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A small flock of bluebirds perched on the old oak tree’s branches lilted as they met the morning sun, promptly announcing twilight to any unfortunate person sleeping by an open window. One such person was Quentin Smith, an understandably light sleeper who had neglected to shut the damn window despite the snow before falling asleep for the umpteenth time. Groggily, he rubbed his eyes and sat up, giving his room a glance around before his gaze fell on the still sleeping figure bundled up in a sleeping bag in refuge from the chilly air.
Having Steve over was fun, that Quentin couldn’t deny. It was reassuring having someone around while he slept even now, over a year since he and Nancy had finally defeated the bastard that haunted them. Besides, Quentin barely got to see his longtime friend after he moved to Illinois before high school and phone calls only went so far. Still, it was a bit annoying to wake up at–Quentin dropped on his elbows and leaned across the bed to look at his alarm clock–6:33 in the morning while his companion slept in for two more hours minimum , leaving him to fiddle around with whatever he could occupy himself with until Steve woke up. It was the very reason why Steve couldn’t sleep on the bed seeing as he effectively trapped Quentin in every time they had an arrangement close to one other.
Quietly, Quentin got out of bed and tiptoed over to the window, shutting and latching it. The room immediately felt a little less cold, much more comfortable than it had been. Looking at the snow reminded Quentin of something, particularly the reason why Steve had come back to town in the first place.
“Merry Christmas,” he turned around and whispered to the still sleeping Steve. It was somewhat bittersweet–both he and Steve were in their senior years, making this what would most likely be the last Christmas they spent together before they both continued on with their lives. Maybe their families could get together as they had before the move, but the coordination that would take was more than Quentin trusted them to have.
Quentin moved past that less-than-jolly train of thought and grabbed the slightly fancy clothes he had set out the night before: a nice pair of jeans, a button-up, and a sweater. It wasn’t much, but compared to his normal regalia, it was an upgrade. At the very least they were no less comfortable than the clothes he slept in–pajamas were something Quentin hadn’t even considered wearing for over a year, his already fragile trust in sleep not allowing him comfort in not being ready to jump right up and be ready for a fight if need be.
With a yawn, he headed into the bathroom and went through an upgraded daily routine, trying to make himself look somewhat presentable. Christmases weren’t anything he necessarily had to dress up for anymore, not since they had gone down to just his dad, Steve, and himself. The Braun’s had moved away soon after Jesse’s death, and Nancy, a new addition in the year prior, was living with cousins in Virginia. Even further back, the Harrington’s moved away back when Quentin was in middle school and only Steve came back to visit this time of year. There was really no formality to the celebration anymore, but it felt nice to pretend there was just to hold on to a bit of normalcy in his pointedly abnormal life.
Now that his hair was somewhat regulated, Quentin changed into his new clothing and walked out of the bathroom, tossing his old clothes into the hamper. Steve was still asleep meaning Quentin had some time to kill. Avoiding the sleeping lump on his floor, he worked his way to the door and into the hallway, leaving it cracked so Steve knew he left.
Figuring out how to explain what had left him with so many scars, both psychological and physical, was something Quentin had fretted over for weeks before Steve arrived. Trying to get his dad to understand was hard enough, the conclusion he eventually came to being nothing more than a group psychotic break as their repressed trauma finally caught up to them. His dad knew that wasn’t true, not with the way he tiptoed around the subject, but Quentin didn’t push it. Besides his dad, trying to explain to the therapist he had so graciously been provided what had happened felt like pulling teeth. He couldn’t get a word in edgewise once the man started going on his tirade about childhood trauma, something Quentin was sure he’d appreciate if his trauma made itself known through flashbacks instead of in the form of a demon hellbent on killing him and everyone he loved.
But it was different with Steve. Everything had always been different with Steve, so Quentin didn’t even know what he had been so worried about.
The first night Steve had come in, Quentin’s apprehension towards sleep and the absence of Jesse was enough to get some questions coming in. Initially, Quentin avoided those questions at all costs, unwilling to have another person thinking he had lost the plot after the stress of losing people close to him. It didn’t take long for him to be worn down though, and after Steve saw the scar marking Quentin’s shoulder, he knew he had to give him some answers. Jesse’s death had been explained near the beginning of the trip, his dad taking care of that one for him, but the rest was a mystery to the newcomer.
Reluctantly, Quentin had sat down on his bed and made Steve promise–cross his heart, hope to die, the whole nine yards–not to think he was crazy. Only after he got that promise did he begin to explain, covering each and every minuscule detail that was ingrained so deeply in his memories that he saw it everywhere he looked. There were many, many responses that he expected to receive, but the one he got was something he hadn’t anticipated.
“I believe you,” Steve had muttered, more somber than Quentin had been accustomed to, and filled with an unspoken understanding.
Why he seemed so understanding was a question that had been answered the next night, and Quentin couldn’t lie and say he didn’t finally understand why people he told his story to didn’t believe him. There was something so genuine in Steve’s eyes as he told Quentin about every incredible detail that made it impossible for him to question a single thing Steve said though, and it left him feeling less alone than he had since Nancy moved away.
