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Billy Hargrove

CANON

Stranger Things

CANON POINT

S3, post-death

PRONOUNS

he/him

AGE

Player

emilia |

mimsbee | et

Summary

Billy Hargrove was born into a contentious home. We know that early on, his father Neil abused his mother verbally and physically, and that as a young child, Billy witnessed abuse, bruises, thrown plates, and was a victim of domestic abuse himself. We know that as a child, his father would get in his face, wrench his arm, and yell. We know that at seventeen, his father felt confident in throwing his son around, hitting him across the face, and calling him a faggot. We know from Billy’s and his step-mother’s acquiescence, that this was not unusual.

When he was nine or ten, Billy’s mother left. She wasn’t sick, she didn’t pass away, she left her abuser and her son behind, and while we know she and Billy spoke by phone for some time, by his late teens, his mother was no longer mentioned by him or the narrative. Billy Hargrove was left with his and his mother’s abuser, and grew up in the house of an angry man. This made him angry. He began acting out, and as he aged, bullying kids on the playground turned into staying out late, drinking, drugs, and fucking. When his father married a woman named Susan and brought along her daughter Max, Billy was pissed. He didn’t want anything to do with them — Neil hit him, he didn’t hit them, and Billy resented them in his life, especially once he was charged with minding Max.

When Neil Hargrove uprooted the family from California and moved them to Hawkins, Indiana, Billy blamed Max and Max blamed Billy. He was seventeen, less than half-a-year from adulthood, and he was ripped from his home to carry out senior year in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere. At home, he blamed Max. At school, he began laying seeds to capture social capital. He sniffed out Steve Harrington at a Halloween party and started taking his friends; it was clear he wanted something from Steve given the ribbing in the showers, whether it was his throne or allyship or friendship remained unclear.

All of that went up in smoke when his step-sister escaped out her window and disappeared while Billy was getting ready for a date. When Neil discovered she was missing, he blamed Billy’s preening, “like a faggot,” for her being able to slip out. He shoved Billy, hit his face, and demanded he find her, and when he left, Billy’s armor broke. He cried. When he finally found Max at a stranger’s house with a group of boys, he intimidated them by physically shoving Lucas Sinclair. When Steve Harrington hit him, it kicked off a powder keg and vicious fight that ended with Steve’s face being turned to pulp until Max drugged Billy. Ultimately, she intimidated him by threatening his balls with a bat and told him to leave her friends alone. He seemingly did, ignoring her at home.

By the summer, Max was comfortable enough with Billy to joke with El about spying on him, but it was unclear how their relationship functioned daily, and equally uncertain why Billy was still living under Neil’s roof three months after turning eighteen. Did he not have the cash to leave? Did he wonder if his leaving would turn Neil’s fists on the girls? In the week leading up to July 4th, Billy was possessed by an interdimensional demon the kids referred to as a Mindflayer. He kidnapped fellow lifeguard Heather and allowed her to be possessed, as well as her parents and perhaps 30–40 other Hawkins residents. His possession granted him physical prowess, made him vulnerable to heat, and made his mission simple: kill El and her friends. He and the monster almost managed it, but El was able to enter Billy’s memories, reminding him of better times with his mother. Billy was able to regain control long enough to save El, and to stand up to the physically manifested and fleshy Mindflayer, which punctured and mangled his chest. Billy died nearly alone, without friends, coughing out an apology to his step-sister Max.

IMPRESSIONS

HEIGHT
5'10

WEIGHT
180

OLIFACTORY
cigarettes, leather, a worked-up sweat on occasion. previously, paco rabanne's pour homme and estée lauder's aramis.

AURAL
a west coast drawl, takes his time.

Skills & Abilities

Ability/skill
Ability/skill
Ability/skill

Servitor

SERVITOR: The Gutless Beast

This Servitor embodies Billy’s fury, his angst, his desire to fill a hole in himself that can’t be filled, not when anything important slips away. When he’s pushed to anger, he can’t stop on his own, he can’t moderate himself.

Description: The Gutless Beast is a huge, slavering wolf-beast with its guts torn out. Its fur is tawny, heather, golden and black, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from the viscera it's appeared to roll in. Its coat drips fetid rotted matter, and it carries a horrible stench with it. It’s rolled around in everything it’s wanted to keep.

Behavior: The beast rarely calms, though it occasionally has the wherewithal to stalk. Driven by an insatiable hunger and desire to find fullness, it stalks indiscriminately, though it’s drawn to those who provide comfort to others and those who lord their power over others. When chasing its prey, it’ll snap down with a brutal, steel grip, its teeth sawing through armor or bone, and it will swallow creatures whole. Though, once they travel down its esophagus to its stomach, they’ll slip out from the beast’s open guts.

Abilities:
Stalking & Shadow-stepping: When the Gutless Beast decides to find you, it will find you, hunting you down through corridor or forest, occasionally seeming to dive in and out of shadow while deep in its hunt.
Razor Sharp Bite: These fangs are all the better to eat you with — sharp, cold, cutting. If you survive an encounter and a bite from the Gutless Beast, you may recover, but you’ll feel cold and hopeless, with no way to escape it by yourself. If not broken from your own malaise, you’ll shiver and waste away.
Acid: When riled up, the beast’s stomach acid burns through its guts and foams at its gums. While you may slide from its guts onto the ground, the acid does its best to digest you before you slip free.
Weaknesses:
The gaping gut in the Gutless Beast’s belly is sore and inflamed, bright red with disease that makes it fever-hot. The beast can carry on with its guts hanging out, but it also provides a weak spot to rend it into pieces. The beast is also soothed by lullabies and music boxes. But who would know such a thing?

Permissions

Physical
yes

Shipping
yes, but he's a slowburn for emotions usually

Smut
yeah, he's easy

Fighting
yes, he definitely wants to

Injury
yes

Death
chat! probably

Psionics
yes, but explain to me!

Powers
yes

Fourthwalling
nope!

Preferences

Threadjacking
yes if network, ask if scene

Backtagging
yes! forever if regular tagging, but after a month I like to move on to something more current

Aversions
N/A

Tagging Style
defaults to prose, brackets fine, present tense preferred, medium pace.