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Steve was trying to figure something out. Something that was chewing up his insides. Something that started with Robin's confession in the Starcourt Mall bathrooms and was currently being torn apart by a children's toy.
"Jonathan Byers was playing with dolls today,” he ends up blurting out.
Robin is silent, a brow raised in imploring interest, waiting for him to continue. Steve cleared his throat and carried on.
"With El,” he clarifies, feeling awkward. “I dropped off Henderson at the Byers' house with Lucas earlier and he was in the living room, on the floor, with a Barbie doll in his hand."
Robin is again silent, like she was still waiting for Steve to continue; to add something else to his story—something monumental—and when he doesn't, she continues unsnapping the thick plastic ridges on the video cassette cases, popping out the tapes and setting them aside on the counter.
"Okay?" was all she ended up saying. Just 'okay'. Like what Steve had told her wasn't all that remotely interesting or strange or even weird.
But it was definitely weird, Steve thought. Jonathan Byers was a seventeen year old boy and he had been twirling a blonde Barbie doll around on the living room carpet, much to El’s delight.
Steve fidgets, chewing on the pencap poised between his lips, his face lined by a difficult expression.
"Isn't that...a little bit fucked up?" he ends up asking. He had tried his best to figure out a better way to word it, a better way to express how strange it felt when he caught the other boy with with a doll in his hand, but the tableau of the unguarded Jonathan with a small, albeit genuine smile on his face as he played alongside El was sitting heavy on his mind. In fact, it had been something that had been taking over all the space in his brain for most of the morning.
"Huh?"
There it was again: that lingering silence as Robin waited for him to continue. The pencap in his mouth pops out and so does:
"Guys don't play with dolls."
Robin's expression of disinterest then shifts, like her tongue was trying its hardest not to jump out of her mouth with a metaphorical knife in hand and she set down the plastic casing she had been fiddling with on the counter.
"Did you ask him why he was playing with dolls?" Robin responds with instead. He can tell by the tone of her voice that she thinks what he had said was stupid. Robin did that sometimes; she didn't outright state it, but she has this way of telling him anyways just by the sound of her voice and the way her face looked.
"Yeah. He said, 'El is like my sister. Why wouldn't I if she wanted me to?' Or you know...something like that."
Robin rolls her eyes.
"So he was playing with them because his sister wanted him to. It's not that weird, Harrington. Stop acting like it is."
Steve just nods, a jut to his jaw and a squint to his eyes like he has no other choice but to accept this sage wisdom of the all knowing, all seeing girl who confessed to him her biggest secret, spoke three languages, played two instruments, and was probably the smartest girl in all of Hawkins.
But even so, somehow, he isn’t quite sure he believes her.
—
It happens again, but this time Robin and Max are with him.
“Barbie dolls?” Max sneers. Her distaste is palpable; an unfiltered reaction the moment she walked into the Byers' living room and saw El, alongside Jonathan, sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor.
Slowly, carefully, like she doesn’t quite know what she’s done wrong, El sets down her doll.
Steve swallows thickly and watches as the transgression unfolds.
“That’s lame - we’re too old for that,” Max adds, her decision and judgement final.
Unlike El, Jonathan holds the doll in his hand tight. He looks to El, who is staring shame-faced and confused at the toy on the floor, and his brow raises ever so slightly, seeking out the divine intervention of someone who isn’t a bratty, loud-mouthed fourteen year old. Momentarily, his eyes wash over Steve, lingering only long enough to realize he isn’t going to find the support he needs before they move on. Instead, he meets the gaze of Robin, who, from the corner of Steve’s eyes, has noticed the twitch in her lip and the way her tongue presses thickly against the curve of her cheek. Swallowing down anger and holding back the metaphorical knife, he thinks.
"Hey," Jonathan tries gently when the silence persists, a hand falling to El's knee.
“—no we’re not,” Robin cuts in loudly with a shrug. She swishes past Steve and Max, eyes trained on Jonathan who directs her attention towards El, silent and embarrassed. She settles herself across from her, next to Jonathan, and picks up a doll. Max scoffs, but Robin pays her no heed, extending the doll out towards El, a secretive and conspiratorial smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.
