To Heal All Wounds

The Games We Play

Steve turned, and just as he'd predicted, Billy was lounging against his countertop, his hips rocked all the way to the side, with a stir stick hanging from his lips, smiling like a wolf. Steve could swear he caught Billy's eyes flicking back up as he stared at something lower than the back of Steve's head while his back was turned.

Steve ignored the way his face felt warm and his body reacted without his permission to Billy's gaze.

"Looking more and more like yourself every day, man," Steve chirped instead, allowing his hands to come to rest on the counter, leaning heavily against his wrists.

Billy looked, for all intents and purposes, like he had before he'd died. A denim jacket, a solid-colored tee shirt, and the tightest jeans Steve had ever seen on another man. He even had a set of aviators hooked down to his collar, the weight of the glasses pulling the neckline down to reveal the hollow of his throat. He looked like the old Billy Hargrove in everything but his expression. In the month that he'd been back, Steve had watched his expressions go from guarded to something much softer as they interacted. Something closer to the one he used to hook the housewives of Hawkins. Closer, but not exact, because even then it still had the edge of a hunter. There was nothing of that in this expression.

There hadn't been since that first day at the station.

Billy visibly preened at Steve's observation, straightening up with a smile that Steve supposed used to be predatory, but now he just recognized as Billy's. It was all pointed teeth and flashes of pink tongue and it wrinkled his cheeks and his eyes. His brows knitted together between his eyes for just a second before they smoothed back down, sloping towards his temples. He adjusted his denim jacket and smoothed a hand over the hips of his faded jeans. As he moved, that stupid dagger earring that had ruined Steve's life for a whole calendar year cut through the air, tapping his jaw.

Steve was struck, not for the first time since Billy had been coming in, with the urge to take that earring between his teeth and pull, ever so slightly.

"First check finally come through," Steve asked, drying off his hands if only to give them something to do as he watched Billy peacock in his new clothes.

"Yep, and Susan wasn't going to hear anything about me paying for shit to help out until I got myself some clothes so..."

He'd tried to help Susan with bills. Three years ago, Steve would never have believed it. Three years ago, of course, Billy was stealing kids' lunch money to buy his own food after school. Not that Steve had known anything about that until an out-of-the-blue admission from the other man last week.

"Not sure why I even told you, Harrington. Anyway, have a good evening. Eddie's over right? Tell him I said 'hey.'"

And then he'd knocked twice on the counter and left.

"You went and bought everything a size down, I see," Steve casually mentioned as he tried to avoid looking too hard at the swell of Billy's thighs as he shifted his stance, showing off for his audience. Billy loved an audience, and recently it seemed like his target audience was Steve. Steve at exactly 5:15 every Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Sometimes it was Steve at 10:40 on Sunday mornings if it was just him opening. But no matter when, Billy would walk in, detour to the cream and sugar counter for a stir stick, and begin a kind of routine show with Steve as his captive audience.

And Steve had gotten so good at audience participation.

"You make a habit of noticing how all your friends fit into their clothes?"

Billy had returned to lounging against the counter again, his hips rocked back out. He positioned himself below Steve. He always did. Always looked up at Steve as he laid himself out against the surface of the counter and Steve could swear that he craned his neck back and to the side to expose the length of his throat on purpose. He was smiling, and the expression was mostly teeth, and it wasn't a challenge. But Billy was working the pale wood over with his horrible, wicked jaws and was staring up at Steve almost through his lashes. Something warm and heavy settled in Steve's stomach as he watched the muscles in Billy's neck flex as he chewed. Something that Steve hadn't felt since Eddie leaned over in the RV two years ago and asked aren't ya, Big Boy? Something that was living and writhing and pressing aorund inside of Steve in search of... Steve didn't know what.