calicokitters
Recent bookmarks
-
Tags
Summary
Steve Harrington has turned out to be a lot like a stray cat―the particular genre of stray cat Lonnie insisted Frog was: The kind that’s not really a stray at all, but looks so cute and sweet and pitiful that you can’t help yourself.
Once Jonathan paid him a little attention, he wouldn’t go the hell away. It was impossible to just ignore him, since he seemed to like being ignored―it must’ve been the thrill of the chase. There was a solid six months where he was almost always on the phone or in Jonathan’s bedroom, flipping his fucking hair around and drawling translate this for me, Byers. What’s our friend Robert Smith saying?
Jonathan has tried throwing rocks at him, metaphorically speaking; he’s been mean and he’s been honest; he’s left the most pessimistic parts of himself in charge.
And somehow, despite it all, Steve is still here.
Series
- Part 4 of A Catalog of Non-Definitive Acts
Bookmarked by calicokitters
25 Jan 2026
-
Tags
Summary
Steve made his choice, hiding behind his too-big Letterman jacket and later that overpriced Members Only while his friends went out of their way to make Jonathan’s life hell; or what he thought, in the ninth grade, was hell.
Hell actually came two years later, when they dragged Will’s body out of the quarry. When Lonnie came home. When his mother sat him down like he was three years old again and said, smiling tightly, I’m going to have a baby.
Benjamin, the magnificent life-fixing-grief-resolving-replacement-baby, was born nine months later.
-
Tags
Summary
“Hey, I know you!”
Jonathan knew him, too; it was a worse person to be trapped with all summer than anyone he could have imagined.
He was probably late in equal parts due to the bagel and his ridiculous hair, meticulously styled as always; the collar of a polo shirt was peeking out from his VBS t-shirt; and he was grinning at Jonathan like a complete fucking maniac, like they were best pals.
“Don’t we go to school together?”
Bookmarked by calicokitters
25 Jan 2026
-
Tags
Summary
Jonathan doesn’t know what counts as the first time he met Steve Harrington.
Was it when Tommy Hagan first zeroed in on him in the sixth grade and Steve was never far behind? Jonathan would make eye contact with Steve, sometimes, just before Tommy shoved him to the ground or against a locker; Steve always looked away first.
Or was it the gas station last year, when Steve called him Jason while Jonathan glared out from behind the counter the whole time? In the days after, he’d gone back to that moment more often than he’d like to admit; usually, it was to think some variation of that’s probably the worst thing to ever happen to him, me not selling him beer so I don’t lose my goddamn job. Meanwhile.
(Meanwhile: As in, while Jonathan wasted his time on Steve Harrington, Will almost died. That would turn out to be a recurring theme of their relationship: Moments of catastrophic distraction, always at his brother’s expense.)
Eventually, after a few detours, Jonathan comes to the conclusion that the first time he really met Steve was in ninth grade, when he and Fred Benson got stuck taking the basketball team’s yearbook photos.
Series
- Part 3 of A Catalog of Non-Definitive Acts
Bookmarked by calicokitters
25 Jan 2026
-
Tags
Summary
“If you could see one person one more time before the big bad Ruskies obliterate us,” Robin giggles, “who would it be?”
Steve has been feeling so wonderfully unabashedly honest for these last few minutes or months or however long they’ve been here, tied together in their Scoops uniforms and possibly dying from beating-induced brain hemorrhages or Russian poison that he says, without hesitating, “Jonathan Byers. And I’d give him a big ole kiss.”
Series
- Part 1 of A Catalog of Non-Definitive Acts