Chapter Text
Being loved by Billy Hargrove, was not flowers and hearts and chocolate coated caramels.
It was not huge public displays of affection and online declarations of love.
It was not even cheap hallmark cards and misshapen teddy bears brought half-heartedly from a gas station.
Steve knew that, had always known that from the very first moment Billy had pushed him up against the deserted Gym wall and quietly asked him if it was true that he liked guys.
Their relationship had started as a secret, a whisper in darkened cars and small desperate looks passed in the school hallways. It had sprouted as a thin wiry weed-like shrub and blossomed into a modest wallflower, grown on an understanding that the world was not yet ready to appreciate its beauty.
Through the years of their relationship, that feeling of not needing to be noticed was not easily shook off. Steve would often wonder if they would feel more comfortable if they had left Hawkins, had even raised the idea of moving more than once, looking up house prices in San Francisco.
Los Angeles.
New York.
Even Atlanta.
Just anywhere where Billy might feel more comfortable.
Less exposed.
Safe.
But Billy had taken one look at Steve with his gaggle of friends and hopes for the future and instead had used his savings to buy the small repair shop right in the centre of town, telling his boyfriend to shut up and take the job he so desperately wanted.
The guilt had weighed heavily on Steve at first, but Billy, sweet understanding Billy, the strongest person Steve had ever known, had promised him that it was all fine, that he was happy in Hawkins too.
Steve always thought that perhaps, in some other reality, the two of them were out there somewhere living it up in a big city, loud and proud.
Instead, they wondered through the years in a sort of half existence. Neither one of them hid their relationship – hell, the newspaper had done a whole exposé on their resident queers some time back in the 90’s (thanks for that Nance) – but they never flaunted it. Billy liked the fact that they lived constantly on the edge of ‘Are they/Aren’t they’, said that it brought the town gossipers to his shop door looking to be the one to finally get an answer, and all the housewives flocked to the shop hoping to see the love birds in action.
“Uncertainty is good for you, in a way,” Billy had told him one night, nose nuzzled into the soft space below his ear. “Makes you less likely to end up on the wrong end of a homophobes gun. You’re too unprotected, in your line of work.”
Steve wasn’t sure how accurate that was, but anything to stop his lover panicking.
Billy did not believe in public kissing either, Steve could list every single moment in their almost thirty years when Billy had allowed himself to be openly and publicly affectionate. Nancy seemed to be offended by it more than he was.
“You should be shouting it from the rooftops,” she told them both over a couples-dinner-date night. “Shit on the worlds bullshit views.”
“Why the fuck does the world deserve a front row seat to our lives?” Billy had replied. “Fuck everyone else, it’s only me and Steve that needs to care.”
So, to the World, it seemed that Billy didn’t love at all.
The world would be wrong.
Steve had learned to look for Billy’s version of love, had found it like a toddler discovering a fat toad underneath a rock, had to try and resist the desire to poke it with a stick in case it hopped off.
Sure, Billy didn’t buy fancy jewellery and flowers, but he brought other things. Did other things. He would get Steve an extra portion of garlic bread when they ordered pizza because he knew it was Steve’s guilty pleasure. Or he would make a special trip to HAWKINS-LOVES-BBQ on his way home from the shop, to grab Steve a tub of coleslaw because he knew Steve was a fussy eater who ‘liked what he liked’ and only one kind of coleslaw would do.
He would turn the heating on first thing in the morning so that Steve awoke to a warm house, the heat making up for the empty space left behind in their bed.
He would swear and stomp outside to change the tyres on the jeep at the first sign of snow, muttering about how useless mayors and shitty budget cuts would end up killing the love of his life one day.
Billy might ignore Valentines Day every year, calling it ‘fake chocolate coated shit’, but he had never once forgotten the date of the day they met.
And his version of love might not be grand gestures, but it was always sloppy blowjobs after a hard day and being content with getting nothing in return.
It was the arm snapping sideways to press against his chest when some idiot cut them up, and the consequential tag-team fight they deployed afterwards. Billy using his reputation as a local hardnut, and Steve using his reputation as Sheriff Hopper’s protege.
It was the pink ‘Don’t forget your door keys, you old fuck <3’ post-it-note stuck to the front door.
It was the smell of freshly brewed coffee placed lovingly on his bedside table and the feel of warm slippers that Billy would jam on to his feet with a reprimand about how wooden floors were the worst idea they had ever had.
