Chapter Text
It was a mistake coming here.
Steve already knew that, standing in the too-hot, too-loud entryway of some junior’s half-condemned rental, the music pulsing like a migraine behind his eyes. The kind of place where the walls sweat and the air stinks of cheap beer, old bong water, and too much cologne. He’d been here ten minutes and already wanted to crawl out of his own skin.
The ceiling was spinning, or maybe that was just his head.
He hadn’t eaten today. Or yesterday, if he was being honest. The days were starting to blur. Everything had been off since midterms, or maybe before that…
Somewhere, someone was yelling over beer pong. A girl with a glittered face tripped past him and giggled, grabbing at his shoulder to keep from falling. He gave her a half-hearted smile, the kind he used to be good at, but now it cracked somewhere at the edges.
Steve didn’t party for fun anymore. He partied to forget. Forget the dragging days. The grey hours between class and bed when nothing seemed real. When everything felt like cotton and static and maybe if he drank enough, he could feel something again.
“Shit,” he muttered, pushing through the crowd toward the kitchen.
And that was when it happened. That shift. That pull. Like the universe caught his collar and yanked. He looked up, and Billy Hargrove was already watching him. Leaning against the fridge, beer in hand, like he’d been summoned by some awful part of Steve’s subconscious that wanted him to suffer.
Of course Billy was here. Billy was always there. Always at the edge of Steve’s periphery, always circling like a damn vulture with a cigarette and a smirk.
He looked the same as always—dangerous and sunburnt, all denim and muscle, curls wild and damp at the temples, a fresh bruise along his jaw that Steve didn’t even want to imagine the origin of.
Billy didn’t smile. Not at first. Just stared, eyes sharp and slow. Like a wolf thinking about its options.
Then he pushed off the fridge and started walking toward him.
Steve tried to pretend he didn’t see it. Turned toward the counter, poured himself something that tasted like burnt sugar and battery acid, but it was too late. He felt that heat already. That buzz in his spine like a warning.
Billy cocked his head. “You followin’ me now, Harrington?”
Steve turned, drink in hand, face blank. “This isn’t your house.”
Billy’s smile came sharp and fast, teeth bared. “No, but I walk in and there you are. Like clockwork. Like a puppy.”
Steve didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Not with Billy that close, the air between them heavy with stale beer and gasoline and sweat. Steve felt it like a bruise, deep in his chest.
Billy stepped closer, invading his space like he owned it.
"You gonna throw another punch like last time?" Steve asked, voice low.
Billy shrugged. "You gonna cry like last time?"
Steve flinched.
He had cried. Just a little. In the bathrooms at the gym, after Billy shoved him against the lockers during their last argument-slash-foreplay. It wasn’t from pain. It was from the crack—something in him splitting open, and Billy saw it.
And Billy didn’t laugh. He didn’t hit him again either. He just looked at him. Like Steve was something raw and worth studying.
Steve hadn’t known what to do with that. He still didn’t.
"I’m not in the mood," Steve said now, backing up toward the hallway.
Billy followed, easy as breath.
"You’re never in the mood," he said. "But you always stay."
"I don’t—"
"Bullshit."
Steve’s hands were shaking now. Just a little. He took another sip, tried to get that buzzing in his chest to shut up. Billy was too close again. Too much. The heat of him. The presence. Like violence wrapped in sex, standing too still to be safe.
Steve swallowed. Hard. "Go bother someone else."
"Why?" Billy leaned in. "They won’t blush when I say their name."
Steve hated him.
Hated the way he knew exactly where to press. Hated the way his heart jumped when Billy said "Steve" with that low, dangerous whisper, like a sin rolling off his tongue.
Billy turned away before Steve could answer.
Walked into the next room like nothing happened. Like he hadn’t just reached into Steve’s chest and crushed something soft.
Steve found the backyard. Sat on a crate. Tried to breathe. The stars looked fake. His hands wouldn’t stop trembling. And his head was loud again. Too loud.
What are you doing?
Why do you let him touch you like that?
Why don’t you stop going to these parties?
Because if he stayed home, it got worse.
Because if he was alone, the silence turned into something else. Something dangerous. Something dark.
Because sometimes—just sometimes—when Billy shoved him against a wall or called him pretty or bruised his ego with a single look, Steve felt alive. It was fucked. He knew it. But the alternative was worse.
He scrolled through his phone. No messages. Not even from Robin.
He was alone. Except he wasn’t. Because Billy was still inside. Still watching. Still waiting. And Steve hated himself for wanting to go back in.
He remembered last month, late October. A house party like this one, even colder. The sky had been bruised with rain and smoke, and the streetlights were yellow and mean. Steve had been drunk. Not the good kind either. The sloppy, self-pitying kind that came after learning your girlfriend of two years had been fucking a poli-sci senior named Connor Whitman behind your back since the beginning of the semester. Robin had tried to warn him. Everyone had, in their way. But Steve hadn’t wanted to see it.
