Calibrations ◊ The Chain by Fleetwood Mac

[playingtough]

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.

Comments

[playingtough]

Wow. Billy had no idea of any of that for Steve. Their time knowing each other has been so short, no wonder they didn't know anything. If it weren't for this bullshit ordeal - what was it called? Calibrations? - Steve would've never known about Neil. Billy wouldn't know about Steve's parents. How absent they were.

"Fuck," he says quietly. Neil may have beat the shit out of him, but at least his mom and Susan were there to help when he finally allowed for it. "Jesus your family sounds as shit as mine is, Harrington."

Billy finally glances to Steve, like he's not sure if he's allowed to. They have a truce, but it's so fragile between them. It all depends on Billy and how he acts and that's so hard because changing how he's been for years is the hardest thing he's ever done.

Even harder than when Neil made him chose going to JROTC or losing the Camaro for two months. (He chose to lose his car).

"That...just sucks." No 'I'm sorry' comes past his lips though.

[farrahfawcetts]

Steve snorts a little and nods his head to the side in mute agreement. "They didn't touch me ever. But that included hugs so... I don't know." He chuckles and suddenly feels a kinship with Billy he didn't have before he entered this room. He offers him a sarcastic smile.

"We can fight it out sometime. Who's was the worst. The one contest that you lose by winning."

The smile fades and he deflates a little, looking back around the room. His house had been empty and Billy's had been filled with a monster. Neither one of them had love. Who could they have been if they had? Who could Billy have been without a boot on his neck?

Maybe here they would find out.

[playingtough]

He doesn't know if Steve intends to keep in the room longer, but he motions to the empty seat on the couch. There's enough distance that Billy wouldn't be able to surprise grab Steve if he wanted to. But... it's an offer. One he might not make in the waking world.

"Then I win and lose I guess. I know what happens to me when I go back home. Max told me some of things that happen afterward. How... Neil didn't even go to my funeral." And that he wasn't even saddened by the loss of his only biological son. No, Billy had just been a thorn of failure in Neil's side from beginning to grisly end it seems. "Also we can't fight it out. Breaks our truce you made us agree to."

Steve's voice echoes about the room for a moment, almost too faint to hear the words: "Counts for all of us. No fighting or shoving around or shit like that. This is a truce for Max," came the echo.

He looks at the other teen, eyes hard but serious. "Do you believe me when I say I'm trying to be better?" Billy thinks he already knows what the answer is. He knows there's a lot of bad blood between them, but there's just... maybe a little bit of hope that someone might have a sliver of faith in him.

[farrahfawcetts]

The truce. Steve listens to it loop around the room and looks at the couch uneasily. He could leave. But he and Billy are surprisingly getting along, here. Why cut that short when it was so rare to begin with?

Steve crosses the room and sits at the far end of the couch, back straight. At the question he appraises Billy carefully, considers his response, and then answers honestly.

"I do. But the word 'trying' is why I still don't trust you." He swallows and finally looks away and into the empty room. "You are trying which is great. But it also means you're probably gonna have slip ups. Mistakes. Old patterns and shit. I don't want one of those hurting Eddie or anyone else around here. Until I can figure out what this whole 'better' looks like for you, I just. I need to stay on my guard, man."

[playingtough]

The house seems to rumble as Steve says 'I still don't trust you,' and there's an echo of another voice that fills the room for a moment. The voice belonging to that man who had punched Billy's mom in the face.

'Stop lying to me!!' the voice says along with 'I don't trust you, you're lying to me!'. Billy has visibly stiffened where he sits on the couch, and the gap in the floor splinters open further at his feet. Like it's a mouth trying to open to swallow everything into the darkness within it.

"It sounds like you aren't even expecting me to change," comes the gritted out remark. The gap splinters open even wider, starting to pull back past Billy's feet. Still he doesn't move, hard and watery gaze stuck on Steve on the other end of the couch. It's probably a reach, that train of thought, but it's thoughts like that, that he knows. That he expects.

A voice adds to the mix around them, trying to drown out the echoes of Neil's voice. 'Watch out for ripcurrents—'

[farrahfawcetts]

The instant urge is to lie. To make Billy feel better about this and soothe the ache he must be feeling. But it wouldn't be fair. Not to him and not to Billy. The only way that he can learn to be better is to have reasons to be worse and choose otherwise. Is to not learn to avoid ripcurrents but learn how to escape them. Steve does Billy no favors if he lies. All he does is insulate him from reality and the things he has to face within himself.

