Billy is a sad, broken, fucked up little boy and he needs a fuckin' hug, okay?

I just love him so much!

On that note...

A little bit of Billy's life after Alice left Cali.


When Susan brought Max over for the first time, Billy froze.

It was too shocking.

She was this twig of a little girl, with long red hair and big shiny eyes that stared at him like he was the most confusing thing in the whole world.

Looking at her brought him back to that week he spent with a girl he barely knew. A girl with the hair just like Max's. A girl who saved his life and threatened Neil for hurting him and didn't fuck off the second she saw how screwed up he was.

A girl who was, in a really strange way, a little like himself.

She didn't have an asshole dad who liked to kick the crap out of her and hurl insults at her, but she did have an overbearing mother who liked to give her hands on fighting lessons. And they both had dead parent issues on top of everything else.

So in that moment, as the little redhead stared up at him with her big eyes, he couldn't help but miss that girl even more than he already had been since she left.

Suddenly, he caught himself wondering if she had gotten mauled by something since he last saw her. Or eaten. Or if some Demon got to her. Maybe it happened the same way one of them got him, or maybe in a more blood and guts kind of way. The thoughts weren't great. In fact, they made him sick to his stomach, but they were there and he couldn't not think them. They were just too loud to ignore.

(There was also fire and screaming and pain, stillissometimes, but that was always pushed to the very back of his head when he thought about her.)

For a long time he couldn't look at Max without feeling sort of lost, and all because of her fucking hair.

It made him feel pathetic.

But even with all of that going on, they got along fairly well. After the initial shock of how similar Max looked to Alice tapered off, anyway. It took a couple weeks to be honest, but Billy worked through it, and soon enough they bonded until their relationship was almost perfect. They weren't ever going to see eye-to-eye, and they were never going to be as close as real siblings would, but they were close enough. There were disagreements once in a while, usually small or about something stupid, but mostly they were more than happy to hang out together. Anything to be away while their parents were being all couple-y and shit.

(He still can't look at her hair without feeling kind of lonely, just a tiny bit, in a chest pain sorta way. Not so much nowadays, but back then it was pretty bad.)

He willingly took her out with him, showed her his favourite places to chill out at, entertained her any way he could. They went to the beach, the arcade, the movies. Anywhere the little shit wanted to go, he took her. Neil even gave him the money for it which was probably just another way to try to impress Susan, but Billy wasn't going to complain about it.

Billy bought Max her first skateboard when they were out one Saturday because she wouldn't stop staring at it in the shop window. Her eyes went impossibly wide when he dragged her into the shop, and her mouth dropped open when he handed the paid-for board over to her. She even fucking hugged him for it.

That shit was weird.

He used to know some people who were pretty good with the sketchy-looking board on wheels, so he does a pretty okay job teaching her how to ride it. She caught on quick enough and soon she was zooming around on it without his help.

But Max and Susan always have to go back to their own home, so Billy ends up alone with his asshole of a dad at the end of the day every Goddamn time they come over.

Neither of the Mayfield girls ever asked him where he kept getting his bruises.

(They still don't ask, but he knows they know.)


It takes a year after he meets Max and Susan for them to suddenly move in.

Both of the girls seemed excited, and Billy could see the ring on Susan's finger; all shiny with a diamond on it. That means Neil and Susan had gotten engaged and Billy hadn't been told, which felt fan-fucking-tastic, but what else should Billy have expected from the asshole he once called dad, but now called Sir.

(Or Neil when the man wasn't around to hear it.)

He was so bitter about being left out of the loop, about not being told at all, that he sulked in his room like a little fucking kid the entire night.

At some point that same night Max came to his room, all bouncy and excited, gushing about Billy becoming her big brother soon. Her wide grin and hyper movements got him to grin right back at her. Ever since they started getting along she'd always been able to lift his mood a bit when he was down and he liked that about her.

Later, a small part of Billy prayed Neil would give him a bit of a break with the two new additions to their family around.

He would be wrong, of course, because when was Neil/Sir/Dad ever a decent human being towards his own son?

(Never. Not once. Not since he was still unable to speak or walk on his own, he assumes, if he ever had been in the first place.)

There were still backhanded smacks across the face, kicks to the ribs if he hit the floor, insults only ever directed at Billy. Cruel names that were only thrown around when Susan and Max weren't around.

Neil didn't want to scare away the Mayfield girls (one of them soon-to-be Hargrove), after all.


Billy always knew he wasn't a naturally violent person. With how gentle his mom was ad how much time she spent with him, Billy would have never been as cruel as Neil if his mom hadn't died.

