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thissortofsorcery · 11 months

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16 for the soft prompts? Harringrove, my one and only❤️💖❤️

Thank you ☀️

I, um. I did it again. So you get almost 2k. Yay?

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16. laughing while kissing

It was the kid's idea.

They were spread around the living room at Steve's house after a long afternoon of swimming, with full bellies and painted with different shades of sunburn. Dustin had put a movie on for them to watch, but nobody was really paying attention to it. Billy himself was dozing on the couch, head on Steve's chest, letting the feeling of his fingers in Billy's hair and the sound of the tv and of the kids' whispered bickering lull him to sleep.

"NO WAY you can keep a straight face for longer than two minutes, Dustin!" Max yelled into the silence, jerking Billy awake. His groan joined the voices of the other kids' complaints, all of them yanked from their own silent daydreaming.

"Yes, I can!" Dustin yelled back. Lucas, in the middle of them on the floor, rolled his eyes. "Last week I lasted three minutes while my mom stared me down before I broke."

"What'd you burn this time?" Steve asked, and Billy felt the vibrations of his chest.

"I singed a curtain slightly, but that's irrelevant–"

"It's irrelevant because there's no way you can keep a straight face for two minutes if I stare you down," Max challenged, a smug expression on her face.

"Unbelievable," Dustin said, shaking his head. "Lucas, back me up."

"I'm staying out of this," Lucas said, sounding like the argument had already taken years off his life.

"You started this conversation!"

"No, I said the movie was so boring my face didn't move for fifteen minutes, you said that was impossible," Lucas argued. "Then Max said it was impossible for you, and you went off. This is between you."

"Fine, Steve! Back me up!"

"You can't ask Steve, he's my brother in law!" Max yelled.

"Well, he's my brother!" Dustin yelled back.

"They're not gonna let me sleep, are they?" Billy mumbled into Steve's chest, hearing it rumble when Steve chuckled.

"No, babe, they're not," He said.

"Fucking kids," Billy groaned, pushing himself up from the couch with a sullen look on his face.

He got a Coke from the fridge as the yelling went on in the living room. The patio door muffled it much better, and he managed to enjoy a nice, rousing cigarette before he went back in to deal with the madness that was the dweebs when they were being stubborn about something.

Especially when it was Max leading the pack.

When Billy went inside, Dustin and Max were sitting across from each other on the living room rug, faces blank, two one dollar notes piled between them. Lucas, Mike, Will and El were watching them intently, spread around the couch and the loveseat. Lucas kept looking between them and his watch.

Billy headed for Steve, still in the same spot on the end of the couch.

"What's going on, now?"

"They bet on who can last longer," Steve said, rolling his eyes, but Billy could tell he thought the kids were hilarious.

Billy sipped his Coke and settled down on the arm of the couch to watch Max stare Dustin down, leaning her elbows on her knees, face carefully clear of any emotion. He could only see the back of Dustin's head, but he'd bet he was at least twitching.

"One minute, fifty seconds," Lucas called, on the edge of his seat. "Fifty one, fifty two…"

As he counted, the kids were leaning in closer to Dustin and Max, watching their faces avidly. El seemed fascinated by the game, with her chin on her hands, eyes bouncing between the two quickly, like she didn't want to miss a single twitch.

"Two minutes!" Lucas called, and Will and Mike started cheering. Under the noise, Lucas said, "Dustin can hold out that long."

Billy snickered when he saw one of Max's eyebrows twitch and her chin lift a little, fighting a reaction. He'd never admit it, but this was more entertaining than he thought.

Max leaned forward on her elbows, eyes fixed on Dustin's. Billy knew she would take being wrong personally. That meant she was going to make sure she wouldn't lose again.

She started twitching her ears.

Her hair was pulled back in a low braid, so they were visible, but the other kids probably wouldn't notice. Dustin, though, was staring straight at her. He wouldn't be able to miss it.

He didn't last long after that. He burst out into little giggles, and a second later Max let herself join him.

"Two minutes and thirty-four seconds," Lucas said. "Max wins!"

The living room erupted into chaos, the kids talking over each other and trying to decide who would challenge who next.

Mike lost to Will who lost to Dustin, then Dustin lost to Lucas. Lucas beat Mike, but lost to Will, because Will apparently looked like a sad puppy. Max beat everyone but Lucas and El. And El, somehow, beat everyone but Mike.

Billy watched everything from the sidelines, relaxing his body into Steve, with one arm around his shoulders and Steve's arm around his waist. He thought it would take no effort at all to just tip his body to the side and slip on Steve's lap.

"But Billy's the one who's really good at this," Billy heard Max say. "He can go really long without like, twitching or anything."

"No way," Dustin says. "He would start rolling his eyes and calling us dweebs like two minutes in."

"Oh no, there's no way you're roping me into this," Billy said, putting his foot down. "No way in hell."

So now he's sitting on the floor, legs crossed, with the dweebs in a circle around him, staring at his face like a tiny Millennium Falcon is about to come flying out of his nose or something.

"You're all so fucking creepy," He grumbles.

