Look at these two boys looking stylish as fuck in their 80s prom suits. (Also yes, Billy went out and got one that matched Steve’s bowtie, because of course he did.) (Alsoalso, he looks greatin teal and he knows it.)
Harringrove for Ukraine-commission for @hippiebuckyharrington, who wanted Billy being soft with Steve, and ONLY Steve. <3 (Also you KNOW Billy would be like this. The guy’s an asshole. Only he’s an asshole who has a soft spot for Steve.)
Folks, we’re doing so well - thank you all so much for participating! I’m still getting messages every day with more donations, so if you haven’t yet commissioned your fave and you’re worried it’s too late - it’s not! Check out the master list of creators and get donating, because there are plenty of creators still extremely willing to make something for you (including yours truly, I might add).
If you’re a fic writer and you haven’t done so already, could I ask you to add any commissioned fics to the Harringrove for Ukraine collection on AO3 - it’s a great way for everything to be collated so that we can all look through your wonderful offerings.
On to the exciting bit! This number is changing all the time - and if you’ve had donation screenshots you haven’t sent me, now would be a great time so I can add them to the running total - but I thought everyone might like to see where we’re at and how much we’ve raised in the last week or so since we got this up and running.
Drumroll please, because we have raised…
$1,744!
I honestly can’t believe it, this fandom is so incredible - let’s keep going if we can! Thank you all so much!
It’s a lazy kind of party, the kind that takes place down in Sam Crawford’s basement in a cloud of smoke with a cluster of people around the foosball table, a few more getting high on Sam’s mom’s old leather couches, and a steady stream of people swapping in and out of the ongoing Street Fighter tournament taking place on Sam’s Commodore 64 in the corner.
There’s music but no one is hyped up enough to dance, and even the alcohol has dried up to an extent. Steve is sprawled lazily in an armchair near the foosball table with an empty red plastic cup in his hand, head tipped back and eyes fluttering open and closed, and he’s wondering if college is really the place for him, if he’s too old for this shit, because he’s already twenty-two and everyone else his age has graduated.
He doesn’t mind the studying part, although he still has no idea what he’s going to do with it after he’s done. He dithered about whether or not he wanted to go for too long, too caught up in Upside Down bullshit and pressure from his dad and everything else that weighed down on him, and by the time he finally applied he was already twenty.
His eyes catch movement across the room. Billy Hargrove is heading back from the bathroom, cigarette tucked behind his ear and shirt flapping half-open. Billy is the same age as Steve. Billy is somewhat beautiful, although Steve is aware that he’s only admitting it because he’s drunk and a little high.
Billy has an excuse for going to college so late. Billy nearly died saving the goddamn world - diddie, really, spent months wrapped up in a hospital bed and then in a wheelchair and then with a walking stick, and now he walks with a limp and bears an impressive set of scars that Steve only knows about because they’re both still a part of the basketball team and sometimes he glances over in the showers.
Because of the scars, just the scars, he wanted to see - but Billy caught him looking once and grinned, shark-like, and Steve flushed and turned away while his stomach fizzed with something he didn’t really understand.
They’re not friends. Steve’s best friend at college is a twitchy nineteen-year-old called Nicky, and that’s only because they’re roommates. Nicky is too smart for his own good and sells both weed and illegal term papers on the side. He gives Steve the pot for free, and sometimes when he’s feeling generous he looks over Steve’s assignments and points out the obvious mistakes.
Steve doesn’t even really like Nicky. He’s just there, like everyone in college, everyone in this room - everyone except Billy.
Billy is brightly colored, an aura of confidence and warmth surrounding him and making him stand out from everybody else. Steve watches as he heads over to the computer, slaps the shoulder of Jake Simmonds and says something that makes Lucy Carter giggle. Every movement is effortless, his eyes sparkling in the dim lighting of the basement, and Steve lets out a small sigh as he watches through hooded eyes.
Then Billy turns, as if Steve’s scrutiny has laid a physical hand on him, and his eyes settle on Steve.
For a moment they just look at each other. Then Billy grins, eyes flashing, and makes a little gesture. Come here.
Steve doesn’t hesitate. Leaving his empty cup on the floor, he gets up and moves across the room.
“Harrington,” Billy says in greeting as he reaches the gaggle of people watching Chris Elliot and Samantha Cummings playing Street Fighter. Samantha is winning, fingers blurring on the keyboard.
