The first time Jim had picked Billy up while he was in heat, he'd taken him back to the cabin and let him ride it out in the spare room. He'd all but begged the beta to help him through it, but all he'd done is made sure he was fed and watered, helped him to the bathroom when he reached a break in his heat and then take him home when it was all over.
After that, Billy had made sure to get picked up and taken back to the station as an excuse to see him.
He turned up on Jim's doorstep at the beginning of his next heat, sweaty and desperate and this time Hopper hadn't turned him away. That had been two days earlier and now Billy found himself sprawled out and sated in the beta's bed.
Hopper had done his damnedest to stay away from Hargrove.
It seemed like one of those blurry lines, don't mix business and...whatever the hell this was. Being a beta he at least had some level of resistance to omega heats, but it had still been a hell of a thing keeping his composure. It was important, though. Despite what a lot of the alphas in his life had claimed, there was still something nebulously immoral about letting instinct take over and getting with an omega that way, at least as far as he was concerned. They weren't in their right mind, not really, it didn't seem right to just go along no matter how loudly their protests otherwise. So he'd kept his distance, acted a perfect gentleman, all professional, because that was how it should be.
But then things had gotten complicated. Twisted up and the line got harder to separate. The kid was clearly trying to make himself be seen, and Hopper would be lying if he said he wasn't easy on the eyes, with the kind of fire in him he always appreciated. So when Hargrove showed up on his porch the second time, it was harder to refuse. Harder to keep the professional line in place, especially when he was a lot earlier in things this time. More clearheaded, at least at the start. So yeah, he got carried away. Caught up in it, not that he could say he really regretted it, especially not with the smell of him permeating his bed. Two days later, though, and he was pretty well worn out; he wasn't exactly young anymore, nor did he have any of the physical benefits that came with being an alpha for this kind of thing. But it was good, he didn't exactly have any complaints.
"Hey," he mumbled, nuzzling at the other's neck as he wrapped an arm around him, not quite possessive, but certainly some kind of claim.
The last two days had been everything Billy hoped they’d be in the weeks between the heat spent alone in Hopper’s spare room and now. He’d taken every chance he could do get off thinking of Jim -which wasn’t as many times as he’d have liked because it’d been made really clear when he’d first started experimenting that he was not allowed to do that, it was dirty and shameful, slutty for an omega to touch themself.
And when he wasn’t at school or doing whatever running around was expected of him for Max, he was making an effort to see Jim. Which lead to him here.
Billy rolls over to face the beta, smiling softly before moving to press his face into Hopper’s neck and breathing him in. “Hi.”
It was no fucking surprise that Vecna had targeted Billy. He’d tried to kill him via the Mind Flayer last year and failed, it made sense to try again. And he was an easy target. He’d all but ghosted his lover and he was responsible for the deaths of more people than he even really knew in this backwater town. He’d also almost killed his sister and her friend. Her friend who happened to be Jim Hopper’s daughter and that would have been a bitch to explain except then the Russians blew Hopper to hell and that was a whole different kind of pain because he was more attached than he’d been willing to admit.
He’d woken up a couple days after they’d enacted the plan and Vecna had almost killed Billy again with two broken legs, a broken arm and blurry vision in swollen eyes. Given he could have been dead, or in need of a bunch of screws and plates to keep his chest crushing his lungs like last time, he’d gotten off pretty lucky. The bones would heal and his doctor was confident his vision would return after the swelling eased.
Said blurry vision is the reason he’d struggled to identify the person beside him. Well, that and the fact that he was far too many pounds lighter and, you know, dead.
Things had been rough for too damn long. He couldn't really say exactly how long, time had gotten kind of hard to keep track of for a while, but as soon as he could piece something together that was vaguely plan-shaped it was just a matter of time. A hard fought for return, sure, he was pretty sure more of him was broken than wasn't at this point, but he was home.
And as soon as he'd been properly looped in to everything he'd missed, his first stop was the hospital, but not for the reason Joyce probably wanted him to. She got it though, he was pretty sure.