"Ready…" Lucas says, eyes on his watch. "Go!"

He lets his face relax, jaw set, staring straight ahead. He counts his breaths in his head, focuses on his lungs expanding, and does not look at the kids' wide eyes looking at him. He fixes his eyes on a blank spot on the wall behind them until his vision blurs, and he lets himself get lost in his own head.

The silence grows. The kids watch him quietly at first, but they soon start fidgeting.

"How long has it been?" Dustin asks.

"Five minutes, eight seconds," Lucas says.

"Told you," Max says, and she sounds smug.

The living room is filled with tiny sounds from there, fingers tapping, people moving, someone leaving and coming back with a can that they crack open. Billy doesn't flinch.

"Oh my god, he's not moving!" Dustin says, sounding frustrated. "How long did you say he could last?"

"I've seen him go forty minutes," Max says. She doesn't say why Billy went so long without moving a single facial muscle.

"Forty minutes?!" Dustin screeches. "What are we supposed to do until then?"

"We can put on a movie," Will suggests.

"We have to watch him," El says.

Billy counts his breaths. Feels his diaphragm move. He has to focus not to react. He didn't anticipate hearing the kids complain about being bored of something they nagged him into doing to be so fucking funny.

The noises of the living room get louder as they all get more restless, and every now and again someone will sigh like they're grounded with no TV, and Billy has to count his breaths again so he doesn't start laughing. It's worth it, though.

He hears Steve get up and go to the kitchen, picks up the sounds of him cleaning up the mess the kids left in there.

Every few minutes Lucas calls out the time, and the kids are less awed and more frustrated. Except for El, who's fascinated, still watching him like a hawk. Max is just smug.

"Fifteen minutes," Lucas says, like he's at the end of a marathon. "Let's call this."

"Okay, Billy wins," Dustin says, like he'd rather have his fingernails pulled out than admit it. "You can stop now."

But Billy doesn't. He just keeps staring ahead like he didn't hear them.

"Uh… Billy?" Dustin calls, crawling closer to his face. "You in there, bud?"

"Oh my god, he's not gonna move," Max says. "He's doing it to piss us off."

Dustin shoves his hand in front of Billy's face, waving it back and forth. Billy doesn't blink.

"Hello?"

"This is so creepy," Lucas says, throwing himself down on the loveseat. "It's eighteen minutes, by the way."

"We have to make him stop," In the corner of his vision, Max throws her head back.

"Steve!" Dustin screams, "Steve, we need your assistance!"

Billy can hear Steve yelling back from the kitchen, "Oh, no way! You wound him up, you deal with it."

"El, can't you do something?" Max asks.

"No."

"We're going to die," Dustin says.

"Really?" Footsteps come from the kitchen, stopping by the couch behind Billy. Steve continues, "Demodogs are fine, but Billy's blank stare is where you call it quits?"

"I can't live like this, Steve!" Dustin's voice rises in pitch and volume.

"It's been twenty minutes," Lucas groans.

"Oh my god, you're so dramatic," Steve must be rolling his eyes into the sun behind Billy's back. He hears some shuffling, and then Steve is kneeling in front of him, directly in his line of sight. Steve has a fond smile on his face, and it's almost enough to make Billy's mouth twitch. "Hi. Sorry about this, I can't listen to them whine anymore."

Steve crawls slowly to him, until his knees are brushing Billy's legs. It's enough to make his breath hitch, and he knows Steve heard it, because his smile widens, pleased. Holding his face blank is taking all of Billy's concentration right now.

Steve's face is close, and it looms even closer, his bambi eyes half-lidded and sultry, the very image Billy's been dreaming about since he moved to Hawkins. He hears El gasp, and Max's murmured oh my god, and Billy balls his shaking hands into fists with the effort to not move.

Steve's eyelashes flutter, so close to his. He can feel Steve's breath, warm on his face. His lips–

They touch Billy's, and he's gone, mouth spreading into a smile, and his hands come up to frame Steve's face so he can kiss him back once, twice, little smacks of kisses that Steve meets with a smile of his own.

"You fucking cheater," Billy's kisses dissolve into laughter, and Billy tries to stifle it by catching Steve's mouth again, sucking on his lip, but it comes bubbling up his throat, dumb little giggles that infect Steve until he's laughing just as much.

They don't stop kissing, though, meeting halfway in between fits of laughter. Steve's already climbed onto Billy's lap, wrapped his arms around him, and they're willfully ignoring the kids' yelling.

"I had to put a stop to it before they started throwing things at you," Steve presses another kiss on Billy's smiling lips, pulling another giggle out of him.

"Thank you for saving me," Billy says against Steve's mouth, eyes closed, soaking up the warmth of Steve's body plastered to his front.

"I got your back," Steve says.

"Yeah," Billy breathes, takes in the smell of Steve. Billy's face is flushed pink from laughter. "I know."

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Thank you for asking baby!!! I had fun with this one!

#sorcery asks #ask games #harringrove #prompts #billy x steve #billy hargrove #steve harrington #harringrove fic #harringrove ficlet #lovebillyhargrove #billy & the party #sorcery writes

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