Content Warnings: disordered eating, mentions of torture, fatphobia, references to child abuse, depictions of anxiety
“Hold on, baby you’re losing it”
If someone had told Billy a year ago that he would be happy to be back in Hawkins, he would have laughed in their face. He would have told them all about his plans to run off to California the second he had the chance, tossing in a couple choice words on his opinion of their quaint little town in the center of nowhere. And yet, there he was kneeling in the grass of an open field where the helicopter landed, placing his hands into the great American soil, sobbing in utter relief.
He felt a hand on his back, Chief Hopper, who somehow wound up in the same Russian prison—locked up, starved, and forced into physical labor…tortured…Billy didn’t know why he was there too, and he didn’t ask. He wouldn’t want to talk too much about what happened to himself there either.
Hopper had rubbed slow circles into his back, standing beside him and staring into the sun resting just above the horizon, feeling the heat hit their faces. “Feels good huh?” Hopper asked.
Billy allowed his eyes to fall shut, taking in all of the warmth, feeling his frostbitten fingers and toes begin to wake up out of dormancy. He didn’t say anything, he just sat there, basking and breathing.
“It’s good to be back home.” Hopper said, and Billy felt no need to correct him, not at that moment. Hawkins may not have been the place he considered his home—far from it—but he was more than happy to be there. His opinion on the place hadn’t changed, it still was a far cry from sunny skies and sandy beaches, but it was warm and familiar and it did feel a little bit like home in a way—but that could have just been the freedom talking.
“Yeah.” Billy said, wiping the snot from his nose into his oversized flannel sleeve, “It’s good.”
“Come on you two,” it was Joyce’s voice, the tiny woman and mother of the two Byers kids who somehow managed to break him and Hopper out of a maximum security prison across international borders. It was safe to say Billy would do anything she told him to do, if only to avoid getting a taste of whatever wrath she used to get them out of there. “It’s time you boys get a good meal.”