“Hargrove,” Steve replies. Billy’s eyes are so light, so warm, so goddamn blue.
A second too long of quiet between them. Then Billy motions towards the computer. “Want to play?”
“Sure,” Steve says.
“Me and Harrington are on next,” Billy tells the group at large, without taking his eyes off Steve.
Steve waits for his turn. Billy’s shirt is dark red, unbuttoned halfway to his navel, and he’s wearing a silver chain that floats in and out of his collar. There’s a black beaded bracelet on his left wrist and a silver ring on his right thumb. His forearms are bare and Steve has to restrain himself from sliding a hand across them.
Samantha wins the match and Steve and Billy sit down in the pair of chairs in front of the screen. The game isn’t really set up properly for two players, not on a home console, and Billy’s thigh is warm against Steve’s leg. Experimentally Steve nudges against him and is rewarded with a steady pressure in return.
The game starts, pixelated and bright, making Steve blink. He’s never been very good at arcade games; he’s never even really likedthem, but that’s not the point. That’s not the point. The point is the closeness of Billy’s body, the fact that his arm is laid right up against Steve’s, skin-to-skin, shoulders bumping each other and Billy’s hair falling against the side of Steve’s face.
He presses buttons almost at random. He’s not trying to win.
Billy’s leg curls around the back of his ankle. Steve squeezes.
“You’re going down, princess,” Billy murmurs. His mouth is by Steve’s ear, and in spite of the crowd around them Steve isn’t sure if anyone else was meant to hear.
Fast as lightning, he smacks at Billy’s leg. To anyone watching it probably looks like he’s responding to Billy’s shit talking, but he lets his hand linger for a moment above Billy’s crotch, fingers pressing down, just for a moment.
He feels Billy’s cock, feels rather than hears the soft surprised sound Billy lets out as Steve’s knuckles graze past it.
Then Steve is drawing his hand back, returning it to the keyboard. Billy’s on-screen character has faltered, and Steve takes advantage of the moment to deliver a crushing blow.
“I win,” he says quietly, as behind him Lucy and Samantha and Jake and the others cheer.
Billy looks across at him. “Yeah,” he says. He grins that dangerous grin, the one that makes Steve’s stomach contract and his vision blur. “Want to get out of here?”
Nicky is somewhere at this party, probably over by the foosball table selling his wares and trying to chat up the stoner chicks in the corner. The room they share will be empty, unused, Steve’s bed a rumpled mess just waiting for occupants.
“Yeah,” he says, and then he basks in the glow of Billy’s smile.
That’s how long it’s been. They tell him once his breathing starts to level out. Once they’re sure he won’t attack anyone, maybe. He’s still crouched on the ground like a feral animal, coiled and tense and terrified, but he hasn’t moved and he doubts he looks like much of a threat right now, while he’s trembling like a leaf.
He couldn’t tell whose voice it was, not through the haze his ebbing panic attack left behind.
The faces around him are familiar but he barely recognizes them. Especially Max. Her teary stare and the mangled hope in her eyes. She looks older. Her hair is shorter. And she’s looking at him like she missed him.
Time didn’t mean much to the unchanging landscape of whatever hell he was trapped in, but he felt it nonetheless. Unavoidably. Monotonously. Survival was harrowing, scrounging for food and hiding from monsters, but the worst part was the hours blending together into one endless, desolate blur as he struggled to keep himself from crawling out of his own skin to escape the restlessness.
Boredom ate away at him. Loneliness. He started to consider letting one of the creatures he encountered attack him just to put a fucking end to it. Or at the very least remind him what it was like to touch another living being. He’d never gone so long without contact of any kind. He’d have welcomed a beating from his father if it meant being touched. Anything would be better than grasping at his own sides and pressing as hard as he could just to try and replicate the sensation of being held, wondering if this was just his life now. Wondering what he was even surviving for.
But then someone pulled him out, and…and it was all just too much. Being real again.
So, two things we Harringrovers have in common: we all love our two boys, and we’re all really bloody good at coming together in a crisis to support an important cause. We’ve done it before and in light of the situation in Ukraine right now, I’m asking us to do it again.
The best way we can realistically support Ukraine right now is by donating money to one or many of the various organisations rallying to support them. These include:
The Ukrainian Red Cross, which does loads of humanitarian stuff, from aiding refugees to training doctors.
Revived Soldiers Ukraine, which funds medication and medical supplies for army hospitals on the front line.
