revivalproject | Calibrations ◊ The Chain by Fleetwood Mac

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Calibrations ◊ The Chain by Fleetwood Mac

WHO: Billy Hargrove & open
WHERE: Billy’s Calibration Room
WHAT: Calibrations event
WHEN: June 10 - July 10
WARNINGS: Memories are marked with CW/TW to help out

Mingle Post: Runaway by Bon Jovi

It’s a living room. A simple living room filled with 80s aesthetic of a Californian home. Except…

It’s broken. There’s large fissure that breaks the room into two halves and Billy sits on a worn couch that straddles it. There are framed pictures on the wall, but in each of them, the woman’s face has been torn or cut out. There’s holes in the wall the size of a grown man’s fist. There are lines like thin black veins jagged over some of the walls before they fade off.

On a coffee table in front of Billy, are a simple set of Chevy car keys with a metal California keychain attached to the ring. There's a glass enclosure over them, preventing someone from just grabbing them. To keep Billy from grabbing them.

No running from this, not for him.

On each of the four walls, there’s one open door. Thick fog rolling in different hues of red, with ashy flakes of grey, keep anyone from seeing what’s beyond the door’s frame. Things can be heard though. At one door, a plate smashing [cw: domestic abuse]; another has the sound of the ocean’s surf; door number three has no sounds but there’s heat, like a freshly opened sauna; and the last one has a telephone’s dial tone [cw: abandonment/child abuse].

He looks up at the... visitor and his blue eyes harden. “You shouldn’t be here.” But it's clear the guest can't leave the way they magically appeared.

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"Don't bother wasting your time trying to do that. The glass won't break until you go visit one of the memories. Some motherfucker dressed like a government agent was going to try magic."

He finally glances up at Tommy with that hard look. "You watch a memory, the keys unlock. It's fucking simple."

Billy hates that he's being put through this. With strangers on top of it. He at least knew Harrington, was aware of Munson. But these others coming in...they didn't know shit about any of this. And now this guy was here.

"Okay," Tommy says. He'll take the guy's word for it. As for him, well, he looks around.

And in a flash quicker than the blink of an eye he stood before the door the breaking dishes sound came from.

"You got a thing for red, Curls?"

Curls.

Billy wants it to be an insult. Wants another reason to hit Tommy. But the way he appeared from one place to the next told him it probably wouldn't work. The guy boasted a lot of shit in the awake rooms. "Red and blue. Why? Got more smart shit to say?"

He finally gets up, pacing around the room, but not getting anywhere close to Tommy. "Red looks good on me, blue is the color of my car."

Listen, Tommy was hella jealous of Billy's curls. Shut up.

"No one ever respects green," he sighs dramatically before gesturing at the thick fog of red smoke. "Just observing it's a motif in here. Though yeah, now that you mention it, red would look good on you. Dark tones, not over saturated and eye numbingly bright."

"Red does look good on me," he answers back with more bite than it looks like he can really give right now. Like everything that comes out of Tommy's mouth is a challenge somehow. "That red is different."

Billy starts to clam up, but looks away. "I can't explain it." Why was this little shit just taking his time? Didn't he want to leave as fast as Billy wanted him to?

Hardly a challenge. He chuckles and raises his hands as if to say 'woah tiger'.

"Still not big on starting wars here. I'm just going to slip into the memory now, okay? Sorry about it. You clearly just want me the fuck out of here and I'm trying to respect that."

And he backs into the dishes being broken.

"There's no other for you to leave my head," he points out. But he doesn't stop Tommy as he backs up into the room.

It's a dining room. It seems to be apart of the living room the man just came from, decorated in a similar aesthetic. At least in here, there's only one hole punched in the wall, but it looks like someone attempted to patch it up.

In the center of the memory, is a small and circular dining table, set with dinner for three. A young, perhaps about twelve or so, Billy sits in dark blue jeans a buttoned up blue shirt. A man with dark, short hair argues with a slender woman with curly blond hair hair like Billy's, both standing next to to the table.

