the_freak | Dear Billy

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Dear Billy

It was risky, hanging around the hospital like this when pretty much all of Hawkins was still convinced he was to blame for all of this, but Eddie felt like he owed it to Max to visit. It was rough seeing her like that. And he couldn't help the gnawing guilt that if any of them should have lost to this thing it was him. Each of them meant so much to so many people, and here he was, bruised and bandaged, but alive. And the only person who might have cared to know it had to think he was dead. It didn't seem fair.

He ducked outside for a smoke, keeping his head down, but people were too preoccupied with the mess that had opened up under them to be worried about hunting the Freak. As far as they were concerned the Munson boy was dead, and good riddance.

Trying to get the damn smoke to light, Eddie grew still, eyes suddenly catching a familiar set of piercing blue ones, and seeing that moment of recognition in them he paled. He abruptly turned tail, walking aimlessly around the side of the building and praying silently he'd only imagined that look of recognition.

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"One car guy," Eddie allows, with a dramatic roll of his eyes in turn, "No one to...car with." The hell did car guys actually do?? Still, Eddie's point is clear enough. Like any small town, Hawkins has a limited number of highschool social classes to fall into, and didn't typically embrace people who tried to shake that up. Again, unless they had pretty blue eyes.

Eddie takes it, looking a little hesitant. "You sure you don't want scissors?" he asks, but nods, "I'll keep it as long as I can."

"I don't see any in here," he remarks, looking around again. "Might be some down in the cupboard," which he kicks the door next to his foot for emphasis. "Hang on-"

Billy moves, going to sit on the edge of the tub with his feet in it. Behind him on the floor is the bathmat. "Clean up will be easier. I'm fucking tired, I'm not going to want to clean up my hair afterwards." Not even sure if he could stomach it. His car and his hair were his pride and joys, and now both were about to be gone.

"...Do it. Just get it over with."

Billy's tone doesn't leave much room for argument, and Eddie presses his lips together, nodding faintly. He directs Billy to look down with a guiding touch, begins working, his own brows twisted up like it's his hair he's hacking away.

"You know...when I first came here, I had a full buzzed head," he offers, hoping to bring a smile, or at least lighten some of the tension as hair began to fall. "Nooot a good look."

One of the most effective threats Neil ever made to him was cutting off his son's hair. There were some times he had, most other times Neil only came close. And now here Billy was, willingly letting it be cut off to fix it. Eddie almost doesn't need to guide that head to tip forward.

He feels broken. From being abandoned in the dark for so long, to looking like a twig could break him, to now this. Having his golden curls cropped from his head.

A tear streaks down his cheek before he can stop it.

Eddie's voice cuts through the noise in his head. He sniffs hard, keeping still. "I find that shit hard to believe, Eddie," comes the quiet reply. "Someone stick gum in it or some shit and you had to get it out?"

He tries to work quickly but gently, not wanting to prolong what seems to be an emotional moment.

"Nah," Eddie gives a small laugh. Honestly, he wishes it was something like that, something comparably small that he might look back on and laugh about.

"It's was uh- the Old Man," he reveals, trying to sound casual about it. He doesn't realize quite how much their father's seem to have in common. "He never liked it, and we had a fight..." He shrugs a shoulder, "But uh...my Uncle Wayne. He's great, he never-...he let me do whatever I wanted with it since then."

Billy stays absolutely still. As close to the corpse he's supposed to be as he can. At least Eddie hasn't seemed to notice how the blond is reacting to a haircut.

Old Man? Oh, Eddie's dad. He keeps his questions quiet, and lets the other speak while trimming out the mats. It's the shortest it's been since he was a kid. Whoever the Uncle Wayne was for Eddie sounded like a good guy. Maybe that's what his mom would've been like if she had stuck around. "My appearance was really the only thing I got to choose."

Almost everything else was inherited from Neil.

"Live with your uncle I guess?" It wasn't too much of a leap with the current conversation.

"Well, you chose pretty good, I'll give you that," Eddie offers with a cheeky grin, though he frowns a little as he considers what that said about the rest of Billy's life.

Eddie pauses to work free a few more tangles he thinks he can save, humming softly. "Mmmhmm. Dunno how he put up with me for so long, but- heh- glad he did." He misses him. Wishes more than anything that none of this had hurt Wayne like it has.