“You know what my favorite thing to do was when I played with my dolls?” Robin whisper-talks. El looks up, only briefly, and shakes her head, still silent. “Making fun of my teachers,” Robin grins, and her face is bright, like she’s just revealed the biggest, deepest secret of all time. Steve knows that it isn't, but instead it's like somehow what she has just told El was the answer to the mysteries of the universe and that only she had been lucky enough to be trusted with this information. With a dramatic flare, Robin proceeds to sashay the doll across the carpet in front of her, and in a nasally, high-pitched voice, puts on a performance that would put Audrey Hepburn to shame.
“My name is Mrs. Click. And I teach history—poorly—because I’m too busy getting over a hangover every Monday morning—,”
“—she never had a hangover,” Steve cuts in with, but Robin ignores him.
“Which, as a matter of fact, makes me act like a total bitch. In fact, that’s what my name should be: Mrs. Bitch!”
Next to her, Jonathan grins, chewing on his lip and hiding a laugh behind his hand. His eyes are warm as they crinkle and Steve isn’t sure he’s ever seen him react to something so transparently. El’s eyes too seem to brighten, assured by Jonathan’s reaction and spurred on by Robin’s play-acting. Emboldened, she tentatively picks her doll back up, and responds with an innocent and almost shy sounding: “Hi, Mrs. Bitch.”
Jonathan's facade breaks and he bursts out laughing. Robin too bursts, her secretive smile morphing into a cheek hugging grin, absolutely delighted by El’s response. Something in Steve's stomach feels warm and vaguely uncomfortable.
The scene unfolds in equal amounts of hilarity and silliness. Jonathan parrots El’s introduction, his voice slightly higher and feminine, playing into Robin’s theatrical deliveries. Robin reacts in anger, a booming declaration of: "DETENTION!’ Both of you!"
El then giggles when Jonathan’s doll leans in, whispering that they should run. Undeterred, the three of them seem to forget that there are others in the room watching them. Jonathan’s doll drags El’s out of Robin's reach and behind the coffee table, instructing her to hide. In response, Robin’s doll screeches, loud and furious and outraged.
“Where are we now?” El asks, voice quiet as a mouse. Jonathan raises his doll's arm to tell El to be quiet, the position of the stiff plastic arm a poor mimicry of the action at best.
“Shh,” he says slyly. “We’re in the darkroom. “Mrs. Bitch—I mean, Click—won’t find us here.”
“Girls,” Robin says in a sing-song voice, waving her doll around. “Oh girls—where are you? I’m not mad anymore, I promise! I Just. Want. To. Talk.”
Steve crosses his arms, leaning against the entrance into the living room, still watching, still trying to figure that 'something' out. Still wrestling with the weird feeling in his stomach. Next to him, it seemed like Max was trying to do the same. Her weight shifts from one foot to the other, and from the corner of his eye, Steve watches her. Something about her initial expression upon finding Jonathan and El playing with Barbie dolls has changed. She is no longer looking at the dolls on the floor with disgust, but confusion, and if Steve is reading her right, her own pride is threatening to strangle her, swallowing her whole. She's realized she's missing out, Steve thinks, the shame of playing with Barbie dolls be damned, but unexpectedly, before he can say anything to try and soothe her, she swallows it down and Steve’s brows knit. With a loud huff, Max rolls her eyes, stepping away from playing the part of the wallflower and into the fray. She kneels next to El and picks up a doll.
“You’re doing it wrong,” she says, interrupting Robin’s ominous search for the missing students.
Robin pauses, looking over to Max, her brow raised.
“I’m what?”
“Mrs. Click. You’re doing it wrong. She sounds like this—,”
Jonathan has to hide another laugh that Robin doesn’t; Max’s imitation of Mrs. Click is far more scathing and hilarious than Robin’s ever was and the group devolves into a frenetic chase scene as Max declares Mrs. Click to be a secret lizard person. It’s the only logical explanation for her horrid behavior.
As El and Max conspire with Jonathan on a way to reveal Mrs. Click's true identity, Robin's head tilts, looking over to him.
"Are you going to join us or stand there like a stick in the mud?"
Steve grunts noncommittally, but cements his stance by tightening his arms across the width of his chest.
"Nah," he says. "Guys don't play with dolls."
Abruptly, El looks up, jumping to Jonathan's defense with an almost too serious sounding: "Jonathan does."
Jonathan doesn't react—in fact, he doesn't even look at Steve, apparently unbothered—but Robin's brow raises again, daring Steve to continue.