The UN Refugee Agency, which provides life-saving protection to families forced to flee their homes.
I’m going to be running this drive a little differently than some of the others we’ve participated in previously, because we’re on a real time crunch here and it’s absolutely essential to get as many donations as we can as quickly as possible. For that reason, we won’t be operating under sign-up or posting deadlines - we want to get the ball rolling straight away.
If you’d like to donate in exchange for content:
- Check out the masterlist of content creators (this will be added as a reblog to this post) and contact your chosen creator(s) directly to negotiate what you’d like them to create and how much you’d like to donate. You’ll also be negotiating whenyou’ll receive your piece - more on that below.
- Send a donation to one of the organisations linked above and take a screenshot. Send a picture to your content creator.
- Sit back and wait for your piece! I’d like to ask all donors to be patient with content creators, because I’m rolling this out with very little notice and some people may not be in a position to start work on a new piece right away.
If you’d like to participate as a content creator:
- Send me a quick message to let me know, and I’ll add your handle to the masterlist of creators (to be reblogged to this post).
- Create a post detailing to your followers what you’re willing to create - be it art, fic, gifsets, podfics, you name it! You’ll be able to set your rate for donations (a suggestion for fic would be $1 for every 100 words, for example) and specify what you will and will not be willing to create in terms of ratings, tropes and prompts. You can copy and amend my post if you’d like to!
- HERE’S THE BIG DIFFERENCE: You will also be negotiating with your donors when you’ll be able to create your piece for them. Don’t overextend yourselves! Because of the immediacy of the crisis, I’m not setting a deadline for when creations need to be done, and I’m asking all donors to be patient and just get their money in as quickly as possible so we can help sooner rather than later. I know some people may not be in a position to write/draw something right away, but I’d hate for that to be a reason they choose not to participate when with a little patience they could do so in a few weeks instead.
- As soon as you have received a screenshot of a donation, send it on to me - I’m active here and on Discord.
- Get working on your creation! I’ll be making an AO3 collection for fics as well.
Whatever you do, please share this post and tag #harringroveforukraine - both here and on Twitter if you can! I don’t have Twitter but I know it’s a format a lot of people use, and the more people we can reach, the more money we can raise.
So, two things we Harringrovers have in common: we all love our two boys, and we’re all really bloody good at coming together in a crisis to support an important cause. We’ve done it before and in light of the situation in Ukraine right now, I’m asking us to do it again.
The best way we can realistically support Ukraine right now is by donating money to one or many of the various organisations rallying to support them. These include:
The Ukrainian Red Cross, which does loads of humanitarian stuff, from aiding refugees to training doctors.
Revived Soldiers Ukraine, which funds medication and medical supplies for army hospitals on the front line.
The UN Refugee Agency, which provides life-saving protection to families forced to flee their homes.
I’m going to be running this drive a little differently than some of the others we’ve participated in previously, because we’re on a real time crunch here and it’s absolutely essential to get as many donations as we can as quickly as possible. For that reason, we won’t be operating under sign-up or posting deadlines - we want to get the ball rolling straight away.
If you’d like to donate in exchange for content:
- Check out the masterlist of content creators (this will be added as a reblog to this post) and contact your chosen creator(s) directly to negotiate what you’d like them to create and how much you’d like to donate. You’ll also be negotiating whenyou’ll receive your piece - more on that below.
- Send a donation to one of the organisations linked above and take a screenshot. Send a picture to your content creator.
- Sit back and wait for your piece! I’d like to ask all donors to be patient with content creators, because I’m rolling this out with very little notice and some people may not be in a position to start work on a new piece right away.
If you’d like to participate as a content creator:
- Send me a quick message to let me know, and I’ll add your handle to the masterlist of creators (to be reblogged to this post).
- Create a post detailing to your followers what you’re willing to create - be it art, fic, gifsets, podfics, you name it! You’ll be able to set your rate for donations (a suggestion for fic would be $1 for every 100 words, for example) and specify what you will and will not be willing to create in terms of ratings, tropes and prompts. You can copy and amend my post if you’d like to!
- HERE’S THE BIG DIFFERENCE: You will also be negotiating with your donors when you’ll be able to create your piece for them. Don’t overextend yourselves! Because of the immediacy of the crisis, I’m not setting a deadline for when creations need to be done, and I’m asking all donors to be patient and just get their money in as quickly as possible so we can help sooner rather than later. I know some people may not be in a position to write/draw something right away, but I’d hate for that to be a reason they choose not to participate when with a little patience they could do so in a few weeks instead.
