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gideongrace · 4 years

Note

11, 48, 51 for the ace prompts please and thank you! ☺️

11. "Fuck the avocadoes! We're leaving!"

48. "But see that's kind of the problem: I love you. Like crazy, stupid love you."

51. "What do you mean, they were flirting with me?"

I got 48 and 51 as a matched set twice (once from an anon and once from bisexual-cupcake), so I'm going to do them as the same scene in two different povs, one from Billy, one from Steve.

"Fuck the avocadoes! We're leaving!"

Billy looks up from the avocadoes he's currently hunting through - they're all as hard as rocks and normally he'd just say fuck it and buy them anyway, leave them in a cupboard for a few days to ripen but he needs to make guacamole and get to a party in a little less than an hour, half an hour now, probably, so there isn't exactly time for that.

"Did you hear me?" Steve yelps loudly, all frustrated. "I said fuck the avocadoes! Let's go!"

Billy bites down on his bottom lip but he bursts out laughing anyway.

"What?" he asks, smiling wide at his big, dumb idiot.

He can't help it. Steve's adorable. He's got ugly, black sweatpants on, an old navy blue t-shirt with this stretched out neck that's just exposing some of his shoulder and his hair's all flat on one side because his left arm still doesn't quite work right since he got shot a week ago and he refuses to let anybody help him with his hair. Or with his clothes. Or with his anything, really, so Billy, Dustin and Heather as well as Steve's non-cop friends Nancy and Jonathan have all been taking turns being with him, helping him out with as much as they can, whether he wants them to or not.

He won't let anybody touch his hair, though. No matter how many times anybody offers, not even Billy.

Instead he just sulks and moans and complains about it endlessly, flopping onto the couch and complaining like this is all just such an inconvenience to him.

If it were anybody else, it'd be annoying. But with Steve it's somehow endearing. So of course the words, "I love you, you big, dumb idiot," almost come flying out of Billy's mouth, like he can practically taste them, can feel them pressing up against his teeth and fighting to claw their way out but Billy shakes his head and holds them back.

Now is not the time.

"I just," Steve goes to cross his arms across his chest, thinks better of it halfway through and winds up with his good arm slung across his chest awkwardly and his bad one still hanging limply at his side. "I just want to go. Now."

With a closer look, Billy notices the way the garish, bright lighting of the little neighborhood grocery store they're in is bringing out the bags under Steve's eyes and the paleness of his skin and it sends Billy's stomach lurching sideways, has him thinking about things he doesn't want to think about. Things like Steve in that hospital bed and how it could have gone so, so much worse, so, so easily.

So he puts the avocado in his hand down on the pile and takes Steve's hand in his. "Okay," he says. "We'll go."

He lifts up his other arm - the one with the bulky black plastic grocery basket balanced in the crook of his elbow and he shakes it slightly. "Just gotta pay for this first."

Steve's face screws up unpleasantly, his nose crinkling and scrunching. "Okay," he says, not looking in the least like he agrees with what he himself just said. "Fine."

Billy squeezes his hand once then twice before dropping it and turning around. They walk to the front of the store and put their things on the little black conveyor belt thing to be scanned, then they fight over who gets to pay and Steve loses.

Partly he loses because his argument of, "Come on, I'm not doing anything else right now," pales in comparison to Billy's, "Because you got shot last week!" and partly because after Billy says that the cashier with the dyed cherry red hair and blood red, lacquer-bright lips ever so slightly angles the debit machine towards Billy and looks Steve over, eyes wide and suddenly very interested.

And Steve, of course, just stares right back with his big, brown Bambi eyes, clueless and not getting it, not at all.

So as soon as he's done paying, Billy grunts, grabs his thankfully already bagged groceries, loops his arm through Steve's and drags him out towards the Camaro, suddenly feeling a very strong need to kiss him, to claim him right in front of this stupid, little store, right out in the open where that cashier can turn around from their spot at the register and watch him doing it because Steve is his and everyone needs to know about it.

They just barely reach the car before Steve drops Billy's arm and starts to laugh. "Now what's got you so bothered?"

Billy jerks the car door open and carelessly, gracelessly chucks his bag of groceries into the back seat then throws himself into the driver's seat with just about as much finesse, which is to say none at all.

