Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“And how long have you been experiencing these symptoms?” The doctor looked up from her notepad.

“Erm…” Steve looked toward Billy. “How- how long has it been?”

“I’ve been out of hospital for three months,” Billy supplied.

“Right, so three months,” Steve said. “Almost four.” 

“And you said it’s progressed in that time?”

“Yeah. Especially the past month has been erm… has been hard.” The doctor nodded as she scribbled.

“Right,” She said. “And before this point, did you ever have similar problems? You mentioned on the phone that you used to have a speech impediment in your youth. Could you tell me a bit more about that?”

//

As a kid, Steve used to have a stutter, some sort of impediment that made his mouth go numb around the words. It was different from a regular stutter in that the sentences didn’t struggle to get their footing, like a ball that kept b-b-bumping against a threshold before it could roll down the hill. No, Steve’s sentences were like rolling a ball up a hill. As the climb got steeper, he’d lose his grip and the sentence hobbled and rolled away from him. They fizzled out like cheap fireworks. 

“Mama, can I g-go-go-g p-p-pl-l-l?” He’d say as he pushed his chair back after dinner. 

“I don’t wannnn tttt… bbaahttf” He’d whine when she’d try to get him to wash off the dirt of a day of playing in the garden. 

He’d stuttered from the moment he started talking. Steve hardly knew better and the grownups seemed to think it was cute. They were patient with him. They finished the words that he couldn’t. They didn’t mind that he made up his own words when he couldn’t find the right ones. It was sweet. It was creative. It was ‘amazing how the mind of a child works’.

But while Steve stayed the same, the adults around him changed. They were not as patient anymore. They filled in his words, but now they sounded crabby. Suddenly the words he’d come up with weren’t good enough anymore. He had to use their words now. But their words didn’t seem to fit his mouth. They came out warped and messy. It wasn’t good enough.

There was a woman he had to talk to twice a week, Mrs Audrey. Steve didn’t like Mrs Audrey. She smelled like an attic and for some reason she really liked deep breaths and made Steve do a lot of them. His dad didn’t like Mrs Audrey either, though it seemed to be for different reasons.

“I swear to God, Donna, how much do I have to pay that therapist to finally teach him how to talk?” 

“Albert,” Steve’s mother replied with a warning in her eyes. “Steven can talk just fine. Don’t interrupt him next time.”

“ Just fine- Did you hear him just then? There’s nothing ‘fine’ about it. The boy’s an imbecile.” 

“Hey! Don’t say that stuff in front of him!” 

Steve had not dared to open his mouth again. Sometimes, he figured, it was better to be talked about than to be talked to. 

Some nights, Steve wondered why he had to be the firstborn. He already knew that he wasn’t the son his father wanted him to be, too sensitive, too quiet. Would it have been better if another more exceptional Harrington had been born before him? Someone who could fulfill his dad’s wishes so their weight wouldn’t land squarely on Steve’s shoulders. It would have been nice to have a brother, Steve thought. He would happily live in someone’s shadow if it meant he had someone to play with, to blame messes on, all the things his classmates got to do but he didn’t. Or maybe he wouldn’t have been born at all. Maybe his parents would decide that you don’t need another child if you get it right the first time. Maybe that baby would have been the one to wreck his mother’s back on the way out, ruining all possibilities for future children. But it had to have been Steve. Mediocre little Steve with his double tongue. And now they were stuck with him. 

His mother read to him extra long that night. By the time she gave him a kiss on the forehead, whispered ‘goodnight, Stef’ and killed the lights, there was another figure waiting in the hallway. He heard them exchange a few quiet words after which a pair of heels descended the stairs alone. A tap-tap sounded on the door. 

A strip of yellow light spilled over the carpet before it was swallowed by the silhouette of Mr Harrington. Steve’s dad was all the things Steve wasn’t: tall, imposing, demanding attention, demanding respect. His voice was deep and, unlike Steve's, never showed any hesitation.

“Good story?” he asked. The low drone of his voice seemed to fill the entire room. Steve didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to say anything. He would have preferred it if he wasn’t there at all.

“Your mom said you like the book. Mentioned something about a… knight and a talking rabbit. ‘S that right?” 

When he still didn’t get a response, Mr Harrington sighed. His resignation became palpable in the silence that followed. 

“Steven,” he said as he stepped inside. “If you're not gonna talk, I want you to listen. Can you listen?” Steve tugged the duvet up to his chin and nodded. 

“Good.” Father closed the door behind him. He walked over to the bed and crouched down on one knee, draping his arms over the leg that stood upright. 

“Did I ever tell you that your uncle Rory used to wear a sticker over his eye when he was a kid?” Mr Harrington asked. Steve shook no. He’d never heard that. 

“There was something wrong with his eye. It didn’t work as hard as the other one, so for a little while, the doctors covered up the good eye with a sticker to make sure that the lazy eye caught up, you know what I’m saying?” Steve wasn’t so sure but he nodded anyway. 

“The point is that uncle Rory had the last laugh, didn’t he? Because he didn’t go the easy route. He made sure his eye got better. He invested in himself, in his future. And now he’s a jet pilot.

