In Retrospect - Tumblr Posts

WARING! MAJOR SPOILERS FOR GOOD OMENS S2 E6!

I don't know what the fuck possessed me last night to write this in a post season 2 Good Omens fanfic I wrote at 2 in the morning, but holy shit, sleep-deprived me.

“I know you were put on the potter’s glass shelf, but he was abandoned when he cracked halfway through the kiln. He kissed you because he wanted you to stay. He was terrified you would leave and he didn’t want you to, so he kissed you. But you still left. You didn’t hurt him, Aziraphale. You broke him.”

Every so often, I find myself thinking of the kind of story that Billy could have had if it had been Neil who got flayed in S3, instead of Billy.

If it was Neil who went off to work one day, and came back Wrong... not because he came back mean, but because he came back too nice. Too calm, missing all the sneers and casual insults that are usually thrown Billy's way whenever they're in the same room; strangely unconcerned with Billy's life but too concerned with whatever Max and that new friend of hers are up to, instead of offloading "responsibility" for his step-daughter's every move to Billy under threat of violence if he doesn't make her stick to Neil's rules.

And Billy is the only one who notices just how wrong this all is.

Max listens to him about as well as she ever does - which is to say: not at all - when he tries to bring up Neil's behavior with her (admittedly, he probably brings it up with his usual amount of grace and tact, which is to say: also none). It's not like Billy can tell the cops that his dad is acting weird by being too nice, if he was even the sort of person who went to cops to solve his problems. He hasn't exactly cultivated the kind of friendships where they talk about his relationship with his shitty dad, either, so he's exhausted his extremely short list of people who might understand as soon as Max storms off in her usual cloud of pissy, righteous teenage anger at his inability to talk to her without being a dick right off the bat.

And like, he's not even entirely sure why he's bothering to try and understand this new leaf Neil's turned over? Shouldn't it be a good thing that his dad is mostly just ignoring him, that Neil's finally taking a bit of responsibility for the kid whose mom he decided to marry and play happy little family with in the first place?

It's just... it's weird, is all.

It's weird, and it grates at him, and he can't help but drag himself into this mess, looking for trouble even when it doesn't find him first as his dad likes - liked - to say whenever Billy got caught up in the consequences of his own poor decision making.

So long story short, Billy goes from the one always being watched to the one always watching his dad, discovers his dad may or may not be starting some kind of cult with all his (white, male, because the man's definitely got plenty of bigotry that Vecna's perfectly happy to play along with, as long as he gets his army somehow) coworkers, discovers that actually it may be a literal fucking Satan cult or some shit when some of those coworkers and/or his dad start bleeding black (and maybe he catches sight of that new friend of Max's displaying what are definitely magic fucking powers), and winds up stumbling into the midst of the Upside Down plot all on his lonesome just as things are coming to a climax with the melted-people-spidermonster at the brand new mall, of all places.

And maybe Billy's been doing some of his own rather difficult and unpleasant personal introspection and character growth, in between spying on his dad and discovering that his sister and her nerdy little friends know way too much about magic and monsters, but still can't seem to notice just how fucking weird her own step-dad is acting until he goes straight-up feral at their little magic friend, said magical friend shoves him through a brick wall with her brain, and he escapes without so much as a broken bone so far as Billy can tell from his vantage point, hidden what is suddenly looking like a much less safe distance away from whatever-the-fuck-that-was than he'd originally thought.

The point is, Billy's done some thinking of his own. Some growing as a person, even, one might say.

So by the time he follows his dad to the mall, he still honestly has no clue what the hell is going on, but he knows his dad has always been a bastard, and he knows that little magic kid his dad is dragging towards a horror movie spider monster the size of their house might be the only one who can save this stupid nonsense town full of monsters and cornfields and bullshit and maybe, possibly, a few people who don't deserve to die horribly in some insane alien monster apocolypse.

In this universe, instead of El making a last minute, desperate attempt to reach out to Billy with empathy before the Mind Flayer feeds her to the monster, it's Billy who steps in out of nowhere to distract his dad from this random little girl the monster seems to want so badly but isn't gonna get.

Because Neil's been acting weird. He's been ignoring his fuckup of a son, paying too much attention to Max and hasn't even called Billy a delinquent or an irresponsible fuckup or a faggot in nearly a week, and apparently he's possessed by a monster that might literally be from hell.

But Max seemed to think Neil was still somewhere in there when he went crazy on her little magic friend, and maybe she couldn't reach him, but Billy's spent half his life learning just how to push his dad's buttons and get Neil's attention lazer-focused on himself.

Pissing off Neil Hargrove is an artform that Billy's long since perfected.

It feels good to be doing it on purpose because he's trying to stand in front of someone else to keep them safe, for the first time since his mom left and he started thinking he had to care about himself first, since no one else was going to. Doesn't even feel afraid when he tells his dad loud enough for the peanut gallery to overhear that he was right all those years, he raised a filthy fucking faggot who likes dick instead of pussy, that he doesn't give a shit about respect and responsibility if those things are supposed to turn him into a Man like the one that Neil Hargrove's always been.

Billy's always been a disappointment to his father.

Somehow, that fact doesn't sting like it used to.

Now he's got proof his dad hates him enough to shake off a shadow monster from another world just to beat on his own kid, and Billy?

Billy meets his dad's rage with a fucking smile.

For once, his dad's hits don't hurt more than the ache of the physical bruises they'll leave behind, don't come packed with that extra kick of guilt and shame and longing for a dad who loves him. For once, he makes himself get back up, bloody teeth bared with all the feral hatred and rage fostered from years of living in fear of his own father, and he hits back at the man who was already a monster long before he ever got possessed by one from another world.

Billy was never gonna be the kind of son his father wanted, but it's on his own terms now. Because Billy's never gonna be the kind of man his father was, either.

And step one of being a better kind of person is making sure this stupid fucking town and his annoying bitch of a step-sister and all the other weird little nerds and annoying classmates she seems to hang out with and all the other blissfully ignorant hicks sensibly enjoying the 4th of July fair instead of fighting eldritch horrors in the mall, actually survive to see July 5th...

Even if that means fist fighting his dad in the mall while a little magic girl takes advantage of Neil's distraction to take on a melted flesh monster in the background of this brand new form of fucked up mess his life has somehow become.

the ability to like your own posts is so funny to me

its like getting a preview of it, (cuz like, you made it) and your like

"daym, this shit kinda nice, yeah that's a like from me dog"