"Most guys don't play with dolls," Steve corrects genially, offering her a small, sheepish smile. This answer seems to satisfy Robin and more importantly, El. She goes back to her plotting, Max deciding the best course of action was for them to throw Mrs. Click into the freezer: if she really is a lizard person, it'll put her to sleep. Jonathan offers to be the bait.
It's still weird, he decides. Nice, but weird, even if what they were doing was something that Steve was resolute in the fact that he'd never participate in.
He still hasn't figured out that 'something'.
—
Steve watches, a touch anxiously, as Jonathan carefully tries to apply a particularly garish shade of pink nail polish to the tips of a El doll’s fingers. Today the girls had decided that their Barbie dolls looked kind of boring (or as Max had stated: they look like Malibu bimbos) and Robin had delighted in the fact that she knew just how to fix them. Jonathan’s attempts at painting the doll's fingertips, however, wasn’t going very well and El seemed to realize it too: she was watching him just as anxiously as Jonathan fiddled with the applicator brush. His attempts at forming tiny, uniform dots had formed into an uneven blob and El’s brow furrowed. Sighing, the other bit his lip and set down the brush and grabbed a kleenex off the kitchen table to wipe the mess away.
Max’s doll wasn’t doing much better: Robin was mid-lesson on how to make their dolls to look cool (read: disfigure them horribly) and was showing Max how to dye her dolls hair purple with one of Will’s markers. Half the hair had also been lopped off with a pair of kitchen scissors and dark, racoon-like makeup had been added thanks to a black Sharpie.
“This is what girls do to their dolls?” Steve ends up asking, turning his attention back to Jonathan. He doesn’t mean to sound judgemental, but from the sharp look he catches Robin shooting him out of the corner of his eye, he’s not sure he succeeded. But if Jonathan had noticed his tone of voice, he seemed indifferent: instead he was more preoccupied with El’s doll, and was now attempting to apply the nail polish with the tip of a toothpick.
“Jonathan?” Steve repeats.
There’s a pause, Jonathan fiddling carefully with the doll’s thumb, his face screwed up in concentration before he looks up and says: “Sure, I guess. Didn’t you ever try and change your own toys as a kid?”
It’s Steve's turn to pause as he leans back against the counter next to him. Sometimes he had tried adding extra stickers or racing stripes to his Hot Wheels and there was that version of Twister he liked to play, the one where he and his cousins had made up their own rules. He’s not sure that counts, though. Regardless, he tentatively nods only to be put out by Jonathan’s indifferent shrug, a silent 'see?' He watches as the other blows on the Barbie doll’s hand, a long, continuous stream of air, before he smiles gingerly, handing it back to El. She grins brightly, apparently pleased, and slides over to the table, shoving the doll in Robin’s face.
“Ooo,” she coos, “your brother did a great job!” she compliments. “Super cool: we need to give her a bright green streak in her hair to match her nails.”
“Green does not match with pink,” Steve says under his breath and next to him, Jonathan lets out a quiet snort.
“See?” Steve says, a small grin as he nudges the other with his elbow. “Knew you were on my side.”
“I’m not on anyone's side,” Jonathan quietly laughs back. “I just don’t think green goes well with pink.”
“Sure it does, Byers,” Robin cuts in with. “Watermelons? Caladiums?”
“I think caladiums are more reddish than pink,” Jonathan counters, raising a brow as he crosses his arms.
“What the hell is a caladium?” Steve mutters.
Again, Jonathan snorts and Steve can’t help but think it’s a nice sound. It’s nice when Jonathan laughs, he thinks. It makes his chest swell slightly with some sort of profound gratification that he is lucky enough to be able to witness it. He still hasn't figured that 'something' out, and still thinks Jonathan is sort of a weirdo for playing with dolls, but he doesn’t have time to think on that, nor does he get his answer about caladiums as Max cuts in with a loud: “Hey, Jonathan - does your mom have any guy Barbie dolls around here?”
Robin quietly laughs, interjecting with a sly, “You mean Ken.”
Max huffs, rolling her eyes, correcting herself with annoyed sounding, “Yeah. Ken.”
Jonathan shakes his head, an apologetic, “Sorry,” as he offers her a small smile. Max frowns regardless, looking down at her doll on the table, a scribbled pen mustache and beard marking up the doll's face.
“It sucks that we have to keep playing with just girl dolls,” she sighs, picking up the scissors and continuing to mutilate the dolls' hair. Chunks fell off and soon the long, synthetic locks looked closer to a buzz cut than a blow out. “Ken would be a lot cooler for mocking Mr. Willet.”