“What mommy and I are doing, with the speech lessons,” he continued. “is we wanna give you that eye sticker. You might not like it at first and it’s going to be uncomfortable for a while, but you need to be able to talk like other people do, with real words. Right now, it doesn’t matter so much, because you’re still a kid, but when you’re big, you want people to listen to you, right?” Steve nodded. He was already sick of people not listening to him.

“Good,” his father said. “Then you better step up your game during Mrs Audrey’s lessons. Because no one is gonna listen if they can’t hear you speak.”

//

“ Hey, did I stutter? I said keep it down! Geez.” The shouting match instantly fizzled out. Steve caught two sets of apologetic eyes in his rearview mirror and one eye roll.

“Mike, I saw that. You better show some respect or it's the last time I’m driving you twerps.”

Mike huffed. “We weren’t even being that loud.”

“I don’t think you get to call the shots on that, pal,” Steve replied as he turned into the arcade parking lot. He’d barely stopped the car before the kids were tumbling out to continue their energetic discussions. He left the engine running as he rolled the window down.

“Hey guys,” he called. “I’ll pick you up at 9. Please be outside by then. I’m not coming looking for you like last time.”  

“Aren’t you coming in?” Dustin asked. Steve furrowed his brow. 

“No. No, thanks. I’ve got a hot date. See you in a few hours.”

Steve barely got the sentence out before the Camaro pulled (or nearly crashed) into the parking lot. Max was already running toward her friends when the driver’s door opened and Billy’s boots hit the asphalt. While the kids were preoccupied, Billy caught Steve’s eye and gave a nod toward the side of the building. 

Shortly after the kids had taken off, Billy’s back was pushed against a wall out the back. The kisses were hungry at first and gradually got more patient as they found what they were chasing. They’d done this often enough by then that caution no longer ruined the mood. Billy hummed and pressed his lips firmly against Steve’s before he pulled back.  

“So, whatcha wanna do t’night?” His red lips were stretched into a smile. 

“I saw that Terminator is playing at 7. You wanna see that?” Steve asked. Billy made a face.

“I have to pick Max up at 8.”

“Really? Why so early?”

“Family’s coming over tomorrow,” Billy sighed. “Early bedtime. It’s a whole thing.” 

Steve hummed sympathetically. “Do you think you’ll manage?”

“Well, father’s gonna need me to be on my best behaviour -”

“-which you don’t have-”

“ Exactly , so my estimations land somewhere between unbearable and homicide. Ideally performed by me, worst case scenario: on me.” Steve pouted and leaned in slowly. He lingered by Billy’s ear for a second before he murmured, low and inviting,

“Well, if this is your last day on earth, we better make it worth it.”

“Hmm, such a smooth talker,” Billy whispered before he pulled Steve in again. 

At that point, Steve was so used to hearing it that he almost believed it himself. It was nice, being good with words. It made him feel in control, made him feel like he mastered this game, even if it felt like the rules kept on changing. 

He’d done as his father told him. He’d done the lessons, done the breathing, gotten rid of his own words and learned how to work with those of others. He developed an autopilot that got surprisingly good at guessing what his classmates would laugh at, what faces to make, and how long a silence should last. Suddenly Steve was the popular kid and now he got to pick who got picked on. With time, his position at the top of the middle school hierarchy became so self-evident that no one remembered that King Steve had once had a stutter – and if they did, they knew to keep quiet about it. 

But Steve never really grew out of his stutter. Instead, he grew around it like rings around a tree. It still came back every once in a while, when he was nervous or overwhelmed. Not with Billy though. Not because Billy never made him nervous or overwhelmed. That was pretty much all he felt in Billy’s presence. No, it was because Billy couldn’t know. 

Nancy had known. Very early on, she seemed aware that he wasn’t what he made himself out to be. She saw that he was just playing a part, that every sentence was rehearsed and borrowed, saw the seven-year-old boy she’d once gone to primary school with. For a time, she made him feel like it was okay. But eventually, she traded him in for a boy who read Steven King and wanted to go to NYU. He couldn’t really blame her.

But then came Billy. Billy, who was bold and always knew what to say, to whom words were a venom he kept close behind his teeth. Billy, who would shout over his own music to announce when the best parts were coming up. Billy, whose voice turned into a soft murmur when they were catching their breath in the backseat of a car. That’s when Steve liked him the most, when he was at a loss for words. Steve wouldn’t admit it then, that he was lost in words as well. 

“I love you,” Billy whispered into Steve’s mouth. Steve grinned and sealed the kiss. Those words were always easy enough to find.  

“I love you, too.”

Despite his faults, Billy was easy to love. Steve wasn’t sure if he could say the same thing about himself. He wanted Billy to be a clean slate. Billy had never known who Steve was at seven and he wouldn’t have to. If Steve worked hard enough, he could be good enough for Billy.

But Billy, like Nancy, did notice. They were little things, like how flustered Steve became when they were practicsing for his SATs, how he would struggle to get out his order when there was a line forming behind them, how quiet Steve got when they’d been at the party for a couple of hours. He kept asking Steve if everything was okay, who would look surprised and answer with a ‘yeah’ that sounded like a question, like an unspoken ‘why?’. Sometimes Billy would watch him over the course of an evening. At some point, Steve would end up on a couch or a lounge chair, staring off into space. It was as if he wasn’t in his body anymore. But when someone would come by to talk to him, his back straightened. His face came alive again as he started laughing and talking. Like an android switching out of ‘stand-by’ mode. Like he was just playing a part as long as the lights were on him. 