He can't see the grin, but he can hear it as Eddie works. All Billy wants to do is curl up and sleep for awhile, like he seems to do usually. Despite sleeping, he always wakes up tired, and it makes no sense. He doesn't realize he's not actually sleeping but is put under temporarily while Hargrove runs things.

Billy scoffs with his amusement. "Don't know how anyone puts up with you for so long." But yet, here he was, putting up with Eddie while the freak cut mats and detangled his hair. Sitting on the edge of a tub in nothing but a towel, showing off more bones than style.

He hates this. At least he's free now.

"After you're done I should try to eat again."

He laughs again. "Well no one really does apart from Wayne," he dismisses, though there's a few who have hung in longer than he expected, and his new batch of friends might be trauma bonded to him. "I'm shocked you haven't run off yet."

"That's the worst of it out now," Eddie says, brushing the hair away from the nape of Billy's neck. It needs evening out, and the skill of hands more talented than Eddie's, but he can comb his fingers through it now.

"Where would I go? I'm dead," he reminds Eddie, doing his best not to throw a scowl over his shoulder. "I'm dead and was locked away in an abandoned lab for months and it seems like you're the only person that's okay with any of this."

Probably because he knew the shit that Billy went through. Or at least understood it enough to know that the blond really wasn't making it up at all.

He feels the fingers combing through his hair, and lifts his own hands to mimic the movement. Fingers brush over Eddie's, but he doesn't react to it. Not outwardly.

Snipped hairs fall down to the bathmat and into the tub as well before he's getting up to shake the rest out. "Don't know if I should eat or sleep. Starving but I'm tired, too."

Switching who was in charge of the body was probably exhausting him.

Eddie withdraws his hands, glancing away with a cough, and he moves to give Billy a bit of space.

"Why don't you try and sleep for a bit? You've got a bit of food in you. Let your body work through some of it before you over load yourself," he reasons, "Whenever you wake up there's always more."

More food. Well, probably more toast. Sleep sounds good though, so Eddie gets a nod. "I'll go sleep on the couch. At least." So Eddie would be closer in case something happened, and the sound of the television would help him fall asleep.

Getting dressed quickly - he doesn't care if Eddie sticks around for it - Billy heads back downstairs. He gathers the blanket he had to throw over himself after laying down. The couch isn’t the comfiest he’s ever slept on, but it wasn’t the lab. The television is on, now with some weather program happening. It pulls Billy into sleep.

And he gets a couple of hours in. It’s quiet and his brain is at peace. Then the nightmares set in.

Dead people. Dead because of him. The creature in the mall. Max. The Camaro smashed. Rats, rats everywhere, crawling on him. He shifts in sleep, fighting against the blanket before the shifts turn into kicks. It escalates until he rolls off the couch. And it’s not… clear who’s in charge. What is clear is Billy screaming, putting his head in his hands as he struggles between being Billy, or Hargrove.

He's made the bed up, but Eddie doesn't argue. If that's what Billy wants. So long as he sleeps. The guy looks like he hasn't gotten a proper nights sleep since Star Court.

Eddie averts his gaze and pushes off to head downstairs with a muttered excuse. And while Billy sleeps Eddie sits in one of the arm chairs, reading through magazines before his own exhaustion takes hold and he drifts off himself.

He awakes with a start at the sound of screaming, heart jumping to his throat and blood draining from his face and fear seizing him. He half falls out of the chair in his attempt to get to Billy. Or Hargrove. Whichever of them is screaming bloody murder.

"Hey- Hey shh- shh- you're all right- you're all right-" Eddie tries to soothe, down on his knees with him and attempting to pull him into a hug without really thinking about who he was dealing with. Though at least if he's busy punching him he might stop screaming...

By this point, Billy’s curled up on himself, pressed against the couch. God his head hurts, feeling like it was actually being split down the middle now.

Then he feels something grip his shoulders, his arms, pulling him into an embrace. And that scares him more and for a minute he fights against Eddie. Then the soothing gets past his own screaming, and that’s when he realizes it’s Eddie. Not Vecna, not anyone else. Hands whip up behind Eddie to hold onto him tight, with fingernails digging into the cloth of his shirt.

