Chapter Text
“So, I guess between the two of you, Harrington got it worse, huh?”
Billy was out back behind the school, hiding in that little alcove between the gym and the mess hall— in that perfect, quiet spot where you could tuck away and smoke a cigarette without anyone coming up on you.
Well. Not if they knew what the fuck was good for them, anyway.
“Munson,” Billy replied, a warning lingering just under the bored tone he liked to pull out whenever he was forced to engage with someone he didn’t want to. In Hawkins, that was more often than not.
“Just saying,” Eddie went on, a man clearly lacking in self preservation. He stepped further into the alcove, joining Billy where he was brooding. “Harrington’s whole face swelled up like a circus funhouse, and here you are with a couple bruised knuckles and a cut...”
Eddie brought his hand up to the side of his face, to his right brow, fingers dancing over the air as if to draw attention to where Billy knew he was sporting a cut through his own brow now.
“Although, yours actually looks cool . Harrington looks like he got trampled by a herd of cows—”
“Do you have a fucking point?” Billy snapped, cutting Eddie’s incessant chatter off before it started to give him a headache.
“No, not really.” He was grinning, and Billy was starting to think maybe everyone calling him a freak had a damn point. That maybe, he was one of those masochistic pieces of shit who went around pushing people's buttons, because they just wanted to get their asses handed to them. That maybe he liked that sort of thing.
Billy swallowed hard, suddenly feeling a lot hotter. He refused to ask himself why.
Instead, he postured. Shifting against the wall and pushing himself up just enough to match Eddie’s height. The difference was slight, and if he lifted himself just a little onto his toes it was gone entirely.
“Then why don’t you piss off?”
Eddie seemed completely unbothered, draping himself against the nearby brick, his eyes still locked on Billy who felt tense, nervous. He hated feeling like this, like he was weak… usually, he lashed out to prove otherwise.
Instead, he tried to focus all that energy inwards. He didn’t need a fight on school grounds, not one so soon after the fight with Harrington, not another one to be reported back to Neil. He was on such fucking thin ice as it was.
With a grimace he brought his knuckles up in front of him, eyes dropping to examine the split skin where it was scabbing over, idly picking at it as his nerves seemed to compound on themselves.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Eddie said. “You’ll make it worse.”
“Am I supposed to believe you care?” Billy spit out, unable to keep his cool. If the guy had just kept his stupid mouth shut, maybe he could have ignored that Eddie was even here. But he just had to needle, and Billy fucking hated needlers.
He’d pushed away from the wall now, wasn’t even thinking about it really— saw red as he spun on his heel and shoved up into Eddie’s space. He thought he saw a flicker of fear pass through Eddie’s expression, but it was quickly schooled into something calm. Forced.
But there was tension in his body giving him away, Billy could feel it, he was so close.
“Don’t you care?”
Billy froze. Hadn’t been expecting that. Eddie seemed to be bracing for a punch, like he knew he’d just sealed his fate with those words, talking back to Billy Hargrove, who solved things with his fists and the toe of a boot aimed squarely at someone's ribs.
How the hell was he supposed to care? It made things so much worse, if he thought he didn’t deserve the pain and the hurt, the fear. If he thought like that, then he’d spend hours laying in bed unable to sleep, like when he was a kid. Wondering why the hell he had to deal with this stuff, when other kids would go on and on about the fun shit they got up to with their parents over the weekend.
And Billy? He’d been screamed at for putting the dishes into the dishwasher wrong.
“This isn’t from Harrington.” The words left his mouth before he knew what he was doing, and a cold dread instantly soaked him. Eddie’s eyes danced back and forth over Billy’s face, like he was trying to keep up with the plot. To figure out how it was, that they’d seemed to make a full circle back to the origins of this conversation.
“No?” Eddie asked, as if he was expecting Billy to elaborate on that. Instead, Billy pulled back— deflating as he put the distance between them again and slumped back against the wall he’d originally been smoking against. He’d forgotten his cigarette for a moment, and now he realized he’d crumpled the end of it in his hand.
Still, he pressed the now slightly fucked up filter to his lips and took a drag, let the feeling soothe him.
He knew there wasn’t much point in posturing now, because Eddie might have been held back a year but he wasn’t a fucking moron, and it was only a matter of time before he put the pieces together.
It was almost a relief, the realization that someone might know what kind of shit Billy was going through. Not that he needed help, but… fuck it, right?
“Before my dad got put in jail, he used to drink a lot— he’d like, come home really pissed off about something, drunk as hell. I’d hide in the closet while he basically trashed the house, I was safe if I just stayed in there until he passed out.”
Billy raised a brow as Eddie slinked closer to him, barely registering the words once Eddie’s arm had made contact with his. A little too close for comfort, but Billy held his ground.