“Are you okay?” Billy asked once they were back in the car on their way home. 

“You keep askin’ me that,” Steve said. 

“Well, yeah, because you’ve been moping all evening.” There was a pause. 

“I wasn’t moping. When was I moping?”

“Anytime you thought no one was watching.” A pause.

“So you’ve been watching me?” 

“You’d be too if your boyfriend was as hot as mine.” Steve didn’t respond. Didn’t move a muscle. And it was such a smooth save. Why didn’t he respond? Or at least react?  

“Are you mad at me?” Billy asked.

“What?” 

“Why are you acting like this?” Billy flipped the blinkers as he turned onto the main road.

“Acting like what?” 

“Being all–” he rammed the stick shift into third gear. “ quiet and shit.”

“I don’t know,” Steve said after a while. “I just don’t have anything to say.” 

That’s how it starts , Billy thought. First, he ‘just doesn’t have anything to say’ to you anymore. He’s getting bored. Pretty soon he’ll find someone shinier and you’ll feel stupid for believing that he ‘just didn’t have anything to say’.

‘Maybe he’s cheating,’ Billy thought while Steve was in the shower. ‘Maybe he feels guilty about it and he doesn’t know what to talk about because he’s afraid he’s gonna spill.’ 

“Are you cheating on me?” He asked when they were in Steve’s bed that night. He felt silly and clingy as soon as the words left his mouth. Steve, who had been on the cusp of sleep stiffened beside him. 

“Wait, what? ” he slurred. “ No! I’m not cheating on you! Why- Why would you think that? Who would I even cheat on you with?” He propped himself up on his elbow. “Is this because I was talking to Nancy at the party?” Honestly, Billy hadn’t even noticed and knowing it now, he couldn’t give a damn. 

“Sorry,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

Steve let himself fall back on the mattress. “You can be so jealous sometimes.”

“No, I mean– I’m not jealous of Nancy. I honestly don’t care. I just– It really fucks me up when you go quiet on me.” He wasn’t sure what it was about people’s silence that made him so uncomfortable. Something told him it was another one of those things he could blame on his dad.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I honestly didn’t really know I was doing it. Or that it bothered you so much” Steve reached for Billy’s hand in the dark. Their hands fell together easily, thumbs turning around each other, like an old couple dancing in their living room. Steve hated when he made Billy feel bad without knowing it. Thankfully Billy himself was getting better at being upfront about his feelings because Steve still had trouble reading him sometimes. It occurred to him that he hadn’t exactly been following Billy’s example. Steve was terrible at communicating his wants and needs. Maybe he owed it to Billy to be more honest about what was going on with him. It was better for both of them if he just told things like they were rather than try to hide as well as he could.  

“Bibbip,” Steve whispered. He could already feel his heartbeat picking up. “Can I tell you something?

“Always,” Billy murmured from the dark. 

Steve swallowed. “I erm… 

Sometimes I find it really hard to talk
Sometimes I struggle with talking

No one is going to listen if they can’t hear you speak

“Sometimes… I just- I struggle to- talk. I just- I find it really hard.”

“I get that,” Billy’s voice was gentle. “It’s just… hard to get the words out. 

“Yeah, but… This- this is more than that,” Steve said as the knot in his stomach pulled tight. “Sometimes I think something might be wrong with me.” Billy scooted closer. 

“Like what?” 

The words
It’s like they leave
It’s like they’ve never been there

“I don’t know. Sometimes it’s like all the words are removed from my head and I just… I know that I should say something… but I can barely remember what a word is.”

“I think everyone has that sometimes. When it’s on the tip of your tongue but it’s just out of reach?” 

Steve knew what Billy meant. And he knew that Billy meant well but what he was describing didn’t seem the same at all. Steve wanted to explain that this was different , that he felt different, well aware of the irony when he couldn’t find the words to do so. 

So instead, he said “Yeah, ‘course.” and pulled his lips up into a smile. Its insincerity was hidden in the dark. Billy pressed a kiss to Steve’s forehead and whispered,

“There's nothing wrong with you, okay? You’re doing fine.” 

They didn’t talk about it after. It was not like these were regular occurrences anyway. Most days, Steve managed just fine. And sure, he stumbled through sentences from time to time but that happens to everyone, Billy told himself. We all get flustered. We all have times when we’re so tired we can barely get a word out. And yet, the more time they spent together, the more Billy noticed that when Steve was in a particular mood or state of mind, his sentences became… word soup. The individual words were there, but the structure, the coherence, the meaning was completely lost. Billy’s poorly disguised confusion only fed into Steve’s nerves, which made the problems worse. Billy would try his best to follow, to understand, but anytime he asked Steve to repeat something or clarify, he flustered and shrunk into himself.

“Whatever,” he’d mutter. “‘S stupid.”