"…fuck. It hurts— my head hurts—" That sounds like Billy even if it feels like Hargrove holding onto him. The screaming stops and he chokes out a sob. God his voice is already hoarse. "The rats— so many— the mall—"

The desperate return of that embrace surprises Eddie more than the fighting, and he momentarily freezes up before the need to soothe overrides his own shock.

"Shh- breathe, okay? Just breathe. You're here. No rats. No mall. You're right here. Shh-"

He keeps talking about the mall, the rats, with pleas of not going back to the lab peppered in. It has to be Billy in charge, there was no way Hargrove would show such vulnerability like this. But he clings to Eddie tight, not caring if it hurts the other.

The other is real, he’s here, and not a figment of his imagination or anything. Breathe. He needs to breathe.

Those first breaths are quick and short. Like he’s about to hyperventilate. Then he hears Eddie’s since he’s so close, he feels it and tries to match it. Gradually his breathing slows to something more normal, but still Billy holds tight to the other.

"You're not going back. You're here. You're safe," Eddie assures, repeating those phrases and tentatively bring his fingers up to comb through Billy's (?) curls like he remembers his own mother used to do for him when he was little.

"Good. You're doing so good. Just like that."

Not going back. He's not going back. He's not going to be trapped down in the dark anymore. And damnit, he's sobbing, the fear still ebbing through him like he's still down there, but he's not. He's not. He's here in Eddie's supplier's house, a hand in his hair while Billy himself holds onto Eddie like a flotation device in a storm.

He's fucking scared and that's still such a new feeling. Billy hates it.

He finally shudders through the last of it all, wrecked but breathing better. "Don't... don't leave me."

Why couldn't it have been one of the others? Eddie feels ill equipped to deal with this, but he does his best, petting through Billy's hair and rubbing circles over his back. Holding him close means Billy can't see how scared Eddie is, and he tries to sound like he knows what the hell he's doing as he soothes him through it.

"...M'not going anywhere," he promises, though he does shift to sit a little more comfortably. "I've got you."

He doesn't know how scared Eddie is for certain. All that matters right now is that he's promising Billy that he won't leave. Or maybe he's just hearing it as a promise and his brain latches onto it. His broken, hurting brain.

"They left me down there. I kept waking up in different places in the lab, like I was trying to find someone... anyone while I slept," though he didn't realize the real reason was Hargrove taking the reins. "They locked me in the lab, Eddie. I don't understand why. They left me. She left me too."

She.

Billy tries not to let his mind dwell on her too much. Instead, he starts relaxing, with fingers unclenching out of Eddie's jacket.

Edited 2023-05-09 00:52 (UTC)

"...I don't understand either," Eddie offers honestly, but he listens and continues to hold him, brows twisted with sympathy. He doesn't know what happened to Billy Hargrove, couldn't understand even if he was told the full story and not just bits and pieces from different sources. But he can understand the hurt and the fear and the abandonment.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what happened, but I'm sorry."

At last, Billy sits up, not caring (or maybe not knowing) that his face is wet. He doesn't meet Eddie's gaze, breathing labored and trimmed with shudders.

"Didn't mean to scream. Or wake you up if you were sleeping." A glance around. "...What time is it? 'M hungry again."

Fighting in his sleep and waking up with his own screaming took a lot out of his already battered body. "...No more toast though."

The tears aren't mentioned. Eddie would want the same courtesy. "No one means to have nightmares, it's fine."

That prompts a small snort of laughter, and Eddie rolls his eyes almost fondly. "Of course you are," he mutters, "Come on, get up. I'll see what I can find. You just try and relax."

"No one should wake up from them screaming," he points out. Even for being Billy and not Hargrove, the words come out harsher than Eddie might expect from him.

He frowns at the laugh and eye roll, but does get up when prompted to head towards the kitchen. "Not my fault I'm fucking starving, he says, giving Eddie a push. It's difficult to say if it's jesting or actually mean or not.

"It could have been a sex dream, that might have been more awkward to wake up to," he offers with a smirk, trying to lighten the mood.

"What, is it mine because I wouldn't let you make yourself sick on toast?" Eddie asks, following after his stubborn house mate with an amused smile, not all that bothered by the pushing or the harsh tones. "I said I'd make it, where are you going?"

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