Steve gets in the passenger side much more carefully, almost gingerly and gives him a look that says even if he didn't get what that cashier was doing, he knows what Billy is doing.

"Okay, now what's bothering you?" he says, each word enunciated like it's being bitten off into its own sentence.

Billy looks away.

"That cashier was flirting with you," he says. He can feel his face heating up with the words, with the shame of it. He doesn't like being jealous, but he still can't help feeling it anyway.

Steve laughs again. "What? What do you mean they were flirting with me?" He sounds completely and fully confused, just like he always does because Steve literally never gets it when anyone is flirting with him.

He never notices when he's doing it, either. Just does it, easy as anything; people think that Billy is a shameless flirt, and he is, he absolutely is but Steve is worse, just turning on the charm full blast at random like he does with no cause for it or sense to it.

"They were," Billy says, insistent.

He spins around in his seat, shoulders twisting, body turned completely towards Steve, completely open, absolutely all of him wanting to spill out the words, "I love you," and, "It's why I'm so jealous," all over him, like a big, old bucket of paint, just douse him with it, mark him with it and be done. But the words stay carefully locked behind and between his teeth, stay there itching and scratching like miniature razor blades and cutting just as much.

Steve shrugs.

"If you say so," he says, as disbelieving as ever and that… oh, that has the razor blades digging in deeper, has them carving up Billy's gums and his tongue and his cheeks, has them replicating, duplicating, multiplying, multiplying, multiplying until the words, I love you, I love you, I love you, are filling up all the space in his mouth, all the little cracks and crevices in Billy's fractured, war-torn soul, until they're cutting him to pieces, splintering him into ribbons, until -

"Billy?"

Steve looks concerned, has those big, brown eyes trained on Billy's face in that way he just knows Billy is powerless against, that has Billy swallowing all the blood in his mouth.

"I, well, you," Billy stammers.

He wasn't meant to love. Wasn't built for it, doesn't know how. He hadn't even meant to, hadn't meant to love Steve, it had just sort of happened on accident, like one day he was just sorta there, then one day Billy had just sort of loved him and it's irrevocable now, irreversible, he's incomplete without it where before he'd been totally fine, totally fine and happy on his own, thank you very much and now Steve with his big, stupid eyes and his big, stupid heart and…

Billy had almost lost him.

Billy rubs his sweaty palms on his jeans and looks down.

"You, you just…" He can't get it out. He doesn't know how, but the razor blades won't go down, won't go away, no matter how many times he tries to swallow them down, they just won't go away. He can't go back, can't stand back, can't unknow what he knows now is unequivocally the truth. He loves Steve. Like loves him loves him.

"Hey, hey," Steve says, all warm, all soft, all melty chocolate chip gooey. He runs a delicate hand under Billy's jaw and drags it up, makes Billy look him in the eye. "Whatever the problem is, we can deal with it together. Right?"

That softness, the softness Steve is always saving up and using on him, just on him, it shatters him, has him choking out: "But see that's kind of the problem: I love you. Like crazy, stupid love you."

Steve's whole head twitches on instinct, either like he wasn't expecting to hear that or… Billy doesn't want to think about 'or'.

Either way, Steve says, "And why is that a problem?" as his hand trails from Billy's jaw down the side of his neck to grip at his shoulder. "Because I love you, too."

For a moment, Billy sits with that, swallows it, lets the words and the feelings sink deep and fill him up whole, lets them strip away the razor blades and heal the cuts, soak up the blood they've left behind. Lets them until they go sour, bursting and bristling and bitter. So, so bitter.

"You really shouldn't," Billy says.

He looks away again, looks back towards the store and sees the cashier from earlier staring at them, makes eye contact and doesn't look away.

"Why not?"

Steve's hand sits perfectly still on Billy's shoulder and Billy knows him well enough to know how much effort that stillness is costing him, knows how badly Steve wants to squeeze him, wants to force him to turn and look and face him. But he doesn't. Because like always, he knows just what Billy needs. Knows Billy needs to be given time to come to it himself.

