Stranger Things - Imagines (Book 2)

Billy Hargrove X Reader - Spectrum

A/N - This chapter was inspired by the song Spectrum (Say My Name) by Florence And The Machine and Calvin Harris. This is set when Reader and Billy are in college, so I've decided that it's 1988. I hope you all enjoy it. 

When you had left Hawkins, both you and Billy had still been claiming that you were just friends. Sure, road-tripping across the country together over summer break was a little coupley, and spending every waking moment together was probably a little confusing for the people around you. Still, neither of you was willing to take the first step to become something more than friends, all too aware of how fragile friendships like yours could be. It would be easy to damage what you had if you tried to become something more. The entire thing could blow up in your face and leave you both brokenhearted. So you kept yourselves behind a boundary. You set yourselves unspoken parameters to follow. No overly affectionate touching. No pet names. No doing the stuff that couples do. 

It had been easy when at the end of any hang out you could go home. You could hide away in your bedroom for an hour or two and unpack everything that had happened. You could push Billy out of your head and go about the rest of your life without issue. But less than two days into your road trip, you were starting to realise that you no longer had that option available to you. 

And God, Billy was driving you mental already. He looked so pretty sitting in the driver's seat, his hair a little messy from the open window, a cigarette perched between his lips, his sunglasses sitting low on his nose. Shit, he wouldn't have looked out of place in one of those big Hollywood movies. He would have fit perfectly into Dirty Dancing or Top Gun or Full Metal Jacket. He looked like a drop-dead gorgeous movie star and it was killing you. And then, you'd stop for the night and end up in a cheap motel room with him sleeping a couple of feet from you in the other bed. And you'd wake up the next morning and have to see it all again. There was no respite. No pause in your torment. 

"You good?" he hummed, tapping the ash from his cigarette out of the open window, his eyes flickering away from the road to look in your direction. "You've been real quiet today," he pressed, watching as you almost deflated in his passenger seat with the sigh you released. 

You'd been so sure that you were putting on a good act. You'd thought that you'd been hiding the longing pretty convincingly. But apparently, you weren't as good of an actress as you had thought you were. 

You shrugged slightly, shuffling in your seat in an attempt to distract yourself from his flickering gaze, darting between you and the tarmac. "Didn't sleep great," you murmured, watching as he finally turned his eyes fully back to the road, his tongue darting out to wet his bottom lip. 

"So, you're lying to me now, huh?" 

You froze at the comment, swallowing down the lump in your throat. "I'm not-"

"I just want you to talk to me," he pressed on. "I hate sitting here thinking that you're suffering over there on your own when I could help," he murmured, before clearing his throat. "What's wrong?"

"I think this was a mistake," you uttered, watching as his hold on the steering wheel tightened as the words registered. 

"This?"

You nodded. "I don't think we should be going so far-"

"Because you don't want to be around me?"

Your expression fell, pure sadness settling across your features as your head shot around to look at him. "No-"

"I get it," he pressed on. "I know I can be a lot sometimes, and normally you're not around me this much, and-"

"Billy, shut up," you bit at him. "It's not like that," you corrected. "I love being around you, you know I do."

He nodded, his brow still furrowed. "Then why is this a mistake?"

You hesitated for a moment, swallowing down the lump in your throat as your eyes lingered on his features. You couldn't lie to him, you knew you couldn't, but the next words out of your mouth would completely change your dynamic forever. You wouldn't be able to pretend that the feelings weren't there anymore. You wouldn't be able to pretend that you were just friends.

"Because being around you this much makes it hard for me to pretend that I'm not in love with you." 

Billy was pulling the car off to the side of the road within a second, unspeaking as he turned off the engine. And then, before you knew what was happening, he was leaning across the centre console and kissing you, his hands holding your face, thumbs running over your jaw. 

When he pulled back, you were the picture of innocence, all wide-eyed with your mouth hanging open, clearly a little lost with how you'd jumped from your conversation to this so quickly. 

"I love you," he breathed out, watching as your lips quivered, clearly on the verge of saying something, anything to make sense of what was happening. And then, you had nodded, your tongue darting out to wet your bottom lip. "You love me too?"

"Yeah," you uttered, letting out a soft chuckle as you tipped forward to rest your forehead against his chin. "I love you too," you repeated back to him. 

Billy chuckled as he wrapped his arms around you, the angle you were both sitting at making it a little awkward. "You still think this was a mistake?"

You shook your head, letting out a snort of laughter as you pulled back to look up at him. "I think this was the best choice we ever made."

He was grinning down at you. "I think you might be right about that."

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