Archive of Our Own ^beta

NOVEMBER

The first time it happens, Steve and Robin are splayed out on the carpet of the Byers’ guest room, trying not to wake Will up with their laughter.

There’s an Ella Fitzgerald record spinning in the corner, who Robin’s crazy obsessed with for some reason, and the music’s got this fuzzy, crooning quality to it that’s making Steve’s eyelids heavy already.

It’s barely nine, but they’re both beat-- the kids came over earlier with Nancy to binge-watch the episodes of “Leap in the Dark” they’d mass-rented from Family Video earlier that week, and Steve and Robin spent the afternoon keeping them entertained when one of the episodes was a drag. Nance and Jonathan snuck beers from the fridge and retired to the backyard, and Hopper took Joyce with him to some diner after he dropped El off, so Steve and Robin were on babysitting duty almost all day.

And sure, he loved the little dipshits, but sometimes they were exhausting to look after.

Ever since Steve and Robin had moved in, things had gotten a bit more hectic in the Byers’ household; El was over more often to visit with Steve and Robin, and, by extension, so were the rest of the little shitheads. Mike acted like he was just there for the Party, but once, Robin caught him telling El over the phone that he’d only come over if she and Steve were there. The kid took a liking to Robin after she gave him her collection of old comics; he and Will spent hours poring over every edition on Joyce’s living room carpet. It was kinda sweet, but Steve still can’t stand the kid sometimes (read: today he convinced El to go rogue and throw the popcorn Steve had made them at Lucas, which naturally led to a food fight, because although they’re freshmen now, the kids still act like five-year-olds during the holidays).

So after Nancy had forced a protesting Dustin, Lucas, Mike, and Max back into her car and kissed Jonathan goodnight (probably-- Steve’s just guessing, it isn’t like he’s worried about it) and Hopper had dropped Joyce off at her front porch with a twinkle in his eye, and Will had retired to his bedroom to draw until he fell asleep, Steve and Robin made a beeline for the guest room they shared.

After Steve’s little job-hunting expedition had proved to be a bit of a bust, Joyce had insisted he move another bed into the guest room so that his stay could be more permanent. They’d driven down to the only furniture store in Hawkins one chilly mid-November evening to pick out the most practical bed, and settled on a small wooden-framed twin size that would fit easily into the room. It was a small transition, but it still felt significant, and he and Robin spent that entire day lugging shit over from Steve’s house to spruce up the room, dancing around to Jim Croce and The Psychedelic Furs and, at Jonathan’s insistence, The Talking Heads, until the guest room looked like a dorm they were sharing.

Of course, it’s not permanent-- Steve and Robin are still saving up for the apartment they’ve had their eye on for a couple of weeks, and with the combined donations from Hopper and Joyce, they’ll be able to pay rent soon until one of them can find a higher-paying job. Robin’s been bugging Steve about taking classes at the community college in the meantime-- she’s dead-set on him majoring in child psychology, and Steve has to admit that after everything, the idea doesn’t sound half bad.

Now, they’re sprawled on the floor between their beds, eating the last of the Junior Mints Robin stole from Jonathan at their last movie night.

“Okay, okay,” Robin’s saying as Ella sings ‘Dream a Little Dream’ in her silky voice, “how about this: would you rather have to eat nothing but mashed potatoes for the rest of your life, or have to drink nothing but Pepsi?”

“Jesus Christ,” Steve groans, pulling a face. “Both of those are equally disgusting. Can I say. . . neither?”

“No!” Robin exclaims, throwing her hands up exasperatedly and letting them flop bonelessly back to the carpet. One of her arms falls across Steve’s face, and he swats her away as she rolls her eyes at him. She’s got chocolate stuck to her teeth.

“The whole point is that you have to pick one,” she reminds him, and Steve sighs with a long-suffering air before turning to her and glaring.

“Fine,” he huffs, like she’s personally afflicted him, and Robin smiles as he runs a tired hand through his hair, “Uhh, I’ll say. . . mashed potatoes.”

“No,” Robin breathes, wide-eyed. “That’s fucking disgusting. I can’t even look at you,” she says, throwing a hand over her eyes dramatically and half-rolling away from him. Steve laughs when she knocks into the bowl of popcorn they’ve got balanced on Robin’s textbooks; it flies everywhere, springing across the carpet as she muffles a scream of frustration into the floor.

Will’s asleep in the next room over, so they’ve been trying to be quiet, but. . . well, this is what Steve’s dealing with.

“This is why,” Steve’s whisper-yelling as they lunge across the carpet to pick up the popcorn, “we can’t bring food and shit in here anymore, I’m serious-- you knocked over a Coke just yesterday, Rob--”

“Oh, that’s RICH,” Robin cuts him off, and he can hear the smile in her voice as he piles popcorn back into the bowl she’s holding. “Remember the lasagna you decided to bring into a CARPETED BEDROOM? Because I do, and--”

“Shut the hell up,” he hisses, chucking a kernel at her as she laughs, “Will’s asleep in the next room, you dumbass--”

“You’re evading my question!”

“Hey! That lasagna was a leftover and NO ONE was gonna eat it, so why don’t you just sh--”

The door swings open at this exact moment, and Steve and Robin freeze, whirling to lay eyes on one manic-looking Jonathan Byers.

He’s not even questioning the popcorn covering the floor, just standing in the doorway, looking shaken and trapped despite having been the one to barge in on them.

Steve feels this unsettling squeeze in his chest-- the same feeling of unease that settles in his stomach when they’re facing interdimensional monsters or Will’s having a panic attack or Max shows up on the Byers’ doorstep at night with cigarette burns on her arms. Steve wants to lunge forward and pull Jonathan into the room to help, but he feels rooted to the floor. There’s something about the look in Jonathan’s eyes-- the fear-- that’s flinging him back in time, to Demogorgons burning in the Byers’ living room and flickering lights painting the walls rainbow and the musty, metallic scent of the RV he battled the Demodogs in. Even the ghost of the panic freezes Steve up.

Thankfully, Robin makes the first move. She drops the popcorn bowl, letting it roll into the corner as she crosses the room in careful, calm strides.

“Hey, man,” she says, forcing the concern out of her voice. “Everything okay?”

Jonathan swallows, a quick, choked movement, and shakes his head almost imperceptibly. He’s wringing his hands now, like he’s trying to shake something off, and Robin steps back to give him some space. He’s got his eyes locked on some distant point in space, and Steve would be lying if he said he isn’t ready to wake Joyce up so he doesn’t have to see Jonathan like this.

And yeah, maybe that’s kind of shitty of him, but it just sucks to see the people he’s come to care about so much fall apart over and over. It’s this endless cycle, like the Byers family is circling a drain that they’ll never fall down, and he’s started to worry that taking up residence in their house has just made it worse.

But if Robin’s freaked out by this shit, she doesn’t show it-- she ushers Jonathan into the room, letting the door fall closed gently. He still flinches when it shuts, and Steve notices with a pang that he’s shaking.

Robin’s guiding him quickly to the nearest bed, and suddenly Steve can move again; he pulls himself to his feet and approaches Jonathan cautiously as Robin puts an arm around him.

“Can you breathe alright?” She’s asking him, and Jonathan lets out a shaky sigh.

“Yeah, I. . . Yeah. Sorry, I’m fine, I didn’t mean to bother--”

“You’re not bothering us,” Robin assures him, her eyes all soft in the milky lamplight, and Steve sinks down onto the mattress beside her, trying not to stare as Jonathan’s eyes well up.

“I-- I keep dreaming about it,” he chokes, and shit, now Steve’s about to cry, too. God damn it.

The words hang in the air for a moment, and Robin clears her throat just when they’re starting to feel suffocating.

“Walk us through it,” she tells Jonathan, rubbing his shoulder comfortingly. “What was the dream about?”

He sighs, a jagged, broken sound, and fixes his gaze on his lap. “Everything, all at once. Sometimes, it’s just the Demogorgon, and other times, it’s just the Mindflayer, or just the fucking-- whatever this year was, but-- but this time it was. . . all of it.”

“Jesus,” Steve breathes, and Jonathan nods, like, ‘yeah, idiot.’

“We-- we were all here, at home, and Hop and Nance and the rest of the kids were here, too, and. . . it started out normal. We were just eating dinner, arguing over what movie to watch after. It felt so real, just like any other night.”

Robin nods, her eyes flicking from Jonathan to Steve pensively. Steve and the kids made sure she knew what she’d missed in the two years before Starcourt-- mainly because Robin was curious as hell and the kids were restless and itching to induct a new member into their little group. They’d sat her down on Joyce’s couch a couple of days after she’d moved in with the Byers and plunged into the long, messy story. Robin, to her credit, followed along well, listening raptly with wide, intent eyes, but there were some things she still couldn’t understand; the fear that crawls up your throat when you see one of those faceless, gruesome monsters-- Steve can’t describe it, and neither could the kids at the time. So he guesses she’s waiting on him to jump in, to sympathize, but he doesn’t fucking know how to pull Jonathan out of this because he’s in the same position-- it’s a cycle, and it never stops.

“And then what?” Robin prompts finally, and Jonathan closes his eyes, as if reliving it.

“The front door just. . . slammed open, and the fucking Demodogs barrelled in, and El was trying to kill all of them as the rest of the kids screamed and Hopper was panicking because he left his gun in his car, and Nance didn’t have hers on her, either, and then--” he stops, exhaling heavily, “--and then Will’s eyes rolled back in his head and, and, and it was just what he looked like a year ago, all pale and feeble but he was angry at all of us, because he wasn’t himself, and Mom was trying to figure out what to do and it was all happening so fast, and then that thing-- the thing from last year, all the melted bodies-- it started shattering our windows and seeping into the house, and I-- I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t do anything.”

Robin’s got tears in her eyes, and before Steve can do anything, she tugs Jonathan into a hug. He stiffens reflexively, then melts against her, burying his face in her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she tells him, “it’s over.”

Jonathan pulls away from her, and Steve feels this cold, iron grip tug at his heart at the sight of him. Even with his little brother missing, even with his little brother fucking possessed, Jonathan was always enviably strong. He seemed like an unshakable force, like nothing could touch him, and for a long time, Steve believed it; he saw it in the determined set of Jonathan’s shoulders that first night fighting the Demogorgon together; in the quiet fire in his eyes when he’d punched Steve across the face that same year; in the calm, unbothered air he adopted at school, even among the jeers and whispers from his classmates. Jonathan is stoic, he’s driven, he doesn’t. . . he doesn’t break like this.

Or maybe he does; maybe he does all the time and this is just the first time Steve’s seeing it up-close and personal.

Once, in his junior year, before all the interdimensional monster shit, Steve cornered Jonathan before school. Shoved him up against the lockers in the empty hallway like some stock character from a teen movie and fucking laughed when he flinched. He’d leaned in, like a goddamn psychopath, as Tommy and Carol and the rest of Steve’s asshole friends cackled around them like rabid hyenas.

“Listen, man,” Steve said, all faux-nonchalance, “if I catch you staring at Nancy one more time, I might have to do your old man a favor and give you a black eye before he can.”

Jonathan just glared at him, hard and cold, like the words ricocheted right off of him. Like he didn’t care, like he just wanted Steve to leave him the hell alone so he could get to class. And even though the memory is sour and wrong and makes Steve want to give HIMSELF a fucking black eye, he was pissed at the time. Like, he was doing his fucking worst here, and Jonathan was still just. . . just standing there. Unshaken. Unbothered.

But later-- and this is the part that makes Steve want to invent a time machine like the Delorean or some shit, because he thinks maybe if he could just go back and punch his past self across the face, the guilt would finally go away-- he was walking past the boys’ bathroom, and he heard this quiet, choked-off crying, like someone was losing their shit but trying really hard to stay silent. Like they wanted to disappear. There was a bag outside the restroom-- the same ratty, dark backpack Jonathan usually carried around. And even then, when he was still a total dickhead with no sense of empathy, Steve felt something like guilt twine around his heart and pull.

So now, Steve thinks that maybe Jonathan isn’t as invincible as he thought.

He’s still crying, and it’s quiet, like he’s practiced it; like he’s sat in his room trying to stay silent, like he’s spent nights muffling his fear into his pillow, like he’s afraid to be heard, and Steve remembers with a jolt that his dad-- ‘Lonnie,’ his brain supplies in Joyce’s bitter voice--used to knock him around a lot. At least, that’s what he heard in the halls at school. So maybe this crying thing-- how it’s almost methodical, calculated-- maybe it’s learned behavior. Maybe there was a time in Jonathan’s life where he HAD to be quiet.