"Because you shouldn't," Billy says, still looking at the cashier, still daring them to look away. They don't. The words, because I'm broken go unsaid, but Billy knows Steve hears them just the same.

Steve sighs and this time his fingers grip tight to Billy's shoulder, digging in deep.

"No, you're not broken, don't even try and start with that," Steve says, voice suddenly shifting all the way from gooey to gravel to stone in a split second.

Billy chuckles but it's mirthless, devoid and hollow and cracking and wretched. "This isn't an ace thing, Steve," he says.

"And who said it was?" Steve's fingers dig so deep it's like they're trying to find bone.

"I know what this is about -" His voice pitches into inky blackness, becomes dark as the night sky without a single star to light it and he says, "I know who this is about and he's wrong. That bastard that had the nerve to call himself your father? He was wrong. About absolutely every-goddamn-thing. There is nothing wrong with you, Billy Hargrove. Nothing. Alright?"

Billy shuts his eyes slow, lets his breath shudder out of him. All he's got is one word. "Why?"

"Why what?"

Billy squeezes his eyes shut tighter as Steve's grip loosens, as his fingers start stroking gently up and down his arm.

"Why are you -" Why are you here? Why do you love me? Why do you care so much?

Even unasked, Steve answers. "I love you because I love you." Steve's hand trails down from his shoulder to his chest, rests over his heart. "You're so much better than you think you are. So much more deserving than you think you are."

Billy opens his eyes to see Steve leaning in towards him, pressed in as close as he can be without just fully climbing into Billy's seat and sitting on his lap, not that he'd fit.

Steve's hand over his heart tightens, fingers digging in like they're scrambling for purchase and that's when it clicks - Steve's afraid.

Not of him. But for him. He's made Steve afraid. Steve cares enough to be afraid for him, Steve wants to love him, wants to care. Steve does.

Billy feels himself letting out a deep breath in a way he hasn't since just before he got that phone call and he leans forward, presses into Steve's touch.

"Okay," Billy says softly.

"You have a better heart than you think you do," Steve says, like he hadn't heard him, like he thinks Billy still needs convincing.

So Billy takes Steve's hand, plucks it from his chest and intertwines their fingers.

"Okay," he says.

And he kisses him.

fic tag squad:

@a-magey @xgardensinspace @myboyfriendsteve @haxpr0cess @thinger-strang @nagdabbit @demi-don @lissieisspacey @tracy7307 @ihni @yourneighborhoodace

@harringrovetrashh

(I can add or remove people from this list just let me know in a comment or whatever.)

#asexual representation #asexual fic #asexual #asexuality #asexual fic collection #gideonwrites #harringrove #steve harrington #billy hargrove

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pterawaters · 4 years

Note

For the mash up prompt: Stoncy: Soulmate AU + Curse AU

Oh, this is an evil prompt! Soulmate and Curse? Okay, let’s give it a go.

From the time he was young, Jonathan knew he was cursed. When he was born, a fortune teller told his parents that when he met his soulmate, he would be responsible for their death. Jonathan grew up knowing that he would never get to have a soulmate, even if he found them, because they would be taken away shortly after. So, he decides to be solitary. He doesn’t talk to anyone. He doesn’t touch anyone. He’s alone, and that’s the way it has to be.

Nancy finds out freshman year of high school that her soulmate is Steve Harrington. He brushed against her in the hall at school, trying to catch up with some of his friends, and a mark appeared on the inside of Nancy’s wrist: it was just three small moles, blurred together into a sort of heart shape, but she knew it hadn’t been there the moment before Steve touched her. The idea of finding her soulmate this early was a little appealing, but she wanted some time. Time to finish being a kid and figuring out who she was. She doesn’t tell Steve about the mark, and he never comes asking.

Steve honestly has so many moles already that he doesn’t notice the new ones on his wrist halfway through his sophomore year of high school. He’s cool with not finding his soulmate yet. Not when there’s so many pretty and interesting people that he wants to get to know.

Jonathan makes it to his sophomore year of high school without finding his soulmate. So far, so good. He gets more into photography, because it’s fulfilling, but still lets him be solitary most of the time. Maybe he notices some people at school, and maybe sometimes when he forgets not to, he wonders what it would be like to hug a friend, or kiss someone. But that’s all for other people. Not him.

