Work Text:
“Guys?” Max shouts, her feet twisting in the dirt, sweaty hands gripping the handlebars of the bike she’d nearly been thrown from.
It’s too fucking dark. She can’t see a goddamned thing. Her friends had been racing her, but then they’d disappeared into nothingness. Somehow, she’d been left behind, flying bumpily down the dirt road at breakneck speed until her bike swerved off and hit a stump.
Her left ankle twinges in pain as she tries to put weight on it. The stump’s flattened her tire, she’s pretty sure, and when she tries to scoot the bike backwards, she’s certain it's toast, by the way the front-end skitters and dips down too low.
“Fuck,” she spits, squinting in the dark as she examines the damage.
There’s definitely something wrong with both her ankle and her bike—and she definitely can’t ride anymore. I’m stranded, she thinks blankly, and then a horrible sensation of being utterly alone fills her, nearly crushing when no one answers as she shouts again, “Hello, anyone?!”
“Damnit!” She dismounts with a sobbing huff, feeling around the rubbery-tire, hoping against all things holy that she’s wrong about it being fucked.
But no—a saggy flatness meets her fingers. The punctured tire wheezes air as she pokes and prods at it.
“Mike! Lucas!” she shouts, and then after a breath she calls out, “Will? Dustin!”
Only a cricket chirps distantly, and for a moment Max stands and looks around at the bleakness surrounding her, taking in the dusty road stretching on and on in both directions, the night sky twinkling above her, the still air of the outskirts of town, fresh and sharp in her nose.
Did her friends really leave her? It was her dumb idea to go racing, since it’s the summer after they’d all graduated the eighth grade, since she’s finally starting to feel free. She’s fifteen now and her bones are firmly settled into Hawkins, her mom thankfully having divorced her horrible stepfather and (a breath before that) her awful stepbrother having finally moved away….
A last-ditch effort to celebrate a new beginning. High school is just over the horizon, her romance with Lucas just starting to bloom, and everything's finally starting to feel right.
But it certainly doesn't feel right now—because now she’s stranded in the middle of nowhere with a twisted ankle, flat tire, and no way to get home. It’ll take her at least a couple of hours to limp back while dragging a bum-bike, and that’s only if she can remember the twists and turns they all took to get out here. Really, Will’s the mastermind at finding these dirt paths . . . and without him, she’s screwed. Royally.
“William?” she screams, over and over again, until her voice cracks hoarsely. “Where the hell are you guys?”
It’s hard to admit defeat, but Max slumps her shoulders as she slowly wheels her damaged bike back onto the dirt road. It’s going to be a long, long walk, she realizes. It hurts moving just a little ways—and it’s more than a little creepy, by the way everything’s so silent and dark, and by the way she doesn’t really know which way to go.
Her leg muscles protest after twenty minutes of trailing back the way she came, and by forty-five minutes, not only does her ankle scream, but her feet ache, and she’s uncertain if she’s taken the right fork in the road.
“Goddamnit,” she curses, kicking at her bike and howling again as her injured ankle protests. “Why did I think this was a good idea, anyway?”
She lets herself cry, standing still for a moment as the tears leak down her face, and then she swallows boldly and limps another ten minutes down the dirt path she’s started on, when her feet finally scuff across the smooth cement of an actual road.
Headlights glint from a distance away, and Max finds herself waving frantically, hoping that the driver will notice a lone girl dragging along her bicycle.
She steps off the road as the lights grow closer, hearing the pulse of rock music blaring, fearing being hit. Of course, a driver can’t see her in the dark, she reasons, and certainly the driver can’t hear her yelling, even when she screams so loud it hurts her own ears.
That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t try though.
“Please help me!” she shrieks again, and she flinches in surprise when the car slows to a stop instead of whizzing past her like she expected.
Her stomach drops when she recognizes the shiny blueness of an all-too-familiar Camaro, and even before she sees the driver, she knows that Billy has found her.
How in the hell? she thinks blindly, swaying as the rock music dies abruptly, the drawling voice of her stepbrother reaching her ears as he rolls down his window and calls out, “You lost or something?”
“No.”
The dim-yellow bulb from his cabin lights up his sneering face. “You sure look lost.”
Flashbacks from all the times he’s picked on her, shoved her into things, or held her down with his heavy body worms through her mind—and Max finds herself backing away while shaking her head, hating that it hurts to distance herself, hating that she’s just as scared of him as she’d been when they’d lived together months upon months ago.