So he made his way to the room, sucking a breath in through his teeth when he saw the state of Hargrove. Could've been worse, he guessed, but it didn't make it look any less bad, and hospitals in general already had his nerves on edge on a good day. This was....
He took up residence in a chair nearby, filthy and bruised and his own injuries screaming at him, but that could wait. He'd already patched up what he could on his own, Joyce had helped with some of the rest, and anything past that wasn't fatal enough to worry about right now. He must have dozed off at some point during his vigil, though, because the next thing he was aware of was the voice interrupting whatever passed for sleep, dragging him into waking with a grunt and a fleeting look of something between panic and anger before everything registered. Not Kamchatka. Hawkins. Hospital. Hargrove.
He looked over, shaking remnants of his shitty sleep loose, but grinned tiredly at the other, honestly just glad he was awake and talking.
“You died.” He distinctly remembered when Max told him; it was the only thing he really remembered from his first few days out of the coma he’d been placed in to heal, a different kind of pain compared to the physical agony. She’d barely managed to look him in the eye as she said it in a soft whisper so no one else could overhear, not that anyone else had been around, whispered it like the secret it was.
He’s thankful that his one arm was somehow untouched by Vecna’s terrifying habit of twisting his victims up like distorted marionette puppets because it means he can reach out for the blurry shape of the man beside him, mindful of the drip in his hand. “What the fuck did those krauts do to you?” It had to have something to do with them, didn’t it? The Russians had opened the gate Hop had been trying to close and then he’d vanished for nearly a year. It had to be the Russians. “ Can barely fuckin’ see but I know they’ve fucked you up.”
He couldn't help the wry chuckle that slipped out when Hargrove pointed out he was supposed to be dead. Yeah, he could have guessed that one himself, even if he hadn't been here to see the damage himself. It was bad right before, it was bad in the immediate aftermath, from what he'd heard when he got back it was even worse looking from the outside.
But Hargrove reaches out, and Hopper shifts a little closer to take his hand, squeezing it reassuringly.
"Nothing you have to worry about. It'll heal. You worry about you right now, huh?"
“Oh this? This is nothing.” Well, it wasn’t nothing, but it certainly wasn’t anything compared to his injuries in July. The scars are covered now by the hospital gown but Hopper had no way of knowing that, not unless someone had filled him in on Billy’s attempt at stopping the Mind Flayer with his bare hands.
“I can handle a few broken bones.” He blinks, long and slow and pained before sighing softly and looking back at Hop, squeezing his hand as best he can without disrupting the IV. “Fuck I missed you, you asshole.”
Right. 'Nothing'. 'A few broken bones'. Hopper would argue if he didn't know damn well his dismissals of his own injuries were exactly the same, if he didn't have a handful of people's disapproving grumbles and worried faces echoing at him from inside his own skull. But it was old hat; brush it off, keep going, it's what he'd been practically trained for since he was a kid. 'Walk it off'.
He squeezes Hargrove's hand again, twice this time, like a heartbeat. Firm but gentle, like he used to with Sarah, before everything went the rest of the way to hell the first time. The memory kicks him in the chest, makes his blood run cold and has him wanting to bolt for a moment, but this is different. Hargrove's okay, just a little broken for a little while. Few weeks, probably. So he steadies his breathing, forcing a smile back.
"Hey, if I could've told you I was just at the best prison resort the Soviets could provide I would've, but, you know. The wardens aren't that great about making sure everybody gets their phone time."
Well, that and he'd been pretty sure the guy was avoiding him, which meant he'd probably screwed things up somehow which was about par for the course in his experience, but that wasn't anything to get into right now.
"Missed you too, you little shit. Figured I was still gonna be in the dog house when I got back."
Compared to last year, this was nothing. This was an easy fix. Set a few bones, cast him up and let them heal. Keep an eye on the swelling in his eyes and hope he’d get all his sight back. That was nothing compared to the metal plates and rods holding his ribs and sternum up so they stopped crushing his lungs and his heart from where they’d been forcibly collapsed into his organs. Nothing compared to the weird ripped away skin from bites of a creature only a handful of people knew about that was near impossible to stitch closed,
But he doesn’t have the energy to go into all of that right now. He just wants to revel in the fact that Hopper is alive and here, albeit messed up himself from his time in a fucking gulag. Honestly. Fuck Vecna and fuck the Russians. “Too busy with a fucking crash diet to let you make a call, huh?”