It was whispered I-Love-you’s in darkened rooms and the feel of Billy’s little finger brushing his knuckles when they stood next to each other in public.
It was the way Billy’s eyes immediately searched for him when he entered a room, and the way his face split into a devilish grin when Steve wiggled his eyebrows in a suggestive way.
It was the way Billy tilted Steve’s head back to kiss him good night, his shaven chest pressed warm and soft to Steve’s back, every outline of muscle a road map that Steve knew on instinct.
There were so many ways, so many signs, so many little quirks.
That was why, Steve noticed, when it all stopped.
“I think Billy might be having an affair.”
Robin’s eyes snapped from the screen to stare incredulously at her friend, her whole body shifting in her seat to turn in his direction. The past few years had been kinder to her than they had Steve. Her hair was untouched by grey, her eyes still holding that teasing gleam from her youth. Even the wrinkles around her mouth gave her slender face more definition.
It was fucking frustrating.
She was like Billy in that way, neither had to work at staying youthful, it just happened naturally to them. Steve on the other hand used every skin cream and moisturiser he could get his grubby little hands on. The failure of which, stared back at him from the reflection in Robin’s round glasses.
“What did you just say?”
“Billy. I think he might be seeing someone else.”
“What the fuck would make you think that?”
“It’s just. Everything.” He swallowed down the sudden lump in his throat. “Like, he’s been ‘working’ extra shifts for the past two months, staying late and starting early. He’s always ‘too tired’ to do anything remotely fun, I mean like, bedroom fun. He could just be tired but that doesn’t usually stop him. He has always been the one with the overactive libido, you know? But lately it’s like, nada. And this morning he didn’t,” He swallowed again, willing his voice not to crack. “This morning he didn’t even bother to make me a coffee.”
“Oh shit. Someone call Cosmo. Forgetting to make your boyfriend a cup of coffee now equals cheating.”
“I’m serious Robin, I’ve been sitting here working it out in my head and there’s this whole list of things that Billy used to do and doesn’t now and I know him. I know him better than I know myself. He wouldn’t just stop unless there was something, you know, big, to distract him.”
“Steve, this is Billy. The idiot is so in love with you that he closes up shop and travels halfway across town just so the two of you can have lunch together.”
“Yeah? And when was the last time, he did that?”
Robin made a small ‘oh’ noise, a frown replacing the exasperated smile across her pretty face. “Come on, that doesn’t mean anything. Not really.” She pushed her reading glasses up the bridge of her nose, blowing away a stray strand of hair that had come loose from her bun. “Hey, come on, look at me Harrington, Billy’s not having an affair.”
Steve looked away, suddenly interested in the pencil he was rolling across the desk. “Trust me, if he’s not having an affair then he’s bored with me.”
It hadn’t just been the coffee. Billy had not even kissed him goodbye this morning, hadn’t so much as uttered a word. In Billy’s language that was ‘Fuck You’ in neon lettering.
He could not have made it any clearer if he had tried.
“The other day I had to practically beg for sex. And after we finally did it, he literally rolled off me and went to take a shit. Not so much as a kiss or a thanks for that.”
That was not the Billy he knew. His Billy liked to cuddle after. Always had.
“Ew, are you serious?”
“Yep,” he drew the word out so that the end made a popping sound against his lips, feeling more like a love-sick gossiping teenager than the mature adult in a serious relationship that he was meant to be. “He didn’t even bother to close the door, or flush. Just finished and then fucked off downstairs.”
“Oh, that’s disgusting.”
“Do you have any idea what it’s like listening to someone strain out a turd when you’ve literally got their cum dripping out of your own asshole.” He threw the pencil angrily and watched how it bounced off the desk and onto the floor. “Number 1 on the Top 10 most unsexiest moments of my life.” And at the start of their relationship Billy had drunkenly thrown up in his face while they were making out.
“Oh my god men are the worst.”
He threw out a hand, voice raising in indignation. “No no, no don’t lump us all together. I’ve never done anything like that.”
“Steve you literally giggle and tell me every time you fart.”
“Farts are funny!”
“If you’re a twelve-year-old boy.”
He muttered something about Robin having the chest of a twelve-year-old boy before sighing and running his fingers through his greying hair. “I could understand if we’d been dating for a while and we were at that point in the relationship where everything starts getting serious and boring and predictable and he’s having second thoughts but,” He pressed the heel of his hands to eyes and blinked back tears. “It’s been so long. We passed that point ages ago.”