Billy began to realizse that this was serious for Steve, that he really thought something about him was broken. Once he’d uttered those words, once Steve decided ‘it’ - or rather he - was stupid, there was no talking him out of it. He’d given up for the day. His eyes got that unseeing, silent-screaming look to them. It was like he pulled up a wall around himself that prevented anything from coming in. Sometimes he’d sit on the windowsill for hours. Sometimes he didn’t want to be touched. Sometimes Billy had to repeat himself up to three times before Steve would even recognize that someone was talking to him. Responding was an entirely different challenge.

“Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a native language,” Steve said one night on the couch. He’d had what Billy had started calling a ‘clam-up’ earlier that day. His eyes were still distant, but at least he was talking again. 

“Maybe it’s because you’re bilingual,” Billy suggested. Steve pulled a face as if he had taken a sip of sour milk.

“No…” There was a long pause. “It’s like- none of any words are mmine, no matter what language. They’re always bborrowed. Words’re just- ‘s like my fingers are too long. And I don’t know where they are going.” Billy stayed awfully quiet.

“Whatever,” Steve sighed. “You don’t get it.”

//

“What I’m hearing is that even before your accident, you were experiencing many of the problems you’re experiencing now. Or am I misunderstanding?” The doctor tapped her pen.

“Yes and no?” Steve replied with a sigh. “They weren’t really ‘problems’ at the time. Not like they are now.”

“I think what you’re saying is that the symptoms were there, they’ve just become more disruptive,” Billy added and glanced at Steve as if asking for permission. “It was there but it was manageable. You’d get through the day and collapse when you got home, but since the accident, you collapse during the day and at home, you fall apart.”

//

It took a while for people to notice that Steve wasn’t okay. To be fair, no one was ‘okay’ after Starcourt. They were all struggling with what they had done and witnessed in one way or another. In those first weeks, the attention largely went to Billy. 

The moment Steve saw the Mindflayer’s tentacle punch into Billy’s chest, something in his brain snapped. It was like a bolt of lightning cleaving itself into a house, an impact that shook the fundament and fried all the fuses. In a matter of seconds, all the lights went out. Steve was left staring at Billy’s body bleeding out on the tiles. The darkness felt right, then. Why should Steve be able to feel light when things like this happened to people he loved? Why should he ever feel happy again? 

It wasn’t until Billy got out of surgery and was declared stable that it occurred to Steve that something might be wrong. He expected the darkness and the fogginess to go away once he knew Billy was safe but it was still there. In the weeks that followed, the lights still hadn’t come on. He kept up with his tasks, visited Billy in the hospital, went to job interviews, did his laundry and watered the plants. But it was as if he was watching himself on the television, an incredibly boring show that somehow was laced with a dread that never seemed to leave or build to a climax. It was just there, the subtle feeling that something was very, very wrong.

The stutter came back.

At first, he blamed it on the concussion and the lack of sleep. It was normal for someone to be a bit out of it after they’ve had a good thump on the head and the Russians had given him a good run of it. He convinced himself that the lights would come on again, eventually. The stutter would go away. It just needed time.

But whereas Billy got better, Steve got worse. This thing he’d been running from all his life was finally catching up with him. The stutter was back and he couldn’t hide it anymore.

“Here you g-g-go, that wwi-” he cleared his throat. “Sorry that wwill be four ffourtynin.” The girls shared a look and let out a poorly disguised giggle. Steve didn’t bother to count their change and tossed it in the register. 

“On your left,” Robin said as she approached him. Steve still jumped at the sound of her voice which seemed to cut right into his head. 

“You’re on break, I believe. I’ll hold the fort down for a bit.” That was a lie, he’d had his break an hour again. Steve hated how obvious it was that he wasn’t coping. Before, he could be a wreck in the privacy of his own mind. Now it was as if his mood and energy levels were stapled to his forehead with big flashing arrows. 

“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” Steve said to Billy while they were lying in bed one night. That day, Steve had nearly cried, just because Billy asked him if he wanted to watch the X-files while Steve was making dinner. Steve had always been territorial in the kitchen, but these days he would short-circuit if you tried to talk to him while he was concentrating. 

“I think you’ve been through a lot, babe,” Billy whispered, cupping his hand around Steve’s cheek, who ‘umph’ed as he leaned into the touch. “I think we all have.”

The doctor thought it must have been the head injury. Head trauma can damage the speech centerres of the brain, they had said. Steve was put on a waiting list to see a neurologist. 

If you asked Billy, there was nothing wrong with Steve’s head. It clearly had something to do with stress. In moments like these, when he was wrapped up in a blanket, cuddled and cared for, the words came out without a problem. It had always been the moments when Steve was tired or under pressure when problems occurred. In effect, this was still the case. It just seemed that Steve’s tolerance for pressure had been chopped in half, with trice the effects. You can only face so many monsters before something snaps, Billy thought. Just like he needed time to rebuild the lost bits of muscle, Steve needed time to rewire his head. 

“I just wish I could control it more,” Steve sighed. “Sometimes it’s actually not that bad, because when I stutter, you know that I can’t do the talking or that I’d like to leave. But with other people, it’s just embarrassing. I just feel stupid.” Billy squeezes him extra tight. 

“You wanna know something stupid?” Steve asked, wearily. Billy smiled at the question. 

“From you? Always.” The time it took to speak again added extra weight to what Steve said next.