Nancy spends more and more time thinking about Steve Harrington, and about the girls he’s been dating and the summer before sophomore year, she sees him in the grocery store, alone. She’s with her mom, but says she’ll be right back. She walks straight up to Steve, shows him her wrist, and asks to see his. He shrugs, because honestly Laurie Bell approached him the same way. Nancy’s different. The mark on her wrist looks exactly like the one on his. Steve grins and asks Nancy when she wants to go out.

That fall, Will Byers goes missing. Then Barb goes missing from a party at her best friend’s soulmate’s house. Jonathan couldn’t help but take pictures of the party, for once letting himself miss what it must be like to be normal, to not be cursed. Except when he develops the pictures, Steve’s friend Nicole sees them, and it ends with Jonathan’s camera destroyed and Nancy picking up the pieces of Barb’s photo.

Nancy convinces Jonathan to talk to her, she convinces him to help her hunt the monster. When they find the dying deer, Jonathan’s hand brushes hers as he takes the gun. For the two or three minutes that Nancy’s missing, Jonathan wonders if this is it. Did he just kill his soulmate? It can’t be, right? Everyone in school knows Nancy’s soulmate is Steve Harrington. She can’t be dead. She can’t be.

When Jonathan manages to pull Nancy back from the upside down, she’s not breathing. She was just holding onto him, calling for him, and now she’s not breathing, and when Jonathan puts his ear to her chest, he hears her heart stop.

Distraught, but also stubborn and desperate, he remembers the CPR lessons his mother made him take when he was twelve and she needed to leave Will alone with him after school so she could work. Jonathan pumps Nancy’s heart for her and breaths fresh air into her lungs, and it doesn’t take long at all before Nancy’s taking a deep breath, her heart beating wildly to catch up with all the oxygen her body needs.

Jonathan brings Nancy home and puts her in bed, and she smiles at him and turns his wrist over. There’s a new mark there, just like Nancy’s. He says he doesn’t understand. She already has a soulmate. Nancy doesn’t understand either, but she needs Jonathan to stay. Won’t he stay?

Steve is worried about Nancy. She’s been unusually hard to reach, and he knows she’s worried about her friend. He goes over to her house (without Tommy and Carol, because he’s planning on spending the night, like he has before), and sees Jonathan laying in bed with Nancy, holding her.

Steve has no idea what to think. Nancy’s his soulmate. Their marks match exactly. How could she do this to him? Is it because he went out with those other girls the year before? He didn’t wait for her? Doesn’t she love him? She’s supposed to love him. He knows his parents aren’t soulmates, and he always figured that’s why they didn’t seem to care too much about him, but he figured his own soulmate would be different. She was supposed to love him. She had to love him!

Without Tommy and Carol to egg him on, it takes Steve a little longer to come up with a plan of action. After mulling it over for most of the day, he decides he can’t confront Nancy. She’s too stubborn. She’ll leave him out of spite. No, he has to talk to Jonathan, get him to realize that Nancy’s not his and never will be.

Steve finds the only Byers in the Hawkins white pages and drives over to his house. It’s getting a little late in the evening. He should be home by now. That’s his car parked out front, right? Steve bangs on the door, begging Jonathan to make things right, to leave his soulmate alone.

Nancy opens the door. Her hand is bleeding, and Steve can’t hear anything over the thought that Jonathan hurt his soulmate! He pushes his way into the house, intent on punishing Jonathan, but that’s when all the lights start flashing. The lights flash and something comes out of the ceiling, and then Jonathan grabs his hand and tells him to jump.

The monster vanishes. Steve freaks out, and demands that Nancy come with him, but she’s insistent that it’s going to come back. He can’t leave without her. Even when Nancy points a gun at him and tries to get him to go, he says, “You’re going to have to shoot me. I’m not leaving my soulmate to deal with whatever that is without me.”

The monster comes back. It knocks down Jonathan and Nancy’s bullets don’t seem to be stopping it, so Steve picks up the only weapon he sees and hits the monster over and over again until it’s in the trap. He’s fairly certain it got a blow or two in on him, but he can’t think about that yet. Not when Jonathan is setting the monster on fire.