“We’re in our forties, plenty of relationships lose their spark Steve. It doesn’t mean Billy’s getting it somewhere else.”
“You don’t get it Robin. We got into a fight last night, all because I tried to wash his jacket without warning him. Full-on shouting at each other. Tore up half the kitchen. We never argue like that. Not since we were in our twenties, not since Billy’s dad died. It’s like, like no matter what I do I’m either in the way or being a nuisance.”
The clique nagging wife.
The overly clingy partner.
The old ball and chain.
There was a rustle of fabric as Robin leaned forward and pried his fingers from his face, forcing him to lower his hands to his lap. “Listen, I need you to trust me Steve, Billy isn’t bored with you. And he isn’t having an affair. Just, just wait ok? Just wait and see what happens.”
He narrowed his eyes, suddenly suspicious. “What do you know that I don’t?”
“Duh, I know everything, that is why I’m the brains of this station, Dingus. And you’re the brawn,” she smiled sweetly at him. “Speaking of which, they brought in Hagan again. Your time to shine Deputy.”
“Was he running naked down Main Street again?” Steve said, with a groan.
Robin gestured behind her as she turned back towards the screen. “Drunk as a skunk. His wife dropped off some clothes for him, so he won’t catch pneumonia. Tell him she seemed pretty serious about the divorce this time.”
God, some days he wished more than anything that Hopper hadn’t retired.
***
He made it home just after 8pm, Billy’s pick up truck already parked in the drive way.
Cold air spilled into the car as he got out, boots kicking at the last of the winter snow that had long ago started to turn to slush, the yellow glow of the porch light reflected off his wind shield and beckoned him forward.
Their house was nothing special, two stories with blue sliding and a white front door. The paint needed refreshing and the tree outback needed trimming back, just two things on an endless list of ‘We’ll do it soon’.
But it was their home. Twenty years of hard graft and scrimping by and everything - from the empty flower box beneath the kitchen window, to the bird bath Billy had brought on a whim - was completely, wholly , undeniably theirs.
Not a single input from his parents, although they had offered, just his and Billy’s love and determination to make a home they could be proud of.
A home that glowed with love.
The kind of home that they spent half their early relationship years dreaming off.
Fuck, the kind of home they had both wanted as children.
The home that they had found with each other.
He stopped to rub his fingers across the novelty plaque next to the front door, a superstition he had done ever since Max had given it to them as their first housewarming present, and Billy had hung it on an old hook next to the door before picking him up and gleefully carrying him across the threshold.
The red paint across ‘Man Cave’ had begun to peel slightly but like hell would either of them ever throw it out. He wondered, the thought swelling and jamming somewhere in the centre of his chest, if Billy would take it with him, when he finally left him.
Fuck, he was being an idiot. He was, he knew he was.
One or two missed habits that Billy probably wasn’t even aware he did, did not mean that the man didn’t love him.
He opened and closed the door with a snap, dropping his hand to scratch Klaus behind the ear as the rottweiler bounded up to greet him, tongue protruding stupidly from the side of his mouth. Farrah, the rescued runt of a chihuahua followed slower, clawing at his knees to be picked up. He indulged her, as he always did, shedding of his coat and tie with one hand, and kicking of his shoes with his feet.
He hoped Billy hadn’t seen him do that. Steve had spent most of the past few years moaning at Billy for doing that very thing.
There was a sound of squeaking springs as Billy turned to look over the back of the chair and towards the door.
“You’re home late,” Billy said, the words lost in a jaw-breaking yawn. “Tough day?” He stood up as Steve entered the living room, placing the barest of kisses against his cheek as he carried on walking past. “Go warm up, there’s pizza in the kitchen.”
He took the stairs two at a time, banging the bathroom door shut a few moments later.
Steve opened his mouth to stop him, to call him back, to ask for conformation that they really were ok.
Relationships were hard, everyone knew that. He had been told that when he and Billy had sat his parents down and told them they were ‘the real deal’. They had witnessed it when Nancy and Jonathan had divorced five years previously. But after so many years of being together, after seeing all the rotten parts of each other, weren’t relationships were meant to flow sweetly towards the eternity of ever-after?
Why, for the first time in years, did he suddenly feel like theirs was close to crashing into a burning dump-truck?
He closed his mouth again slowly when no sound came out and bent down to put Farrah on the ground gently.
He headed towards the kitchen, following the sweet smell of dinner.