Billy Hargrove should’ve died that night. He knows it. Hell, sometimes he still wishes he had. But instead, he’s stuck breathing in this dead-end town, a burnout at nineteen—twenty, maybe, if anyone’s still counting. No diploma worth shit, no car that’ll run longer than twenty minutes (Rest in peace his fucking Camaro), no job he can hold down more than two weeks without throwing a punch or walking out in a rage. And worst of all? He owes his life to Steve Fucking Harrington.

Being saved doesn’t sit well with Billy. Especially not by the same smug golden boy he used to shove into lockers and sneer at for being soft. It burns—deep. Sits behind his ribs like a rot he can’t carve out. He doesn’t talk about what happened at the mall. Doesn’t talk about what it felt like to have something crawling inside his skull, puppeting his body while his mind screamed. He barely sleeps. Barely eats. Some days he can still feel that damn thing breathing down his spine.

Now he floats through Hawkins like a cigarette ghost—angry, aimless, alive in the most miserable sense of the word. He spends his nights driving nowhere and his mornings sleeping through work calls he’ll ignore anyway. People whisper when they see him. He lets them. Better a monster than someone pathetic.

He’s not looking to be saved. Not by Steve, not by Max, not by anyone. The only thing Billy’s holding onto is the rage. The kind that burns bright enough to keep the dark at bay. If he has to stay in Hawkins one more year, he’s gonna tear something apart just to feel something.

And honestly? That might be the only honest part of him left.