"Walkin' down this rocky road,
Wondering where my life is leadin',
Rollin' on to the bitter end,
I'm finding out along the way, what it takes to keep love living
You should know how it feels, my friend."
Ready For Love - Bad Company
/
A/N
Trigger warning for mentions of self harm
/
They both lay upon the bed, their breathing laboured, and a sheen of sweat glistening on their skin. Joss pushed her hair back from her face and then got up without a word, exiting the room to the bathroom.
Not bothering to turn on the light, she splashed her face with cold water and rinsed the taste of blood out of her mouth. When she looked up, she caught herself in the mirror, her reflection looking as shocked as she felt at her current unexpected situation.
Once again she'd stopped them going further than a heavy make out session, much to Billy's displeasure, and in truth Joss didn't know what she was doing, with this guy in her bed and her life. What was she getting herself into? Wasn't she meant to be leaving after graduation? What good would it do either of them to get this involved? She didn't have any answers. She knew he wasn't a great person, but Joss also knew people were way more complex than being an asshole or a saint in everything they did in life.
For whatever reason, right now, she wanted this, whatever the hell this was. She removed her skirt and top and pulled on an old oversized t-shirt she used for sleeping in, it hung off one shoulder, drowning her frame.
She grabbed some tissues from inside the mirrored cabinet and made her way back to the bedroom. Billy still lay on the bed, but he had taken off his vest, which now lay discarded on the floor. The sounds of Bad Company's 'Ready For Love' reached her ears, giving the whole scene a moody bluesy feel.
"Your room is fucking hot," he said, brushing his damp hair out of his face.
"Well, we did just do a kind of work out," she teased, and went to him, pushing the tissue with soft pressure to his mouth before he could protest.
"Yeah, if you'd been a little more into it, it'd have been the workout of your life." He grinned and took the tissue from her, tending to his injured lip until the bleeding had more or less stopped, before he threw it casually in the direction of her trash can.
Joss made a derisive sound at his blatant attempt at provocative flirting.
"What's with the cut on your leg?" he asked, shocking Joss into freezing for a second at his words. "You fall?"
Joss had to resist the unwanted urge to reach out and touch the scar he was talking about. "No," she said at last, not seeing the point of lying, "it happened years ago."
He didn't say anything, but moved to sit up, his arms relaxed, resting on his knees, as he waited for her to continue. To Joss it was like he could sense her unease, like a lustful animal waiting for its moment to pounce on her weakness.
Why she decided to tell him she didn't really know, maybe it was the knowledge that she would be leaving soon, leaving him and Hawkins far behind, but she found she didn't want to lie or dismiss his curiosity.
"It was just after my parents started fighting. My anger was just..." She tried to find the right words. "Fucking intense, like it was eating me whole, and nothing I did made it better, made me feel better." She swallowed hard. "Stuff at school was bad, being talked about and manhandled in the hallways really brings down your day," she joked, dryly. "I just felt like my body couldn't hold everything in and I needed a way to let it out. So I took a knife and I just... I just cut." She shrugged, "I wasn't trying to, you know, end things or anything. Just find a way to deal with it all, and I felt like pain would be better to feel than feeling like I was about to implode."
"Did it make you feel better?" he asked, without a beat, his voice strange and faraway.
"Yeah." She came to sit on the bed next to him. "Yeah it did. I know it's not the best way to deal with stuff, but it felt like the only way I had then."
"Had?" he nodded with a mocking air. "But, I'm guessing from the fact it's not actually fully healed, you keep doing it?"
She eyed him with great suspicion and, feeling like she needed to see his face clearly before answering, she leaned over to her bedside cabinet and used a match to light a candle, bringing some illumination to the gloom they sat shrouded in. Her gaze went to his face and she studied his expression, trying to find out what exactly he wanted from this exchange. "When things get too much. Sometimes, I don't even realize I'm doing it. It's a bad habit."
"It's a big scar," he continued, "is it cause of your dad, that you keep opening it up?"
She glanced up at him, feeling suddenly stung by him probing too far into her private wounds.
"At first, I guess it was. That whole thing left me feeling kinda numb, so to feel something so real and sharp, other than just dull anger, it was good, I felt powerful, in control. I didn't want to let it go, so when things get tough I just..." She made a slicing motion with her hand.
"That's messed up!" he laughed.