It might get him punched but whatever. Not new.

"Not overnight, no. Not just because you want to. It takes more than that, man. Progress...it's not... You know. It's not just a straight line. It's a zig-zag where you fuck up and get back on course and fuck up again and get back on course and the fucking up is part of it.

"I need to see it to trust it. Not the words, the actions. I need to see it."

[playingtough]

Billy's gaze is set on Steve. Like he's waiting for the fuck-up, or for the other teen to rail into him, or to lie about something. He doesn't know what to expect from him, after Steve's now seen the foundations of his home life.

"Of course it's not going to be over-fucking-night, Harrington." His words are gritted out, like someone holding back so much frustration. "You know who the fuck I am, what I can do. So I'm not going to promise people aren't going to get hurt when I backslide."

There's the sound of that plate smashing again in the other room, the whispers of his mother and father around the two of them. Billy can't stand up, the crack threatening to pull him in now. There is no room to stand. " I just wanted to know if someone, anyone had any sort of faith that I could even do this shit."

[farrahfawcetts]

And this...this is easy to say. Easy to tell the truth for. Steve tilts his chin up and crosses his arms over his chest.

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't have faith in you, dude."

He sighs.

"Look. We're not friends. We never were friends. But...what you did? Coming in like you did at Hawkins and taking it over? That took effort. It took you sticking with a play, even a fucked up one, and executing it. You haven't used it in the best way, but you know how to get what you want. You're good at it. You just need to want this and...you can do it, man.

"It's not my faith in you that you need, Hargrove. That's not what I've ever worried about. It's all been your faith in you."

[playingtough]

Billy chances getting to his feet, keeping his weight on his heels so he doesn't plummet into the gap that cracks his home open from the bottom.

He thinks of the people from Hawkins, the way he had come into the town like a hurricane of arrogance. The way people had flocked to him but he hadn't really made friends had he? Tommy Hagan didn't count, that shit had no loyalty to be one. Heather was close, being a coworker, but she was dead now. The only people he had, had been in San Diego. Billy knew he'd never see them again.

The keys float, easiest for Steve to grab since he has the best position to avoid the crack.

"All my faith went out the door, the moment I realized my mother was never coming back for me. That night," he points to the door with the telephone noise like it would make his point, "was the night I realized that the people that were supposed to care for me never fucking did, so I decided I was going to be like that." And it was easier to just keep people away after that. He may have let himself get the brunt of all of Neil's abuse, may have a sword waiting to drop through him when he goes back to Hawkins, but all of that was trivial to having people leave him.

Again.

The man's yelling echoes become louder, like they're coming from that crevice at his feet. Derogatory statements and remarks about how it was Billy's fault that his mother left. The names he called her.

"...You should go. Before my mind swallows you whole." Though it was more of his anger and grief that would swallow him than just the mind in general.

[farrahfawcetts]

Steve hesitates. He stares at the crack in the floor and then back at Billy, feeling lost. There's so much he wants to say but none of it is going to connect. There's nothing else for him to do but as he's told. So he walks forward, hand extended for the keys. But before he grabs them, he pauses once more. One more time to look at Billy.

To try.

"The people that were supposed to care for me never fucking did either. Never. But fuck 'em. Fuck 'em, man. Because you can find people that aren't supposed to care for you but do anyways. They're out there so be like that instead so you find them."

He doesn't wait any longer. Steve's hands close around the keys and he lets them lead the way out and back to the waking world. But even as he does, he looks back at Billy and the black hole that is his insides. And it's hard to access the anger he'd had for the man, before.

[playingtough]

Billy stands there, caged in by all of the negative emotions he was raised with. He can only watch Steve reach for his keys with the shiny California keychain. Can only listen as Steve presses that they weren't entirely different.

He tries to take it to heart. It's difficult, to a person like Billy was. It's difficult when you're raised by thunderstorms because the sunshine left you.

The roar of the Camaro can be heard as the former king's hands curl around the keys. All of the walls fall away to show it. But when Steve looks back before getting into the token of freedom, he'll get to see the crevice crack open one more time, with Neil's hands coming up to grab his ankles. One moment Billy's there, and the next he's gone into that dark chasm.

The Camaro roars once more before the door pushes shut to cage Steve in before the tires squeal and kick up splinters, and races to the world of the waking.