So, yeah-- Steve would kill for a goddamn time machine.

“Jonathan, look at me,” Robin’s saying, her voice soft and pleading. “It’s over.”

“No,” he breathes, “it’s not. It’s not, and it’s never GOING to be, that’s the thing-- every fucking year, we think it’s over, and we let our guard down, and it’s like-- it’s like, even if it IS over, we’ve got years of trauma to sort through, and it’s never going to feel over because we’ll never know if any of those things are really dead. Like, yeah, El closed the gate, but that doesn’t mean something can’t reopen it. We’re always gonna be waiting, Robin. For the next. . . problem. It’s like. . . It’s like we’re stuck. And every time I close my eyes at night, I’m dealing with all the shit that’s already happened. It never stops. I just keep. . .” He trails off, sighing like he’s got this giant weight bearing down on him.

“Reliving it,” Steve finishes, and Jonathan nods.

“Well, good news is, you’ve got other people who get that,” Steve says, and Jonathan looks up at him, blinking through his tears. “And they’re always gonna be there.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Look, man-- your mom loves you to death, Will looks at you like you put the stars in the fucking sky, the kids all think you’re a total badass--”

“Debatable,” Jonathan cuts in, laughing a little.

“Yeah, well, maybe not Mike-- but that kid is fucking ruthless, meanest thirteen-year-old I know, man--”

“Steve,” Robin says quietly, rolling her eyes at him, like, ‘get to the point’.

“Right, so Mike’s a dick sometimes,” Steve says, grinning when Jonathan smiles, “but the rest of us love you, dude. And you’re fucking stuck with us, got that? No interdimensional sludge monster is gonna screw that up. If we’ve killed the shits before, we’ll do it again. And again, and again, and again, until they’re so fucking sick of respawning or however the hell they reproduce-- oh God, that’s a terrible mental image--” Steve cuts himself off, pulling a face, because he didn’t mean to say THAT.

Robin cackles, then claps a hand over her mouth. Jonathan’s staring wide-eyed at Steve, and he looks like he’s a second away from either laughing or crying.

“We’ll keep killing them until they’re so sick of dealing with us that they sink into the ground or whatever and fuck off straight to hell,” Steve finishes, and Robin nods, like, ‘right on’.

“We’re always gonna be here for you, dude,” she says, and Jonathan’s face softens.

“Thanks. . . you guys know the same goes for you. If you ever. . . I mean, if you ever wanna talk about this shit, I’d be happy to listen. Therapy is expensive, so. . . and it’s not like we’d be able to explain it to anyone, anyway. We’d all end up in a mental institution.”

“Oh, definitely,” Steve agrees, and Jonathan laughs again.

The room feels less heavy now.

And Steve would say more, would try harder to smooth out the pinched mask of worry on Jonathan’s face, but he can tell he’s done talking about it-- he’s got this closed-off look in his eyes, like the doors have shut and he’s ready to barrel forward and forget this happened, and honestly, Steve can’t blame him.

Talking about. . . everything that happened is like opening Pandora’s box sometimes. Or at least, that’s how Nancy refers to it. They’ll be lounging around on her bedroom floor eating pizza-- Steve and Jonathan and Robin carpool over to her house sometimes when the little dipshits are at the Byers’ and Joyce is on babysitting duty-- and Robin will crack some stupid joke about the Russians, and Nancy will be all, ‘Uh-uh, let’s not open Pandora’s box tonight,’ and Robin will roll her eyes and chuck her pizza crust at Nancy and that’ll be the end of it.

Steve still doesn’t know what the hell the expression even means, and Robin’s probably explained it to him before, but at this point he can rely enough on context to get the gist of it.

So, Pandora’s box? It’s closed. It’s closed as fuck.

Jonathan’s wiping his eyes, all hurried like he wants the evidence gone before Steve can tease him for it (which he wouldn’t, for the record, because he’s a changed man, damn it), and Robin’s crossing the room to retrieve the popcorn bowl and pile the popcorn back into it-- it’s scattered over the floor again, and Steve laughs when she accidentally steps on a kernel and crushes it into the carpet.

“Shit,” Jonathan hisses, like he’s just now noticing the mess, “we just got that guy to come and spray this place for bugs.”

“Well, it’s-- it’s-- I didn’t do it,” Steve says weakly, and Robin glares at him from across the room. “I mean, it was Robin, she knocked the whole freaking bowl over.”

“Snitch,” Robin hisses, and Steve snickers when she chucks a popcorn kernel at him.

“This is why we had roaches last week,” Jonathan deadpans as Robin settles back on the bed, shaking the bowl under Steve’s face.

“Want some?” She asks, and Steve rolls his eyes.

“No,” he says, drawing the word out like Dustin would. “Do I look like Hop to you? Guy’ll eat anything, I swear to God.”

“Coward,” she says, shoving a fistful of it into her mouth and smiling all smug at him like she’s the shit.

“Oh my God-- it has lint on it, Rob, that’s fucking disgusting--”

She laughs, not bothering to stay quiet for Will’s benefit, and Jonathan’s lips twitch into a hesitant smile. Robin’s got this instant calming effect on people-- she just doesn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks of her, and they gravitate towards her because of it. She’s the coolest loser Steve’s ever met.

“Want any popcorn, Jonathan?”

Steve sighs a long-suffering sigh as Jonathan shakes his head, all doe-eyed in the glow of Robin’s bedside lamp. He looks lighter, somehow, like opening the box for a little bit took some extra weight off his shoulders.

Robin sets the popcorn bowl in the center of the bed and pushes herself to her feet, crossing the room to open the blinds. It’s pitch-dark outside, the streetlamp outside being the only source of light, but Robin still squints out the window like she’s looking at something.

“Whatcha lookin’ at, Rob?” Steve asks, and she turns back towards him, her eyes bright and wide despite the hour.

“The sky’s clear,” she says, dead serious. “We can go out and stargaze!”

Jonathan’s brow furrows, and he sends Steve a questioning glance, like he’s wondering whether Robin and Steve have done this before without him knowing. Robin just smiles, all boundlessly energetic, and Steve sighs because he knows he won’t be able to say no to her.

After all, it’s not like he’s gonna sleep very well after hearing the gruesome details of Jonathan’s nightmare.

Rob’s kind of got a thing for stars-- ‘astronomy’, she calls it, like it’s a real thing and not just one of her weird hyperfixations. If he’s being honest, Steve doesn’t really get it-- like, fine, there are constellations and shit, and they’re pretty and everything, but what’s the point of making up all these stories for them, and how do you keep track of them all, anyway? It sounds so tedious, like people just sit down around a cherry oak table and are like, ‘Okay, team: how can we make stars boring?’

But Robin loves it-- the constellations and their names and the legends that go with them-- so Steve follows her out the window on cloudless nights to lie in the Byers’ backyard or on the hood of Steve’s car in the driveway or, if they’re feeling rebellious, on the roof of the Byers’ house (Robin insisted just once; she told Steve they’d feel like characters in a movie, but just for the record, all Steve felt was the ever-present fear that one of them was going to fall and crack their head open on the ground). They’ll stay quiet most nights, side-by-side, and Robin will occasionally point out little groups of stars that just look like white specks in the sky, explaining their origin and the tribes that named them and all that crap, and Steve will squint up into the darkness and try to follow along as the minutes drag by.

Now, Robin’s got that glint in her eye again-- that smug, you-can’t-say-no-to-me sparkle that reminds Steve of Dustin and El and Max, and before he can even gauge Jonathan’s opinion on it, he nods his defeat.

“Wait, what?” Jonathan says. “How are we even gonna get outside without waking up Will or Mom?”

Robin just shakes her head pityingly at him, sighing as Steve cracks a smile.

“Oh, Jonathan, you have so much to learn.”

Steve snickers as Robin hefts the window open, a gust of chilled night air blowing in. Jonathan’s standing up now, arms crossed like he doesn’t exactly agree with what’s going down, but he follows Steve out the window after Robin anyway. Thank God the Byers have a one-story house-- Steve would NOT be up for scaling the side of the house like he’d done to get into Nancy’s room back when they were dating.

He scrambles out the window and straight into Joyce’s flowerbeds, wincing when Robin tugs him out of the roses. Jonathan lands on his feet as Steve gets his bearings.

The air outside is light and cool, gusting across Steve’s face as Robin leads him into the backyard. There’s a patch of grass under this big oak tree they like to sprawl out under, because the leaves and branches frame the sky and give them a good vantage point for picking out certain constellations. Jonathan trudges behind them, folding his arms around himself like he’s cold.

“Jonathan, you’re gonna love this,” Robin is saying, her hands gesturing excitedly at the night sky as she drops to her knees and lays back against one of the roots of the tree. Steve joins her, splaying out beside her in the grass as the crickets chirp around them. Jonathan just stands a few feet away, staring at them like they’ve gone insane or some shit.

“Well?” Steve asks him, patting the place beside him on the ground. Jonathan sighs, rolling his eyes good-naturedly before plopping down beside Steve and laying back, propping his arms behind his head as a cushion.

“Do you guys do this often?”

“Shh,” Robin hisses, like the stars are animals Jonathan’s scaring away. She’s squinting narrow-eyed up at the sky, one hand hovering in midair to point out anything special.

Steve turns to Jonathan as Robin begins her search for Orion.

“I mean, whenever we can,” he replies, and Jonathan looks incredulously back at him.

“And. . . I mean, how do you not wake Will or me up?”

Steve laughs lightly, picturing the time Robin had almost broken her neck trying to climb back into their bedroom one night-- it was nearly three in the morning, and she’d gotten the hem of one of her pant legs caught on part of the window frame. Steve had to yank her inside, and the force of it tore the edge of her pajamas, but she was safe and not entangled in one of the rose bushes below them, so Steve counted it as a win. The real shocker was how they’d managed to stay quiet enough not to wake anyone else in the house.

“Honestly, it was pure luck,” Steve tells him, still smiling. “It’s actually a miracle we haven’t woken you up before.”

“Hey, morons,” Robin cuts in, gesturing vaguely at some clump of stars Steve’s probably heard her talk about before, “that’s the Nemean Lion.”

“Oh, nice,” Steve says, whistling, and Jonathan rolls his eyes at him.

“Like you even know what that is.”

Robin laughs, muffling it into Steve’s shoulder, and he huffs at her.

“Hey, I’ll have both of you know I got a solid C-plus in mythology,” he tells them indignantly, and this just sets Robin off again as Jonathan stifles his own laughter.

“Sorry, Einstein,” she says, rolling away from Steve when he swats at her, “Forgot you were an astronomy expert.”

“That’s not even a real thing,” he fires back, and Jonathan snorts out a laugh.

“Steve,” he wheezes, “Astronomy’s the study of stars, it’s a science-- you can major in it, for Christ’s sake.”

“Yeah, you can major in it, Dingus,” Robin says, grinning at Jonathan like they’re both in on a joke. Idiots.

“Stupid thing to major in,” Steve says, rolling his eyes at them fondly. “Like, ‘Oh, how am I spending the rest of my life and career? Studying specks of dust that float around in the sky, what a practical way to make a living, right?’”

“Shut up and look at how cool that is, idiot,” Robin says, turning his face with her hands to try and guide his eyeline to the group of stars she’s pointing at.

“Like I said, specks of dust,” Steve tells her, but secretly he thinks it does look pretty cool.

They lie there like that for what feels like hours, just talking and laughing about shit the kids have done and Joyce and Hopper’s perpetual will-they-won’t-they dynamic-- Steve’s got Robin convinced they’ll move in together soon, but Jonathan says to give it another year because they’re more indecisive than Lucas and Max were before Max dumped him for good. Robin points out shiny, distant families of stars as the minutes drag by and Steve’s eyelids grow heavy, and he must fall dead asleep at some point because later someone’s shaking him by the shoulder, and Jonathan’s hoisting him up on his feet, and they’re stumbling back to the Byers’ house as the sky lightens and the birds begin to chirp.

The morning air is even colder than it was last night, and Robin shivers before she takes a running leap at their bedroom window and hoists herself inside, helping Jonathan and Steve in, too.

As Steve scrambles into the room, Robin brushes windblown hair out of her eyes and grins; she’s got this dreamy, mystic expression on her face, the same one that crops up when she’s telling all the kids some elaborate, made-up story around the campfires they sometimes build in Joyce’s backyard, or when she’s scored a pretty girl’s number at Family Video, even if it’s just to recommend new releases.