"Oh yeah, destroying school property and beating the shit out of other guys over the slightest infraction is a much healthier way of coping, I guess?" she said with a snide smirk, pushing his shoulder.
"Just two perfectly healthy people, living our healthy lives," he assured, searching the floor a moment before finding his carton of cigarettes. He pulled out one and lit it with a flash of flame from his lighter.
Joss wrinkled her nose, unhappy that her bedroom was going to be ingrained in stale smoke by morning. "They smell like ass you know?" She indicated to the cigarette as he took a long hard drag on it and in reply blew a large plume of smoke in her direction.
"Asshole," she said, coming to lie next to him on the bed with a smirk of wry amusement.
"You know it." He blew out a ring of smoke in defiance.
"Is that why you broke the water fountain today? To feel better?" Joss asked, feeling he owed her some tidbit in return.
"Is what why?" he said in between a draw.
"You said you break things when you get mad, so was it your dad that made you mad?"
"Something like that."
She could tell he didn't really want to talk about this subject in depth, but she couldn't help wanting to understand just how his mind ticked. "Even though you knew you'd get in more trouble and it'd just come back on you later?"
He shrugged again and laughed. "Got to let it out somehow right?" He quirked an eyebrow at her in what felt very much like a belittling gesture. "You should know that better than anyone." His gaze flicked down to her leg again and Joss huffed out a sound of dissatisfaction with his answer and disdainful tone.
"So, all this time I've been calling you Tanner and that isn't really your name," he fished without any elegance.
"Well, you could just call me Joss if it bothers you that much."
He laughed. "That isn't even your name either!"
Joss gave a dismissive shrug. "It is now, has been the last few years. I can't imagine going back to my old name. It's not who I am."
"Like Black 'n Blue's 'Miss Mystery'," he said, without any earnestness and a large helping of mockery, and caught her eye before laughing again, finding his own joke funny.
Joss remained silent, knowing he was trying to goad her into some kind of situation where she'd let her guard down and give him the information he wanted without a fight, but this time her boundaries were firm and she wouldn't allow them to be crossed.
"Seriously?" he said, sounding half amused and half offended that she hadn't offered up the facts on a platter. "You're not going to tell me?"
"Nope," Joss said with a flash of a snide grin. "Why do you want to know so bad anyway? It's just a name."
He didn't seem to have an answer for that.
"So, is Fright Night your favourite movie now?" Joss' attempt at steering the conversation elsewhere was just as graceless as him asking for her real name.
"Maybe, if I ever get to see the whole thing," he said with a teasing grin that called back to her little shrieking fit at the cinema.
"So, what is your favourite movie then?" Joss felt that this line of conversation was actually working at easing the atmosphere and his prying.
He pursed his lips together in thought a moment before a big grin came to his face and he took a long drag on his cigarette, the glowing cherry end crackling as he drew the smoke into his lungs. "The Terminator," he said, as he exhaled the smoke.
Joss nodded her head in agreement. "Okay, a little bit more sci-fi than horror, but I get it," she admitted.
"The Terminator is totally a horror. A relentless killer, body horror, sick kills! It's a horror."
Joss hummed in appreciation of his points. "Why is it your favourite?"
He gave her a sideways glance. "Because of everything I just said," his look almost verged upon calling her dumb for asking.
Joss bypassed his unkind meaning with a roll of her eyes. "Yeah, but I mean, what is it about The Terminator that makes it your number one? That makes it like no other movie?"
"The Terminator is unstoppable, he just goes forward and gets shit done. Nothing can stop him."
"Apart from Sarah Connor," Joss corrected.
"She got lucky with that pressing machine," he dismissed with a hiss of smoke and a wave of his hand.
"So, it's the villain you like then?"
"Always," he grinned.
"Interesting," Joss said with a raise of her eyebrow, her look clearly judging him playfully.
"What is?"
"I'm sure Sigmund Freud would have something to say about that mindset."
"Sounds more like a damn fraud to me. Look, The Terminator is the perfect killer, he hasn't got feelings, you can't bargain with him, you can't get his empathy or his pity, he just does what needs to be done. When he gets shot, stabbed or hit by a truck, he just shrugs it off, he keeps going. No stopping him."
"Yeah," Joss said with a nod of semi-agreement, "but it's not really like he's a free agent."
Billy gave her another sideways glance, and this time he looked just a little bit less confident. "What?"