“Sometimes I’m jealous of El.” Billy sat with it for a bit before he answered.

“And why’s that?”

“Because… she doesn’t have to explain herself as much,” Steve said. “She can just- she can say so little and people just seem to get her.” Billy had never thought of it like that. The way El talked had never been that interesting to him. Notable, but quickly forgotten. Maybe that was what Steve was getting at. 

“Sometimes I feel like I have a small person inside of me who doesn’t wanna talk. But people are not gonna like him, so I have to be the parent and translate for him and it can be exhausting sometimes.”

“Does that guy have a name?” Billy asked. Steve was quiet.

“Don’t laugh, okay?” 

“‘Course not.”

“I call him Stef.”

“Stef? That’s kind of sweet,” Billy grinned. “So Stef’s not much of a talker, then?” Steve shook his head. 

“Stef doesn’t talk at all. He just- makes sounds. Or screams.” Billy chuckled.

“Yeah? Like what?” 

“‘s like-” Steve produced a sound that Billy would best describe as the screech of a seagull. He stifled a laugh.

“It’s fine. I know it’s funny,” Steve said. Billy tried to recreate the sound but Steve jumped in to correct him.

“No, no. You’re doing it on the exhale. You need to pull your tongue towards your throat and then inhale.” Billy tried again with better but still disappointing results. They went back and forth like that for a while with no improvement made on Billy’s part, but a lot of strange sounds and laughter were produced in the process.

They did this sometimes, these nonsense conversations. Steve had always made little sounds, melodic bu-bu-bu-bu-bu’s as he hopped down the stairs or baaaah’s when he flopped face-first into the couch after a long day at work. At first, Steve was a bit self-conscious about it, always looked like a deer in the headlights whenever he realised he’d been vocalising. So Billy hid his smiles and pretended he didn’t notice. But as they grew more comfortable around each other, Steve relaxed and more sounds came out, sounds he would keep in when they were in public. With Billy, there was space for it to exist, even if it wasn’t understood. 

At one point, Steve began making the sounds at Billy. He’d call “Bibbip” at which Billy would look up from his book or his homework and hum inquisitively. 

“Ghhaah,” Steve would say and Billy would snort.

“Ghaah?”

Steve would nod. “Ghaaag.”

Billy chuckled and said “Alright, ghaahg to you too.” 

Sometimes it was just a simple exchange. Sometimes it turned into one of the surrealist dialogues they were having right then. There was something liberating about it, Billy thought fondly as Steve once again demonstrated seagull screech. It was nice to talk without the need for words, just to share attention and sound. Perhaps, Billy realised, it wasn’t about what they said but about saying something , anything. Maybe Steve just found it easier to connect without systems of meaning getting in the way. No need to translate when there is no intended message.

And so Billy started a little experiment. Whenever Steve made a sound, Billy said something back. In some cases that seemed to work. The back and forth often ended with the both of them trying to one-up the other with increasingly ridiculous sounds, which always ended in a laughing fit.

They’d come up with their own words in the supermarket. Steve would point at a roll of biscuits and ask Billy if he could get “thee, erm-” finger-snap finger-snap “Skips”. And why shouldn’t they be skips?

“One skips, coming up.” 

Steve would smile and whisper a ‘thanks’ that felt like it was about more than groceries. 

This seemed to work for them. They could have whole conversations without using a single word. Other times, however, Steve seemed thrown off by Billy’s responses. He’d give a quick little reaction and get back to what he was doing. Two weeks into this trial, when Billy had just produced a string of kh-kh-kh-kh, Steve blurted, “I wasn’t talking to you.” 

“Uuh, okay,” Billy said after a moment. He tried to laugh it off but he’d be lying if he said it didn’t sting a little. He reminded himself that Steve could be like this sometimes. He would just– state the facts. And apparently what Billy had thought was a thing they shared, was something he was intruding on. 

“Sorry, didn’t mean to be harsh,” Steve said as he scratched his neck. “It’s just that ermm… I mean I know you don’t mean it that way but sometimes it feels like you’re mocking me.” 

“Oh,” Billy’s heart sank at the realisation that he’d been doing the exact opposite of what he thought he was doing. “No… not at all, I just thought we were having fun. I thought you liked it.” 

Steve chewed on his lip and said,

“I mean, sometimes it’s fun. I think… there are times when I’m trying to get your attention, like- I just wanna say hi, I guess. But most of the time I’m just- being a 24h weird sound radio station. If I can help it, I’d rather not think about it too much.”

“Okay,” Billy nodded as he began to rearrange everything he thought he’d learned over the past few weeks. “So- what sound means ‘hi’ then?” Steve held Billy’s gaze for a moment, brows pinched.

“It’s not like that,” he said. “It’s- they’re just sounds.”

They were just sounds.

If that was really true, then why didn’t it feel that way? After being together for over a year, and living together for almost four months, Billy had the feeling that ‘Prrrrpp’ and ‘hhmMmhpf’ meant very different things. When Steve got really excited, for example, the sound usually had a rattle in it, something like a ‘kkrrrrrrararah’ or ‘nnghhrrrr’, matched by a big grin and eager eyes. There were patterns. The only problem was that Billy couldn’t seem to figure out what they were. And seeing as Steve didn’t think much of it himself, it was hard to make progress. 