“We don’t have work today,” she tells Steve, and he pumps his fist in the air celebratorily as Jonathan high-fives Robin.

“Thank God,” Steve says, wincing as he flops down on his bed. “I think I, like, pulled something in my back. We need to find a different spot next time, those tree roots are brutal.”

“Fine, Grandpa,” Robin teases, laughing when Steve glares at her. She’s piling her hair up into a bun as the telltale clattering of pots and pans floats in from the kitchen.

Jonathan smiles at both of them, giving a little wave as he ambles out of the room, and that's that.

Steve doesn’t really know what to think.

The part of him that’s still a little awkward when it comes to Jonathan-- that stilted, guilt-filled version of himself that jolts awake whenever the subject of his junior year comes up-- wants Jonathan to just bury the memory of their little midnight stargazing party deep in his subconscious and forget about it forever. And maybe that’s selfish of Steve, but that’s his and Robin’s thing, and it’s the only time he gets to really talk to her one-on-one about the heavy stuff, because Family Video is reserved for playful banter only. And maybe he should make an exception for Jonathan, because the guy’s been nothing but nice to Steve since Starcourt and he’s letting him stay in his home, for God’s sake, but Steve just can’t focus when Jonathan’s around and if he’s being honest, it’s becoming a bit of a problem.

Two days ago at breakfast, Will was plunging into this long narrative about the Party’s latest campaign, and Robin was listening raptly, her fork poised in mid-air, scrambled eggs hanging on by a thread.

It was this long-winded story involving ogres and some kind of buried treasure deep in the woods, and Will was raving about it-- it’d been Lucas’ idea, and it only took a day for all the kids to become obsessed. The day before, they’d spent six straight hours playing, only pausing their campaign for bathroom breaks and this stupid side-game they’d devised in which two of them would race into Joyce’s kitchen and see who could collect the most snacks to bring back to the coffee table in sixty seconds.

So anyway, Will was rambling about the ogres and Robin was on the edge of her seat because she’d been an avid D&D player throughout freshman and sophomore year (Steve wasn’t surprised), and Steve was trying to listen, but all his mind could seem to focus on was the way a strand of Jonathan’s hair had fallen into his eyes. It swung across his forehead whenever he moved, and the sunlight slanting through the window behind him was illuminating it like a spotlight.

It was only when Robin kicked Steve under the table that he realized he’d been staring at Jonathan for the past, oh, maybe five minutes, and Will was looking at him expectantly like he’d asked Steve a question. A question that Steve definitely hadn’t heard.

Jonathan, thank God, was absorbed in this giant book Nancy’d lent him, something called ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, and he didn’t seem to pick up on the fact that Steve was fucking entranced-- which, by the way: what the hell?

Thankfully, Robin had answered Will’s question and Jonathan had gone on reading and soon enough Steve had been able to tear his eyes away so he could actually eat his breakfast.

But he’s been experiencing a lot of these little moments lately. He’ll zone out over breakfast or dinner or one of the Party’s movie nights, and his thoughts will wander to Jonathan, and the way he looks while he’s reading at the table or flicking a piece of broccoli at Robin or curled up under the blankets sandwiched between Nancy and Will as some long-ass movie lights up his face in the darkness.

And it’s driving Steve just a little crazy.

His main method of defense so far against, well, whatever this is, has been avoidance: Jonathan’s going to pick up groceries? Sorry, Steve’s got a movie date with Robin.

Jonathan’s driving Will and the rest of his little hellion friends to the skating rink downtown? Steve can’t come, he’s working late even though Robin’s going home early. Rewinding tapes is important, dammit.

Jonathan’s accompanying Nancy to a little cafe to help her study for her finals in the spring? Steve’s all tied up with the kids-- they’ve got a craving for homemade brownies and he has to supervise, and besides, what help would he be with studying, anyway?

So. Stargazing with Robin suddenly being invaded by Jonathan and his fluffy hair and weird music taste and soft, gentle voice? Yeah, Steve’ll be damned if that’s what’s gonna start happening.

So now, as Joyce fixes them pancakes or waffles or whatever Will’s asked for, Steve sighs heavily and sinks against the wall beside the walk-in closet Robin’s shut herself in to change.

He knocks on the door to get her attention, and smiles when he hears her stumble and drop a hanger or two.

“Jesus, dingus, what?”

“Sorry-- um, I just wanted to ask. . . you don’t think this’ll end up being a regular thing, do you?”

“What?”

The closet door swings open so suddenly that Steve stumbles away from it, and Robin leans against the doorframe in one of Steve’s sweatshirts and a pair of her own ripped black jeans. She’s got smudged makeup around her eyes, and her hair’s falling out of its updo, but she looks as effortlessly pretty as ever. It makes something in Steve’ heart tighten-- she compares herself to other girls all the time, and sometimes he wishes she could just see herself the way he sees her.

“What do you mean?” She asks, all narrow-eyed, and Steve almost plays it off, because Robin looks pissed.

“Uh, just that-- well, I mean. . . stargazing, that’s our thing, right?”

Robin sighs heavily, dropping the pose like she’s getting serious, and yeah, Steve is regretting this because now she just looks sad.

“Steve. . . if Jonathan needs us, we have to be there for him. I know things used to be. . . weird between you guys, but you’ve got to stop focusing on all the bullshit you used to worry about in high school and just move ON. He’s going through years of trauma right along with the rest of us, and if we’re his safety net, we’ve gotta step it up.”

Steve feels his face heat up. It’s not that he’s still hung up on all the high-school bullshit, but he can’t very well tell Robin that with the bedroom door wide fucking open, and now Joyce is calling them in-- french toast this morning-- for breakfast, and Robin’s giving him this look, like, ‘end of discussion’.

So Steve just sighs and tries for a smile as Robin drags him into the kitchen.

It’s overcast today, a slate-grey sky blanketing the town and darkening the Byers’ house. Joyce has all the candles and lamps lit, and Will’s seated at the kitchen table with a heaping plate of french toast in front of him, chatting quietly with Jonathan about the campaign again.

Apparently Will needs a ride to Mike’s today so they can spread everything out in his basement. The kids have taken to hanging out at the Byers’ lately because of Steve and Robin’s new arrangement, but sometimes, as Dustin puts it, “it’s more fun to monopolize an entire room for the game”, and Joyce’s coffee table just doesn’t allow for that kind of luxury, so. The dickhead’s basement, it is.

“I need a ride by noon,” Will’s telling Jonathan, starry-eyed with excitement as he shovels french toast into his mouth. Jonathan’s got that look on his face that crops up whenever he’s trying not to laugh-- syrup is dribbling down Will’s chin, but the kid is totally unaware. He barrels on with his little tangent as Joyce passes plates to Robin and Steve.

They pile french toast, strawberries, and blackberries onto their plates, bobbing their heads to the record Jonathan’s got playing. Steve knows it’s his music because it’s got that vaguely ominous quality to it; it’s somehow still upbeat, though, and Robin twirls a little as she sprinkles sugar on her toast. Steve rolls his eyes good-naturedly at her when she slips on a napkin she’s dropped on the floor, catching her by the shoulders as Joyce laughs.

When they’re safely seated at the table and Joyce has switched on the TV to the morning news, Will turns to Steve with a hopeful expression.

“Steve! I need a ride to Mike’s, and Jonathan said he’d take me but only if you and Robin agree to come, too--”

“To supervise the kids,” Jonathan cuts in, a tiny blush dancing across his cheeks, or maybe it’s just the light and maybe Steve’s going insane, maybe he’s finally snapped because he can’t pull his eyes away to face Will and he can feel Robin nudging him under the table but god damn it, he can’t stop staring--

“Sure!” Robin says finally, eyeing Steve like he’s grown another head as Will pumps his fist in the air celebratorily.

“Sure, Steve can go, but I actually have a lot of laundry to catch up on,” she tells him, talking more to Steve than to Jonathan or Will, and damn it, he’s going to kill her for this later.

“I mean, laundry can wait, right?” Steve asks her through gritted teeth, and she smiles innocently back at him.

“Oh, it’s a LOT of laundry, Dingus. It’ll probably take. . . all day, now that I think about it.”

What. The. Fuck.

“Uh, okay,” Jonathan says. “That works. I just, y’know, wanted someone else there to watch them. I was planning on just taking off after dropping Will there, but I can stay.”

“Oh, that’ll be perfect,” Robin says, all smiles, and Steve fights the urge to bang his head on the kitchen table.

Thankfully, Will smiles cheerily at him, and that’s enough to give Steve the motivation he needs to finish his french toast without kicking Robin in the shins.

After they’ve put their plates in the sink and thanked Joyce again and shut themselves back in the comfort of their room, though, it’s a different story.

“What the HELL,” Steve whisper-shouts as Robin laughs, hastily making up her bed while he paces the room.

“It’s gonna be so awkward, Rob, you have no idea--”

“Why is this such a big deal?” She asks, levelling him with a weirdly knowing look as she straightens up her pillows. “I thought you’d moved past all that high-school crap, and then the Nancy shit--”

“Exactly,” Steve tells her. “Exactly, yeah, we’ve moved on, which means. . .”

“Which means everything should be fine, and you shouldn’t be wearing a hole in the carpet,” Robin finishes, turning to look at him. “Be serious. Why are you freaking out about spending a little one-on-one time with Hawkins’ resident James Dean?”

Steve scoffs. “Okay, FIRST of all, if anyone’s James Dean, it’s ME--”

“No, no, no,” Robin cuts him off, waving her hands dismissively, “Jonathan’s got that edgy, badass look, whereas you’re more of a. . . John Bender character.”

“The jackass from The Breakfast Club?! Robin, you wound me!”

“Stop deflecting.”

Steve heaves a long-suffering sigh, pressing the heels of his hands into his temples. He knows he can tell her, he can tell Robin anything, but this is so new and kind of terrifying and he doesn’t understand it because he still looks at Lea Thompson and Claudia Wells and Molly Ringwald and feels his heart rate pick up, and it just doesn’t make sense--

“Hey,” Robin says, pulling Steve out of the rabbit hole he’s tumbling down when she places a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

Even though Robin’s using her gentle voice and it makes something in Steve settle and calm, everything in him is screaming not to tell her; Steve’s got nothing against gay people-- nothing, because they’re not hurting anyone by being themselves and Robin’s the best person in his life right now and she keeps teaching him every day that people can rise above labels and stereotypes and the boxes other people try to shove them in-- but when he looks in the mirror some mornings and thinks about Jonathan and mouths the word “queer” at his reflection, it feels weird. It feels weird and he’s not sure if it fits, and he doesn’t want to sit in front of Robin, who’s witty and beautiful and so sure of who she is, and ring a bell he can’t unring. He doesn’t want to tell her he’s just like her, because he doesn’t know that for sure.

But then she smiles at him, soft and reassuring, and something in him snaps; here’s the girl that replied to his bathroom-floor love confession with the deepest, most dangerous secret Steve’s ever been trusted with, and he’s shying away from confiding in her about something she knows a hell of a lot more about than he does?

He can’t just lie to her. Not to Robin.

“I. . . need to tell you something.”

“Okay,” she says, plopping down on his bed and tucking her knees up to her chest as he sinks down onto the mattress across from her.

“It’s, like, Starcourt-bathroom-level important,” Steve clarifies, and Robin huffs a tiny laugh before nodding seriously.

Steve focuses his gaze on a loose thread in the knitted blanket Robin’s shoved into his lap. It’s blue, frayed at the edges where it’s separated from the rest of the blanket. He twines it around a finger as the room seems to grow hotter.

“I think. . . Sometimes I think I picked on Jonathan because he. . . because I saw a little bit of myself in him. Or in what people. . . said about him,” Steve says, letting the words bleed into the air. They don’t feel right. He’s being too vague, and when he glances up Robin’s kind of squinting her eyes at him like he isn’t making a ton of sense, the way his teachers used to look at him when he tried to answer questions in class, and his heart feels like it’s tripping over beats in his chest, this weird hop-skip-jump thing, over and over and--

Shit. He needs to breathe.

“And. . . what did people say about Jonathan?” Robin prompts, gentle in the way she only seems to be when she’s talking to the kids.

“That he. . . well, y’know, that he didn’t have a girlfriend because he was. . . well, because he liked guys.”

It’s too quiet, and Steve looks up from the thread he’s twisted around his index finger, feeling his breath catch in his chest. He shouldn’t be this scared to say this to her, because it’s Robin, and she won’t judge him, but he still can’t understand how he can feel this way about Jonathan when he feels it for girls, too-- he felt it for Nancy. For the girl sitting across from him now, all those months ago (it feels like years). For countless other girls he crushed on throughout high school.