"Well, he's just a worker bee right? He's not doing all that stuff and killing for himself or because he hates Sarah Connor, he's being controlled by something more powerful. He has no bodily autonomy. He's just a thing with no emotions who only knows how to kill, or at least only to do what he's told."
"What, no!" Billy said, frowning at her.
"Okay then, tell me one thing he does for himself? Gets himself a milkshake, or a nice day off to go to the beach? It's not personal between him and Sarah Connor is it? It's just what he's been told to do."
Billy stuck the cigarette between his lips to free his hands and ran his fingers through his hair in frustration before letting out a humourless laugh. He plucked the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and exhaled, allowing the silence to hang between them for a few seconds. "Are you just an expert at sucking all the fun out of everything or is that a natural talent?" He took another puff, burning it down to the butt.
Joss tried not to feel too stung by the sharpness of his tone. "Sorry to burst your 'perfect killer' bubble."
"Okay then, what's your favourite movie? Let's see if I can pick it apart?"
Joss gave him a withering look. "Nightmare on Elm Street."
"Ah, because of the knife fingers, right?" He waggled his eyebrow in a very suggestive manner and gestured to her thigh.
Joss pushed him in response. "No, it's because Nancy is smart. She gets a plan to beat Freddy, even though no one believes her, and she does it all alone, knowing he's killed everyone she cares about. I think she's a great final girl."
Billy looked like he was going to say something laced with a smart ass comeback but finally he relented. "Yeah, okay," he admitted with a sigh of defeat.
"Anyway, we should, you know, actually sleep, because it's late," Joss said, knowing she'd be lucky to feel even semi-rested by morning.
Billy grasped for an empty gaudy ceramic ring holder nearby and stubbed out the remaining butt.
"Hey, not an ashtray!" Joss protested weakly.
"It'll wash," he said, settling back into the pillow and closing his eyes as if that was the end of the matter.
Joss gave him an unimpressed look while he continued to refuse to even acknowledge her presence. Finally she relented and closed her eyes too, the soft rhythm of the low music lulling her into sleep, her body easing into the warmth of him as he shifted beside her, finding his own comfortable position. She felt a slight brush as his fingertips slid up her arm, sending all the fine hairs prickling with the contact.
"Hmm?" she asked, sleepily.
"Thanks." He whispered the word so quietly she couldn't be sure she'd heard him right. She hugged her pillow to her as a drowsy smile grazed her lips.
"You're welcome," she sighed, curling herself up onto her side, her body relaxing fully against his. "Now shush." She patted his arm and allowed herself to fall fully into sleep.
/
A/N
Songs for this chapter:
Ready For Love - Bad Company
Black 'n Blue - Miss Mystery
A/N
Friday hello to anyone there. I know I've gone down a very niche road here with not only writing about Billy and not changing his ultimate fate, but removing the upside down elements. I know this hasn't made this fic one many want to read, so if you are here, my thanks for giving it a chance. You can skip the rest if you don't want to hear my thought process when writing this as I tend to ramble on.
I wanted to touch on a few themes in this chapter, such as Billy's warped view of what strength means. I wanted it to reflect someone who has been through parental abuse, felt helpless and powerless and so, the prospect of being all powerful would be very appealing, so much so, that he didn't really stop to think what the consequences of having that relentless strength/power would mean. It's how he wants to be but he's so wrapped up in the control aspect he hasn't thought how mindless and numb that would ultimately make him. I think this feels even sadder to me when I think that his fate was to actually become some evil things puppet that gave him all the strength he wanted, but took away his power to choose.
I used to find it frustrating how other Stanger Things fans I knew during season 2 and 3 saw Billy as a very black and white character, he's either a sweet softie underneath it all that just needed the 'right' person or the 'right' kind of love to save him, or a plain villain that isn't capable of change or anything but being a crappy human being. I always saw Billy as a complex ball of everything, he's both and not both to me, if that makes any sense. He's human, he's been hurt and he can hurt others but he is just human (at this point) and I hope I can try and get what I want to say about his character in this story as it goes forward, as obviously I just ramble in the notes.
I really blame (thank) Dacre Montgomery for bringing so much nuance into the character that really made me sit back and reflect on where I had been at low points in my own life, when I hadn't been a great person and unfortunately, Billy never got that time to discover who he really was. I don't have the answer of who he would have been, but at some point he'd have had a choice, that choice got taken away from him ultimately. But, again. I am rambling lol
Anyway, thank you for being here. Until next time.