“Is Mr. Willet also a lizard person?” Jonathan prods with a barely there smile, screwing the lid back onto the pink nail polish.
“Yeah, definitely,” El smiles and as she meets Max’s gaze, the two beginning to giggle.
“He totally failed me on my math test last week,” Max laughs. “And the way he talks?”
El giggles harder, uncapping the cap from the green marker and hands it to Robin.
“So definitely being lured into the freezer then,” Robin grins slyly. “You up for being the bait again, Byers?”
Steve watches as Jonathan laughs again, a pinch to his cheek as his teeth pull it between the soft smile he shoots the girls, nodding.
“Yeah,” he says, still quietly laughing. “Maybe Steve will even join us this time,” he teases. “We could use another person in the freezer.”
“Over my dead body,” Steve counters flatly and Jonathan’s laugh deepens. He's a weirdo, Steve thinks, but he can’t help but to smile: he has a nice laugh, even if he does play with dolls.
—
“Here,” Steve says, holding out a scuffed up looking GI Joe carrying a plastic assault rifle the next time he sees Max. “It was in my closet,” he tells her. “It’s not a Ken doll, but—,”
“—cool!” Max says, grabbing the action figure, her eyes going wide. “I’m totally going to be a cop. Like Robo Cop. He’s gonna terrorize the high school like the Terminator.”
Steve sighs.
“First off, those are two totally separate movie franchises,” Steve lectures. “And I thought last week you wanted to make fun of Mr. Willet?” Next to him, Robin smirks, nudging his shoulder gently, amused by his apparent exasperation.
“Plans change,” she says grinning brightly. “Right, Max?”
“Right,” Max parrots, her grin just as wicked.
Across the room, Steve catches sight of Jonathan, the other sitting cross legged on the carpet with El, tying an elastic around a doll’s hair. The weird feeling swells up in him again: the same one he gets everytime he sees Jonathan playing with them. He wishes the other would laugh or something. Or put the doll down. Something. Something that doesn’t make his chest feel tight and not in the good way like when he gets to watch the other smile.
“I’m going to clean up some of the dolls in the kitchen,” he abruptly announces. The girls don’t stop him and Steve finds himself at the kitchen table, fiddling with a cotton swab and a bottle of rubbing alcohol, removing blue marker from Skipper’s face.
Skipper. He hates that he knows this doll's name. El had lectured him on it after he called the doll ‘short stuff’ for being so, well...short...compared to Barbie. Jonathan had laughed though, quietly in that secretive way he does, hiding his mouth behind his hand and Steve had let it slide. He didn’t fight El on the doll's name and instead just nodded, repeating it’s name for her benefit.
But Skipper wasn’t really looking much like Skipper anymore, Steve realized. Some of the doll's hair had been cut and there were chunks of glitter glued into it. It looked like a Max Special if he was being honest, and Steve frowns.
“El really messed up her doll this week - sorry Skipper, but you look like you’ve been hit by a truck,” he mutters to himself.
“We were playing Gem and the Holograms.”
Startled, Steve looks up and nearly knocks over the open bottle of rubbing alcohol, some of it spilling onto the tabletop.
“Jesus, Byers!” Steve exclaims. He frowns, dipping a cotton ball into the liquid to wipe it up and starts patting it against the dolls hair. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough to hear you bitching about Skipper’s new look,” he smirks.
“Yeah? Well…” He feels slightly ridiculous. Cleaning the dolls was something he did, but he often did it alone while the others conspired to expose secret alien plots or lock disliked teachers into meat freezers. Jonathan had orchestrated a particularly compelling plot last week where Robin’s doll turned out to be a face stealing cryptid and the three of them had to gang up to defeat her. In some ways it was fun to watch—Robin and Jonathan always played up the drama, taking on different voices and characters, and without fail, Max’s doll would go on a rampage. El’s dolls had a habit of gaining superpowers. They even asked him to join them a few more times. Steadfastly, however, Steve continued to say no, and he had taken to tidying up the dolls they weren’t using as a way to avoid their continuous badgering. Only it felt weird. You know. Being seen with one. Even if he was only cleaning it. “You need something?” he finishes awkwardly.
“This is my kitchen,” Jonathan points out, but before Steve can argue back, he holds up another doll. This one had green marker covering it’s entire face and a black star drawn around it’s eye.