“Oh, Steve,” Robin says, something like recognition seeping into her voice. “You’re. . . you still like girls, too, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Steve says, suddenly desperate because she’s nodding her head at him like she gets it, “Yeah, and that’s what keeps confusing me, because I have to choose, but I can’t, and-- and, I just keep worrying that if I don’t belong with either group maybe I don’t belong anywhere.”

“Fuck,” Robin says, in her ‘I’m-trying-really-hard-not-to-cry’ voice, “Steve, you don’t have to choose. You don’t.”

“But. . . then what am I?”

Robin grabs both his hands then, her grasp firm and grounding, and Steve jerks his head up to look at her. Her eyes are gleaming in the lamplight, and strands of her hair are framing her face, and she’s staring at him like she wants to hug him.

“It’s called being bisexual,” she says, eyes glittering. “It’s a real thing, and there are other people like you out there, and they’re doing just fine. You don’t have to choose a side, you don’t have to, Steve.”

And it’s like something clicks, then-- or falls into place-- and Steve nods, three quick, jerky movements because he’s trying hard to maintain his composure, and Robin pulls him into a hug and yeah, okay, now he’s really crying.

“It’s okay,” Robin’s saying, in that whispery voice she uses to comfort the little shitheads when they’re upset, “It’s okay, Steve, don’t cry.”

“I was just-- I was worried you wouldn’t understand,” he chokes, burying his face in Robin’s shoulder.

“I know, I know, but I do, okay? I understand, I promise.”

He tightens his grip on her and sighs shakily as she kisses his forehead, a tiny thing they’d started doing somewhere in the blurry stretch of months after Starcourt and bathroom-floor confessionals and weekends spent in empty parking-lots and the Wheelers’ basement and Steve’s bedroom. Steve thinks he was the first to do it, back when Robin would still get panic attacks at night, and it’s since evolved into a comforting gesture rather than one of affection-- she’s saying “I’m here,” and “It’s okay,” and “Chill out, idiot,” all at once.

Steve sighs, letting his eyes flutter shut, and it’s like he’s breathing out years of denial and anger and shame.

Like he’s shedding selves.

“Jesus, moron,” Robin sighs, running a hand through his hair because his hands are fisting her sweatshirt as he hugs her, “I just thought you, like, hated Jonathan Byers or something.”

Steve laughs wetly, shaking against her, and she smiles into his shoulder.

“Yeah, turns out it’s kind of the opposite,” Steve says, and Robin pulls back to gape at him, eyes shining.

“Holy shit,” Robin breathes, clapping a hand over her mouth. Her eyes are blown comically wide, and Steve laughs again. It feels good, like a sunrise blooming in his chest. He feels so much lighter.

“You. . . you like Jonathan. Jonathan reads-Voltaire-at-breakfast Byers. Holy shit.”

“Yeah, moron,” he tells her, “and now thanks to you I’ve gotta spend the afternoon with the guy.”

“Holy SHIT!” Robin screeches again, vaulting herself up off of the bed like a fucking lunatic, and Steve waves his hands frantically at her like, ‘shut up!’, because Joyce is still puttering around in the kitchen and Will’s helping her wash the dishes and Jonathan’s probably in his room, which isn’t too far from theirs, either.

But to Robin, who spent her entire high-school career in marching band and drama, shouting at the top of one’s lungs when excited is the norm. What a freak.

“Steve, this is PERFECT, oh my GOD--”

“Shut up, shut UP--”

She’s racing to their closet and throwing the door open, pulling shit off hangers like she’s been suddenly possessed by a fashion-obsessed madwoman. Steve squints at her as a denim jacket sails across the room and narrowly misses his face.

“What the hell are you doing?! You ruined the moment!”

“Sorry, Dingus,” she says halfheartedly, chucking a leather jacket over her shoulder in mild disgust.

“Robin,” Steve says again, in the same voice Dustin sometimes uses to talk down to Lucas, “What. Are. You. Doing?!”

“We’re finding you something hot to wear,” Robin says matter-of-factly, flouncing over to him with a flannel he hasn’t touched in maybe a year and a pair of dark-wash jeans in her arms.

Steve scoffs as she drops the clothes into his lap. “Uh, firstly, this isn’t a date--”

“It COULD be, though,” Robin points out, winking at him as she closes the closet door again.

“No, it couldn’t-- he’s dating Nancy, and he’s probably not even into guys at all, and even if he was, he wouldn’t be--”

“Nuh-uh, none of that, Dingus,” Robin says. “He’s dating Nancy as far as we KNOW, and he COULD be into guys-- literally all the posters in his room are of dudes-- and if he was, he’d totally be into you! You’re a catch!”

“Yeah, the same catch that bullied him for the better part of two years, Rob.”

She rolls her eyes, like, ‘big deal, water under the bridge’, and pats his shoulder consolingly. “Chin up, moron. Just change out of that sweatshirt-sweatpants combo, yeah? Not a good look.”

Steve glares at her as he gets up, throwing the clothes over one shoulder as he heads for the closet. “I make it work, you’re just too stubborn to admit it.”

---

“Alright, ground rules: no screaming when your characters inevitably die or whatever because Mrs. Wheeler can hear you little shits, no throwing food at ANYONE-- I’m looking at you, Lucas--, and for the love of God, no fighting. We don’t want a repeat of the broken-window shit, do we?” Steve says as he surveys the room of kids in front of him.

Jonathan’s already settled on the couch, chatting with Dustin about some comic they’re both into, and the rest of the little shitheads are setting up their game, expertly ignoring Steve and the rules he’s actually spent some time ruminating on for once.

“Got it, Dad,” Mike drawls sarcastically, and Lucas and Max snicker as they unfurl notes about the campaign and set everything up.

“Just sit down, dude,” Jonathan says, like they’re not dealing with a bunch of grade-A hellraisers, and Steve sighs heavily.

He feels weirdly exposed in the flannel Robin chose for him-- she’d told him earlier to cuff the sleeves at his elbows, and it’s not something he’s really used to. She’d unbuttoned the top two buttons, too, which he would’ve done instinctively himself if he were going out with some girl, but. . . it just feels different doing it with a guy in mind. With Jonathan in mind.

Jesus Christ.

“Fine,” Steve says, plopping down on the couch beside Jonathan as the kids circle around the table. Mike’s running the campaign, and he’s talking about a mile a minute to catch Max up to speed, because apparently she missed the last meeting and now she’s behind because the little dipshits couldn’t just wait for her.

They’re about five minutes into the campaign, all talking over each other and yelling about monsters (fictional, thank God) when Jonathan squints at them, turns to Steve, and says, “Wanna get out of here for a minute?”

And suddenly a million different voices are racing through Steve’s mind, the loudest being his father’s (“I don’t wanna see you hanging around any of those Byers kids,”) and Robin’s (“He COULD be into guys,”), and Jonathan’s just sitting there, waiting for Steve to answer as the kids fight over whatever the hell they rolled on the stupid dice, and finally Steve shakes his dad and Tommy and all his old selves and even Robin out of his head, and turns to Jonathan, and grins.

“Yeah. Little shits are getting annoying anyway.”

The Wheelers’ backyard looks almost painted-on in the afternoon light-- grass turned brown and brittle by the November cold, a rusty-looking swing set that Steve guesses hasn’t been touched in maybe ten years, and a couple of flower pots by the door, empty and sort of sad, sitting there in a line. Mrs. Wheeler’s probably forgotten all about them.

Jonathan ambles over to the swing set and settles on one of the swings, huffing a laugh when the chains squeak in protest. Steve eyes it warily from a distance, shaking his head when Jonathan beckons.

“That thing’s a fuckin’ death trap, man.”

“What happened to living on the edge?” Jonathan asks him, blowing his hair out of his eyes. He’s growing it out again, and sometimes seeing it sends Steve back two years, to Tommy and Carol and Jonathan in his trench coat with his little camera slung around his neck; to cans of spray paint and the shock of knuckles flying across his cheek; to flickering lights and Jonathan’s hands gripping his shoulders and “You have to get out of here,” echoing in his brain like laughter bouncing off of bathroom walls.

“I do enough of that nowadays, don’t you think?” Steve shoots back, and Jonathan’s brows tick up a bit at that.

“Fair point. But in all seriousness, these things are indestructible.” He kicks off the ground and swings a little as if to prove his point, and it’s so endearing-- Jonathan on a kids’ swing, trying to stop himself from smiling as the wind picks up and tugs at his jacket-- that Steve caves and sits down gingerly on the second swing before he can think of a snappy reply.

The chains squeak, but don’t give.

“See? You’re not gonna plummet to your death. And even if it did break, you’d be fine.”

“Okay, smartass, you win. Now what?”

Jonathan laughs a little at that, and Steve feels something tug in his chest.

“Just relax, dude. Why are you so tense, anyway?”

“Well, for one, it’s fucking freezing--”

Another laugh; louder this time, floating into the air above them. It IS freezing-- Steve didn’t bother to bring a coat, because he’d figured he and Jonathan would stay inside with the kids the whole time in Mike’s stuffy, humid basement, and now he’s really regretting that decision. He’d be fine if it wasn’t so damn windy-- leave it to November in Hawkins to fuck up Steve’s hair AND his nonchalance. He’s got his shoulders hunched up against the cold, and it’s probably making him look like a goddamn idiot.

Robin would laugh if she could see him now.

“Okay, I’ll give you that,” Jonathan concedes. “But what else? C’mon, the cold’s not that bad.”

“Okay, firstly, yes it is. It’s fucking sub-zero out here, Byers. So yeah, I’m tense. I’m tense alright, because one: it’s cold as shit. And secondly, you--” Steve cuts himself off before he can finish the thought. He does this sometimes, just talks without thinking. Robin calls it word-vomit, a phrase that makes Steve and Will recoil, but he guesses it’s accurate. Spewing out whatever comes to mind. Nancy would know the technical term for it, something about a filter. . .

“I what?” Jonathan’s asking him, suddenly serious, and Steve kind of wants to bolt but that’d be SUPER weird, so he swallows his pride and dignity and the bile rising up his throat and tries for a smile instead.

“Um-- you-- I just mean, you kind of. Intimidate me, I guess. . .?” Steve says, getting quieter as he trails off.

This is definitely not what he’d meant to say.

But Jonathan seems fairly entertained by it, so. Maybe it counts as a win.

As soon as the words are out of Steve’s mouth, Jonathan’s throwing his head back and laughing, this bright, crazy sound that Steve’s never heard from him before, and he huffs out a laugh too because it’s kind of contagious, like Robin’s belly-laugh or El’s giggles.

“Holy shit,” Jonathan wheezes, turning to stare incredulously at Steve, “I intimidate YOU? Seriously?”

“Yes,” Steve insists, nodding vehemently, and this just sets Jonathan off again, and now they’re both laughing like maniacs on the Wheelers’ rusty-ass swing set and Steve’s surprised the neighbors haven’t called Hopper about a disturbance because, in all honesty, they’re being super fucking loud.

“Oh my God,” Jonathan says once they’ve calmed down, swinging back and forth a little as Steve runs a hand through his hair. “Sorry, man, that’s just. . . like, holy shit.”

“Well, you did beat the shit out of me that one time,” Steve reminds him, and Jonathan looks a little guilty at that.

“About that--”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re sorry and all that crap,” Steve says dismissively, staring out at the Wheelers’ back porch. “Listen, you don’t have to apologize. I deserved it, anyway-- I was a total dick to you, and that was just. . . karma.”

Jonathan sighs. “Yeah, well, I still feel terrible every time I remember it.”

“Come on,” Steve says. “Don’t psych yourself out about it. I have way more to apologize for. I shouldn’t have ever said all that stupid shit about your family, and I-- God, Jonathan, I hate myself for it. Your mom is-- she’s amazing, she’s like, so fucking funny and kind and strong, and Will’s just. . . he’s so smart, and artistic, and caring, and every day I wake up to this tiny house that actually feels alive, and all I can think about is how lucky I am to have a place in it.”

Jonathan’s quiet. He’s gone still in the past couple of minutes, and Steve turns to look at him and sees that he’s hastily wiping at his eyes.

Well, shit.

“Fuck, sorry, Steve. That was. . . that was really something. Y’know, you could’ve gotten an A in English if you’d just turned your assignments in. You’re kind of poetic sometimes.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It kind of sneaks up on people, but it’s there.”