Or at least, he never thought he was violent. He never enjoyed hurting people or pushing them around, because he wasn't a bully (he wasn't Neil). He was just a very angry kid because he had a lot to be angry about, but nowhere to dish out that anger. He'd never once considered venting his aggression on other people (his mom would've been disappointed if he did).

And it would be wrong.

But after that Demon...

Well, it unlocked a fairly dark part of young Billy Hargrove.

A dark part of him that wanted other people to hurt just as badly as he did, all the time. He wanted others to feel what he felt, and whatever that Demon unlocked made it happen. He used to be really good at keeping his anger bottled up for later. Later, when he would punch something inanimate until his fists ached and bled and (just once) broke.

But after the Demon he would just... let loose.

He started fighting. He would hit someone just for looking at him wrong, or because they bumped his shoulder in the hall by accident. He knew it wasn't right but he did it anyways because he was hurting and pissed and alone.

His dad had never been a dad, his mom was dead, his friends had fucked off long before the fighting started, and Alice was gone.

So he hit and kicked and punched, rag-dolled people across rooms and hallways whether they deserved it or not, tossed around insults the same way Neil did. He hurt other people because it was the only way to make himself feel better.

In the moment, anyways.

Afterwards, he would go home and feel like absolute shit for what he did, but would never admit it to anyone. He would sit and think and regret, wondering what his mom would say if she found out. Or what Alice might think if she knew. He was acting the way she'd described the Demon did, in his body.

That thought made him sick. That he was like a mix of Neil and an unholy creature that enjoyed making people suffer.

(In retrospect, Neil Hargrove and Demons seem to have a lot in common. Both of them enjoy other's suffering, and making those people suffer with their bare hands rather than a weapon. They screw people up, mentally or physically or both, until the victim snaps and does the same to someone else (or dies). It's all one big, violent and unnecessary cycle of pain and hate.)

The only upside to the violence was that it made him look a little more tough in his dad's eyes, and that kept him off Billy's back for a little bit. Got him to ease up on kicking the crap out of Billy sometimes. And if he won, he sometimes got a pat on the back. He would still get a couple smacks for causing trouble, but fighting boys instead of fucking them made his dad happy(ish).

There were a few nights after fights where he would wonder if she would be pissed at him for doing this shit, or if she would feel proud.

Would she get mad at him for being such a prick?

Would she be just as big of one as he was?

No, he would tell himself after he'd spent a few minutes thinking it over. No, she would be like the angel on his shoulder.

She would have been the angel on one shoulder that kicked the devil off the other, then whispered in both of his ears to do the right thing, to be better, to not hurt people just because he was hurting.

God, he missed her.

And that felt weird because he barely knew her. Sure, they spent a week together. They did whatever they wanted, went wherever they wanted, drank and smoked and talked about the shittier aspects of their lives. She showed him the scars from monsters that got too close, he showed her the scars from his dad being a shitty human being.

(They may have bonded over some stuff, but it wasn't like they knew each other enough to fucking miss each other, right?)

He blocks out the feeling, and any feelings after that revolving around her. He really didn't need that on top of all his feelings about the unfair mess that is his life as of late.


Most of the time, Billy was stressed and tired and so fucking done.

(Still is, kinda.)

He snuck out a lot, hung around with not-so-great people, smoked and drank a lot, and slept around like he got paid for it.

(Which he did not, thank you very much.)

There weren't too many spats with his dad, and that was almost worse than their old routine. He kept waiting for the angry asshole to beat his face in for something fucking stupid, like a dirty plate or not cleaning his room 'properly', but it didn't happen the way he basically wanted it to. It came with fairly gentle back hands and growled threats.

He started a fight one night just to feel normal again.

Later, when he went to bed with bruises darkening across his face and chest, all he felt was angry, just like always.

This time, though, it was directed purely at himself.


Things were good for a while. About two years, give or take a couple months.

He started to have nightmares at some point. They were usually a mix of Neil's 'discipline' and what he watched that Demon use his body for. Sometimes, though, she suddenly popped up and then she gets eaten by some ungodly creature right in front of him.

Neil toned down the violence significantly, only gave Billy a few smacks and insults here and there. Almost always for being a little shit as usual (but sometimes just because Billy was there when he was angry). But what kid isn't a little shit, right? Talk back to any authority figure, starts fights in school, act like a total brat. All of it gets you a quick smack as punishment.

That was how Billy saw it, anyway.

But then he got reckless, got stupid, went full-blown mental, and brought someone home with him that he shouldn't have.