Steve only realizes that something is wrong when Nancy looks at him and says, “Steve! You’re bleeding!”

There’s a big gash in one of his legs and he’s falling to the floor, passing out.

Jonathan doesn’t even think about the curse. He tells Nancy to call an ambulance, and then he makes a tourniquet out of a belt and slows the bleeding. By the time the paramedics show up, Steve’s pulse is getting weak, and Jonathan notices the mark on his wrist.

He watches his other soulmate get loaded into the ambulance, and his blood is all over Jonathan’s hands, and this is how it happens, isn’t it? This is how the curse takes Jonathan’s soulmate away from him.

Nancy gets Jonathan cleaned up and she drives them to the hospital, even though she only has a learner’s permit, and they wait for word on how Steve is doing. The trauma surgeon wants to talk to Steve’s parents, but Nancy pulls the soulmate card and demands to know what’s going on. The surgeon says that Steve’s heart stopped while he was on the operating table, but they managed to get it going again when they got his blood pressure up. His leg is a mess, and he probably won’t be playing basketball anytime soon, but at least it’s repaired enough that it probably won’t kill him. In fact, whoever put the tourniquet on him probably saved his life.

Jonathan has to sit down and put his head between his knees. The curse killed both his soulmates. But he still managed to save both of them.

Oh, and now he has two soulmates, instead of none. Go figure.

Send me a ship + two tropes and I’ll tell you how I’d mash them together!

#stoncy #long post #stranger things #trope mashup #oooh that one was so fun #thanks for the ask!#whookami

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billys-hard-grove · 6 years

Text

MIA - Army AU pt 2

This goes out to all the people that messaged me in tears and especially to the anon who suggested a way to fix it, it was an EXCELLENT idea.

I tried to make you happy, my dear anon, but this turned into 1000+ words of pure angst with only a very slight sliver of non-angst, im so sorry

Read part 1 here

It had been 3 months.

3 months since Max had shown him the letter and Steve’s life had fallen apart. The hope he had clung to in the beginning was slowly fading and he didn’t know what to think anymore.

Missing in action.

Steve had read the letter over and over again, the words burning into his mind. What did that even mean? What was he supposed to do?

Neil had scoffed and had told Susan almost laughingly that the coward had probably deserted, but Steve refused to believe that. Billy was nothing if not determined and he really did believe in the cause. Steve knew he wouldn’t have left the army. He wouldn’t have left Steve.

Maybe there had been a mistake? Maybe he had gotten lost? Wounded? Captured? The thought of Billy rotting away in a filthy prison cell, beaten to within an inch of his life left Steve nauseated, but at least he would be alive. He couldn’t even stomach the thought of the other option.

That first month, it was hope that kept Steve on his feet and going through the motions.

He had held onto it for dear life. The hope that Billy was still out there, putting up a fight no matter what situation he was in, probably laughing if he knew how worried Steve was. The hope that Billy was missing Steve as much as Steve was missing him. The hope that Billy would return to him safe and sound.

He had clung to it desperately until his hope was shattered into a million pieces and Steve had shattered with it.

One month after they had gotten the letter declaring Billy to be MIA, Brad had visited Hawkins, Brad the army buddy.

He had looked like a broken man when he sat down in front of Neil and Susan and told them about the battle, the battle that had left dozens of soldiers unaccounted for. Their platoon had been lead into a trap and it had been brutal, the rebel troops shooting at them from all sides as they tried desperately to escape, climbing over the lifeless bodies of their fallen brothers. Brad had told them about how brave of a man Billy was and that if anyone from the missing guys was still out there, it would be Billy.

But the words sounded all wrong to Max, who had been listening from the doorway. Silently tears streamed down her face when she heard the man talk. She knew what he was saying. She could read between the lines.

It had been brutal.

Neil had only waited two weeks after that before he organised a ceremony. He had probably been all too eager to get it over and done with and forget all about his good-for-nothing son.

It had only been 6 weeks and the asshole had given him up.

Steve had been so angry when he heard about it. He had raged. He had kicked and screamed, cursed Neil’s name until all the anger was burnt up and the only thing that was left was sadness and pain.