This can’t be happening.
The driver’s side door opens, the metal creaking making her sick as Billy steps out. He’s taller than she remembers and more muscular now—but with the same hateful face she always sees in her nightmares. It’s those familiar blazing, blue eyes and awful, twisted smirk, that makes her pulse pound in her throat, his plush lips ugly and snarling, exposing sharp, white teeth.
“I’m not lost,” she stammers, nearly dropping the bike as it refuses to roll back with her stuttering steps.
“That bike looks done.”
She doesn’t answer him, choosing instead to glare, like she’s brave (like she’s not almost pissing herself, the heat of her urine wanting to splash against her shaky legs), wishing for all the world that anyone but him would have found her. Everything inside her trembles as he takes a step towards her. His jawline looks too defined, sharp like a shark, and his gaze looks even meaner.
“What’re you doing out here, all alone?” he asks, tilting his head.
“I’m with my friends.”
“Yeah? Where are they, then?”
Max shrugs, looking around wildly in hopes that Lucas or anyone will appear. The air suddenly smells stagnant. Too deadly and still. Like a deadzone with no one in it but her . . . and swollen with the person she wants to see least in the entire world.
This is just fucking perfect, she thinks absently, that Billy would find her and drag her back home—or do something worse, a cruder thought blares, but she stamps it down, focusing on the fear that he’ll torment her and then get her in trouble one last time with her mom, who will probably never let Max out of her sight again….
“Seems like you need a ride,” Billy drawls, fingering a smoke out of his pack and then lighting it. “Guess I’m your knight in shining armor, huh?”
“I don’t need your help.”
Billy stares her straight in the eyes, making her feel small and weak as he exhales a long, smoky breath.
“I can walk back,” she continues.
“Maybe.” He nods like he doesn’t agree, flicking the ash off his cigarette and inhaling again, his face lit up like a demon in the cigarette’s harsh glow. “Or maybe you’ll wind up dead in a ditch somewhere—who knows what kind of weirdos lurk around these parts.”
A chill goes up her spine. She can see her own death in his overly large pupils, her corpse cold and still after being brutalized by some stranger. (Or maybe by someone she wishes was a stranger.) The way he stares at her makes her nauseous, overly intent like he used to do, like when he’d held her beneath him and told her that she was a worthless, little brat, and that he could break her if he wanted to.
“I’ll throw your bike in the back, come on,” he says, stepping towards her.
He laughs when she stumbles and lifts her left ankle in pain, eyeing her knowingly.
“You fucked up, huh?”
“No!”
“You were always a shitty liar.”
“I’m fine,” she insists, but she can’t move as his looming figure approaches her, can’t breathe as his hands snake out to grasp her handlebars; he rips the bike out of her clenched hands.
“Stop being stubborn. You need my help—but you’re too stupid to admit it.”
“I’m not stupid!”
“You look stupid,” he scoffs, spitting his cigarette out and smashing it beneath one booted foot as he turns to finagle her bike into his car. “You want a ride or not? I can take the bike without you….”
Max stares at the back of his head, imagining throwing a rock straight through the mulleted curls and into his skull. She doesn’t want his help, for fuck’s sake—and she sure as shit doesn’t trust him—but she doesn’t want him to take her bike and leave her stranded here, even more.
Everything inside her hurts as she whispers, “Fine. I’ll go with you….”
“Not with that attitude you won’t,” Billy answers, slamming the passenger door shut after he’s secured her bike in the back, his face smug and satisfied as he turns towards her. “It’s ass, grass, or cash to ride with me.”
Max gapes at him, the pit in her stomach growing. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“I don’t have any money on me, Billy!”
For a moment she’s more annoyed than scared—because of course her awful stepbrother would expect her to pay him for the favor of transporting her back to town, but then her heart drops as he smiles, at the feverish glint in his eyes.
“I didn’t expect that you would….”
“I—I don’t have any drugs either,” she stammers.
“A good girl wouldn’t, no,” he agrees, still smiling. “So that leaves the third option.”
All the color drains from her face. He can’t be serious, right? The raw terror she’d felt upon him discovering her grows thicker, desperate, haunted yet knowing. The denial screams that she’s practically his sister—even if their parents aren’t together anymore, they’d spent several long years being raised beside one another . . . he couldn’t really mean to suggest….