See, Billy has always liked people in general. Not in a "Let's be friends!" way, but in a "If you have a nice face then I'll totally swap spit with you." way. Boy or Girl, tall or short, curvy or twig-like. He's never given a shit as long as he got to be in control of whatever they were doing together.

(It was one of the many things she agreed with him on.)

Whereas Neil Hargrove found just the thought of a boy simply holding hands with another boy vomit (and violence) worthy.

With that knowledge Billy really, really shouldn't have brought that pretty boy home after school.

But he did.

The sad-but-funny part is that it wasn't even Neil that caught the two of them making out in Billy's room. No, it was Max. She'd busted in saying something Billy couldn't hear over the blood rushing in his ears, and caught them mid grope-session, faces barely an inch apart.

Her cheeks turned a deep shade of red and she slammed the door shut.

About an hour later, after Billy had helped the guy sneak out of his bedroom window, Neil was kicking in his ribs and hurling the word faggot at him like it was going out of style.

Which meant Max told him.

Billy couldn't trust her anymore, and that sucked way more than the broken ribs and concussion Neil gave him.

Max was the good part of the bullshit marriage Susan and Neil had. She was his calm breeze in the shitstorm Billy called his life. They had fun together, they talked like everything was normal (which it definitely was not) and they could trust each other.

But that was gone in a little over sixty minutes.

He was mad and he wanted someone to blame besides himself or his dad, so he chose Max. So everything after that became her fault. He chanted it in his head like a fucking mantra, just so he wouldn't completely hate himself. He had so little respect for himself left that shifting the blame to her was his only way of staying on the right side of self-destructive; the only way he wouldn't spontaneously implode with how fucked he thought (still thinks) he was (is).

So after that he stopped being the big brother she'd always wanted, purely out of spite, even though he knew she didn't tell on purpose. She couldn't have known Neil would be a complete douche about it.

Billy ended up spending a few days in the hospital for some broken ribs and a concussion. His would go blurry in and out, he wobbled when he walked, couldn't breathe right or without it hurting his chest, and every once in a while his ears would ring so loud that it blocked out any other sounds.

It's not the fact that Billy was necking with a guy that makes Neil move them all to Butt Fuck Nowhere, Indiana once Billy's ribs healed. No, it's the questions from the doctors and nurses that get them out of Cali. He said it was to keep Billy away from the 'temptation' in Cali, but Billy knew it wasn't. He knew the hospital asked questions that made Neil look bad, made him nervous with the possibility of the cops being called in and that he couldn't come up with a very convincing lie, so he shipped the family off to another state to avoid the trouble all together.

Max blamed Billy.

Billy blamed Max.

They both should have pinned the blame on Neil, but they didn't.


The first time Billy saw Steve Harrington he thought pretty pretty pretty.

Then immediately started to hate himself just a little bit more.

This is why we moved, he thought bitterly. Because you're-

He couldn't finish the thought. That would be like giving into Neil's bullshit and Billy wasn't going to do that outside, too. He figured as long as he kept those thoughts to a minimum and never acted on them, he would be fine.

Besides, Harrington had a pretty little girlfriend always by his side and Billy knew he couldn't compete with that.

(Not that he wanted to compete with Little Miss Perfect for Harrington. No fucking way.)

He stuck to girls, picked through the crowds of small town girls (or cows, as he referred to them more than a few times) until he knew all the pretty ones by name, and then started to work his way through the rest of them. He avoided the redheads, though. Too much like her, he would think when he saw them. Could never get close to one of them without his chest tightening in a way he taught himself to hate. The way that meant he missed her, and Billy was told at a young age that missing people was a sign of weakness.

Parties and sex (with girls, of course, because he couldn't risk Neil hearing about any male partners) were his biggest distractions from the itch he felt to scream and fight and hurt. He hated Hawkins with a passion, wanted nothing but to go back to Cali. It was his home, where his mom was buried, and it was warm. Hawkins was cold as a witches tit and small as fuck, and Billy hated it.

But the parties were fun, the sex was decent, and messing with Harrington whenever he could was interesting.

It didn't take too long for him to become the new King of Hawkins High.


He doesn't remember much of The Incident.

That's what Max and her Nerd Herd have started calling the fight between Billy and Harrington at the Byers' house.

The clearest memory he has of that night is greeting King Steve in the driveway. Asking am I dreaming or is that you Harrington, getting a humorless yeah, it's me, don't cream your pants in response, then calling Harrington out on his lie about Max not being in the house.