"Where were you last night?" The man demands of her, hands already curling into fists. The woman holds her ground, even as he shouts at her, "where were you?!"

"I told you, I was with Wendy!"
"Stop lying to me!"
"I'm not lying t-"
"You saw him again didn't you?"

Billy's father crowds up against the woman, grabbing her arm hard to keep her from running. She manages to wrench the grasp away while shouting back, "get away from me!!" then proceeds to grab her empty plate from the table to smash over her husband's head.

It cracks over his skull and he takes a step back. It just fuels his anger, all zeroed in on his wife. "You...you whore!!" He doesn't even notice Billy getting to his feet to get between them. The adolescent runs at his dad, colliding against him to try and hold him back.

"Stop it!" Billy screams as his dad shouts the word 'bitch' at his mother. "Don't hurt her! DON'T HURT HER!" The man wrestles with his son for a moment, maybe two, before throwing him to the side and going back for the woman. Billy hits the floor but scrambles to his feet to look up in time to see his father punch his mother in the face. She goes down and he races towards her.

"MOM!!"

Then almost all the lights go out, leaving only one to shine down on the broken plate before that light goes out as well. Then the door leading into the living room opens again.

A broken plate and a broken family. It... rings far too true in his life. He knows this pain, this powerlessness.

Tommy stoops and scoops up a piece of the plate before heading back into the main room to look a Billy. There's no pity, no disgust, on his face. Just tired understanding.

"He do that often?"

It explains almost everything in the main living space. Billy's seated on the couch once more, one hand holding the other in a fist tightly. He doesn't see Tommy or the broken plate he's holding. It was standard white, with the trim around the raised edge as repeating pattern of swirling blues to flowers.

"Yes. Until she left." He breathes in deep, holding it together. "Until she left without me."

He looks about, eyes glassy and focused on anything but his guest. "I hate this place. No one's supposed to know about this shit." The glass around the keys break and float into the air around them. They raise up, slowly turning this way and that.

No, they aren't. And that's horrible that is gets shared.

"He's an asshole," Tommy says. Because he needed to have someone say it to him all those years ago. "And you didn't deserve that, at all. Or your mom. But men like them, they're just angry at the world and seeking power. And it's up to us to not let them poison us for the rest of our lives."

The thing in the end is, he isn't shocked Billy got abandoned. Every parent he had abandoned him. His own brother ditched him. That's... just how life treats people like them.

Horrible that it gets shared, but also - who knew they'd have common ground? Especially after Billy tried to beat Tommy's face in. "He remarried. Didn't treat Susan that bad because I kept his attention on me."

He licks his lips, feeling nervous. He told Harrington this at least. "Kept his attention on me, and not her. Not my step-sister either. She was here for a bit. Max. Little red-haired shit, likes to skateboard. And listen to a Walkman." That same Walkman that was halfway stuffed under his pillow while he slept at this very moment.

Kept his attention on him. Tommy shudders to think it.

"I never would have had the guts to do that. Fuck, man, you're strong as hell."

But he hadn't known Max so he just shrugged at that part.

"I think that's why I got into superheroism in a way. To get the tar out of me that they out there."

Billy huffs. "Told you I was strong. And when you know what to say to get him the fuck off your back, you'd do it too." A photo album appears on the coffee table and he opens it, the pages flipping rapidly until it lands on one of Max in his car.

"This one is Max. She used to be here but she was sent back to Hawkins." Another huff. "Harrington thought he was going to bully me out of protecting my own step-sister not long after I got here." Like he hadn't been doing that the whole time.

Just keeping it quiet because of his reputation outside of the house. And if Susan and Max knew what he was doing, they might try to involve and fuck everything up. "Dad used to tell me it was my fault mom left. You say I didn't deserve any of this but I must've done something."

"There's a lot of different types of strength. You've got the harder to get kind," Tommy said with a shrug.

As for Stevie doing that, well it makes sense. The guy is protective of people. Tommy barely knows him and he can see that. And Chuckles here was a clear asshole. Like Tommy, before what even he knew as his own redemption arc.