“Neil doesn’t drink,” Billy said, reaching into his jean jacket pocket to pull out the pack of Marlboros he carried with him, tapping the bottom to get a cigarette out and offering it to Eddie. "Not really."
“What does he do?” Eddie asked, carefully taking the offered cigarette as if he knew. That this peace treaty was a tentative one, and he should appreciate everything that came out of it. Billy didn’t really know how to answer his question, swallowing hard instead. He could feel Eddie watching him, and it made him jittery.
Eddie was as patient as he could be, distracting himself by lighting up the cigarette Billy had given him, grimacing after he took a hit from it. “Fuck, man— these taste like shit.”
Billy couldn’t really help but laugh. Because it was fucking absurd, that him and the resident freak of Hawkins were sharing a cigarette behind the gym. That he’d give Eddie so many fucking allowances, resisting the urge to beat his face in like this. And that despite all of that, Eddie still had the nerve to bitch about what Billy gave him.
“Bet you like parliaments,” Billy accused, determinedly looking away as Eddie’s leather-clad arm brushed against him again.
Eddie laughed, shaking his head. Now they were fucking standing here, laughing together. “Nah man, Harrington smokes those.” Billy flushed, because he fucking knew that. Eddie’s tone made it seem like he knew Billy knew that— like this was a whole fucking thing.
“You think he bites the end?” Eddie asked, and Billy could feel eyes on him. Like they were looking for something. A reaction.
“Who the fuck thinks about shit like that?” Billy asked, sounding just a little too defensive.
Eddie simply shrugged, as if it wasn't that big a deal. “I mean it’s the whole point of them, right?” Eddie went on, ignoring Billy’s annoyance. “It’s nice to bite, just like a cigarette holder,” he parroted, one of the many stupid fucking ads Billy had seen on the back of Susan’s magazines.
“Bet Harrington bites down on it while he’s getting head from his pretty little girlfriend,” Eddie went on, casual, as if he wasn’t saying the kind of shit that infiltrated Billy’s wet dreams, the kind of stuff that woke him up in a sweat, humiliated and full of shame.
“The hell are you talking about?” Billy muttered, fully aware of the deep flush coloring his cheeks. Trying to turn away from Eddie did little to hide it.
“Mhm,” Eddie hummed, sounding like he’d just figured out everything he needed to know. “You know, you could try being nice to him.”
Billy finished his cigarette, turning to face Eddie, stubbing it out on the brick wall near his face. “Yeah?” He was feeling a little bold again, was starting to think maybe he really should have just beat the shit out of Eddie in the first place.
“I have it on pretty good authority that people like it when you’re nice to them, instead of trying to beat them up,” Eddie went on, clearly unafraid. “And Steve, man? Steve is like, king of ‘treat me sweet and I’ll drop my pants for you.”
“You don’t know shit,” Billy weakly protested, hands balling into fists by his side. He tried to remember why he hadn’t hit Munson yet… something about Neil finding out, the school ratting on him. Right.
“I know it's a better tactic than treating him like garbage all the time,” Eddie said, shrugging a little. “Just, try a little compassion.”
Yeah, fuck it. Billy hit Eddie square in the nose, his knuckles making contact with his face fast enough that neither of them had time to see it coming. The healing skin split again, and their blood mixed as Eddie’s nose started gushing from the impact.
Billy pulled back, a little disgusted, as Eddie curled in on himself and cupped his face.
“Oh fuck, okay— wow that was, really unnsesscary— I think my brains are leaking out man, what the fuck.” He sounded messed up, voice nasally as he pressed at his face..
“Nah, didn’t have any,” Billy spit back, adrenaline leaving him vibrating. He wanted something else to hit, but Eddie looked kind of pathetic crumpled in on himself and uselessly trying to stop his nose from bleeding.
“I’m trying to help you, you dickhole,” Eddie went on, making a pathetic noise as he fished his handkerchief out of his back pocket and pressed it to his face.
Billy didn’t really know what to say to that. Because it didn’t feel like help. It felt like something fucking terrifying, encroaching in on him, squeezing him until he couldn’t breathe. Until his mind was screaming at him to run, that if he didn’t get away from the thing making him feel like this then something terrible was going to happen.
And besides that, Billy Hargrove didn’t fucking need help.
So he spit, collecting a wad of saliva from under his tongue, sending it flying across the space between them— hitting his target perfectly, the side of Eddie’s face. Wetting his cheek as he stared blearily up at Billy, like he was still trying to put together how this interaction had wound up this way.
And before he could feel badly about any of it, Billy was turning on his heel and stalking away.
He’d finished his fucking cigarette, anyway.