Jonathan sits down across from him and Steve frowns again, turning his attention back to the doll in his hand.
“Well the sick Mark St. John over there is going to have to wait,” he says. “Skipper here is being a difficult patient.” The glue in the doll's hair wasn’t coming out easily and he secretly wonders if this is from more than just today.
“I got it,” Jonathan shrugs, and grabs a damp cotton ball, beginning to wipe away at the doll's face.
From the living room, there’s a loud laugh, and Robin’s gleeful: “Okay, so who wants their dress gold and who wants their dress silver?”
Steve raises an expectant brow, waiting for an explanation and Jonathan laughs, a quiet: “They’re adding glitter to the clothing.”
Steve looks down at Skipper and the chunks of glitter in her hair and sighs.
“You know,” Jonathan says, raising a brow right back at him. “You don’t have to stay. I know Robin gets a ride over here with you, but you must be bored.” Jonathan sets his doll down, the marker slightly faded, but still visible and smudged. Steve shoves his tongue into his cheek, making a disapproving sound: Jonathan never cleaned the dolls up properly. “I can always give Max and Robin a ride home later," he adds.
Steve stares at the doll a long time before he looks up to Jonathan, continuing to scrub at the glitter glue in Skipper’s hair.
“Nah,” he finally decides. “It’s fine. You need help cleaning up their fucked up dolls anyways. If El sees the mess you left on its face, their next storyline is going to be about a drug addict.”
Jonathan just snorts and pushes the doll towards him, pushing out from the table. Steve feels his chest flutter, captivated by the sound.
“Let me get some soap,” Jonathan then says and Steve just nods.
—
“You’re getting glitter on my seat,” Steve frowns, pulling out of Byers’ driveway.
Next to him, Robin cackles, shaking out her hair.
“You’re lucky Max is staying over for dinner. She’s even worse,” Robin giggles.
“Seriously,” Steve says, frown deepening. “What did you do in there? Apply the glitter with a wind tunnel?”
“Lighten up, Harrington,” Robin prods, grinning. “It’ll vacuum right up.”
“My dad is going to see me with glitter on my clothes,” he points out.
“And?” Robin asks.
Steve grinds his teeth before he sighs, signalling left at the intersection and steering his car towards the Buckley residence. That 'something' was back and he really didn't want to think about it.
“And nothing. Don’t you think it’s a little weird that Jonathan is still playing dolls with El when she has Max now?” he says, changing the subject.
“I play with dolls with them,” Robin says, rolling her eyes.
“Yeah, but you’re a girl,” Steve points out.
“Okay? And when you were a kid, you had that GI Joe. Which is a doll. You played with it, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“And did you have fun?”
“I mean, yeah. GI Joe was awesome.”
“So you were playing with a doll and having fun,” Robin says, the words said slowly and overly enunciated.
“A doll meant for a guy. And technically it's an action figure.”
Robin gives him another look and pauses for a moment like she’s trying really hard not to make a snappy comment. Then, she exhales deeply and frowns.
“I don’t think it’s weird that Jonathan plays with them,” she finally says at long last. “I think it’s sweet of him to play with his sister and his sister has fun. Playing with dolls doesn’t mean anything, Steve. It’s a toy. And who is it that decided that toys have to be ‘gendered’? Like is there some law or something out there that says girls have to play with dolls and guys have to play with, I don't know! Cars? Is it biologically written in our DNA that we must play with things that stores sell us, based on marketing, to enforce socially constructed concepts of gender? I think it’s stupid that society says girls have to play with dolls and boys have to play with cars, like it makes any difference in the way they’re enjoying themselves. You know what’s weird? Adults deciding that if a kid picks up the wrong type of ‘toy’ it somehow makes them lesser. What does it even have to do with them? Does it affect them in any way? No. It’s like how society has decided it is somehow weird that I like girls. A toy is a toy, Steve. And Byers playing with a Barbie doll doesn’t make him any less or more weird than he already is.”
Robin finishes and Steve is silent, nearly forgetting to turn on his blinker as he steers the car right up Maple Street. When the car pulls to a stop in Robin’s driveway, it’s only then do they speak again.
“I’m right, you know,” Robin says, unbuckling her belt. “Even if you think it’s weird, there’s nothing wrong with it.”
Steve swallows, fingers nervously tapping on the steering wheel.
