DONTMAKEMEFALLINLOVE || Billy Hargrove, Stranger Things

LIII.

"Your head in your hands as you color me blue." –Lana Del Rey, NFR

"Diana."

A voice from her nightmares and her dreams.

It makes her heart stop. This can't be real. Her breathing stops. The tears stop.

Slowly, she stands up.

She turns.

Her everything.

There Billy Hargrove stands.

Inches away from Diana. Alive.

Trick of her tears. Diana presumed it had to be her mind playing tricks on her so she vigorously rubbed her eyes before staring back at him.

This just can't be him.

"Sorry for staring," Diana's voice shakes, "you just remind me of someone I used to know."

That didn't explain how Billy knew her name.

"Diana. It's me. Billy." He tries to get closer to her but out of fear Diana steps back, almost tripping on a rock.

"No," Diana shakes her head as her heart pounds and the tears well up in her eyes again, "I-I watched y-you die. I watched Billy Hargrove die in my arms with no one there to save him. Everyone told me Billy died."

Billy wanted to cry too. Billy dreamt of this moment, reuniting with her. But he left her broken. Diana didn't believe this was her Billy. And Billy didn't want to believe this was his Diana.

"Diana, are you okay? Please it's me–"

"No!" She jumps, "don't get any closer, for all I know Jason could've sent you to get me, whoever you are!"

"Who's Jason?" Billy questions as he tries to find a way to get to her. But if she won't get any closer then he'll just have her listen.

"Diana Henderson," Billy's voice shakes, "the love of my life. The person who held me in her bloody arms as I died. Please my love, it's me, Billy. I have a lot of explaining to do but I know you haven't had it easy either."

And slowly, Diana's eyes closed.

"We got tattoos together, remember? And I-I was supposed to win you an obnoxious colored stuffed animal the night I died," Billy continues as she chuckles through the tears, "and that night I left you at your house I was attacked. I haven't been the same since but my love for you has always been here. Please Diana, it's me."

A stranger wouldn't know these details. She knows that. She can only drop her head and clench her eyes to stop the tears. Billy didn't like seeing her cry.

Diana doesn't move away as Billy steps closer to her, closing the distance. "Baby, look at me."

She can't. She shakes her head before Billy's fingertips gently lifts her chin, touching her for the first time in eternity. Billy's heart feels like it has just been stabbed numerous times in the chest when he looks at her. Her golden skin has gone like it was never there, her lips are pale, and her eyes. Her tear filled eyes, red and broken.

"They haven't been treating you well, have they?" Billy asks while gently cupping her cheeks, his fingers lightly grazing over her lips.

Diana thinks back to the times where she was never given answers to the disappearance of the boy right in front of her. To the time when no one believed her. When she herself was purposefully harming her own body with unknown substances. "No," she shakes her head, while leaning into his hands, tears falling down. Soon, she was holding onto Billy as if she wasn't ever going to let him go ever again. Billy took her hands in his own and guided them back down onto the sand, with Diana curled up next to him, crying in the crook of his neck.