He’d stood outside on the driveway, barely upright, trying to light a cigarette with shaking hands. It wasn’t even his brand. He didn’t smoke. He just needed something to do with his fingers, something that would keep him from picking up his phone again and scrolling through Nancy’s texts, looking for clues that had been there all along.
Billy had shown up without warning, like he always did—shoulders tense, boots loud, some new cut blooming red along his cheekbone like a dare. He hadn’t said anything at first. Just grabbed the cigarette from Steve’s fingers and took a long, slow drag. His eyes were bloodshot. Or maybe that was just how they always looked. Like something had been festering under his skin for a long time.
"You look like shit," Billy had said eventually.
Steve had laughed. Laughed so hard he’d nearly choked. "Yeah, well. Turns out my girlfriend prefers men with no moral compass and a hard-on for Ronald Reagan."
Billy snorted. "Guess you finally found out you’re not that special."
That had hurt. It was supposed to. Steve had wanted it to. He wanted to be punished, maybe. Or maybe he just wanted someone to push back hard enough that he could stop feeling so weightless, so fucking pointless.
They’d argued after that. Sharp, ugly words flung like darts. Steve couldn’t even remember what set it off. Something about Nancy. Something about Billy calling her a "tight-lipped liar with a voice like a mosquito." Steve had shoved him, hard, and Billy had shoved back, and before he knew it, they were pressed up against the side of someone’s car, breathless and snarling.
Billy had him pinned. One hand wrapped in Steve’s collar, the other braced beside his head. His knee was between Steve’s legs; not quite touching, but close. Too close. Close enough that Steve’s whole body went taut, like a live wire, every nerve screaming. His breath hitched. He told himself it was fear. Just adrenaline. Just the cold.
Billy had looked at him then—not with hate, not really, but with something worse. Curiosity. Like Steve was some wounded thing he was trying to dissect without gloves.
"You’re shaking," Billy had said. His voice had dropped. "What, you think I’m gonna kiss you?"
And Steve had snapped.
"Fuck you," he’d hissed, wrenching away like he’d been burned, chest heaving. His skin had gone hot with shame, like something had been exposed. Something awful. "I’m not—Don’t flatter yourself."
Billy had just laughed. A low, bitter sound. "Keep telling yourself that, Harrington."
Steve hadn’t been able to sleep for two nights after that. Not because he wanted Billy. He didn’t. He wasn’t... that. He wasn’t like that.
He told himself it was just the power games. The manipulation. Billy got under people’s skin. That’s all it was. Some twisted mind game. A control thing. Steve had just been vulnerable, that’s all. Caught off guard. But the way his body had reacted—that was harder to explain. Harder to ignore.
It lingered. In the locker room after gym, when Billy walked past him half-naked and damp from the showers. In seminars, when Billy sat too far back in his chair, legs wide, eyes heavy-lidded and bored. In parking lots, in hallways, in nightmares.
Sometimes Steve woke up sweating. Sometimes he couldn’t even remember the dream, just the feeling. That same tightness. That same guilt. He never told Robin. Never told anyone. He couldn’t even admit it to himself. Because if it was true—if even a piece of it was true—then what did that make him?
And what the hell did it make Billy?
Now, sitting in the dark backyard with his heart thrashing in his throat, Steve could still feel that moment like it had just happened. Billy’s knee. Billy’s voice. The way the air had felt too thin, like Steve had forgotten how to breathe. And still, he stayed. Still, he couldn’t make himself leave. Because even if he hated Billy—and God, he did—some twisted part of him needed to know what would happen next. Needed to know how far this would go before something finally broke.
A twig snapped in the bushes nearby. Steve looked up fast.
Billy.
He was standing in the dark, just past the porch light, cigarette burning low in his fingers. Neither of them said anything. Steve didn’t move. Billy took a drag, then exhaled slow. "You run out here to cry again?"
Steve’s jaw tightened. "Fuck off."
Billy didn’t.
Instead, he stepped into the light. His face was unreadable, all shadows and sharp edges. "You like this," he said quietly. "Being hurt. Being seen."
"I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about."
"Yeah, you do."
Billy sat down on the crate next to him, too close, knees brushing. Steve didn’t move away. Couldn’t. Because some part of him—some sick, broken part—needed this. Needed the heat of Billy’s body, the constant push-pull, the sharp edges that made him feel less numb.
"You scare the shit out of me," Steve said.
Billy was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “Good.”
Steve didn’t know what he would’ve done next—say something stupid, lean in closer, maybe just sit there and let himself be ruined—if they hadn’t been interrupted.
“Yo, Hargrove!”
A voice rang out from the porch. Some guy in a red Letterman jacket, already half-drunk and swaggering. He was grinning like a jackass and holding up a blunt. “You in or what, man?”