“Hey, dingus’—did you even hear me?”
This isn’t really about dolls, Steve realizes. It's about that 'something' again. What Robin said, it makes sense, but—
“Earth to Harrington!”
“No, no, you’re right; sorry I’m just thinking,” Steve exhales, trying to focus. Robin shoots him a strange look, like she doesn’t quite believe him, but eventually nods, opening the door.
“Just try it sometime, okay?” Robin sighs. “It’s not that big of a deal that you’re making it out to be.”
Steve thinks he nods, but he’s not sure. He’s not sure about anything at the moment, really, only that he really likes the sound of Jonathan’s laugh.
—
Steve’s not sure why he’s back at the Byers’ house so soon—well actually he does know why, but it wasn’t like he had a reason (well, a good reason)—so he stops at the thrift store near the drug mart on his way back and finds a half naked Ken doll in one of the bins, pays a whole whopping dollar for it, and steers himself back in the direction of the southside of town.
He only knocks once before letting himself in, only to be greeted by two frowning faces, the girls visibly disappointed that he apparently isn’t someone else.
“Where’s Robin?” El asks at the same time Max asks: “Robin isn’t with you?”
Steve rolls his eyes.
“What am I? Chopped liver?” he says, holding out the bag. “I’m just here to give you this,” he adds, frowning.
El takes it, opening it carefully before Max’s eyes go wide, grinning devilishly as she grabs for.
“I think we’ve just found our next murder victim,” she slyly announces, holding up the doll.
“Murder victim?” Steve questions, raising a brow.
“Yes,” Max tells him, like it’s obvious. “So far Mr. Melvald and Ms. Johnson have been killed off.”
“There’s a town serial killer,” El informs him sagely.
“And who's the killer?” Steve asks, brow still raised.
“Probably the mailman,” Max just shrugs.
There’s a pause, Steve staring at El and Max and El and Max staring back before Steve frowns.
“The mailman?” Steve repeats flatly. “That’s super lame.”
Max rolls her eyes and shoots him a withering look, handing the doll off to El.
“Jonathan is busy, and we don’t have Robin here, okay? And like you could do any better.”
“I could,” Steve tells her with a scoff almost automatically. He rolls his eyes right back. “My ideas are way more original than the mailman.”
“Oh yeah?” Max challenges. “Then prove it.”
Steve frowns, crossing his arms. He has a choice to make. A choice that started when Robin told him it wasn’t weird or strange that Jonathan Byers was playing with dolls. A choice that started with 'something'. A choice he had been trying to make easier by coming to talk to Jonathan about it, but he didn’t really have a plan, not really, and the other was nowhere in sight, and now he has two haughty fourteen year olds making faces at him because they don’t think he has it in him to swallow his pride.
He huffs, pushing past them and sits down cross-legged in the living room, picking up one the lesser disfigured dolls. One that he would almost call ‘normal’ looking.
“This,” Steve says, holding the doll out for the girls as they follow him in. “Is Cindy. She is the daughter of Harlow Vanders and Elisabeth Munroe.”
El sits down across from him, but Max raises a brow, crossing her arms, already unimpressed.
“And who is Harlow Vanders and Elisabeth Munroe?”
“Harlow is the mayor. Duh,” Steve scoffs like Max should know. “But he’s not married to Elisabeth. Cindy was their love child from an affair eighteen years ago and Harlow has like...never acknowledged her or whatever.”
Max’s brow creeps higher on her face, but she sits down next to El.
“This sounds like a soap opera,” Max says distastefully.
“My mom watches those sometimes,” El chimes in. “They’re…”
“Bad?” Max finishes for her.
Steve rolls his eyes, shushing them.
“Quiet. I’m not done yet. Cindy has vowed revenge on the town’s people of Hawkins because everyone here has treated her like shit for being born out of wedlock.”
“Why would people do that?” El asks, sounding confused.
“Because people are assholes,” Steve explains, frowning. “The point is, she’s killing everyone and she’s not the mailman.”
Then, he grabs the Ken doll back from El, standing it next to Cindy.
"And this is...Jack," he announces, struggling to come up with another name. "One of the murder victims you accidentally got killed while investigating. I'm the ghost that's haunting all of your asses."
El giggles and Max, despite her initial huffiness, allows Steve a small nod. It's a small sign of approval and Steve grins. A second burst of laughter, however, filters into the room, and it’s very decidedly not Max’s.