He already missed Hopper’s belly. And his beard. Fuck.
“You were never in the dog house. But that thing… he’d have made me hurt you. I couldn’t let it.”
"You can tell that through your messed up vision, huh?"
He chuckles a little, stroking his thumb along the line of the other's hand carefully, so as to not disturb the IV. He knows how he looks, barely recognizes himself when he looks in the mirror. Better shape than he's been in in years, sure, but he's pretty sure it's only because he hasn't gotten a real meal in months.
"Not like I haven't taken on monsters before, kid. If you'd told me about it we could've figured something out. Maybe it wouldn't have had to get so far."
“Jim.” Even to his own ear, his tone is oddly firm. “There’s literally only half of you.” Billy knows it’s likely caused by starvation and, with his health regime, he knows Jim’s body is going to hold onto every single ounce of fat and carb it’s given to make up for it. And, there’s no denying he looks good -would be better if it had been intentional and not cruelty, of course- but Billy liked how Jim looked before too.
“Not exactly like I knew you and the brat parade were in on Hawkins’ monster secret. Not until they locked me in a fucking sauna and your kid threw me through a solid brick wall.” He’s not mad about it anymore. He had been, for a while after he’d woken from his coma with the knowledge that they knew about all of this shit and it could have been prevented, but it’d been too fucking hard to hold onto all that resentment and focus on getting better at the same time.
Also, the suits were fucking intimidating as hell. He got it.
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After that, Billy had made sure to get picked up and taken back to the station as an excuse to see him.
He turned up on Jim's doorstep at the beginning of his next heat, sweaty and desperate and this time Hopper hadn't turned him away. That had been two days earlier and now Billy found himself sprawled out and sated in the beta's bed.
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It seemed like one of those blurry lines, don't mix business and...whatever the hell this was. Being a beta he at least had some level of resistance to omega heats, but it had still been a hell of a thing keeping his composure. It was important, though. Despite what a lot of the alphas in his life had claimed, there was still something nebulously immoral about letting instinct take over and getting with an omega that way, at least as far as he was concerned. They weren't in their right mind, not really, it didn't seem right to just go along no matter how loudly their protests otherwise. So he'd kept his distance, acted a perfect gentleman, all professional, because that was how it should be.
But then things had gotten complicated. Twisted up and the line got harder to separate. The kid was clearly trying to make himself be seen, and Hopper would be lying if he said he wasn't easy on the eyes, with the kind of fire in him he always appreciated. So when Hargrove showed up on his porch the second time, it was harder to refuse. Harder to keep the professional line in place, especially when he was a lot earlier in things this time. More clearheaded, at least at the start. So yeah, he got carried away. Caught up in it, not that he could say he really regretted it, especially not with the smell of him permeating his bed. Two days later, though, and he was pretty well worn out; he wasn't exactly young anymore, nor did he have any of the physical benefits that came with being an alpha for this kind of thing. But it was good, he didn't exactly have any complaints.
"Hey," he mumbled, nuzzling at the other's neck as he wrapped an arm around him, not quite possessive, but certainly some kind of claim.
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And when he wasn’t at school or doing whatever running around was expected of him for Max, he was making an effort to see Jim. Which lead to him here.
Billy rolls over to face the beta, smiling softly before moving to press his face into Hopper’s neck and breathing him in. “Hi.”
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He’d woken up a couple days after they’d enacted the plan and Vecna had almost killed Billy again with two broken legs, a broken arm and blurry vision in swollen eyes. Given he could have been dead, or in need of a bunch of screws and plates to keep his chest crushing his lungs like last time, he’d gotten off pretty lucky. The bones would heal and his doctor was confident his vision would return after the swelling eased.