“You’re joking….” she whispers.
“Am I?” Billy asks, sneering at her. “Because it looks like I could just leave you here, Maxine—and it looks like you won’t get very far on that ankle. Don’t pretend you’re so prim and proper not to know what I want. You’ve probably been handing it out to your little boyfriends, hmm? Do you think you’re too good for me or something?”
Yes, she definitely thinks she’s too good for him, but she isn’t stupid enough to say it. Instead, she blinks at him rapidly, her mind racing, her heart thumping so hard in her chest that she thinks she might black out, as she considers the proposition.
“Do you want a ride or not?” Billy breathes, stepping closer to her.
This can’t be happening, she thinks again, flinching as his large body towers over hers, inhaling sharply as she catches a whiff of his bitter cologne, of the sweat emanating from him, of the cigarette reek from his breath.
“You can’t be serious,” she pleads. “Billy, don’t do this—I’m your sister.”
“No, you’re not.” He laughs, the heat in his eyes going cold. “Not once have you reached out to me, sister . . . not once have you regretted the loss of our family. I guess I was the only one who took it seriously....”
No, you didn't, she thinks bitterly, but she blushes because the rest of his statement is true, dropping her gaze to the dusty ground. She’d been happy when Billy turned eighteen and fled off to God-knows-where to start his new life without bothering her, and she’d been happier when her mother had decided to divorce Neil….
Honestly, she’s never really given a second thought to either of them. She’s been free. She’s been gleeful to live her life without Billy or Neil’s suffocating presence.
“Ass, grass, or cash,” Billy repeats, giving her his vile, half-lidded look. “And you only have one of them. So, do you want a ride or not?”
He steps even closer to her, breathing his hot breath down the side of her face as he gets so close that they’re nearly touching. Can he hear her heartrate skyrocket in her chest? Can he see her pulse pounding behind her eyes? Can he smell her fear-sweat, the sharp musk slickening her chest, her pits?
“I’m just kidding, shitbird,” he whispers.
She freezes and then blinks up at him in shock, staring at the little twitch in his neck, the fluttering cord in his jaw. Before she can feel relieved, before she can laugh at the absurdity of it all, she hears him sniff tauntingly.
“All I want is a kiss….”
“What?”
“You really are stupid,” he mouths, his hand snaking out to grasp her neck softly, gliding up to cup her cheek. “Kiss me.”
She squeaks, “Are you still kidding?”, but then his mouth meets hers, and she knows that he isn’t, shock flowing through her like an electric current as she tastes his cigarette-tinged breath, something salty yet sweet, his hot tongue invading her mouth.
It doesn’t feel like kissing Lucas—safe and wholesome and warm. It feels overwhelming, her small body caged by his towering one, her mouth engulfed by predatory heat. Awful tingles shoot down her as he explores her mouth, sliding his tongue in just the right way against hers, and then he finally pulls back with a satisfied sigh.
“Are you still my sister?” he asks, grinning.
“This isn’t funny,” Max bites out, shoving her hands hard against his chest; she flinches as his muscles twitch beneath her palms, his brawny body not moving.
“Don’t. You’re about to piss me off. And if you piss me off, you’re stuck here with your fucked ankle and no bike.”
The soft deadliness of his words makes her drop her useless hands to her sides. She’s beyond screwed, she knows, trapped in Billy’s twisted game unless she wants to end up completely abandoned. Maybe if she just admits that they aren’t siblings he’ll back off—maybe if she just goes along with his weird, kissing game….
“You win,” she says shakily, “I kissed you, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t kiss me back,” Billy insists, pulling a face. “Try again.”
Max sucks in a breath and stares at his large boots, feeling her ankle pulse angrily as she steels up all her courage. Everything feels so fake. So unreal. But, she can do this—right? She’d just sort of done it. She can do better….
With every ounce of courage she can muster, she lifts her face and closes her eyes. Billy slowly brushes his mouth against hers, and she inhales sharply, breathing in his smoky, masculine scent, shivering as his hot, wet tongue teases her lips, before pushing in further. She lets him deepen the kiss, even though she doesn’t want to, and feels the heat of it flutter all through her, straight down to her toes.
It’s intense. It’s wet. And it doesn’t feel fake anymore, but too real, too frightening, like being suffocated—and she feels very young, his stubble brushing her youthful face, like a child being kissed inappropriately by a full-grown man.
