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Billy’s spent the first half of his lunch break outside, still dressed in his lifeguard swim trunks but now also having pulled his crop top on, smoking in the shade below a tree close to the pool’s open gates. He’s got his cigarette held loosely between his middle and forefinger, and a cool can of coke in his other hand that he grabbed from the employee fridge before he stepped out. He’s got a sandwich in there too, and he’s going to go grab it as soon as he’s smoked his cigarette.
There’s a bee that keeps circling him, trying to get into the open hole in his can, enticed by the sweetness. Billy keeps swatting it away, and it keeps coming back.
It comes again now as he’s lifting the can to take a drink, and he goes to swat it away, when he, because Billy’s an unlucky bastard of there ever was one, somehow manages to push it towards himself.
“Fuck!” he shouts when it stings him. Then again, “Fuck, fuck, fucking shit!” as he spills some of the coke down on his shoes. It’s gonna attract even more bees to him, fucking hell.
He looks up from his shoes and meets the disapproving gaze of a grandmother about to herd her two grandkids in through the pool’s gates.
“A bee,” he explains, because he doesn’t like the way she looks at him, especially since he’s next to be in the lifeguard chair and she wants the adults to at least respect him while he’s watching to make sure their kids don’t fucking drown or hurt themselves, even though the brats may not appreciate it. “It stung me.”
And it still hurts, sharp and burning.
Her expression shifts to something a little more understanding if still uncomfortable. The old hag probably doesn’t like people swearing in front of the children.
Whatever the hell.
As though the kids won’t be off swearing by the time they’re Maxine’s age if not earlier, no matter what you do.
He grins at her, a little softer at the kids, and she smiles tightly back, before taking the kids’ hands and leading them in through the gates.
Billy stays where he is, somehow miraculously not having dropped his cigarette from all the swatting, and finishes it.
His head’s starting to hurt and he feels a little off as he walks back in through the gates, but he doesn’t think anything about it, not until there’s a sudden cramp in his stomach followed by a bout of lightheadedness that comes from nowhere.
He sways to the side, thankfully not towards the actual pool. His knees buckle as he stumbles into the edge of someone’s sun lounger.
He ends up halfway kneeling on it, and would’ve fallen down face first if it wasn’t for the fact that the owner sits up and catches him, holding him up with hands on Billy’s biceps.
The owner turns out to be Steve Harrington, because Billy really is that unlucky. “Hey- Hey, man, hey. What’s wrong you?”
There’s salive pooling in Billy’s mouth and he feels nauseous. He tries to swallow it down but it’s hard. It feels like there’s something thick in his throat. “Get-“ He gasps. “Get- Get Heather.”
Steve hesitates, as though not satisfied by the lack of answer, as though not interested in following anything that Billy asks him to do. Billy’s breath hitches - it’s starting to feel like when Neil chokes him, when he can’t breathe - and he pulls at his top. His heart feels like it’s trying to beat straight out his chest.
He lets out a tiny, tiny little noise that he’s immediately embarrassed by, but that noise seems to be what convinces Steve that this is serious, damn it, he’s got to do something, because he lowers Billy down to the lounger and runs away.
Billy has half a mind to yell at him not to run on the wet stones by the pool, more instinct at this point than anything else.
He turns on his back, knees bent and feet firmly planted on the ground, only halfway to lying on the lounger. He stares up at the blue sky and clouds and tree crowns above him, his breathes leaving him in wheezes. The skin on his stomach has started itching.
A shadow falls over him and Billy hears Heather’s voice. “Oh, shit. Shit!”
He must look at least as bad as he feels for her to say that.
“Fuck, okay. Okay, Steve? I need you to find one of the other lifeguards and tell them to call 911. Tell them Billy’s having an allergic reaction.”
Billy hears Harrington take off again. Heather sits down on the side of the empty lounger beside him, coming into Billy’s field of vision.
“Okay, Billy?” she starts, voice even and soothing the way Billy heard her sound with the kid who fell and scraped her palm last week. “It looks like you were stung by a bee?”
Billy quickly nods.
“Yeah? Did you know you were allergic to them? Have you got a kit in your car or locker?”
“No,” Billy gasps. It’s an answer to both questions.
“Okay. Okay, Steve’s back. Steve, I need to borrow your credit card.”
“What? Why?”
“Just give it to me,” she sounds exasperated.
“Okay, okay, fine.” Out of the corner of his eye Billy can see Steve crouch down and start to rummage in a bag on the ground beside the lounger. He gets out his wallet, and grabs his card., holding it out above Billy. “Here.”