Said blurry vision is the reason he’d struggled to identify the person beside him. Well, that and the fact that he was far too many pounds lighter and, you know, dead.
“Hop?”
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And as soon as he'd been properly looped in to everything he'd missed, his first stop was the hospital, but not for the reason Joyce probably wanted him to. She got it though, he was pretty sure.
So he made his way to the room, sucking a breath in through his teeth when he saw the state of Hargrove. Could've been worse, he guessed, but it didn't make it look any less bad, and hospitals in general already had his nerves on edge on a good day. This was....
He took up residence in a chair nearby, filthy and bruised and his own injuries screaming at him, but that could wait. He'd already patched up what he could on his own, Joyce had helped with some of the rest, and anything past that wasn't fatal enough to worry about right now. He must have dozed off at some point during his vigil, though, because the next thing he was aware of was the voice interrupting whatever passed for sleep, dragging him into waking with a grunt and a fleeting look of something between panic and anger before everything registered. Not Kamchatka. Hawkins. Hospital. Hargrove.
He looked over, shaking remnants of his shitty sleep loose, but grinned tiredly at the other, honestly just glad he was awake and talking.
"Hey, kid. Sorry I took so long."
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He’s thankful that his one arm was somehow untouched by Vecna’s terrifying habit of twisting his victims up like distorted marionette puppets because it means he can reach out for the blurry shape of the man beside him, mindful of the drip in his hand. “What the fuck did those krauts do to you?” It had to have something to do with them, didn’t it? The Russians had opened the gate Hop had been trying to close and then he’d vanished for nearly a year. It had to be the Russians. “ Can barely fuckin’ see but I know they’ve fucked you up.”
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But Hargrove reaches out, and Hopper shifts a little closer to take his hand, squeezing it reassuringly.
"Nothing you have to worry about. It'll heal. You worry about you right now, huh?"
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“I can handle a few broken bones.” He blinks, long and slow and pained before sighing softly and looking back at Hop, squeezing his hand as best he can without disrupting the IV. “Fuck I missed you, you asshole.”
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He squeezes Hargrove's hand again, twice this time, like a heartbeat. Firm but gentle, like he used to with Sarah, before everything went the rest of the way to hell the first time. The memory kicks him in the chest, makes his blood run cold and has him wanting to bolt for a moment, but this is different. Hargrove's okay, just a little broken for a little while. Few weeks, probably. So he steadies his breathing, forcing a smile back.
"Hey, if I could've told you I was just at the best prison resort the Soviets could provide I would've, but, you know. The wardens aren't that great about making sure everybody gets their phone time."
Well, that and he'd been pretty sure the guy was avoiding him, which meant he'd probably screwed things up somehow which was about par for the course in his experience, but that wasn't anything to get into right now.
"Missed you too, you little shit. Figured I was still gonna be in the dog house when I got back."
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But he doesn’t have the energy to go into all of that right now. He just wants to revel in the fact that Hopper is alive and here, albeit messed up himself from his time in a fucking gulag. Honestly. Fuck Vecna and fuck the Russians. “Too busy with a fucking crash diet to let you make a call, huh?”
He already missed Hopper’s belly. And his beard. Fuck.
“You were never in the dog house. But that thing… he’d have made me hurt you. I couldn’t let it.”
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He chuckles a little, stroking his thumb along the line of the other's hand carefully, so as to not disturb the IV. He knows how he looks, barely recognizes himself when he looks in the mirror. Better shape than he's been in in years, sure, but he's pretty sure it's only because he hasn't gotten a real meal in months.
"Not like I haven't taken on monsters before, kid. If you'd told me about it we could've figured something out. Maybe it wouldn't have had to get so far."
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“Not exactly like I knew you and the brat parade were in on Hawkins’ monster secret. Not until they locked me in a fucking sauna and your kid threw me through a solid brick wall.” He’s not mad about it anymore. He had been, for a while after he’d woken from his coma with the knowledge that they knew about all of this shit and it could have been prevented, but it’d been too fucking hard to hold onto all that resentment and focus on getting better at the same time.
Also, the suits were fucking intimidating as hell. He got it.