- As soon as you have received a screenshot of a donation, send it on to me - I’m active here and on Discord.
- Get working on your creation! I’ll be making an AO3 collection for fics as well.
Whatever you do, please share this post and tag #harringroveforukraine - both here and on Twitter if you can! I don’t have Twitter but I know it’s a format a lot of people use, and the more people we can reach, the more money we can raise.
Hello! I’m participating in Harringrove for Ukraine! That means I’ll be writing fanfiction in exchange for donations to an organisation that supports the Ukrainian people in this crisis.
I’m asking that you donate money to one of the following organisations in exchange for me posting my work:
The Ukrainian Red Cross, which does loads of humanitarian stuff, from aiding refugees to training doctors.
Revived Soldiers Ukraine, which funds medication and medical supplies for army hospitals on the front line.
The UN Refugee Agency, which provides life-saving protection to families forced to flee their homes.
Follow these steps if you’re interested!
- Reblog this post and/or the master post both here and on Twitter if you have it so that we can get as much traction as possible as quickly as we can.
- Send me an ask to let me know what you’d like me to write for you and how much you’d like to donate. I’m active both here and Discord.
- Wait until I reply to your ask, then you need to make your donation to one of the orgs listed above.
- Donate!! Remember PLEASE to screencap your receipt – you need to send me this to show you’ve donated so we can all track how much we’ve raised as a group
- Don’t forget to block out any private contact details you don’t want me to see!
- Once I’ve seen your receipt, I’ll start work on your project.
What I have to offer: Fanfiction for donations!
What I Like to Write: Really I can write anything if you like. But I’d love it if you give me whole idea so I can work on it quickly.
What I don’t like to write: bdsm stuff(I really don’t have many knowledge about it)
Accepting prompts? Yes please, it helps me v much actually.
Additional Info: Please specify if you want smut or no smut and if you have any squicks or preferences.
Suggested Donation Amount: $1 per 100 words of a fic. Obviously the more the better - this is such an important cause.
Please reblog and donate as soon as you can - I know it’s not in everyone’s budget right now but this is a really precarious situation and the faster we can get donations the better! Let’s do this!
(This is my Harringrove for Ukraine piece for @callieb, though it’s not actually Harringrove. It’s a post s3 Billy centric, angst hurt comfort ficlet….so I may have to write up something else now that I really think about it….yeah, I’ll write up something better)
Billy doesn’t know how much time has passed since he went up against the monster that stole his body, but he does know one thing.
He’s definitely dying.
It hurts…and sucks ass, but it is what it is.
He supposes it’s fine. At least he stood up to it in the end. He broke free from the control. He helped that girl.
The one, the only one who sawhim.The him inside the monster.
So he at least did somethingworthwhile in his sad pathetic life.
Right?
He protected her.
She’s alive. She will be able to see her friends and family again…
And Billy…
Well, it doesn’t matter because he’s alone.
So, no one is going to mourn him. No one is going to cry over Billy Hargrove.
So, it’s fine.
He can let go.
Nothing is tying him to this miserable plane of existence.
His moms already gone…so there’s nothing…
Nothing and no one.
“Billy?”
No one gives a shit about him…..
“Billy!”
Right?
“Wake up, Billy!”
So….why is someone calling his name?
“Billy,please. Open your eyes!"
Someone is holding his hand, putting pressure on his chest…
"Not like this! You can’t give up like this! Please!!"
Who is it? Who is pleading so desperately? Don’t they know he’s worthless? Don’t they know what a horrible person he is? All the shitty things he’s done? He was stupid enough to get possessed for fucks sake! and anyways, don’t they know even if he was a good person… that it’s too late? He’s got too many holes in his guts. He can feel his life force slipping away with the blood pooling beneath his cooling body.
It’s over.
He’s finished.
The sobs are quiet in his ear. "Don’t go.”
There’s nothing left for him here…
“Please don’t leave me.” The voice breaks as they softly add, “Don’t leave me with Neil."
And with sudden and frightening clarity, Billy knows the owner of this sad miserable voice. He knows it and he knows how wrong he’s been…knows the voice is right. He can’t die like this. He can’t leave….he does have a reason to stay…
If he dies….his dad might…
He can’t let him hurt…
"Ma..Max.” He is barely hanging onto this world but he speaks her name with a mouth full of slick black sludge. He can’t get his eyes to open or his limbs to move but he can still force himself to speak. “Don’t cry."