He had spent days crying, sobbing into his pillow. He had wailed and wailed until his throat was raw and his whole body was sore from all the heaving.

He kept imagining Billy’s dead body, covered in blood and dirt in a ditch on the other side of the world, his eyes wide open but unseeing, surrounded by other soldiers, forgotten by everyone.

He wondered if they had buried him.

He had clasped Billy’s necklace between his hands as he prayed and prayed to a God he no longer believed in.

It had hurt so much.

But now, 3 months after they’d gotten the letter, there was nothing left anymore. He was all cried out and the void that Billy had left behind had filled him up completely.

Steve felt numb. He barely slept, he barely ate, he barely even existed anymore.

Billy’s necklace was stuffed away inside a drawer. Steve couldn’t wear it anymore, he couldn’t even look at it. The memories were too painful.

He spent most days curled up in bed, unable to do anything, unable to smile at Nancy when she ran a hand through his hair, unable to laugh at Dustin’s attempts to lighten his mood.

He just felt so empty.

It had been 3 months.

3 months of beating, breaking and cutting. Unidentifiable men kept coming in, keeping him awake, spitting on him, screaming in a language that he didn’t understand. They only fed him moulded scraps and only gave him water when Billy was seconds away from dying of thirst.

Every day brought a fresh hell of pain and exhaustion. He knew they wanted information, but the broken man had none to give.

It had been 3 months and they had broken him, he was done fighting. He couldn’t take it any longer.

He felt himself teetering at the edge of consciousness and he was ready to plummet into the darkness. He was ready to surrender.

He closed his eyes and all he could see was Steve, looking back at him with a radiant smile and eyes that were brimming with love. Billy basked in it for a moment before he let himself fall and it all went black.

He woke up days later in a field hospital where they kept him for another two weeks. It was a blur of sleep and people asking him questions. Where had he been? Who had he met? What did they want?

Billy didn’t have answers. His captors had never given him any clues to their whereabouts or identities.

It was exhausting and the more he recovered, the more he wanted out. The nurses just laughed every time he threw a fit, calling his anger a good sign of his recovery.

Eventually they had let him go. He had been flown back to the US and after even more questions and more paperwork, here he was.

He was wandering through Hawkins, but the familiar town felt surreal. It was even quieter than before he had left and it made him feel on edge. He had gotten used to the constant sounds of war around him and he didn’t trust the eerie silence.

A man walking his dog appeared around the corner and Billy felt himself tense up, eyeing him suspiciously as he approached. The passer-by smiled at him and Billy had to fight down a snarl before he nodded curtly at the man.

Billy started walking faster after the encounter. It took him another 10 minutes until he rounded the corner onto Steve’s street. He felt himself relax when he saw the large house. He hadn’t realise how tense he still was until he unclenched his fist and released a deep breath.

He walked up the driveway, a different kind of apprehension making him jittery as he rang the doorbell.

He waited impatiently.

His heart was pounding in his chest. This was it. He had been waiting for this moment since he had gotten on that bus almost a year ago.

He rang the doorbell again.

He rang it again 5 times actually before the door cracked open and Steve appeared.

His eyes widened when he saw Billy and he had to catch himself on the door.

They stared at each other, neither of them knowing what to say and Billy noticed how bad Steve looked. His skin was pale and blotchy and he had lost weight. His hair was too long and hung limply in his face, Billy could tell it hadn’t been washed in a while. Steve was staring at him with his big brown eyes, but they didn’t sparkle how they used to.

‘B-Billy?’ Steve managed to say, his voice weak.

Billy nodded.

‘You’re here? You’re real?’ Steve looked like he honestly didn’t believe that it was true. ‘You’re… You’re alive?’

‘I’m home, Steve,’ Billy said softly, a smile tugged at his lips.

Steve lurched forward and fell into his arms, crying into his shoulder, desperately clutching onto him. Billy wrapped his arms around Steve’s small frame and just held him. They stood there for what felt like hours until Steve’s sobs died down.

Billy pressed his lips to Steve’s temple and he knew that was he said was true.

He was home.

#IM SOBBING JUST AS MUCH AS YOU GUYS OKAY #IM SORRY #army au #harringrove #mp

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