“That’s it, that’s my girl,” he whispers, pulling back slightly only to kiss her again and again as she forces herself not to resist. “Is this how you kiss your little friends?”
“No!” she growls, turning her face away as he tries to pull her in again, wanting to stomp on his feet if hers didn’t hurt so much; instead, she stands stock-still, like a scarecrow.
“How do you kiss them, then?” he rumbles lowly.
“I don’t.”
But he doesn’t seem to believe her as he grips the back of her neck so hard it nearly hurts, his mouth becoming angry, greedy. She gasps as his tongue slides swiftly against hers, trying to match his pace, trying to give into the heated assault.
“I think you can do better than that,” he murmurs, releasing her.
“Billy, please—I just….”
“Save it,” he says sharply, the darkness making his face look more demonic under the pale moon’s glow. “I’m tired of you acting like a little schoolgirl. You’re a big girl now, aren’t you?”
“I—”
“Big girls who want rides from men don’t make a fuss. Big girls who screw around with their little friends don’t pretend to be shy virgins. Now—”
“But I am a virgin!” she hisses.
He tsks, rolling his eyes dramatically. “Sure, kid, sure. You all are, huh? No girl wants to admit she’s a whore.”
“I’m not a whore!”
“That’s good, because I don’t like whores,” Billy says smoothly, smiling again. “Now show me your tits or the deal's off. I’m getting tired of arguing with you.”
“Please, Billy, just listen—” she croaks, but her pleas die as he turns abruptly from her, stomping back to his car like he’s about to leave.
Fear bubbles through her mouth, “Okay! Okay, I’ll show you!”
I thought you said you were kidding, she wants to scream as he turns back towards her expectantly, but she finds herself clumsily lifting up her t-shirt, dragging it up to show her pale midriff, pausing only a second before she shows him her plain, white bra.
“Happy?”
“Your tits are under that ugly thing, I think. So, no.”
Hot humiliation burns through her as she hooks her fingers under her bra and tugs it up, squeezing her eyes shut as her perky breasts jiggle free.
“Wow,” he murmurs, and her face grows hotter as she imagines his eyes honing in on her bubble-gum pink nipples, at the milky-white and slightly freckled globes she’d only ever shown Lucas before. “They’ve certainly grown since I last saw you, kiddo….”
“Fuck off,” she says through clenched teeth, shoving down her bra and shirt. “Are you happy now?”
She yelps as he lurches forward and grabs her wrists, tugging her to him. “I’m getting sick of your bullshit, Maxine. I’m not going to warn you again—show me your tits and stop complaining. I can and will leave you here to die, do you want that?”
“You don’t know that I’d die,” she stupidly argues.
She gulps as his blue eyes burn into hers, swallowing hard as he lets her go with a curse.
“W-wait!” she stammers as he shoves her back, swallowing a pained yelp and lifting her ankle as he turns to stride towards his car.
With a loud snarl, he spins back towards her, grabbing her and lifting her up into his strong arms. “This ends now,” he whispers, making her shriek as he clutches her so tightly to him that she can barely breathe. “I’m going to set you down and you’re going to put your tits on the hood of my car. If you don’t, I’m going to leave you here. Got it?”
He drops her roughly in front of his Camaro, the warm air suddenly cold as her damaged ankle hisses pain all through her, as his demand worms its way through her brain.
Put your breasts on the hood, her thoughts whimper at her, just DO it.
It feels surreal to lift back up her shirt and bra, and alien to bend over so that her bare tits smash against the cold metal of the car’s sloping front-end, but she does it, her mind reeling, her body trembling with anxiety and adrenaline.
“Good girl,” Billy says, placing a large, warm hand on the small of her back. “Now pull down your shorts so that I can see your underwear.”
His fingers dig into her painfully when she hesitates, but an iciness lances through her, making her feel numb and resigned. If she doesn’t listen, she knows for sure she’s going to be left here with no way home—and in all the time they’ve been arguing, not a soul has passed on the open road.
Her friends are probably miles away. She’s completely alone and helpless. Her ankle hurts too much to walk on it anymore; she needs Billy to get back to town.
Numb fingers claw at the button and zip of her shorts, thumbing them clumsily open until she can shimmy them down her slender legs. It isn’t heated embarrassment that rushes through her, but a stone-cold certainty as she shows her step-brother her white, cotton panties.
He’s going to fuck me, she thinks, a terrified whimper escaping her as he hums in appreciation. He’s going to take my virginity.