(He could see her in the window for Christ's sake!)

Everything else is kind of hazy from then on.

Up until the needle, anyway. The needle Max jammed in the side his neck while he was caving in Harrington's (pretty) face on the floor. The needle filled with some kind of fast-acting knock-out drug that stopped him from killing Harrington right then and there, in front of a bunch of kids. Oh, and the threat to his balls with the crazy-looking nail bat! That's a pretty prominent memory too.

His tired laughter after he agreed to leave Max's gang of misfits alone was directed more at himself than anything or anyone else. Or maybe it was at the situation, the sight of little Maxine towering over him, holding a baseball bat covered in fucking nails. Either way, it was directed at him, and not her or her gang of weirdos and their creepy babysitter who was also half-conscious on the floor.

Her stance and his little blackout rampage and maybe a few other things that night brought up some shit he'd been trying to push deep, deep down for the last couple years. Punching and punching until his own knuckles bled. Laughing, attacking someone like a rabid animal. All of it, things he half-remembers from his Demon Days.

(He doesn't like to use the word possessed.)

The way Max had stood over him with that bat raised above her head, that wavering but oh-so tough tone to her voice, that protective fire in her eyes, and the force she put behind smashing the nail riddled end of the bat into the floor between his open legs... Well, that had looked way too much like her that day she threatened Neil's safety with a crowbar.

It made him feel sick because in that moment he was Neil and Max was her.

He was the bad guy now. The legitimate bad guy, like the ones in movies and on TV, the one in their house. He was the asshole threatening kids and beating up people who (maybe, probably) didn't deserve it.

(He still thinks it was really fucking creepy that Harrington was hiding five pre-teens in a shack out in the middle of nowhere, but it might not have been what it looked like. Maybe.)

After that night Billy kept his head down. He stayed away from the twerps, didn't talk to Max (even if it got him in trouble with his old man) unless necessary, lightly harassed Harrington (mostly during practice and sometimes outside of it), and partied a lot or stayed in his room. He didn't need to interact with people all the time, just enough to distract himself.

The worst part about that night was definitely the memories in dredged up. That stupidly long period of time where something supernatural had been piloting his body like it was a Goddamn robot. He'd started getting flashes of things it did with his meat-suit, along with some of the fucked up stuff it showed him of Hell. He'd repressed most of it, but that night brought it all back.

Now he was having nightmares almost every night.

The only nights he didn't have them were the ones where he got drunk off his ass before bed. He didn't even need a party to do it. He'd just go to the liquor store real quick and get a bottle of Jack or something else that was just as strong, then bring it home and drink, drink, drink until he wasn't thinking properly (or at all) anymore.

It became a routine. A shitty, painful, boring routine.


In the past, Billy used to think that his growing anger towards the entire world would make him a great Hunter one day. That he could find her, that they could team up, that he could take his rage out on Monsters and save people from them.

But after Harrington's week off school, when he comes back with a nearly totally purple face, Billy actually feels things about it.

He's not, like, looking to apologize or anything. Doesn't plan on dropping to his knees to beg for forgiveness, or even saying the simple word sorry to Harrington's horribly bruised face. He just feels bad about what he did. Like, genuinely cringes out of guilt and shit whenever he turns a corner and sees Pretty Boy's stupid face.

Something in the back of his head likes to tell him: You're the monster, now.

It's not a new thought.

It's just louder now than it's ever been before.


He's having an already shitty day when he sees Harrington walking down the hall, following behind the usual pairing of Byers and Wheeler.

Today, though, there's a new addition to what is usually a trio. But he doesn't pay much attention to her/him/them.

(Doesn't even look at them long enough to determine if they're a chick or a dude.)

All he knows is that they are very female, and they've got dark hair. Other than they've got a nice ass, he doesn't really care to find out more.

He bumps Harrington's shoulder on his way past, sneering out he dickhead's last name, as per usual, then joins his usual group of assholes.

It's almost lunch, he can bug the group of freaks again in a few minutes.


So, sometimes I think about a purely Stranger Things Billy/OC fanfic and usually when I think about that I end up having to put on "Little Red Riding Hood" by Sam The Sham The Pharaohs.

It makes me think about how Billy might follow a girl around that he found more interesting than the rest of the girls in Hawkins.

And when that song is over I listen to a song by The Sham-ettes called "Hey There, Big Bad Wolf" because it's the girl's side of the whole thing and I feel like it would be the exact response the OC would have to Billy.

But that's an idea I'll probably never follow through on so...

There ya go, Whoever Feels Like Writing It!