"Billy? Oh, my god, hang on! Help! Someone help me!"
Now he’s aware of multiple pairs of hands touching him, pressing down on his abdomen, on his chest. Someone is pulling back his eyelid and shining a light. Many people are talking, yelling over one another.
But Billy doesn’t care about them.
He just wants Max to know- "It’s OK. Max…I won't….I won’t leave you with him."
Her voice is farther away when she calls out to him, "They’re going to help you. So just hang on a little longer. You hear me? Hang on!"
He has no strength left to answer her but he manages to crack one eye open and sees her dirty face, bloodshot eyes and tear soaked cheeks.
He wants to tell her sorry again. Tell her not to cry. But he can't…he can’t even keep his stupid eye open. He’s just so….
Everything goes black.
…Tired.
The next time he opens his eyes, it’s light outside. He’s lying on a bed and not the nasty concrete floor of the mall so he must be in the hospital. He tries to sit up but every nerve ending in his body lights up like a christmas tree.
Fuck. He’s bananged up real fucking good and there’s an IV in his arm, though by the amount of pain he’s in, it must be out of the good stuff.
He groans and glimpses the movement of red hair next to him.
He’s a little surprised that she is actually here. "Shit…Max?”
She looks up, eyes still as red as they were the last time he’d seen them. “Billy!” She moves, he thinks, to hug him, but stops herself short. Instead she awkwardly sits back down. “You’ve been asleep for three days.” She says quietly. “I didn’t think you were going to make it.”
He sighs, which causes his ribs to ache. “You and me both, shitbird."
"I’ll go get the doctor.” She stands to leave but Billy pushes through the pain to grab her wrist, stopping her from going.
“They can wait. I’m not going anywhere."
Max looks confused but nods and sits back down. "OK."
They are both quiet for a moment, neither really knowing what to say.
The thing is, Billy has a fuck ton of shit to say. So much to apologize for. So much to atone for.
"Max?"
"Yeah?”
He might as well start with…"I’m sorry.“
She looks taken aback. "For what?"
"For being such a dick to you.” He replies, eyes trying to meet hers but failing miserably. “For…hurting you…for everything really…"
She’s staring blankly at him. Like she’s waiting for him to say haha! Just kidding. "Ummm. Thanks…I guess."
"I’m serious, ” he insists. He needs her to know he’s being sincere. “I’ve been an asshole. And I took a lot of shit out on you and blamed you, and that wasn’t fair. I’ve been a shitty brother."
"Billy…I get it OK? I…I won’t say that it’s fine because you’re right, you’ve been a dickhead, but like…I understand why….” She looks down at the floor. “I know why you’re so angry all the time…and scared."
He feels a bit nauseous and finally remembers what it was that kept him from death’s door.
"My dad…” He pauses, doesn’t know how exactly to go about this. “He hasn't…he hasn’t hurt you has he?"
Finally her eyes snap to meet his and they are wide with emotion. "What?"
"When I was dying….you said….you told me not to leave you with him."
Her cheeks flush a little. "You heard that?"
"Yeah…I heard it….so I need to know if he hurt you.”
She shakes her head but he can tell there’s still something wrong.
“Max…please. How can I protect you if I don’t know what’s going on?"
She hides her face from his view but she finally answers. "It was just once but…he’s been saying a lot of things so…."
"It won’t happen again.” He promises. And for the first time ever, he can feel the confidence behind his words. He just fought of a fucking demon…as scary as his dad has been in the past, Neil Hargrove is nothingcompared to that.
“But-”
“I faced off against a monster that possessed me, and yeah it about put me six feet under,” he says, motioning to his blood stained bandages, “but I survived. And I swear to god, Max, I’m never going to let my dad hurt me…or you…ever again."
She doesn’t respond for a second but suddenly she leans over and hugs him. "Thanks for surviving, Billy."
It hurts like a bitch, but he finds himself hugging her back. "No,” He replies, blinking back a wayward tear. “Thank you for wanting me to."
Argh this was PERFECT, the perfect blend of angst and happy ending! I LOVE the sibling bonding, I love love love Billy coming back to protect Max, this was absolutely excellent and I loved it! Thank you so much for writing it for me!