"My folks used to blame me for literally everything. There was a point where I became responsible for the bad things that happened that I did or chose. But if she left not long after that? No fucking way it was your fault. He was probably too tiny-dick brained to accept his own role in it. People like our shitbag sperm donors never take responsibility for their own choices. Mine told me it was my fault when he hit me, when sometimes it was just that he'd had a shit day at work and he saw me at all."

Some people want to make punching bags of the world.

But it had to be his fault. The amount of times Neil told that to him, amongst a slew of insulting names, it had to be. He starts pacing again, like a caged animal. "I asked her to stay out too late for surfing. I always kept asking her for things. Always her, never Neil. She got tired of it, and left." As he says these things, there's an echo of his dad's voice with it. Like the walls around them were echoing them back. Words engrained into his brain for so long.

"I shouldn't have beat your face in, in your room." Unexpected and not...quite an apology. "Fucking antagonizing asshole you were being aside."

No, it's not his fault. Tommy's there at Billy's side, hands on his arms. Yeah, he's putting himself in risk of getting hit. But it seems like Billy's mind isn't shutting down who and what Tommy is in here. And Superheroes can get away with shit.

"Adults have the power to say no, Billy. Especially to children. Especially to their children. If she didn't want to give you more time for surfing, she wouldn't have. If she didn't want to give you things, she wouldn't have. Maybe she agreed to try and make up for what Neil was like."

He ignores the echoes. If he had to shout over them he would. He would make himself heard.

"You have to take responsibility for kicking my ass, yes. You're an adult and you made that decision. Just like Neil chose to hit you and your mother chose to give you what she could. And I have to accept that I was egging you on. But each person is responsible for their choices and their choices alone."

Maybe Billy's mind was easier at dealing with magic after dealing with the Mind Flayer's control, and then El's intervention to save him from it. He tries to listen to Tommy and the man's echoing voice gets louder. More pronounced. It's clear that he's yelling, trying to overpower the reassurances Tommy's giving him.

The blond's eyes start to grow wild - trying to focus on Tommy and ignore Neil's voice. He feels cold creep down his spine when the other describes how Neil hit his mom, and how Billy knew it was the exact same shit he had done in the bedroom before they all went back to sleep.

"...She never came back for me," with the echoes of 'she's not coming back for you' mixing with the words.

No. No, Tommy's not pleased with that voice. In fact, he's angry... And if he was talking about his own family, he'd take another tact. But this guy is hurting and Tommy has no intention of losing to this ghostly voice that is only after hurting Billy.

"You sure about that?" Tommy asks, lifting his hands to hold Billy's shoulders. "Would Neil even tell you if she had? Or would he have driven her off? Fuck man, you're from the 80s, right? Do you know how rarely men were punished for domestic abuse? How rarely custody was ever awarded to women? She made her choice to leave, but that doesn't mean she had a choice or not on coming back."

Billy's muscles are tense under Tommy's hands, like he's ready to lash out. But he doesn't.

'Still not big on starting wars here,' Tommy had said. And he wasn't. He was practically yelling to be heard over Neil's phantom voice, trying to get the logic through to Billy. It's surprising, because of how Billy treated Tommy when they were awake, that he was even trying here.

Honestly Billy figured he would've left as soon as the keys were grabbable.

"...1985." Would Neil have told him? Maybe his mom was too scared to come back. He never looked into how the laws were, and had just accepted what Neil told him as fact. Laws were for nerds and made to be broken (roadway and underage drinking laws specifically). Billy wasn't a nerd.

Hands lift, but not to hit. To grab onto Tommy's shoulders and hard. It's not malicious, but just his mind trying to grab onto something, or someone good. That crevice in floor cracks open wider, threatening to open like a mouth to devour Billy. "I miss her," he admits like it's a horrid secret. "She'd hate me for what I am now."

Yeah, fuck that crevice. Tommy grips Billy harder and in a blink they're across the room, far from the crevice. He's fast, but he's clearly also strong. And he's not letting Billy go.

