but he brought out the men’s rings too. He told me to look again and think of you and if I couldn’t pick a ring when I thought of you, he would give me fifty percent off the earrings.”

Billy can’t breathe. He can’t speak. All he can do is hold the box in his hands, his whole body shaking in the water as he stares into his own reflection in Steve’s glasses, warm tears starting to slide down his face.

“I was actually going to tell him to go fuck himself, I was so mad, but I looked down at the trays and there was this…there was this tungsten ring and it had like this I don’t know, like a design through the middle like it was struck by lightning and glowing blue between the cracks and the blue was like…” Even through the glasses, Billy knows that Steve is looking right at him as his pale Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “The blue was the same color as your eyes.”

“He knew immediately that I found one, the bastard,” Steve continues like he hasn’t essentially thrown Billy into the Twilight Zone in some alternative universe where the boy that he loves actually may love him back. “Made me pay full price for the earrings but he told me that when I came back for the ring he’d give me a discount.”

His voice is shaky when he finally manages to take in enough air to respond, “Why…why are you telling me this?” He’s so scared now. More scared than he has ever been in his life. Hope isn’t something that’s ever worked out for Billy Hargrove and yet the feeling is being stirred up in him now in a way that it never has before. Steve could kill this feeling in just a few words but he’s hoping, shit, maybe even praying that he doesn’t.

Steve sighs before pulling off his sunglasses and looking Billy straight in his blue eyes. “Because Nancy was right last night. I am bullshit.”

“No, you’re not.”

The laugh that Steve lets out is a bitter, rueful thing. “Yeah, I really am, Billy. She’s right about how I was only staying with her because it’s what everyone expected of me. I’ve been too scared to be honest with myself because…because everything that I’ve ever really tried for, I’ve never gotten. Couldn’t get my parents to love me no matter what I did. Couldn’t get good grades when I tried. Couldn’t get into college. Couldn’t get Nancy to look at me the way that she looked at Jonathan Byers. So how could I get the most beautiful fucking guy that I’d ever seen to want me back?”

Beautiful. Steve thought he was beautiful? Billy was nothing compared to Steve. How could Steve ever think that Billy wouldn’t want him? How could he not see what Billy saw?

“You’re so smart, Billy. You’re smart and you’re funny and everyone you meet either wants to be you or be with you. You’ve been through so much and you just keep coming out stronger and better from it. And Jesus, you’re so hot! I mean, look at you, even now you look like a fucking merman or something all wet and glistening and shit,” Steve gestures at Billy’s whole body with a red face. “I mean how the fuck do I even compete when you could have anyone you want? Nancy at least felt attainable, you know? She didn’t make me feel like my heart and my head and my dick were just going to explode every time she even looked at me. Not like you did…not like you still do. I mean, I’ve been carrying this around with me for weeks just trying to find the courage to give this to you.”

Did Billy actually drown in the pool? Maybe he never came up from air because everything Steve is saying could only be said if he was in heaven. Then again, maybe it is real, because there’s no way Billy’s not going straight to hell, not with how he treated Max and everyone else before he became friends with Steve.

“I kind of wasn’t completely honest with you last night, either. I said that when you used to sleep with me in my bed it made me feel safe. But it didn’t just make me feel safe, it made me feel loved. It felt like maybe you loved me too whenever you chose to come to me and be in my bed rather than someone else’s. You’d fall asleep and I would just watch you for hours. Not in a creepy way or anything! Like I never looked at your dick or anything like that. Just the way your nose scrunches up really cute when you’re dreaming about something and stuff like that. Little stuff,” Steve is quick to explain. “When we were sleeping next to each other it felt like maybe you weren’t this unattainable dream that I had for myself and maybe you could really want to be with basic ass, dumbass Steve Harrington who only has two things going for him. His hair,” Steve points to his head. “And his trust fund.”

“You’re…you’re everything to me, Steve. My family. My best friend. How could you think that? How could you think that I didn’t…that I wouldn’t want to be with you?” Billy asks, honestly bewildered.

Steve rubs his neck in embarrassment. “Because that’s what everyone pretty much told me except for you. I love Tommy and Carol, but even they’ve told one too many Steve is an idiot jokes for me not to think that they really feel that way. And you? Billy, you’ve been through so much I was worried that you were just grateful and didn’t know how to pay me back. I was worried you felt obligated to say nice things to me because I helped you get away from your dad. Honestly, I kept worrying that one day you were going to wake up and realize what a loser I am and how much better you could do.”

