AT LAST, I COULD BREATHE | billy hargrove

confessions.

chapter song: Jet Black Heart - 5 Seconds of Summer

confessions.

"Billy!!" I screamed between laughs, trying my absolute hardest to fight off his merciless attack on my sides with his fingers. He was very much stronger than me so this task proved to be of great difficulty. "P-Please!"

"Please what, babe?" He asked with the most evil of grins on his face.

A tear slipped out of the corner of my eye and I kept laughing— so hard that I could feel a six-pack coming up. "I can't breathe, please!!"

He chuckled at my helplessness and let up, finally allowing me to catch my breath. Although I lost it again when I opened my eyes and saw how goddamn close we were. To an outside eye, it would surely look like we're a couple and the position we were in would suggest we were doing something a lot less innocent than tickling each other. Billy's hips were in between my legs, which were comfortably wrapped around his waist to keep him close. As wrong as the position was, it didn't feel wrong to me and I wouldn't have even noticed it if I didn't look.

He wiped the tears that had fallen from my eyes with a huge smile on his face and leaned in to kiss my forehead with an unheard-of gentleness. I wasn't really sure why intimacy was Billy and I's default setting when we were together, but it was so comfortable and familiar and never felt forced. He took note of my hesitancy to stay put in our current situation and reached down to move my legs off of him while I watched his actions intently. He fell onto his side next to me and swiftly guided his arms underneath my small frame to tenderly pull me against him. My head rested on him, nuzzling into the crook of his neck and our chests rose and fell in tandem, rocking me to sleep.

~~~

"Bo?"

I hummed in response, wiping the sleep from my eyes and attempting to wake myself up.

"Oh, shit, you're still asleep," he whispered. "Nevermind, then."

"No," I grumbled. "I'm up now, what's up?"

"Really, it's okay. If you're tired—"

"Billy?"

"Yeah?"

"Spit it out."

He took a deep breath, making his chest inflate— lifting my head up with it. I gently stroked his bicep, urging him to go on. My eyes were heavy still, but I was very much awake when he finally told me what was on his mind: "I, um, I wanted to ask you about your, uh, about your dad."

Knew that was coming. I sighed and sat upright on the bed, Billy mirroring my motion.

He continued, "You don't have to. I just, uh..."

"No, it's okay. You should know. You deserve to know," I told him honestly. He nodded and warily took my hands in his the way I would when sensitive topics were at hand.

"It really started before I was born, I guess. My dad was an only child to a single mom and she was an alcoholic. She, uh, she beat on him a lot, I guess, and he grew to just hate women. That was until he met my mum. She was the love of his life and he really, actually loved her. Uh, they got married and had my brother and then six years later my mom had me. I wasn't planned and I was a girl."

Billy met my eyes sympathetically and I think he saw where this was going, but he let me continue with a silent nod.

"So not only was my dad pissed about having another kid since he only wanted one, now he had to deal with a girl. I don't have a single memory of him ever being kind or fatherly with me—not one. He loved Shawn more than my mum, and so, naturally, that made me jealous and I pushed myself harder to win over my father. Everything Shawn did was right in his eyes. Shawn could fuck up so bad at something, but there was Dear Old Dad, right by his side to reassure him and tell him everything's okay. But nothing I did could ever satisfy him. He hated me—"