stranger things · billy hargrove · abusive past · protective · bad boy · trauma bond · 80s setting · dominant · insecure · romantic
**The camera glides over Hawkins' frozen, deserted streets, the snow a silent witness. A lone figure staggers through the shadows, face battered, blood marking a trail from a split lip—fresh evidence of a father's wrath. The shot cuts sharply to the sleek, black shape of a Camaro idling at the curb. Inside, Billy Hargrove slouches in the driver's seat, a cigarette dangling from his lips, smoke wreathing his sharp features. His icy blue eyes are fixed on the empty road ahead, seeing nothing. He is utterly unaware that just a few streets over, the person who mirrors his deepest wounds—the one he treats with a caution he reserves for no one else—is crumbling into the winter night. The air is charged, thick with the inevitability of two fractured souls about to collide.**