Billy shakes his head, curls flinging water across Steve and the ground below him. “I’d never leave you, Steve. Not willingly. You’re…you’re it for me. You have been since ninth grade,” he confesses.

The smile Steve gives him is as bright as the sun above them. “Yeah, yeah I kind of figured that out last night. And I love you too. That’s what I told Nancy this morning. I told her I was in love with you and that I’d always been in love with you but too scared to say it. I told her that I didn’t want to keep building a life that I would regret and that I didn’t want her to regret anything either. I even told her to call Jonathan because she looks at him the way I look at you.”

Billy pretty much stops processing anything Steve says after “I love you too.” Steve Harrington is in love with him. Steve Harrington has been in love with him for possibly as long as Billy has been in love with Steve. Steve broke up with Nancy. Steve broke up with Nancy because he’s in love with Billy, because he wants to be with Billy.

He doesn’t regret last night. He wants more. He wants Billy.

He snaps the lid of the jewelry box closed and pushes it to the side. He’s breathing fast and hard as he lurches up from the water, grabbing Steve by the front of his shirt and pressing his wet lips to Steve’s slightly chapped ones. He pours nearly 10 years of love and affection into the kiss. His lips confess his elation, his hope, and the manifestation of the one dream he’s held onto for most of his life. Steve kisses him back immediately. It’s an easy kiss despite the odd angle. Steve’s lips meld with his as if they have been kissing all their lives. It’s familiar and joyful, so much so that neither Billy and Steve can stop smiling after a moment, their teeth bumping together as actual giggles spill out of both of their mouths.

“Oh my God, finally!”

Billy and Steve break apart slowly, both of them seemingly reluctant to part even with Carol squealing at them.

Carol is smiling like the cat who got the canary underneath the obnoxiously large brim of a straw beach hat. “Ugh, thank God you both got your shit together because I did not know if I could take one more year of Billy coming to my dorm every other weekend and crying like a little bitch cause you don’t love him.”

“Carol!” Billy screams in embarrassment.

“You been crying over me, Hargrove?” Steve teases.

“Shut up, Harrington. Don’t think you’re hot shit just because I’m in love with you.” Billy splashes at him, soaking Steve’s shirt.

Steve laughs, the sound somehow even more beautiful in the aftermath of their confessions. “Oh, I am hot shit now, especially now that I’m dating the hottest guy from here to Chicago.”

“Just till Chicago?” Billy scoffs. “Pretty boy, I’m the hottest guy from here to Florida at bare minimum.”

“Maybe,” Steve hums. “Guess we’ll have to go all the way to Florida and see.”

“We’re going to Florida?” Tommy interrupts from behind Carol, dressed in an obnoxious Hawaiian t-shirt with hickeys all over his pale, freckled neck. “What the fuck’s in Florida?”

“Another pool for Steve and Billy to fuck in,” Carol quips.

Tommy looks flabbergasted for a moment before he breaks out into a toothy smile. “Holy shit! You guys fucked? My birthday wish totally came true!”

Steve looks disturbed. Billy knows he must look like a strange combination between touched and offended. “You wished Steve and I would fuck for your birthday, Hagan?”

“No!” Tommy looks embarrassed. “I just wished we would all be happy and get what we want this year.”

“Aww, baby!” Carol coos before pulling Tommy into one of their infamous gross kisses inappropriate for public viewing.

Steve smiles and leans in to place another gentle kiss on Billy’s lips. “It definitely feels like my wish has come true.”

Billy’s never felt so warm. He’s glowing from the inside out. His luck has really changed. He can’t wait to text Max and tell her the good news—Carol isn’t the only redhead who is sick and tired of his pining. He just hopes his little sister doesn’t do something stupid like hitchhike to Chicago just to throw them a party. “Mine too, pretty boy. Now put that shit in my ear, I wanna wear it for the rest of the weekend!” He says with an obnoxious rhythmic tap on the blue velvet box.

Steve laughs, loud and uninhibited in the sun. “Just for the weekend?” He asks, like the gorgeous brat he is and Billy loves.

“Well, I guess I can wear it until you get me that ring you were talking about.” Billy bats his eyelashes.

Steve laughs so hard he snorts before he pulls Billy in for another, lingering kiss. “Shut up,” he says against Billy’s lips.

Billy shuts up.