Heather takes it. “Thanks. I’ve got to get the stinger out.” She leans forward toward Billy’s torso. He tenses when he feels her hand on his stomach, above his belly button, close to where the bee stung him. His skin pricks under her touch. “Okay, Billy, this is going to hurt, but I need you to stay still. Just bear with me for a moment.”
Billy can do that. He trusts her.
He trusts all of his fellow lifeguards to be able to do their jobs, but, well. He maybe trusts Heather a little bit more, because he saw her taking actual notes during their first aid training. He could hear her humming the tune to Stayin’ Alive while she tapped out the beat against her sternum on the way to the car.
He whines when he feels her scrape the edge of Steve’s credit card over where the bee stung him. It comes out strangled from how hard it’s getting for him to breathe. He’s got a sneaking suspicion his throat is swelling up.
But he stays still, and Heather’s done in less than a minute.
She hands Steve his credit card, and tells him he’ll probably want to clean it. Get rid of the venom sac if nothing else. She also asks him to bring her some ice in a towel.
Steve disappears to do just that.
Billy’s stomach cramps and he feels lightheaded. “Heat’r?” he slurs.
She takes his hand, but doesn’t move closer, doesn’t crowd him. “Right here, Billy. Help’s on the way. You’re gonna be alright.”
She rubs his knuckles. It gives him something to focus on besides how sick he feels.
“Is he alright?” comes an older man’s voice from a lounger or two away. He must’ve just gotten out of the pool and come back to find Billy freaking out just a few seat away.
“He’s having an allergic reaction,” Heather says, turning to him. She sounds reassuring. Billy squeezes her hand. She squeezes back. “But we’ve called an ambulance, and he’s going to be fine.”
“He’s one of you lifeguards, isn’t he?”
“He is,” Heather confirms. “And he’s going to be fine.” She turns back to Billy. “You’re going to be fine, Billy.”
The man starts talking again, and Billy just wants him to shut up and go away. He hates this, he hates not being in control here, at the pool, where people are supposed to trust him to take care of them. How in the fuck is he going to win back their trust after this? How many people are looking at him, how many will hear about this? He feels so fucking humiliated and he doesn’t want to be made a spectacle for this man’s curiosity.
But he surprises him.
“I could go wait for them outside? Make sure they go the right way when the get here.”
“Oh, would you?” Heather says. “That would be great, thank you!”
Billy hears the lounger scrape against the stone as the man stands up and leaves.
“That was nice of him,” Heather says.
Fuck, yeah, it was. Billy hadn’t expected it.
It’s only a minute or so later that Billy hears the sound of sirens coming closer and stopping outside the pool. Harrington’s just come back, and Heather’s taken the ice filled towel and put it down on Billy’s stomach.
Whoever hadn’t noticed what was going on must as soon as the EMTs hurry in, but no one approaches them and Billy wonders if that’s because his fellow lifeguards are keeping any curious onlookers at bay. At least a little bit. At least enough that there isn’t a crowd surrounding him.
“Hey, kid,” one of the EMTs, a young man only a couple years older than Billy, says. “You’re going to be fine.”
Someone holds one of Billy’s legs down to the lounger while someone else pushes his swimming trunks up a little. A second later there’s a sharp sting in his thigh and deep ache in his muscle that has Billy trying to jerk away.
But almost immediately it starts getting easier to breathe. The EMTs start to move him to the stretcher they’d brought and Billy wants to protest, because it’s embarrassing, being wheeled out like this, but if he’s honest with himself then there is a rather large risk that he’d topple straight into the pool if he tried to walk out by himself. And that would be more embarrassing.
Heather follows all the way to the ambulance, and by that point Billy feels okay enough to speak when she asks him if he wants her to come along.
“Trying to get out of work, are we, Holloway?” His voice comes out weaker than usual, but Billy’s just happy it comes out at all. He’s still gasping most of the time, but still.
Heather laughs, looking relieved to hear him joking. She winks. “You’re on to me, Hargrove.” Her expression turns sombre. “But for real, Billy? You sure?”
He nods. “I’ll be okay.” She’d only be allowed to sit with him in the ambulance, anyway, he guesses. There’s no use to drag her to a waiting room without her car to get back in.
“Okay. Call me when you get home, though. Just so I know you’re okay.”
Billy nods. His eyes burn a little. He doesn’t think anyone’s ever asked him to do that.
They load him into the ambulance after that, and press a breathing mask over his mouth and nose, forcing precious oxygen into his lungs.
Billy closes his eyes and just breathes.