"I know. I fucking know. They leave us behind, they abandon us, and we miss them. They may not like us for who we are, but you know what? We can be better. We can get better. Become better. You've got a choice, Billy. You can choose to start to be someone you think she'd like better. Someone she can be proud of, and you can be proud of. Or you can let Neil win. First rule in life Curls? He's not allowed to win."

One moment they're in the middle of the room, the next they're by the room with the heat coming from the doorway. Billy doesn't feel any of the movement, but does blink in confusion at the sudden change of position.

Could he be better? He told Eddie and Steve he could try, but maybe he really couldn't. That gaping hole in his mind's floor was threatening to swallow him whole. Did he deserve it, especially after the events of the summer? He still holds in that harsh grip to Tommy. Neil may not win, but his own actions might.

"She won't like what I've done, Tommy," and it sounds like an admittance. He recalls telling Max, sitting in that damp sauna room, about how he's done such bad things. He felt regret for all of it, too. Maybe that was where he was actually starting to change.

Curls.

Billy finds he likes that name. It could be for his hair, or maybe his weight-lifting tactics. His hands grip turns harder. Doesn't know, maybe doesn't care, if he's hurting Tommy. "You have to go. Even if I can't leave here, you can't stay in here." The room might consume Billy, and if that happens, he doesn't know what would happen to Tommy.

"Yeah, but you see there's a problem. I'm a super hero, and my specialty is making sure no one gets left behind," Tommy says, and he doesn't even seem bothered by the grip. "So I'm getting us both out of here."

And then he's probably not going to poke the guy in the morning because he doubts that Hargrove will forgive him if the guy remembers all of this.

"You can't wash the blood from your hands, but you can spend the rest of your life building a better world, Hargrove. I live it every fucking day. I get up in the mornings and I cook, I farm, I clean, I do everything I fucking can to make life better for the people around it. It doesn't take away the ghosts, but I refuse to make more. And that's a step forward. You're going to do it too, because you're too fucking stubborn. So say it with me. Fuck Neil."

Edited 2023-07-08 19:21 (UTC)

This was his head. If anyone couldn't leave, it was Billy. But the words that Tommy says seem to get through somehow. He hadn't been talking shit in the bedroom about being a superhero - it had to be the only way Tommy got them away from the crack that keeps widening.

He listens again. When had people ever tried to make his life better? Billy knows he did it for Max, but whoever did it for him? That girl in the mall did. The one he had been hunting for. Not he as in Billy but what was the name Eddie or Steve had called him? Vecna? Henry? Something like that. She went out of her way to save him when he hunted her like an animal.

Billy thinks of Max, and what she had told him what happened after Starcourt. What Eddie and Steve had also mentioned.

He could be better for them. Even if they weren't here, they had to believe that Billy could do it, right? Max escaped Neil, so did Susan. She did what his mother couldn't.

"Fuck... Neil." Said slowly, breathing haggard. That crack splits open more, trying to aim for the two of them.

Yeah, fuck that crack. Stupid fucking thing. And there's not another county to run to and there clearly isn't enough space around the walls to stay above the crack that way. So bullshit. What's the point of being able to run on walls if the world is going to be against you on it? He's filing a complaint.

"Good," Tommy says, and he sees the crack and excuse you, he's repositioning them. again. No fucking slow moving threat is going to really mess with him. And he's not getting them swallowed up. He just has to find the out. The way to wake them up.

"Come on, say it again. Louder. Scream it."

Billy blinks and he's over by the dining room. Right. Superhuman and speedy shit. You can file a complaint with the man right in front of you Tommy, though it probably won't do much good. His hold is still tight on the other, grounding him and keeping his focus on him. Not the crack, not the echoes of Neil that try to overpower the superhuman. He focuses on Tommy.

"Why aren't you just taking the keys to leave?!" He shouts. Gives Tommy a push towards where they were floating, waiting. "Staying here isn't going to help, you need to go and wake up!!"

Calibrations ◊ The Chain by Fleetwood Mac

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