Steve’s head swivels and he catches sight of Jonathan, leaning up against the doorway.
“Playing with dolls?” he questions. But there’s no bite to his words, only amusement.
“Thought you’d gone out,” Steve mutters, but Jonathan just laughs louder and clearer, no hand to hide it. He walks over and wordlessly sits down next to him.
“I’ll be Cindy,” he shrugs, taking the one doll out of Steve’s hand. Steve nods, a little breathless, a little embarrassed, but tries not to show it.
Max grins and El giggles, and Steve tries to remember how words work when Jonathan smiles at him before putting on a falsetto.
—
“You did good for your first time,” Jonathan says, sitting next to him on the porch. The sun was setting and inside the house, there’s a familiar din of voices as Will and El argue over who has to wash the dishes and who has to dry, followed by a shriek of laughter as Will shouts at Max for spraying him with water. “Your cooking skills aren’t so bad either,” Jonathan smirks. “Thanks for helping out with dinner.”
Steve rolls his eyes, puffing lightly on his cigarette before he exhales, head tilting towards the sky.
“Wasn’t my first time,” Steve says, lips pinched. “I played with GI Joes as a kid.”
“But it was your first time playing with Barbie dolls.”
Steve pauses before he nods, a quieter, “Yeah.”
“It’s basically the same thing,” Jonathan shrugs and Steve nods, realizing he can’t help but to agree.
“Except the girls are kind of little psychopaths,” Steve says, unable to help himself. “Trying to skin a ghost? That isn’t even possible,” he mutters.
Jonathan laughs, and Steve bites down on his lip, feeling weightless.
“You got out of it, though,” Jonathan grins. “Quick thinking with the possession of Cindy. You’d be good at D&D,” he adds. “You should see if Mike will let you join a campaign sometime.”
Steve raises his brow, a touch speculative.
“D&D? Don’t get me wrong, Byers—Barbie dolls are one thing, but I’m not that much of a nerd.”
“Guess I’m a nerd then,” Jonathan snorts with a shrug.
Steve shoots him a look, brow raising even higher, waiting for him to explain.
“I’m the one who taught the kids it,” Jonathan smiles softly. “Like...years ago. I was their first Dungeon Master. They thought it was super nerdy at the time too—especially Mike—but Will was really into high fantasy at the time after we read Lord of the Rings and…” He shrugs. “Turns out they liked it.”
Steve pauses, tapping the end of his cigarette, the ash falling onto the steps before he nods, chewing on his cheek.
“You really are a good brother, you know that, right?” he says suddenly.
Jonathan shakes his head, an unsure, “I mean—,”
Steve cuts him off.
“You really are. Don’t give me that bashful shit you just tried to pull right there, Jonathan. You just...do whatever you have to do for your siblings. Even if it’s sort of lame or sort of nerdy or hell—playing with dolls. You’re really nice, you know that? Like...really, really nice.”
Jonathan doesn’t speak at first, quiet as he tries to hide a visible blush that starts at the back of his neck and streaks across his ears, face sinking into his shirt. Like he wasn’t expecting Steve to say that, or to say it so earnestly. Like he almost doesn’t really believe him.
“Okay,” is all he says at long last, and Steve rolls his eyes, letting out a loud, brash laugh. He finally gets it, he thinks. That thing he was trying to figure out. That something that was chewing up his insides and had started with Robin’s confession in the Starcourt Mall bathrooms and was torn apart by a children's toy.
“I’m saying I like you, idiot,” Steve explains, letting out a loud exhale. His cigarette is almost done, the glowing tip burning dangerously close to the filter. He puts it out on the step and flicks it off into the driveway. He swallows the last of his pride just as the sun slips behind the trees. “You want to hang out sometime? You know...not playing with dolls?”
There’s a tick of silence and Steve watches as Jonathan’s expression melts, teeth chewing at the corner of his lip as he nods, beginning to laugh.
“Yeah,” he says, a little breathlessly. “Yeah...we could hang out.”
Steve smiles, pocketing his lighter.
“Cool,” he tells him, leaning back on the palms of his hand. Just cool. Jonathan keeps laughing and Steve keeps smiling, because his laughter still really is the nicest thing to hear in the whole entire world. Maybe one day he’ll tell him that, he thinks. Maybe.
If playing with dolls really wasn't that weird then maybe this didn't have to be either.