Chapter Text
He tapped the cigarette in his hand and watched as the specks from it fell slowly to the ground, creeping lower and lower until they disappeared from view, too small for his eye to perceive them. They hit the ground without him seeing, invisible to his eye. But they certainly hit the ground, gravity pulling them. His hand shook slightly as he brought the cigarette to his lips to take another puff. He breathed in the thick, nicotine rich air and exhaled. In his exhalation, his vision became clouded with smoke, it obscured the world around him, created his own world, if only for just a moment. In the momentary haze of the smoke, he closed his eyes and let himself embrace a fleeting moment of tranquility. But the smoke cleared and so did the calmness.
He looked out at the world around him, now clear. It was harsh. The world was harsh. From the cold that nipped at his neck to the sting that lingered in his midsection where the most recent blows had landed. The thick clouds in the sky were oppressing, bringing with them the threat of snow. More cold. More harshness. The roughness of his denim jacket did little to protect him from the elements, in fact the popped collar rubbed harshly against the skin of his neck. He glared up at the clouds, he glared out at the placid water before him. But the clouds and the water didn’t react to his glare and it was probably for good reason. His expression held no real malice. Instead, his expression was defeated, tired, and so exhausted. Seventeen years shouldn’t feel this hard. But for Billy Hargrove, they were.
It was the exhaustion that led Billy to this place, to where he sat. On the hood of his car by the quarry, staring off into the abyss and strongly considering throwing himself into it. In the abyss he could rest, he could let go, he could lay down all the pretenses that sat so heavy upon his shoulders. All the guilt, all the shame, all the lies, all the hurt, all the pain, all the anger would be gone. Nothing to worry about, no one to let down. It was an incredibly alluring thought. The only interjection in his mind about why he shouldn’t kill himself was thinking about the church.
And sure, he was only dragged to mass once a year on Christmas. It was definitely out of a sense of duty rather than conviction that his family attend midnight mass once a year. But his mom had liked church. She liked the music and the architecture, and the ceremony of it all. She probably believed in God, but mostly she believed in good. She was good. Her son was not. He wanted to be good for her and in honor of her. But she was dead and her son was not good. Things were not right in the world and there was probably no God anyways. But still, when Billy thought of sin, he thought of his mom and of disappointing her. But he knew he had probably already disappointed her in many ways. What was one more?
Billy didn’t remember choosing to be a faggot, didn’t know how or why he just was. He didn’t know why he got so angry, why he kept taking out that anger on people who really didn’t deserve it. He didn’t know why his father hated him, why nothing he did was ever good enough even though he tried. He tried really hard. Liking boys, having an anger management problem, and a dad who liked to kick him in the ribs when he stepped out of line made life harsh. It made it difficult every single day to get out of bed and keep on living. Maybe it was a small mercy he’d made it this far? Maybe seventeen years was all that he would get and that was enough. So many people, people better than Billy, got far fewer years. Billy only had to think of his mother and the image of her in the hospital bed to know this. Maybe throwing himself off this ledge would be a mercy to someone else. More resources left in the world for people better than him. After all, his dad did frequently call him a waste of space and it was probably true.
Billy took a final pull from his cigarette, it was burnt down to the filter. Done. He exhaled his final breath of smoke and dropped his cigarette on the ground, watching it fall. He stomped on it, ground the toe of his boot into it, to make sure it was out. He was pretty sure he was gonna do it. He was gonna kill himself. He had some regrets, maybe more than he could even allow himself to think about. He regretted every person he’d punched, every mean word he’d said to someone who didn’t deserve it and even some of the one’s people had deserved. He regretted not being able to tell his mom goodbye one last time before they’d had to pull the plug, the cancer too far advanced for any treatment to work.
He regretted not ever finding love, even though the thought of loving another man made him shrink away in shame. Even though he didn’t want to admit it, and almost physically couldn’t, there was one boy he thought of a lot. He was thinking of that boy now and was suddenly overwhelmed by sadness that he’d never get the chance to apologize to this boy. Because he did, he wanted to apologize to Steve Harrington for punching his face in and beating him over the head with a plate. That had not been his finest moment. But the boy was too beautiful for his own good and Billy was too angry and broken for his own good.
Billy pushed himself up off the hood of his car. He took a step forward, his heavy steel-toed boots feeling heavier than usual as he took that step. He was only about two feet from the edge. Two feet from a fateful decision. He reached up and wiped away a tear, feeling a moment of shock because he hadn’t registered the fact that he was crying. Silent sobs wracked his body. His hands were shaking and he wished he had another cigarette. If he had just one more cigarette he’d take the time to smoke it, to think this over. And who knows? Maybe that time would be enough for him to change his mind. But there wasn’t another cigarette. The pack of Marlboro Reds lay empty on his passenger seat. There was no more time. There was just this moment. This final moment before nothing. And although Billy shook, he was starting to feel a little better. He was about to do it. He swore to God he was about to take that step forward into the dark and silent night.
But the silence was punctuated. Like a bullet through the silence, a sharp sound felt like shrapnel to his ears. Police sirens. Followed by police lights. Billy stared dumbly at the approaching lights through the tears in his eyes. He swore out loud to himself. He wasn’t going to die tonight. This was just one more thing he’d failed at.