“Hey bub!” Billy called one night when he heard the front door open. Steve didn’t answer. The sound of socked feet disappeared in the direction of their bedroom. A door fell shut. 

‘Must have been a long day,’ Billy thought to himself as he stirred some tomato paste into the pan. Steve always did something to make his presence known upon entry, even if it was just a ‘baaah’. Always, unless he was really tired. Robin had been sick, so Steve had to cover her shift as well as his own. They should make it an early night. Billy himself had had physical therapy that day and he was beginning to feel its effects. He just hoped that Steve wasn’t coming down with what Robin had. 

A few minutes later, Steve shuffled into the kitchen, wearing one of Billy’s big old sweaters, the ones he’d worn during recovery, and hooked his chin into the crook of Billy’s neck. 

“HmmNAhh.” 

“Hey baby,” Billy said and twisted his neck to plant a kiss somewhere in Steve’s hair. Steve bent towards the touch but Billy had pans to keep track of and carrots to grate. Steve put more of his weight on Billy’s back. 

“Hmmnehrr.” Billy snorted. He had to flex his toes to support Steve’s weight on top of his own. He reached over his shoulder to give Steve’s messy hair a ruffle before he got back to his carrots. They stood like that for a moment longer when all of a sudden, Steve budded his head into Billy's shoulder with more force than he probably intended. Billy’s hand shot forward. 

“Fuck!” He screamed as he pulled his hand back. “Steve, what the hell!” He inspected his grazed knuckles. The cuts, shallow as they were, began to pool with blood. Steve stared with horror in his eyes, hands retreating into the sleeves. The ‘sorry’ he produced was barely even audible.

“Why’d you do that for?” Billy shouted as he turned to put his hand under the tap. Steve couldn’t look him in the eye, shoulders drawn up to his ears, guilty like a dog. 

‘I don’t know.’ 

Steve barely touched his food during dinner. After about 15 minutes of abhorrent silence, Billy put his fork down and said:

“The bandaids look kinda cool, don’t you think? Kinda like a beat someone up.” Steve continued to poke at his pasta without looking. 

“Look, I’m not mad,” Billy said, even if it wasn’t entirely true. “I just don’t get it.”

There were plenty of times when he didn’t mind at all that Steve forewent words when he could, but in moments like these, he’d desperately wish that this could be easier. He wanted that for Steve, sure, but he also wanted it for himself. It became tiring, to have to mindread, to try and write a dictionary for a language the native speaker can’t even help you out with. Steve still wouldn’t look at him, arms wound tightly around himself as a restrained squeal escaped him. 

“Steve?” 

Steve caved in, like a cardboard box collapsing in the rain, slow, wet, and anything but graceful. He curled into himself and produced a wounded squirm, the sound one makes when they have a very bad stomach ache. Billy picked himself up along with his chair and scooted over until he was as close to Steve as he would get. 

“C’mere. Come.” Billy sighed and gently urged Steve onto his lap where he wound his arms around Billy’s neck. His chest was heaving as he tried his best to keep the worst of his crying inside.

Billy knew these moods, when there was just Bad, Bad stacked up to the ceiling, drowning out all the senses. So full of Bad that it seemed to be eating at your skin.

Billy squeezed Steve’s thigh and whispered: “Hey. Relax. Set it loose.” Another squirm broke a deep aching sob, the type that doesn’t seem to stop, like a boulder that crossed the threshold and only knows down.

“Breathe, dear,” Billy said, swaying Steve gently as he struggled to regain his breath between the bursts of tears. Billy shushed him with a gentle hand on his back. A muffled ''Mm sorry' sounded through the fabric of Billy's shirt. 

“You know I’m not mad at you, right?” Billy murmured into Steve’s hair, which was soft and smelled vaguely like the video store. And Steve nodded, nose bumping against Billy’s neck.  

“Not to say that you should be trying to wrestle me when I’m holding a grater. I just wish that you could tell me what was going on because headbutting me doesn’t work, yeah? I don’t know what to do with that.” Steve managed to laugh past his tears for a moment and nodded again. 

“Good,” Billy said as he pressed a long kiss to Steve’s hair. Steve sat up slightly.

“I’m…” he took a deep breath and then another. 

“What is it?” Billy asked softly. 

“Work,” Steve managed after a while.

“You want to tell me about work? Did something happen at work?” Steve nodded.

“Good or a bad thing?” Steve tapped Billy’s thigh two times.

“A bad thing? And it upset you?” Steve nodded. 

“It- ” Steve said through heaves. He squeezed his eyes shut and blew out through his nose. His hands came up and he shook them like he was trying to get the water off his hands. He was trying really hard. And Billy didn’t know how to help him. 

“I think you want to tell me what happened,” he said. Steve nodded and another tear crawled down his cheek. 

“I appreciate that, baby, but we don’t have to do this right now. It seems like you’re really tired. I can see you’re struggling.” It didn’t do anything to lessen Steve’s frustration. Billy wrapped his own hands around Steve’s cheeks. He didn’t know what to do to make it better so he just held Steve. And thank god Steve allowed it. 

