Work Text:
Neil Hargrove knows he is a hard man. Maybe too hard, in retrospect. Too rough on a son who didn’t know how to handle what he was born as. He could’ve - should’ve - done better. It wouldn’t have been very hard to. Still, he’s a hard man. Something he thinks he was just born as.
He married Doreen Voecks on a very hot summer morning. It was a cheap, small wedding held at Doreen’s church. She was Catholic, though her family and Neil’s were Lutheran. He still isn’t sure how that happened, but it did. She was a college grad and so, so smart. Fiery. Not a timid woman, like his dad always said he should have.
Maybe he should’ve married a different woman, because their marriage was failed from the start.
Doreen liked drugs. Hard stuff. Cocaine and heroin, shit that left marks on his skin. She never kept a job for long, even if her Stanford degree and smile always was shiny enough to score one easy.
No one wanted to hire a Vietnam vet with no high school diploma. He had to go back, take classes. It took a while before he could support just the two of them right.
They had their first son at a hospital and Neil remembers getting the bill. He had to borrow money from his father to afford Billy Hargrove’s entrance into the world.
Billy was a small baby. Neil couldn’t keep Doreen off very much during the pregnancy.
He gets a job as a security guard under a private firm. He’s sent to high end banks, celebrity bashes, the sort. He gets a raise after six months. It’s enough to finally start saving. He moves them to the suburbs.
Doreen doesn’t fit in with the suburban moms. Neil does with the dads. They all work hard. His hours are odd, but he always finds himself at the weekend barbecues.
His son is a star in the suburbs. The baby boy with curly blond hair and bright boy eyes. He has women ready to die for him before he can even talk.
Neil loves his son.
Doreen is possessive. She tries to keep Billy inside. They fight when it’s time for Billy to start going to daycare, so Doreen can work.
“Maybe I shouldn’t work. I don’t trust leaving Billy with strangers.” She says.
Neil is making enough. He agrees, even if I does make it a bit harder.
They have to be careful in bed, now, because Neil is insistent that they don’t have anymore children. It makes Doreen mad. She won’t listen to him trying to explain their money problems.
They fight. A lot. Neil becomes harder. He lays down rules. Otherwise, she’d let Billy run wild.
Billy is a sensitive boy. He runs away when he’s yelled at. He always quits after a couple weeks. Neil starts making him stay and pursue even when he gives up, until Billy likes it or at least starts pretending to.
Doreen hates it.
“He should be home with me.” She says.
Neil just ignores her. She yells at him. He yells back. How many times have they done this? When she pushes him, he pushes back.
Every bruise he gives her, he gets one back. She throws plates and vases. She stabs the wall with knives. She screams so loud the neighbors call the cops. He has keys hanging out of his forehead when they drag her away.
She blames him. She tells Billy terrible things.
Neil gets harder.
Doreen leaves him when she snaps at him and he backhands her. She leaves Billy behind.
Neil gets even harder.
He slaps. He breaks Billy’s arm. He spits insults and spits even more when Billy cries. He buys Billy his first car.
History is as is.
Neil tried not to think about it sometimes. But he does, when he sits in his son’s bedroom.
It’s been three months since he was told his son died.
Billy had been acting strange for a little while. Chemicals, something, weird things. Like a government conspiracy. Neil thinks about Vietnam and the things that he’s never supposed to say he did. He knows what the government is capable of.
Neil didn’t cry when Doreen left him.
He cries every night in his son’s bedroom.
He wonders if he’d been softer, if he’d been more forgiving, Billy would’ve been home instead of running off. Rebelling. Maybe Billy was just a sensitive boy. Maybe he wasn’t a fag, just sensitive.
Neil sometimes dares to think he wouldn’t care if it meant his son would he back blasting that terrible music and doing stupid, stupid things.
Susan asks about cleaning out Billy’s room one night, when Neil comes back from it.
“No.” He says.
She tries to press.
Neil’s jaw clenches. She gets too close. He swings his hand and she falls into the wall. She cries. Neil sleeps on the couch.
He thinks about his son, still. Staring up at the ceiling.
He misses him.
Billy Hargrove is buried in the Hawkins City Cemetery. Neil visits him every Monday night. He drops off a new batch of flowers. Wipes the headstone clean. He sits down, on the grass, in front of it and stares.
He wonders about what his son could've been.
Billy was amazing at whatever he put his mind to. Basketball, especially. But also swimming. Flirting. Neil used to be grateful his son hadn't knocked up some whore. He now wishes Billy did. At least there'd be something of Billy left behind for him to have.
He lights a cigarette and looks up at the sky. He used to smack cigarettes out of Billy's hand. Now he's smoking the same brand.
The smell brings forth a lot of memories. Billy's bedroom doesn't even smell like it anymore.
The grass is grown over the lot the first time Neil finds someone else at Billy's grave.
It's around Thanksgiving time. He took the holiday week off so he could take Susan and Max back to California. Max is going to visit her dad. Neil didn't used to want that. Now he thinks about losing Billy and feels guilty about taking Max away.
He's caused too much pain already. He's tired of causing it.
When Billy was fourteen, Neil punched him hard enough to knock him unconscious. He lied to the nurse at the hospital about it, but he wanted to make sure Billy was okay. A few months later, Neil hit him too hard again. Frontal lobe damage. It took a while for Billy to recover. He had seizures, for a little while, but he got better fast. He was a strong boy.
Neil blames himself. Billy would've been a better kid, he thinks, if he hadn't knocked Billy around so much. He drove Billy away, right into that bad music. Into the parties and the slutty girls and the classic bad boys.
Billy was smart. He could've been something so much better.
The first person he sees at Billy's outside of his reflection in the headstone is a strange teenage girl. Reminds him vaguely of Billy, the way she's looking out in the world. Like it did her so wrong, like it sickens her to look at it sometimes.
"Ma'am." Neil greets.
She looks away from the headstone and stares at him. She points and says, "Bad papa. Your fault Billy was alone."
Neil looks at her. He doesn't know how she knows anything about him. "Billy wasn't alone." He grits out. "He had me."
"No he didn't." She says. When she walks by, she shoves her shoulder into him.
He doesn't have it in him to retaliate in any way, in front of Billy's grave.
Neil just sits down and lights a cigarette like he always does. Billy did have him, he thinks. Even if he was too rough, sometimes, Billy had to known that Neil loved him. Loves him. Billy had to have known.