Steve smiles to himself. Kicks at a clump of dead grass as he swings back and forth, falling into rhythm with Jonathan.

“I. . . I don’t know everything about your home life, obviously, but. . . from what you’ve told us, it sounds like it was pretty lonely, and I just want you to know that I’m here for you, too. I know I’m not my mom or Robin, or even Will or the rest of the kids, but. . . I care. About how you’re doing.”

The words hang in the air; Steve keeps his gaze locked on the ground.

“Thanks, man. I mean, yeah, being at home sucked, but everything’s fine now, so. No need to worry about me.”

Jonathan nudges the toe of Steve’s shoe with his, and he looks up to meet his calculating gaze.

“Don’t do that,” Jonathan tells him, eyes dark and earnest in the fading afternoon light. “You’ve gotta stop pretending like things are okay when they’re not. I stopped last night, you can stop today.”

Steve snorts out a laugh. “What is this, an anti-drinking ad?”

Jonathan rolls his eyes good-naturedly, and the air around them seems to thin out a bit.

“Shut up, idiot,” he says, laughing as Steve kicks dirt at him. “I was trying to be nice!”

“Yeah, well, doesn’t hurt to remember who you’re talking to. Over the course of seventeen shitty years, my dad taught me the undying art of repression, and I’m not about to give that shit up just yet.”

“Repression, huh?” Jonathan asks. “You always struck me as more of a. . . deflector. Or an avoider.”

“Nah, I face shit head-on,” Steve tells him, smirking when Jonathan laughs. “Like Nancy. You’d know a thing or two about that, right, Byers?”

Jonathan’s eyes go wide, and Steve’s chest seizes in panic for a brief moment; he can backpedal out of this, though, like he does with everything heavy, but Jonathan opens his mouth before Steve can gloss over the comment.

“About Nancy and I. . . um. I think I kind of owe you an apology. I should never have. . . it was super shitty of me to take those photos of her. Like, really fucked up, and I’ve felt guilty about it since before you called me out on it, even though I totally deserved that. And. . . I just feel bad. For wrecking your relationship with her.”

Steve sighs, waving a hand dismissively.

“Man, that shit doesn’t matter to me anymore. I mean-- Nance and I, we were never gonna work. We’re too different. She needs someone on her level, like, intellectually, or whatever. You guys. . . you’re better for each other.”

Jonathan shifts his gaze to his lap then, and Steve worries that he’s said something wrong for a moment until he speaks up again.

“Well, in theory. But. . . I mean, we kind of clash sometimes, too. College just. . . compounded everything. The distance, the lack of time we were putting in to call each other and actually maintain a relationship. . . it kind of ruined us, I think. But not in a bad way. Like, we’re friends now, we’re really close friends, and I think that’s kind of what we were always meant to be.”

Holy shit. Holy SHIT. Robin’s gonna flip her fucking lid.

“Oh, shit. . . I had no idea,” Steve says, kicking at the ground beneath him again. Jonathan’s looking at him now, his gaze calculating as ever. “I mean. . . wow. Good for you guys, really. As long as you’re both happy, I’m happy.”

Jonathan smiles at him-- a genuine smile, not a snarky, sarcastic one-- and Steve feels his heart speed up in his chest. God dammit, he needs to get a grip.

“Thanks, man,” Jonathan says. “That means a lot, even if it was said in a super ineloquent way.”

That little shit.

“Hey, I resent that--” Steve starts, about to go off on some stupid tangent, but an ominous crash from inside the Wheelers’ house cuts him off.

“Shit,” Jonathan mutters, leaping to his feet, and the moment’s over. Steve follows close behind as Jonathan rushes back inside and practically drags him down to the basement. The stairs are a blur as they stumble down them, and Steve nearly trips on the last step before Jonathan steadies him.

The kids, thank God, all seem intact-- they’re all standing except for Max, and they’re fidgeting anxiously, but they’re not scraped up or bruised or tearing each other’s heads off, so everything’s good on that front.

Steve heaves an internal sigh of relief, but any sense of calm he felt before quickly evaporates when Jonathan points accusingly at Dustin, who’s holding the remnants of what looks like a broken vase in his hands.

“What the hell?”

The kids all whirl to look at each other, eyes wide and panicked. Max is the only one that’s unaffected by the pitch of Steve’s voice-- she’s splayed out on the couch Jonathan and Steve had been sitting on earlier, her legs crossed and propped up on the coffee table as she surveys the rest of the little shitheads with an unbothered, amused gaze.

Finally, after about a solid minute of Jonathan helping Dustin deposit the shards of the vase in a nearby trash-can, ranting to him the entire time while the rest of the kids whisper frantically amongst themselves, Max pipes up from the couch, twirling a strand of red hair around one finger.

“Mike and Lucas and Dustin got super excited when we finally finished the campaign and Lucas smashed the vase over his own head in sheer glee. And idiocy.”

Mike stares at her aghast as El’s eyes flicker seriously from Max to Lucas to Steve, like she’s waiting for Steve to go all Mom-mode on their asses. That’s what Max calls it, “Mom-mode”, like Steve’s their legal guardian or some shit. El adopted the term quickly, because El parrots Max all the time, and they mutter it to each other when Steve’s about to yell at one of the other little shitheads for something stupid they’ve done. It’s annoying. Kind of cute, but mostly annoying.

So anyway-- Steve is working REALLY hard at not bursting into laughter at the mental image of Lucas slamming the vase over his own head (holy shit, that must’ve hurt like hell), but Jonathan doesn’t seem amused by it at all. In fact, he looks the opposite, eyebrows drawn together in an endearing mixture of concern and confusion.

“He smashed that over his HEAD?”

Lucas just grins sheepishly. “It’s not a tall vase.”

Mike nods knowingly, dead serious, and Steve thinks he sees the two boys fist-bump out of the corner of his eye as Jonathan pushes past Dustin and the rest of the little shitheads to stand beside Steve like an aggravated housewife.

Whoa, wait, weird simile. Weird simile. Steve needs to just stop thinking for good; he can have Robin do all the independent cognitive shit for him.

“Okay. Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do,” Jonathan’s saying, his voice soft and calm as ever despite his obvious irritation, “since you guys are done with your game, I’m taking Will home, and if any of you need rides home I can provide, but no more of whatever this destructive phase is. You guys are in high school, for God’s sake.”

El salutes Jonathan, and he cracks a smile, and then all the kids are nodding and muttering begrudging apologies as they pack up their game. Mike and Lucas break out into a halfhearted argument about when their next “meeting” will be while Will plays mediator, and Steve smiles to himself.

Sure, the kids might be in high school now, but they’ve still got the same spirit they had at twelve. Maybe, he figures, they’re making up for lost time that the Upside Down and interdimensional monsters and Hawkins Lab stole from them. Maybe their immaturity is a tiny rebellion in itself, not against Steve or Jonathan or any of the adults, but against what took their childhood from them.

As Jonathan ushers Will and Max and El into his car and Steve hops into the passenger’s seat, cold night air nipping at his neck, he feels a sense of calm wash over him. Like, the kind of calm that follows a hot bath on a rainy day, or the first bite of Joyce’s self-proclaimed “famous” spaghetti (which makes Will recoil every time he sees it), or falling asleep in the grass with his head on Robin’s shoulder and a knitted blanket they’ve dragged outside draped over him.

Talking with Jonathan-- really talking, not “How’s the weather?” and “Is college killing you yet?” and “How’s Nance doing?” talking-- settled something in him, he thinks. Sure, all the scary, surreal shit they’d been through had bonded them. Robin and Joyce’s open arms had bonded them. Nancy, and the loss of Nancy, had bonded them. But all of that didn’t erase what Steve had said to Jonathan two years ago in that alley, and in the halls, and behind his back-- it just glossed over it. Swept it under the rug.

Today, they’d confronted it head-on, and clearing the air felt good. It felt like. . . Robin would know the perfect word. Resolution, Steve decides. That’ll have to do for now.

Jonathan’s got some loud, riffy music blasting from his radio, and Max and El and Will are all talking in the back, cuddling up together because it’s cold as shit and El’s like a tiny human furnace. Steve first discovered it when she’d hugged him for the first time. It was a couple of months ago, when he’d taught her how to style her hair since it was getting longer. He’d braided her hair into two delicate plaits as the rest of the kids rampaged through Joyce’s kitchen cabinets for “brainfood” to help them study for their latest test. El had taken one long look in the mirror and catapulted up off of the stool Steve had dragged in from the kitchen, pulling him into a warm hug.

Now, she’s curled both arms around Max and Will, resting her head on Max’s shoulder as Will describes his next campaign idea. Jonathan glances at them in the rearview mirror and smiles, turning to Steve like they’re sharing a secret.

The music’s almost too loud and the car’s still freezing, but Steve feels more relaxed than he’s been in weeks as Jonathan bobs his head to whatever song he’s got playing and the kids giggle in the backseat and Hawkins whizzes by them outside the windows of Jonathan’s car, dark and still and silent.

---

After Jonathan and Steve have dropped Max and El off at the cabin for a sleepover, they pull into the porch-lit driveway of the Byers’ house.

Will stumbles out of the backseat, grumbling that they’ve woken him up, and Jonathan laughs lightly, ruffling the kid’s hair as they bound up the porch steps. Steve smiles as Jonathan twists the key in the lock and holds the door for him and Will, who rushes inside to the warmth of the living room, flinging himself down onto the couch almost immediately.

The first thing Steve notices is the music-- it’s one of Hopper’s records, some Jim Croce album they haven’t played yet. It floats out to greet Steve and Jonathan as they make their way inside, and it’s only when Steve’s gotten to the kitchen that he sees it. Jonathan stops a couple of steps behind him, watching the scene silently.

Joyce and Robin have fallen asleep at the kitchen table, slumped over what looks like Robin’s college applications and a stack of bills, but that’s not what makes Steve’s eyes tear up.

Joyce has got one arm curled around Robin’s shoulders, and Robin’s got her head tucked on Joyce’s shoulder.

Of course, Steve knows Joyce is a great mom. He’d known it when he’d seen her ushering all the kids into her car after Starcourt, he’d known it when she’d bandaged Max’s scraped knees and Mike’s bruised ribs and the cuts marring Lucas’ face, he’d known it when she’d offered to let Robin and Steve stay with her after Robin’s asshole parents kicked her out and Steve broke down at the idea of returning to his own empty house.

She has the maternal gene Steve’s own mother and countless others seem to lack-- it’s in her eyes, her voice. The way she beams at Will when he shows her his art or the way she wraps El in a bear hug every time she visits the Byers house.

Steve knew Joyce was a Great Mom in theory, but he’d never seen it put into practice with Robin before.

Sure, she welcomed Robin into her home with no questions and open arms, but Steve had only ever seen them hug once-- that first night Robin arrived, rain-soaked and shivering and crying. Even then, it had been a group hug, a tangle of limbs as El and Will and Steve all joined in on the embrace. The memory of it made his chest seize up.

Steve vaguely remembers Robin mentioning that Joyce was helping her with her college applications once or twice, too, now that he thinks about it. He hadn’t really given it a second thought, at the time, because it was such a Joyce thing to do, and it never struck him as particularly important.

But now, here they were, napping side-by-side at the kitchen table with their work spread out in front of them. To a stranger, they’d look like mother and daughter, planning college visits and drafting admissions essays together.

“Well, damn it,” Jonathan breathes, and Steve startles. “I’m gonna cry again.”

Steve smiles as he saunters forward to ruffle Robin’s hair; she stirs, grumbling something at him that sounds vaguely like a death threat.

“Yeah, I just might have to join you on that, Byers.”

Jonathan grins at him again as the last verses of the song bleed out into the room, and Steve feels his heart skip a beat at the sight: Jonathan, his hair haloed by the dimmed overhead lights, eyes gleaming, his mouth quirked up in a smile. Steve takes a mental picture-- ‘the highlight reel’, Robin calls it. Steve thinks he coined the term first, one late night sitting on Joyce’s porch with her, but Robin maintains that the phrase was her creation and hers alone. Moron.

“Dingus, if you don’t get out of my way, I’m gonna run you over with this chair,” Robin snaps, frighteningly more awake now, and Steve almost trips over his own feet backing up. Robin pulls herself to her feet, picking the chair up to move it rather than dragging it across the kitchen tile, and Steve smiles to himself. She acts like she doesn’t care about anyone sometimes, except when it comes to him and the kids, but he knows she’s keeping quiet for Joyce’s benefit. She’s still dead asleep, and Jonathan laughs quietly at her as he ambles down the hall to his room.