“I can tell you’re very frustrated,” he said, just to say something. “It is frustrating.” Steve nodded. Gradually, as his breathing evened out, his shoulders relaxed. His body grew heavier in Billy’s hands, leaning, trusting. His eyes had fallen shut. 

Once Billy felt sure that he wouldn’t trigger another way of panic, he said, “How about we take it one step at a time, yeah?” Steve reluctantly agreed. 

“How about we make step one eating some dinner, hm? How about five bites. Think we can do five bites?” 

Five bites was a compromise they’d come to for whenever Steve didn’t think he was hungry. Steve would only have to eat five bites, after which the meal would be ‘done’. Billy wouldn’t bother him about food anymore. The trick was that five bites was just enough to wake Steve’s stomach. Once he had five bites down, he was usually hungry for more.

And so Billy brought the plates over to the couch and let Steve eat his dinner in front of the tv, comfortably poised between Billy’s thighs. When the plate was empty and put away, Steve settled deeper into Billy’s embrace. He was an absolute sucker for a good firm hug. 

The way they were physical with each other had changed a lot over the course of their relationship. In the beginning, they’d been all over each other but as time passed, they mellowed out. And of course, Billy’s injuries required them to have a change of pace. If Billy let him, Steve could spend hours in Billy’s lap while the latter did homework or played video games, whatever was keeping him busy. If it was up to Steve, he would be plastered to Billy’s side all day long. 

As the movie was coming to its end, he started playing with Steve’s hair again, combing it back into a ponytail, scratching at the nape while Steve produced a constant stream of content little hums.

“Are you purring? ” Billy chuckled as he squeezed Steve’s shoulders playfully. “Have you secretly been a cat this whole time? Is that why you’re always trying to climb in my lap when I’m trying to get shit done?” Steve squirmed as he wiggled in Billy's arms until he felt comfortable again. They sat like that for a little longer, Steve blinking slowly and purring while Billy played hairstylist.

“This is what you wanted, right?” Billy said after a while. “You just needed a hug.” Steve didn’t reply, not in words. That was okay. Who needs words anyway. Sometimes a simple ‘hhmpf’ can be enough. 

//

“Forty-two, forty-one, forty, thirty-nine, thirty-“

“That’s good. Thank you, Steve. You can put your shoes on.” The neurologist walked around her desk and began to type. Steve settled back into his seat beside Billy and cast him a look. The doctor spoke up before Billy got a chance to.

“I have some good news,” she said once everyone was seated. “You passed all of those with flying colours. All the function seem to work properly. I did some additional tests to check for symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but there were no signs pointing to that prognosis. Besides, you’re incredibly young, even for early onset Parkinsons.” Based on what he’d just seen, it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise and yet, Billy felt a wave of calm wash over him at the news.

“Based on this evaluation I can rule out most neurogenic causes for the speech problems. Especially because you mention that the symptoms are very contextual, it’s unlikely that there is any structural damage in the brain.”

“Okay,” Steve nodded. “So I don’t need a brain scan or anything?” Billy forced his lips out of a smile. Steve was not very good at disguising that he had looked forward to looking at pictures of his own brain. 

“From this evaluation, I couldn’t find anything that we might want to have a closer look at in a scan, so no. I’m inclined to mark this down as a psychogenic cause, so related to emotional trauma. It’s rare but it does happen. Since something like the accident you were both caught in was both physically and mentally traumatic, I wouldn’t be so surprised if that left an impression.”

//

“Can’t believe we had to wait two months just for a doctor to let you walk in a straight line and tell you that you’re good,” Billy said. “I could have told you that.” 

“You’re dripping.” 

“Shit.” Billy managed to catch the drop just before it slid onto his hand. 

They’d decided to celebrate the good news with some ice cream. Ever since working at Scoops, Steve had gotten pretty interested in ice cream making (the artisan stuff, not the fabric-made junk that Scoops sold). He’d heard about a family-run business in Indianapolis and since they were there for the appointment, they took a detour to check it out. 

“Sure,” Steve said. “but did it ever occur to you to have me walk in a straight line? I don’t think so.”

“If that is what they teach you at med school, I’d want my money back. You can come up with those tests just by watching some toddlers do PE.”

“Maybe you should become a neurologist then.”

“Maybe I will.” Billy grinned. They found a park and then a bench. For a while they sat in silence, people watching and listening to the rustle of the trees. With every gust of wind, a couple of leaves were torn from their branches. They were about halfway through their cones when Billy spoke up again. 

“So… Did it give you what you were looking for?” he asked. 

“I guess,” Steve replied and took a bite from the cone. “It’s good to know that my brain is okay.”

“For someone who just heard they don’t have brain damage, you don’t sound very excited.” 

“I am. I am happy,” Steve said but the line between his brow didn’t fade. Billy gently bumped his shoulder against Steve’s.

“You really wanted those brain pictures, didn’t you.”

“No, that’s not it. It’s…” Steve sighed. “To be honest, I’m… not sure what to do now. I don’t have a brain disease. That’s great. But- what now? Is this just how it’s gonna be from now on?”

“Maybe,” Billy said. He understood the worry. To be honest, he was a bit scared himself, of what it would be like if Steve didn’t get better. Things had been going smoother since that one night but they were still harder than they used to be. On a day-to-day basis, it was fine. It was just the prospect of this forever that was a bit daunting. 