Somehow it seems like a million timelines are colliding at once, and at every intersection of them, that she was always destined to get raped by her step-brother. Hadn’t he held her underneath him a hundred times before? Hadn’t his large, warm body enveloped her time and time again—crushing her underneath him, just as he’s about to do? Hadn’t his hot breath ghosted her neck, her ear, breathing smoky muskiness all through her?
“Not gonna hurt you, Red,” he says in his soft, drawling voice, the one he thinks is soothing (the one he’s used time and time again when he’s done something wrong and doesn’t want her to tell anyone); his fingers pull her panties to the side, toying with her slit, dipping inside her as Lucas had done, only a time or two before. “You’re already wet….”
But she doesn’t understand why she’s wet, with as terrified as she is. The invasion of Billy’s thick fingers make her moan in fear, a twinge of pleasure going through her as he slowly stretches her out, slowly seems to find that spot inside her that makes her toes curl, slowly seems to show her what her pussy is made for….
“You like that?” he breathes huskily in her ear, “I can feel you squeezing around me.”
“Please stop,” she begs, but she doesn’t dare move, terrified that he’ll make it hurt, like she knows he’s apt to do. “Please, Billy….”
“Yeah, keep begging me. Just like that,” he murmurs, pulling his hand away to replace his fingers with something much thicker and warmer, something oozing and twitching….
His cock, her mind spins, reeling as she leans forward on one-tip toe, her bum ankle lifted in agony.
She hisses as it pushes in, the pain sharp and brief, trembling as her wetness gives way to the throbbing bulge sliding in inch by inch.
Oh, my God, she thinks, He’s actually fucking me….
(Billy's just stolen my virginity….)
But it’s hard to think as he thrusts against her, her mind spinning as he wraps his muscular arms around her slender waist, one hand dipping between her legs to toy with her clit. Time seems to go into slow-motion while he plays with her expertly, drawing a shaky moan from her lips, making pleasure coil deep within her as he slowly pushes himself to the hilt, only to draw back again and push in deeper still.
“Billy!” she cries, her nipples burning against the cool frame of his Camaro, pink on blue. “Billy, please!”
STOP! Don’t cum in me, she thinks wildly, but she knows she can’t control that, and in her helplessness, she melts under him, nearly sobbing as he fucks her slow, then more quickly, his gasping breaths ringing in her ear as he mouths her neck, his teeth nipping gently at her shoulder.
“You feel so fucking good, Max,” he groans, pinning her beneath him as he shudders. “You’re such a big girl now….”
She tries to squirm tightly against the car, further away from him, as she feels him twitch inside her.
“Please,” she begs, hugging the car so hard that she’s trying to become one with it. “Please—”
“Yes,” he groans, pumping into her hard, the twitching turning into pulsing, his hot sperm dousing her insides in heated jets; his fingers curl up just right against her clit, and she feels the horrific coil within herself snap, her body seizing up, orgasm flooding through her, the pain in her ankle melting into whiteness.
“No!” she cries, gasping as his thrusts grow jerky and uneven, the bliss ripping through her like a bullet. The blueness of the car turns white, her vision tunnelling, going hazy. “Billy!”
“Fuck!” he huffs, stilling as he presses against her, pinning her to the hood, and finishes draining himself with a grunt of satisfaction.
Wetness leaks down her legs as he slowly pulls away, their ragged breaths and the rustle of his jeans being rezipped the only sounds in the still air.
“Guess I owe you that ride now,” Billy murmurs, pulling her shorts back up, making her panties squelch against her used pussy. “Your boy toys make you cum like that? Or was that special, just for me?”
She’s so out of it that she can’t even tell him to ‘fuck off’, her body shaking against the cold metal of the hood, and she feels nothing but an empty hollowness, a blank desperation of being thoroughly used.
I don’t want a ride anymore, she thinks about telling him, but she can’t, tears springing to her eyes as he opens the passenger’s side door for her and she slowly and awkwardly stumble-limps in. He buckles her seatbelt for her a few moments later, not talking as he situates himself beside her, and he doesn’t even have to tell her this time not to say anything to anyone, or threaten her with bodily harm if she does, because she sure as hell isn’t ever going to admit what just happened between them—not to her mom, not to his dad, and certainly not to her missing friends, who will greet her tomorrow with unsure smiles and ask her where she disappeared to….