Steve drags Robin along with him to their bedroom as Will starts to snore from the couch.

---

“Tell me everything,” Robin begs him once they’re sprawled out over the floral duvet on her bed. The room is dimly lit by Steve’s bedside lamp, a soft orange glow that makes everything feel fuzzy and half-there. Painted on, like the Wheelers’ backyard.

She’s somehow even more awake now that she’s had a nap, and Steve fucking resents her for it right now because all he really wants to do is fall asleep in the mess of blankets they’ve dragged onto the bed with them. It doesn’t help that Robin’s running her hand absently through his hair. He knows he shouldn't be this tired after doing pretty much nothing all day, but all the emotional shit he’s dredged up in the past couple of hours-- with Robin in their room, with Jonathan on the Wheelers’ rust-covered swing set-- is making his eyelids heavy as hell.

Steve gets like this sometimes-- exhausted after being vulnerable. It’s a thing that he first started noticing after all the Mindflayer shit happened. He’d be talking to Dustin over the walkie talkie at night when the kid couldn’t sleep, coaching him through a panic attack or comforting him after a nightmare, and suddenly a wave of fatigue would wash over him and he’d have to fight to keep his eyes open.

So now, he’s got his head propped up on a pillow in Robin’s lap, and she’s leaning against her headboard, eyes bright and awake as ever. It’s goddamn infuriating. He wants to be awake, to be conscious enough to recount the details of his and Jonathan’s earlier conversation, the way they’d laughed, heads tipped back to the sky like maniacs.

But all he feels is a blossoming, bone-deep tiredness in his chest.

“Rob. I’m about to pass out from exhaustion, here--”

“If you can speak in coherent sentences you can stay awake for a couple more minutes, Dingus. Just tell me-- was it fun? Did you idiots finally resolve all your petty high-school bullshit?”

Despite himself, Steve smiles.

“Yeah,” he sighs into the pillow, letting his eyes flutter shut as Robin rests her hand on his forehead in what Steve guesses is supposed to be a soothing gesture. It doesn’t really have that effect though, because her hand is fucking freezing-- her hands are always cold as shit (“poor circulation”, she’d told him when he’d first held her hand the night after Starcourt), especially in winter.

Steve leans into the touch anyway.

“I think we really worked stuff out. I apologized for all the shit I said to him two years ago, and he told me it was fine because he’s a fucking saint, and then he said. . .”

Steve trails off, half-asleep already, and Robin jostles him awake. Asshole.

“He said what? Steve, what did he say?”

“Jesus Christ, Rob, let a guy rest. He said he broke up with Nance, that they’re better off as friends.”

There’s a beat of blessed, blissful silence, and then Robin’s shaking him and whisper-yelling in his ear like a madwoman, a grisly repeat of this morning.

“Holy shit, holy shit, this is perfect!” She exclaims, and Steve bats her away from him, pulling the blankets over his head to muffle her excited rambling.

“Would you shut up? I need to catch up on my beauty rest,” Steve mumbles, and finally Robin quiets her tangent, flopping down to lay beside him.

“Chill out, moron, I’m not gonna keep you up any longer. Just. . . I think this is a good sign.”

Steve rolls his eyes even though she can’t see him in the mess of blankets he’s cocooned in.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, Matchmaker. Now turn off the light, I’m dying here.”

“You are SUCH a drama queen, Dingus.”

She tugs the blankets away from his face and kisses him on the forehead, a tiny, annoying peck, and Steve glares at her as she flicks the lamp on their bedside table off, plunging the room into cool blue darkness.

---

The second time it happens, there’s a blizzard descending over Hawkins.

Steve wakes to Robin aggressively shaking him-- she’s got both hands gripping his shoulders, and she’s jostling him like some sort of crazed lunatic as the front door of the Byers house swings open and a gust of cold rushes into the home. Steve doesn’t even have to blink the sunlight out of his eyes this morning-- all that he can see outside the one window in their bedroom is endless flurries of snow. Because of said flurries, the room is mostly dark, so the whole being-shaken-awake thing? Kind of jarring. Steve, for one, is not amused.

But Robin doesn’t seem to notice, because even after he glares at her, she still keeps shaking him.

“What the fuck-- stop, stop, I’m up!” Steve exclaims, shrugging Robin off of him as he disentangles himself from the sheets. She laughs maniacally, and Steve chucks the nearest pillow at her; it hits her square in the chest, and she retaliates by sticking a socked foot out in front of him, tripping him as he makes his way to the bathroom.

“Robin, what the hell is wrong with you?”

“It’s a snow day, Dingus!” She shouts gleefully, grabbing both of his hands to help him up. “We’re stuck inside! All! Day!”

Jesus Christ.

Will whoops in delighted solidarity from somewhere in the kitchen, and Steve swears he hears the telltale sign of Max and El’s laughter drift in from the same room.

Robin must hear it, too, because without warning, she dashes into the kitchen, dragging Steve behind her as Jonathan throws open his bedroom door to see what all the commotion is about, looking groggy and adorably tired.

Steve shrugs at him as Robin slams to a halt once they reach the kitchen, and both of them stumble on the tile. Sure enough, El, Hopper, and Max are crowded into the kitchen, covered in snow from the flurries that have taken over Hawkins. Hopper’s looking oddly cheerful for eight a.m., chatting with Joyce as she shakes the scrambled eggs in their pan and rambles on about Will’s grades and Jonathan’s college experience.

Will is waving El and Max over to the kitchen table, and they fall into seats beside him, shrugging off their coats as Robin smiles.

“What’s all this about?” Steve asks no one in particular. Will brightens from his seat at the table, gesturing for Steve and Robin to sit down.

“There’s gonna be a blizzard today,” he informs them excitedly. “Max slept over at El’s, and Hopper didn’t want them braving a storm from the cabin, so Mom said they could stay with us all day!”

“Oh dear God,” Jonathan deadpans from the hall. El and Max snicker.

Robin rolls her eyes at him dramatically. “Oh, I’m Jonathan, and I can’t handle ONE DAY inside with my brother’s friends because I’m MOODY and I need time alone to BROOD--”

Steve kicks her gently under the table, and Jonathan huffs out a laugh as he drops into the empty seat beside Steve, twisting his hands together in his lap. It’s a nervous tick that Robin noticed first; she’d pointed it out to Steve after they’d first moved in. They hadn’t asked him about it, because they had their own Things-- Robin and her nail biting, and Steve’s compulsive tendency of running his hands through his hair. Speaking of, Jonathan’s hair is sticking up on one side, and Steve gets this weird urge to smooth it down for him. Before he can unpack that feeling (Jesus Christ), Joyce is setting down plates of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of all of them and retiring to the living room with Hopper to talk about what great weather they’re having, or taxes, or some adult shit Steve can’t be bothered to care about. He’s honestly shocked that Joyce and Hop can even still DO small talk after everything-- maybe it’s a blessing instead of a curse.

“Max, pass the salt,” El is saying as Will digs into his eggs like he hasn’t eaten in days. The sight is equal parts horrifying and hilarious, and it must show on Steve’s face, because Robin nudges him silently. She’s trying to hold back her laughter, too.

El grins at them like she’s in on the joke even though she’s paying no attention to Will-- she’s too busy viciously shaking salt on her eggs.

“Whoa, slow down, El,” Jonathan says through a laugh. “You don’t want your eggs to drown in all that sodium. I’m sure Mom already salted them, anyway.”

“She likes them that way,” Max informs him, and El shoves a forkful of them into her mouth as if to prove Max’s point, staring Jonathan down as she chews.

Jonathan’s eyebrows furrow, as if this is some kind of equation he can’t figure out, and Robin snickers as El locks eyes with him and shovels more food into her mouth.

“How is she-- that must taste awful,” Jonathan says under his breath, and Steve muffles a laugh into his sweater sleeve. Max is keeping a straight face, miraculously, but Steve still catches a flicker of a smile as El finishes the eggs off.

“El is a MACHINE,” Will declares as he deposits his already-clean plate into the dishwasher. The irony of his statement is that the kid can eat anything in record time. Weirdly, though, he doesn’t really seem to notice. Once, they’d all gone out to Dinah’s Diner for a night-- the shitheads and Robin and Steve-- and Will had finished what was on his plate before Dustin even got his order. He didn’t seem to care, just sat there fiddling with the sugar packets and talking with Robin as the rest of the dipshits ate their dinner.

Now, Will plops back down into his seat, grinning as El shakes salt onto her bacon. As funny as this whole debacle is, it makes Robin recoil.

“God, no-- the bacon already has salt on it!”

El just smiles at her wordlessly, and Steve almost gets chills. The salt shaker is half-empty.

“She likes it that way, too,” Max says, struggling to hold back a laugh. Finally, she snatches the salt shaker from El, rolling her eyes fondly.

“If you eat that, your blood pressure’s gonna skyrocket, weirdo.”

El is unperturbed. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means you could get a stroke,” Will supplies.

“You don’t GET a stroke, you HAVE a stroke,” Max argues, and Steve laughs incredulously, because the kids can get really freaking morbid sometimes.

“Fine,” Will huffs, “It means you could HAVE a stroke.”

El’s eyes have been darting back and forth between Will and Max as they banter, and now she just looks confused.

“I don’t know what a stroke is, either.”

Jonathan bangs his head down on the kitchen table as Robin cackles, sloshing her coffee onto Steve’s sweater.

“Robin!”

“Sorry, Dingus. Don’t get in the way of my coffee next time.”

“Hey, kids and bigger kids,” Hopper interrupts from the living room armchair. “How do we feel about games and hot cocoa?”

“Yes and yes,” Robin says, and the kids vehemently agree, nodding like a row of bobbleheads. Jonathan flashes a thumbs-up at Hopper, and suddenly kitchen chairs are screeching across the floor as the kids bound into the living room and Robin pulls Steve out of his seat.

An hour and a couple of mugs of cocoa later, Steve’s standing in front of the living room couch, trying to get the kids to guess what he’s playing at in their ongoing game of charades.

The snow has started pounding more insistently against the house, but the Byers home has a strong foundation, and Joyce has lit candles in the living room, so for now, everything is good.

Except for the fact that Robin’s been beating him in charades for the past four rounds.

“Alright, dipshits,” Steve says, “Sorry, not you, Joyce-- but the rest of you! If I know anything, it’s that I’m the KING of this game--”

“Debatable,” Jonathan pipes up. Robin high-fives him across Max and El; she’s perched on the arm of the couch, and Jonathan’s sandwiched between Joyce and the kids. They have to lean over the little shitheads to slap their hands together.

Hopper rolls his eyes.

“Alright, kid, one more try,” he tells Steve. “It’s my go after this.”

Steve rolls his shoulders back and winks at Robin; she mimes puking onto the throw pillow in El’s lap.

“Okay, okay. I’m counting on you little shitheads-- this is an easy word, dammit!”

Steve mimes vacuuming the floor as the kids stare at him blankly.

“Mopping?” Will asks, scrunching his face up as El shakes her head.

“No. . . he’s painting the floor!”

“He’s what?” Max snorts, snickering at El.

“PAINTING,” El stresses, throwing her arms out at Steve, “the FLOOR.”

“That’s totally nonsensical,” Jonathan comments, which just makes Max laugh harder. Her face turns almost as red as her hair when she does; it makes Steve feel a little lighter despite how dark the room’s gotten.

“YOU’RE totally nonsensical,” Robin replies.

Jonathan rolls his eyes at her, and Steve plops back down onto his place on the floor. He’s giving up, damn it.

“Alright, amatuers,” Hopper says gruffly, rolling up his sleeves like he’s getting ready to punch something. Joyce snickers as he cracks his knuckles. “Watch and learn, Harrington.”

“Hey,” Steve protests. “I’m the king of charades! I OWN this game.”

“You’ve lost the last four rounds,” Hopper shoots back, smiling when El laughs.

“At least he’s not old,” Max pipes up. She’s joking, a smile quirking at her lips, and Joyce huffs out a surprised laugh as the Chief reads the next cue card in the pile and does his best impression of. . . some kind of bear? Hell if Steve knows.

As their game of charades drags on and Will racks up points like Max playing Dig Dug (the kid should go into theater in sophomore year, Steve swears), Jonathan starts looking increasingly uncomfortable. He’s been weird all morning, in all honesty. Fidgety. Steve chalked it up to a lack of sleep at first, but now, as Jonathan’s face remains blank when everyone else loses it at El’s horrendous imitation of bowling, it seems like there’s more going on under the surface than he originally thought.