Because Billy wanted it to be forever. It had been terrifying to admit it to himself and he wasn’t ready to say it out loud but he wanted to spend the rest of his days with Steve, in sickness and in health, upside-down or right-side-up. He’d realised a couple of weeks ago when Steve came home with raspberry-scented dish soap, of all things. 

“Cause it’s red,” Steve had explained. “I thought, ‘That’s so stupid. It’s gonna make the dish water look like blood. Who would want that?’ And then I realised: Billy would want that.”

It was silly but that was when Billy knew. He wanted to have a house and maybe a few kids with Steve and they would have conversations about dish soap. They’d have two cats, a ginger and a tabby that Steve would give too many treats. They would have a lawn and bicker about whose turn it was to mow it. It would be boring and domestic and glorious. It was something Billy never knew he wanted before he met Steve, whose voice pulled him out of his fantasy home, back to the bench in the park. 

“I think what I’m afraid of,” Steve said. “is that- if I don’t have brain damage that it’s my own fault, that I’m just not trying hard enough to control it.” he breathes out a cold laugh. “If it’s all in my head, I guess I just have to buckle up and go back to speech therapy.”

“Steve,” Billy said. “You know you don’t have to do anything, right?” 

“But it’d be selfish not to.”

“Selfish to who?” 

“To you.” The words lingered. Steve looked away. Billy wished Steve would look at him. He wished he knew how to tell Steve that he wasn’t a burden, that he wanted this forever, in any way he could get.

“Steve, I- I don’t care” he said. “Really- I don’t mind.” Steve’s lack of response gave him the impression that he didn’t believe him. 

“I can’t expect you to hear me when I don’t say anything.” Steve said.

“Is this about the day with the carrots?”

Steve replied with the quietest ‘yeah’. 

“We figured that out in the end, didn’t we?” 

“I hurt you.”

“Yeah, so now we know that headbutting is not a good way to communicate and it hasn’t happened since. There are other ways to tell me what you need. You tell me all the time.” 

“Except on nights like that.”

“ Especially on nights like that.” Steve finally met Billy’s eyes, almost as if he expected to be able to see the lie in them, the frayed edges where he could peel away to reveal the truth, that he was a burden, that Billy was only being nice. 

“I don’t understand,” Steve said, frowning. “I could barely talk.”

“You don’t always need words,” Billy replied with a gentle smile. “When you start making these squirming sounds, kind of like a drowned cat-” Steve laughed. He knew exactly what Billy meant. “-that’s you asking for attention. I wish I’d known it then because it might have saved me a few grazed knuckles but I’ve been trying to remember it since. I can’t always drop what I’m doing, but I try to give you a hug when I can.” Steve’s smile slipped off. He had noticed Billy being a lot more… attentive as of late. 

“And when you’re happy, you make these crow sounds. Or sometimes it’s like air escaping from a balloon,” Billy continued. He was blushing a little.  

“I think my favourites are when you make these… bubble-like sounds. They usually have a ‘b’ or a ‘d’, sometimes a ‘p’ in them. Like bu-bu-bu-bu-buh or erm… da-da-da-da-dah. It’s- that’s also a happy sound but it’s not as heightened as with the crow sounds it’s- it just means that you’re comfortable. Those are the sounds you make when you’re working on something or when we’re on the couch- hey,” Billy laughed as he reached out to wipe the tears from Steve’s cheeks. “Why are you crying?” 

“Dunno,” Steve replied wetly.

“What’s this good for?” Billy laughed and cupped Steve’s cheek. God, if they weren’t in a public park, he would have kissed him. 

Steve took a deep breath. “Because-” 

because you’re telling me things I didn’t even know about myself
because I never felt seen like this
because I’ve never felt so sure that someone loves me

“Because- I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” Steve managed and laughed through his tears. Billy joined him.

“All I did was pay attention,” Billy said, sweetly. His hands were warm around Steve’s cheeks. 

“‘S more than anyone ever did,” he replied. The corners of Billy’s mouth twitched and for a moment Steve thought that Billy might join his crying party, but he took a deep breath and said,

“Don’t feel like you have to go to therapy for my sake.” He held Steve’s gaze as if he was trying to write the words into Steve’s head. “If you think it will make your life better or easier, then I’m all for it but don’t do it because you think you owe me. I love the way you talk to me. I wouldn’t change it for the world.” 

Steve nodded and smiled. He felt another surge of gratitude, that this was his man, who was kind and considerate and nothing like what people had said about him. Billy smiled back at him, but Steve could tell there was something he still wanted to say, something knocking at the inside of his lips, wanting to get out.

“You know,” Billy started. “I like to think that you call me Bibbip because- it has those same ‘b’ and ‘p’ sounds that you make when you’re happy and safe. And I like to think that you feel safe around me. If the rest of the world is exhausting, then I want you to relax when you’re with me.” 

Steve grasped Billy’s face and kissed him. Billy hesitated at first but settled into the kiss as well. All of Indianapolis could be damned.

“You do make me feel safe,” Steve whispered once they parted. “Bibbip.” Billy laughed and kissed him again.

“I bibbip you, too.”