Billy turned his head lazily toward the voice. “Yeah,” he called back, but didn’t move. His eyes stayed on Steve a beat too long, unreadable in the dark, smoke curling from his lips like punctuation. Then, finally, he stood. The crate groaned under the loss of weight. He flicked the cigarette down into the dirt and ground it out with his boot.
“Later, Harrington,” he muttered, like it didn’t mean anything. Like none of it ever meant anything.
Steve watched him walk away, feeling that same slow, sick twist in his stomach. That ache of something unfinished. Or something that never should’ve started in the first place.
The night was too quiet now. Too still.
He scrubbed his hands over his face, fingers trembling. He needed to get a grip. Needed to stop chasing this—whatever this was. He wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t eating, barely even showing up to class. He’d bombed his last English Lit assignment so hard his TA had emailed him with concern. Said something about “academic wellbeing” and “personal resources.” Steve hadn’t replied.
It was Nancy, maybe. Or started with her. The way she’d looked at him lately—like she was always just barely tolerating his presence. Like she was already halfway gone.
And then finding out she was gone—that she’d been letting some overconfident poli-sci prick with an ego problem climb through her window on Tuesday nights while Steve was pulling late shifts at the student union—that had shattered something in him.
It wasn’t the betrayal. Not really. It was what it meant. That he hadn’t been enough. Not smart enough, not interesting enough, not enough in any way that made someone stay. It was a wound he’d carried since high school, since his dad’s fists and his mom’s absence and all the ways people had left him without even saying goodbye.
He was still staring at the grass when a voice cut through the fog.
“Steve?”
He blinked up, startled. A girl was standing a few feet away, holding a red cup, face backlit by porch lights. Her name was Mia or Maya—he’d had a class with her once. Poli Sci 102, ironically. She’d smiled at him a few times. He’d barely noticed.
“Hey,” he said, defaulting to charm. His mouth smiled before the rest of him caught up. “Didn’t see you there.”
She giggled, swaying a little. “You okay? You looked, um... deep in thought.”
He shrugged. “Just needed air. Party’s kind of a lot.”
“It is,” she agreed, stepping closer. “Wanna come dance? Or at least pretend we’re too cool for everything together?”
He didn’t want to. Not really. His head was still full of smoke and Billy’s voice and that stupid fucking knee between his thighs. But he couldn’t sit here forever. Couldn’t let himself spiral again. “Yeah,” he said, pushing himself up with a practiced grin. “Why not?”
The house was hotter than before. More bodies, more sweat. The music had gotten worse, or maybe just louder. Steve let her lead him into the crush of people, where lights spun too fast and everything felt like it was vibrating. She was pretty, in a clean, safe kind of way—glossy hair, soft perfume, a laugh that didn’t cut too deep. He could let this happen. Pretend for a night.
They danced. He held her hips, swayed with the music. Let her hands curl around his shoulders. She was warm and willing and she smiled up at him like she meant it. But then her lips brushed his ear and for a split second, it wasn’t her voice he heard—it was Billy, low and rough and too close. Steve flinched.
“Are you okay?” she asked, looking up.
He smiled too fast. “Yeah. Just dizzy. Need a drink.”
She followed him to the kitchen, and they downed something that tasted like sugar and rubbing alcohol. He didn’t even feel it hit. He was already spinning. He laughed at something she said, touched her back, said all the right things. He could do this. He could be the guy who moved on.
Ten minutes later, she kissed him in the hallway, and he kissed her back. It was fine. Familiar. Easy.
But when her hands slipped under his shirt and pulled him into the bathroom, locking the door behind them, Steve felt the same cold flash behind his eyes. Like he was watching himself from somewhere far away. He kissed her harder. Tried to stay in the moment. But then she moaned a little against his mouth and pressed into him—and his body reacted, but his mind… His mind went somewhere else. Back to cold October air. To cigarette smoke. To the bruise on Billy’s jaw and the heat of his breath and the way he’d said, You’re shaking. To the fact that no one had ever looked at him like that before. Not even Nancy.
Maya was breathing against his neck now, hands slipping lower. Steve gripped the sink behind her like a lifeline, chest rising and falling too fast. He couldn’t do this.
“Sorry,” he muttered, pulling back.
She blinked. “What?”
“I—I’m not feeling great. I think I drank too much.” It was easier than the truth.
Her face fell, a little. “Oh. Okay. Yeah, sure.”
He kissed her cheek like an apology, opened the door, and left before she could say anything else.
He found the hallway mirror and didn’t recognize the face looking back. Eyes bloodshot, jaw clenched too tight, skin pale under the overhead light. He splashed water on his face and didn’t look back up. In the distance, someone shouted. Laughter. Music.
Steve leaned against the wall and let his head thud back once. Twice. He was unraveling. And the worst part?
He wasn’t sure he even wanted to stop.