So when Jonathan gets up to refill his mug and the others continue on with the game, Steve follows him.

---

“Hey, man, you good?” Steve asks, raising his voice over the whooping and overlapping cheers drifting in from the living room-- someone must’ve finally guessed one of the words right.

There’s a clatter-- Jonathan dropping his mug into the sink-- and then they’re facing each other.

“Jonathan,” Steve says, insistently this time. He’s really starting to worry. The circles under Jonathan’s eyes are more pronounced under the glaring overhead lights of the kitchen, and his posture is different, too-- hunched, his shoulders inching up towards his ears. It reminds Steve of the way he curled in on himself that day in the alley, all those years ago. The memory makes a shudder roll through him.

“I’m f-fine,” Jonathan stutters, dragging a tired hand over his face. The nervous energy is rattling off of him in waves.

“Bullshit.”

Dark eyes dart up to meet his. “Steve,” Jonathan sighs. “Just drop it, it’s not a big deal. The others are waiting on you, just--” he jerks his head in the direction of the living room, “--just go, it’s fine.”

Steve blinks at him. “No,” he says, more a whisper than anything else. “No, I can’t just-- something’s wrong. Hey, look at me.”

Jonathan’s eyes are back on the kitchen tile, and frankly, Steve’s sick of whatever this is, so he reaches out and tilts Jonathan’s chin up before he can think of something else to say.

It’s weird, and he knows that it’s kind of a strange thing to do, but Jonathan’s glaring at him straight in the eyes now, so, progress?

“Whatever you’re trying to do, stop,” Jonathan says, shouldering his way past Steve.

“I’m trying to HELP you,” Steve whisper-yells, even though the others have no chance of hearing them with how loud the game’s gotten (Max and Will are screeching with laughter about something stupid Robin’s done), “but you won’t even talk about what’s bothering you--”

“God, nothing’s bothering me! Jesus. It’s FINE, I’m fine, okay?” Jonathan’s pacing in circles now, and Steve’s worried he’s overstepped some sort of invisible boundary, because he’s pretty sure there are tears in Jonathan’s eyes.

“No, you’re not,” Steve murmurs. “And that’s okay, right? We’ve been over this. It’s fine if you. . . if you have a rough day, or a rough week, and you need someone to talk to. I was just trying to be that person, I guess. That’s all. Sorry, man.”

Jonathan stops pacing for a second at this, and some of the tension pinching his posture seems to melt away.

“No, I’m sorry,” he sighs, scrubbing a hand over his eyes, and Steve gets this terrifying urge to pull him into a hug.

“Hey, it’s okay-- you’re just stressed out, that’s okay,” Steve says, and Jonathan looks up at him with this weird, unguarded expression that tugs on his heart.

“No, I-- I blew up at you, I’m sorry--”

“Jonathan, it’s fine, seriously, just-- Jesus, man, do you need a hug?”

A beat of silence.

“I mean. . . yeah, I think I do.”

Steve opens his arms, kind of hesitantly, because he can’t even remember the last time he’s hugged someone that isn’t Robin or Dustin, but Jonathan falls into the embrace easily, bracketing his arms around Steve like he’s a lifeline.

“You’re gonna be okay, Byers,” Steve assures him, and yeah, it’s a little weird, but mostly it feels. . . nice. Jonathan’s short enough that his head fits on Steve’s shoulder. Robin, who’s lanky as hell, can’t really do that-- they usually have to be sitting down to cuddle because of it. But this isn’t like that-- it’s not mutual affection, it’s Steve being there for Jonathan, who probably would’ve hugged any one of them-- Robin or Steve or even Hopper-- under these circumstances, so it’s not like Steve’s special. Actually, no-- probably not Hopper. But still.

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan’s saying as Steve pulls him in closer, and God, why does he have to be so sincere all the goddamn time? Steve was about to crack a joke, but now the mood is ruined, so.

“Stop apologizing,” Steve says, rubbing circles into Jonathan’s back like he does for Robin sometimes when she’s freaking out, “Just shut up and try to relax. We gotta get back in there pretty soon or else--”

“Hey, DINGUS!” Robin yells right on cue from the living room, and Steve rolls his eyes as Jonathan abruptly disentangles himself from the embrace, “Get the FU-- sorry, Joyce-- get the HELL in here!”

There’s a faint thwacking sound, like someone’s hit Robin with a pillow, and Will’s voice drifts in from the living room: “Hell’s a curse word too!”

“Hell’s not a curse,” Max argues, “It’s a real place.”

“Don’t remind me,” Robin deadpans, and Steve almost laughs despite himself.

Jonathan makes a beeline for the living room, but before he can leave the kitchen, Steve darts out and grabs hold of his elbow.

“Hey-- hey, listen-- if you ever. . . I mean, if you ever need anyone, I’m here, okay?”

Jonathan locks eyes with him, and some unspoken agreement seems to pass before he gives a short, staccato nod.

“Y-Yeah. . . thank you. I mean, same goes for you or Robin.”

“You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah, for today,” Jonathan says, smiling lightly. “Thanks to you.”

Steve smiles back at him, releasing his elbow and nudging him forward, and they rejoin the others in the living room as the snow pounds against the windows and the candlelight flickers and Joyce throws her hands up in victory when she wins whatever round they’re on.

---

Later that night, Robin’s curled up in Steve’s lap, her head resting on a pillow she’s dragged over from her own bed.

“So you. . . hugged him?”

Steve rolls his eyes at her, even though she’s focused intently on twining a friendship bracelet Max gave her back together. It unravelled earlier in the week because she forgot to take it off before playing tag with the little shitheads-- Dustin tugged on her wrist too hard, or some shit.

“Yes,” Steve says in the same ‘are-you-an-idiot’ tone Dustin sometimes reserves for him, “I hugged him. And before you ask, it was a consensual hug, got that? I opened my arms, and he just, like. . . I don’t know, kinda melted into me. It was. . . nice. His head was on my shoulder.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then Robin starts to snicker.

“Oh my GOD,” she says through a laugh, “you are SUCH a SAP!”

Steve scoffs. “Am not.”

“You totally are. Before the Great Bathroom Coming Out of 1985, you talked about me like I was some. . . heroine in a movie or a book or something. Like, gushing nonstop. I’m never letting you live that down, dude.”

“Oh, hush,” Steve says, cringing at the memory. “And to be fair to Past Steve, you WERE like a heroine from a movie. Super smart-- like, could-be-valedictorian-if-you-gave-a-shit smart-- and funny, and multilingual, which was a major turn-on--”

Robin fake-retches, and Steve pats her shoulder consolingly.

“Just being honest, Buckley. Learn to take a compliment.”

“Learn when to stop talking.”

She’s grinning from ear-to-ear, all smug, and Steve feels a smile bloom on his face at the sight. Without warning, he grabs the nearest pillow and vaults it at her; she twists out of his lap, shrieking.

“What the fuck-- I was kidding!” Robin yells through peals of laughter.

“Read the room, Rob, does this look like a place for goddamn jokes to you?”

Steve’s got three pillows hefted in his arms to throw at her, and in all the chaos, they’ve shoved their nest of blankets to the floor. There are soda cans littering the dresser, chip bags on Robin’s desk, and a bunch of weird lamps they both picked up from the thrift shop on the corner decorating the bedside table. The room, to put it lightly, is a goddamn catastrophe.

“Yes,” Robin says breathlessly, throwing herself off the bed right as Steve launches the pillows at her. She lands with a mildly concerning thud, and Steve pauses in his efforts of catapulting pillows at Robin to check on her.

“Jesus, Rob, you’re gonna break something one day.”

“Yeah,” she says, her voice muffled by the carpet, “I’m gonna break some HEARTS!”

Steve snickers as she fails to get up, and hoists her back onto the bed when she glares at him.

They’ve just settled down again-- Robin nestled into Steve’s side, Steve twirling a strand of his hair around one finger-- when a faint knock sounds on the door.

Steve moves to answer it, depositing Robin in the cocoon of blankets they’ve pulled back up onto his bed. She looks mildly scandalized, but remains where she is as Steve swings their bedroom door open.

“Hey,” Jonathan greets, shouldering past Steve into the room. Robin, suddenly interested, props her head up on one hand-- she’s sprawled out over Steve’s bed now, leaving no room for him, the monster. He plops down on her bed in retaliation as Jonathan paces.

“You gonna spill about what’s bugging you or are you just gonna keep wearing a hole in the carpet?” Robin asks, half-kidding. Her voice is gentle despite her words, and Jonathan relaxes a little when she smiles half-heartedly. God, Steve loves Robin.

“Sorry, I know this is, like-- I know I keep intruding. I just. . . it’s about Will.”

Robin pulls herself into a sitting position, patting a spot beside her for Jonathan to sit down.

“Spill,” she says. “Therapist Robin is in the building, baby.”

“And she isn’t accepting payment of any kind,” Steve adds, feeling something flutter in his chest when Jonathan offers him a meek smile.

Once Jonathan’s settled down beside Robin and she’s draped a bunch of unnecessary blankets on him, Jonathan opens Pandora’s box.

“It’s just. . .” he starts, fidgeting with the same loose thread on the blue blanket that Steve had twined around his finger a day ago, “I don’t know, it’s November, and everything with Will’s disappearance happened this month three years ago, and. . . I’m just worried about him. About how he’s doing, but also just about his safety. It’s irrational, I know-- the demogorgon’s gone, all of it’s gone, but. . . I just feel like I’m waiting for the next monster to come crashing through our walls.”

“I get that,” Steve says. “I do. You think I’m not searching for the exits in every movie theater and arcade I drive the kids to? Jesus, that’s like, my main concern. ‘The next monster’. . . I get that.”

“I think what Steve’s trying to say is that you’re not alone,” Robin supplies gently.

“So. . . so how do you get the fear to go away? Or-- or just pause? It’s like it follows me everywhere, it’s suffocating, and I need to know how to tamp it down.”

Steve sends a questioning glance to Robin. She’s wrestled with anxiety her whole life, even before all the Upside Down shit, and dealing with it is definitely more in her wheelhouse.”

“Well,” she says, placing a comforting hand on Jonathan’s shoulder, “You could start by learning some grounding techniques. Naming certain things in the room that you can see, hear, smell. . . it helps pull you back into the present a little. You can also. . . tell us and your Mom what to look for when you’re feeling anxious. Sharing the signs with us can help us know when to pull you out of a situation that’s freaking you out.”

“Okay,” Jonathan exhales, nodding like they’re getting somewhere. The tight coil of worry in Steve’s chest loosens a bit.

“So, what should we look for?” Robin prompts gently. “Give us the 4-1-1 on what Anxious Jonathan looks like.”

Jonathan cracks a smile at this, shifting on the bed so that his posture’s more relaxed.

“I don’t know, I guess. . . I guess I kind of hunch over when I’m freaking out, and sometimes I twist my hands together? Really it’s mostly internal, so if I’m not responding to what’s going on around me, I’ve probably checked out,” he confesses.

“Dissociation,” Robin muses.

“What?” Steve asks.

“Dissociation,” Robin repeats, “it’s when you disconnect from your surroundings. It’s a stress response.”

“Jesus, that sounds bad,” Jonathan mutters.

“No, no, it’s really-- well, it IS bad, but it’s manageable. If it worsens over time, you have to promise to talk to someone about it, though. There are medications you can take in some cases.”

“Got it.” Jonathan says.

“Okay,” Steve says, “So shitty posture, fidgeting, and zoning out super hard, right?”

This pulls a laugh from Jonathan. “Yeah. Sorry to bother you both with this, I just--”

“No apologizing!” Robin shouts, tossing a pillow at Jonathan to silence him. “Rule number one of Robin’s Therapy Service: saying sorry for ANYTHING earns you a pillow to the face!”

“That seems really unfair,” Steve interjects, “What kind of business are you running here, ma’am?”

She huffs at him, like she’s actually frustrated, and Steve bites back a laugh when she chucks a pillow at him, too.

“Rule number two of Robin’s Therapy Service: No comments from the peanut gallery!”

“Hey, I resent that,” Steve says, feigning hurt. “I thought I was your right-hand man!”

“Right-hand moron, more like.”

“Guys,” Jonathan finally says, his eyes a little brighter than they were earlier in the night. “With all due respect, shut the fuck up.”

Robin rolls her eyes one last time at Steve, then pats Jonathan on the shoulder, like, ‘sorry you had to witness that’. They have a habit of getting into half-fake arguments in front of people, and sometimes they can spiral into actual fights if both of them are sleep-deprived enough. It’s a blessing that Jonathan stepped in, really.

“Anyway,” Robin says, snapping back to business, “I think for now another tangible thing you can do is. . . just talk to Will.”

“What?”

“If you spend more time with him, you won’t worry about him as much. Your brain is in Will’s-in-Danger Mode, except he’s not. So if you spend more and more time with him, you’ll trick your brain into realizing that he’s safe. It won’t work all the time, but I think maybe it could help.”

Jonathan’s silent for a moment, studying the woven blanket in his lap, and finally he looks up at Robin like he’s sort of seeing her for the first time. Steve knows that feeling-- the moment you recognize someone you aren’t related to is your family. He’d felt that an impossible amount of times over the past couple of years: The moment Dustin freaked in those tunnels about getting interdimensional sludge in his mouth and Steve felt his heart drop in his chest because he thought he’d gotten hurt; The night Max called him over the Walkie Talkie crying about her stepdad, who’d given her a black eye because Billy wasn’t home; The time El hugged Steve after he showed her how to curl her hair; The day after Starcourt when Robin showed up at Steve’s house with tears in her eyes and a million questions; The night Mike sprained his ankle trying to learn how to skate like Max, and Steve had to carry the kid to his car and drive him to Hawkin’s Hospital because his parents were at work. It’s a jarring feeling, being so connected to people you aren’t related to. Steve thinks it’s its own kind of magic, though.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Jonathan says, eyes soft in the lamplight. God, Steve wants to hug him again. Jesus. Maybe he is a sap.

“Thanks, Robin,” Jonathan’s saying, pulling her into a hug. She smiles all gooey-eyed at Steve over his shoulder, and he can’t help but smile back.

“You too, Steve,” Jonathan says, rolling his eyes when Steve tries to go for one of those neutral back-pat things guys used to do in high school. They hug again, and it’s short-lived, but equally as heart-fluttering as the last-- okay, yeah, Robin’s right. Steve is a fucking sap.

After they exchange goodnights, Jonathan’s out the door, and Steve and Robin are sitting opposite each other on the wrong beds.

Robin gets up first, joining Steve on her bed. They’ve got a sort of system worked out-- they’re both touchy-feely, tactile friends, having been deprived of physical affection as children (thanks, Mom and Dad!), so some nights they cuddle up on the same bed like kids at a sleepover and swap embarrassing stories about their childhood.

Just as Robin lets her head fall onto Steve’s shoulder, there’s a creak from the hallway. Will’s voice drifts into the hall, a quiet, “Hi, Jonathan,” that makes Robin sit up straighter, as if it’ll help her to hear better.

“Shh,” Jonathan is saying. “Don’t wake Steve and Robin up. Can I come in?”

Robin smiles at Steve, all giddy and proud of herself, and he rolls his eyes at her fondly.

“I did that, bitch,” she tells him.

“Yeah, yeah,” he concedes, tugging her closer; she curls into his side, shoving her ice-cold hands around his neck.

“Jesus fuck, why are your hands always so cold?!”

“Poor circulation, Steve, we’ve been OVER this--”

“For the love of all that is holy, PLEASE see a doctor about that shit. I can’t deal, Rob.”

“You know what ELSE you can’t seem to deal with?!” She exclaims gleefully. “Your crush on JONATH--”

Steve claps a hand over her mouth, and she laughs delightedly, the maniac. God, he needs a quieter best friend.

“Okay, no more talking tonight for you. I’m revoking your first amendment until tomorrow morning,” Steve informs her, reaching over to shut off the lamp illuminating the room. Robin sighs dejectedly like he’s denied her food or something, and Steve pats her shoulder condescendingly. They laugh about it after a second, as they always do.

Before Steve finally drifts off to sleep, he catches a snippet of Jonathan and Will’s laughter emanating from the other room; it makes him all the more grateful for the road that led him here.

---

If Steve has to spend another second watching Jonathan Byers in rumpled pajamas, sunlit and scrambling eggs at the kitchen stove, he just might die.

And yes, he’s well aware that nobody’s holding him at gunpoint or whatever and forcing him to watch Jonathan make breakfast, but they’re the only two people awake right now and Steve’s drinking coffee at the kitchen table and he can’t very well watch TV with Will curled up on the couch in the living room, still dead to the world.

So. Watching Jonathan cook.

He’s got his back to Steve, watching the eggs sizzle in the pan on the stove as the birds begin to chirp outside. The window in the kitchen is letting swaths of golden light sweep into the kitchen, bathing Jonathan in an ethereal glow.

“So, you gonna say good morning, or just keep sitting there staring at me?” Jonathan asks abruptly, making Steve jump about a foot in the air.

“Holy shit, Byers, don’t scare me like that,” he says through a startled laugh.

“I would argue that you’re the one being scary in this situation,” Jonathan says, pulling out a chair across from Steve. He looks tired this morning, but he’s up before Joyce, and there’s a small smile playing at his lips, so hopefully his talk with Will last night helped. Steve only heard snippets of it before he dozed off-- a lot of talk about music, some comments from Will about how oblivious Mike is. Maybe Steve shouldn’t have been listening in at all, but in his defense, the walls of the Byers house are thin.

“Sorry,” Steve says, dropping his gaze to his hands on the table. “I just. . . I don’t know, you looked--”

Fuck. Fuck, okay, backpedal.

But Jonathan’s already wide-eyed.

“I looked what?”

Shit shit shit. Steve squeezes his eyes shut at the awkwardness of it all, sighing. “You looked NICE, okay? Don’t laugh. Jesus Christ.”

When Steve opens one eye, Jonathan’s gaping at him, looking equal parts incredulous and panicked. God, Robin’s going to have a fit when Steve tells her about this.

“I looked. . . nice,” Jonathan repeats, like he’s not quite comprehending it. God, Steve wants to bang his head down on the table. He wants to sink into the fucking floor. Is this how Robin felt when she came out to him?

“Yeah. I mean, yeah. You know what? I stand by that. You did look nice, dumbass,” Steve says, and he’s pretty sure he can pull himself out of this mess if he keeps making it comedic, he just has to keep talking.

“Jeez, Steve, maybe living with Robin and Will and I is affecting you more than you think,” Jonathan says, all snark, and Steve’s heart skips a beat.

“What?”

“God, don’t make me spell it out,” Jonathan mutters. “Robin: gay. Will: also gay. Me: ALSO gay. I think. Maybe. . . Nancy and I had this big talk about it and she mentioned bisexuality, but as far as labels go, I’m not really sure-- anyway. Not important. I was making a joke. As one does.”

Steve feels like his brain is kind of short-circuiting, like it did when he saw the demogorgon for the first time, and he has to blink a couple of times before he can formulate a coherent response, because. Damn.

“I-- I mean. . . wait, so you like guys?” Steve manages.

Jonathan rolls his eyes. “Yes, asshat, now can we move on? It was a stupid joke, okay?”

“Uh, I mean, so do I,” Steve stammers.

There's a beat of paralyzing silence.

“Are you fucking with me?"
“No! Jesus, no, I wouldn’t joke about-- God. I wouldn’t joke about that. Holy shit.”

Jonathan huffs out a disbelieving laugh, and Steve feels his nerves settle a little.

A beat of impossibly long silence follows, but somehow it isn’t laced with any of the discomfort that usually comes with quiet.

“So you. . . you were watching me this whole morning because you thought I looked nice,” Jonathan says finally.

“THAT’S your takeaway, Byers?!”

“Yes!’ Jonathan exclaims, grinning at Steve across the table. “Yes, that’s my takeaway-- hey, are you okay?”

Steve laughs breathlessly. “Yeah, why?”

“You’re shaking,” Jonathan comments, reaching across the tabletop to take one of Steve’s hands into his, and holy shit, he IS shaking.

“Is that the first time you’ve told anyone?” Jonathan asks him.

Steve shakes his head. “No, I mean-- I told Rob about it when I first figured it out. I’m just not really used to saying it out loud, y’know?”

“Yeah, I get that,” Jonathan says, and Steve feels him tighten his grip on his hand, grounding him. “Just breathe deep for a minute, okay? It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

Steve exhales a long sigh, throwing his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Yeah, okay. . . sorry.”

“Rule number one of Jonathan’s Therapy Service: No Apologizing.” Steve can hear the smile in his voice, and he laughs lightly.

“Hey, Steve,” Jonathan says after he’s stopped trembling and the air is less weighted than it was a few minutes ago, “Do you. . . I mean, okay, this isn’t a huge deal, so don’t freak out, but. . . do you like me? Y’know, in a non-platonic way?”

Steve sighs, letting his head drop back down so that he’s looking at Jonathan.

“What gave it away?”

Jonathan smiles, a real one, not those little close-lipped half-smiles he flashes when he says good morning or good night, and Steve feels something like hope flutter in his chest.

“I don’t know,” he says finally, nudging Steve’s foot under the table. “Wishful thinking, maybe.”

When they finally check on the scrambled eggs, they’re burnt to a crisp. Robin, Will, and Joyce meander into the kitchen all at once at the putrid smell, rubbing sleep from their eyes and complaining groggily. Despite the disgruntled comments about “Steve’s horrific cooking skills” (to which Steve replies that this morning’s catastrophe was only half his fault, thank you very much), they all look better rested than Steve’s seen in a while: Will’s less droopy-eyed and more alert, though maybe that could be because of the smoke enveloping the kitchen; Joyce is bright-eyed and smiling at Steve and Jonathan like she knows something they don’t, and Steve thinks maybe that creak he heard during their makeout session wasn’t just the house settling; Robin, to her credit, is only half-glaring at Steve, and she’s making eyes at Jonathan’s hand on Steve’s shoulder.

“It smells like something died in here,” Will says, laughing as Jonathan shakes the remnants of what would have been their breakfast into the trash and Robin hums the taps song off-key like it’s a funeral.

“Yeah, Steve’s dignity,” Robin says, earning a snort from Jonathan.

“Robin!” Steve exclaims, feigning offense. “You wound me.”

“Yeah, yeah, Dingus, now get to work-- you’re making breakfast for us since you ruined it the first go round.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know it was only partly my fault!”

Joyce smiles at all of them like they’re her own, bless her, and says, “Don’t worry, guys. I can just call Hopper and ask him to bring over the Eggo Extravaganza kit. I’m sure he and El can’t have used up everything just yet; he restocked his pantry just this week.”

While Will and Robin throw a little celebration dance party that consists of parading around the kitchen singing a song El made up about waffles at the last Byers-Hopper Family Breakfast, Steve and Jonathan retire to the living room to click through the morning channels and laugh about the blush that colors Joyce’s face when the Chief picks up.
If Will and Robin eat most of the waffles (and most of the toppings) because Steve’s too busy looking at Jonathan haloed by the sun streaming through the window (and vice versa), and El grins knowingly at Hopper when she sees them awkwardly intertwine their hands underneath the kitchen table, and Joyce gives Jonathan and Steve her trademarked ‘I’m not angry but we still need to talk later’ look while the others are busy shoveling waffles into their mouths, then that’s okay.

It’s okay in the same way that Max and El sometimes fall behind the group to hold hands and swing their arms as they walk, blushing when one of them tucks the other’s hair behind her ear. It’s okay in the same way that Will sometimes rolls his eyes to the back of his head when Mike brings up girls to the rest of the little shitheads during a D&D campaign, and in the way that Mike always, always apologizes afterward, even if Steve has to remind him to. It’s okay in the same way that Robin sighs whenever a pretty girl walks into Family Video, in the way that her hands shake when she hands the customer her change, and in the way that she blushes when Steve teases her about it later and offers to get the girl’s number for her.

And if this ten-minutes-old thing between Steve and Jonathan fizzles out after a couple of months or weeks or even days, then that’s okay, too. Certain things-- otherworldly monsters that ravage your small town, flickering lights that ruin the decorative aspect of Christmas for you, elevators that plummet down, down, down, bats studded with nails-- bond people for life. Platonically, romantically, familially, you name it. Steve knows-- when he gets the shakes after catching a glimpse of a faulty string of lights flickering, or when an elevator first begins to drop, or when the monsters in certain sci-fi movies look a little too similar to what he’s seen in real life-- that he’s stuck with Jonathan. And Robin, and Joyce, and Hopper, and all the little dipshits he’s metaphorically adopted over the years.

They aren’t going anywhere.