An unexpected side effect of telling Steve about his experiences was that Quentin was the subject of near-constant concern, the mother hen tendencies that Steve had possessed since they were little kids shining through. Every time Steve made sure that he was okay–reaching up in the night to make sure he was still there, checking in with him when they woke up to make sure there had been no nightmares, keeping him up with stories when Quentin was too nervous to sleep–Quentin felt safer than he ever thought he’d be able to feel again.
That’s why the door was left cracked, an agreed-upon sign that Quentin had gotten up and was okay, acting both as a message and an invitation to come down once Steve was up.
Quentin headed down the hall and towards the kitchen, walking past his dad’s open bedroom door and seeing that he wasn’t inside.
Probably fell asleep watchin’ T.V.
His suspicion was confirmed when he walked into the living room and saw his dad reclined in front of the T.V., an old re-run of I Dream of Jeanie playing on the screen. Keeping up his quiet movement, Quentin walked into the kitchen and got to thinking.
[Pancakes?Quentin rummaged through the pantry, trying to figure out what ingredients they had and what he could do with them. Pancakes were looking like his best bet–easy enough to make while running on four hours of sleep, but filling enough to keep all of them happy until dinner with a few snacks in between.
Soon enough, all the ingredients were laid out on the counter, and the go-to recipe Quentin had written onto a heavily stained piece of paper was set down beside them. The clock read 7:06, meaning he had a fair bit of time before these really had to be done. Still, he liked letting the batter rest, so it was better to start earlier than he really needed to.
“Need some help?”
“Shit!” Quentin turned around, caught off guard by the sudden arrival of someone he hadn’t been expecting to see for a while longer.
Steve started laughing, clearly enjoying the fact that he managed to surprise him with something so mundane. Quentin rolled his eyes in amusement and swatted Steve’s arm before shushing him and pointing to the living room where his dad was sleeping. There was really no risk of waking his dad with how heavily he slept, and Steve knew that just as well as he did but stopped his raucous laughter regardless.
“Sorry, Quen,” Steve said, markedly not sorry. A silence fell over the kitchen before the two boys met eyes and started laughing in full once again. It took a moment for the both of them to calm down, only the occasional residual giggle breaking through when they looked at each other.
Gesturing to the grouping of ingredients on the countertop and still stifling some laughter, Quentin said, “Anyways, yes, I could use some help. Why are y’up so early, though?”
“Hm,” Steve began, walking over to the recipe and giving it a once over. “Dunno. Just woke up and figured I should get goin’.”
“Clearly not that much,” he pointed out the clothing Steve wore, a somewhat kitschy pair of reindeer-themed pajamas. The dichotomy between the two of them was comical, something that often ended up happening when they were together. It was one of Quentin’s favorite parts of being around Steve, though there were more of those than he could count.
“Hey!” Steve mocked offense, “These are perfect for a Christmas morning, thank you very much. You’re the one outta place with that fancy sweater an’ shit.”
Quentin considered a rebuttal to that but couldn’t drum one up, shrugging in acceptance instead. “Nothin’ wrong with dressin’ up sometimes.”
“Sure.”
“Anyways, we should get started on this, yeah?”
Rolling up the long sleeves on his shirt, Steve nodded. “On your mark, Chef Smith.”
“Ha. Get the measurin’ cups from the drawer.”
And so it continued on much the same, the two managing to make pancakes as ineffectively as possible with four hands on the project through their near constant back-and-forth. Quentin had never been one for baking, always finding it too particular for his less than ideal attention to detail and ability to stay on task. Cooking had always been much more up his alley. It was different with Steve though, somehow a bit easier to stay on track even when he was constantly being distracted by Steve’s excited remark that the batter he had just poured into the pan looked like a tree or a teasing comment on his barely legible handwriting.
It felt nice to be a bit more centered than usual. More often than not, even before his life changed for good the year before, Quentin felt not quite all there. It was a feeling he hadn’t always noticed, stifled by the people he kept around who made him feel grounded like Steve and Jesse. Steve leaving left him feeling unbalanced for a good while, and Jesse’s death didn’t even feel real yet. Sometimes Quentin wondered if everything was a dream, just some strange, twisted thing that he couldn’t wake up from. Even if it was, what would his reality be when he woke up?
“Y’okay, Quen?”
He had zoned out again. “Yeah,” Quentin focused back in on the real world, looking at Steve before flipping the pancake he had neglected. “Sorry. Just thinkin’.”
“Don’t think too hard,” he nudged Quentin with his elbow, an outwardly playful gesture that somehow felt like more. Like reassurance. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah. How much batter d’we got left?”
A bowl was lifted and put into his line of sight before Steve retracted it and put it back down. “Couple more?”
“Looks it.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
Quentin went quiet for a moment, focusing on transferring the slightly burnt pancake to the plate they were stacking them on. He was okay, at least relatively. The past few days that he had had Steve over were the most normal and ‘okay’ he had felt in a long, long time. But what was okay anymore? Sometimes he didn’t know if he ever would feel like he used to again. He’d seen too much, felt too much, lost too much. Even the normalcy he could find felt somewhat tainted by the past.
“Not really.”
Steve nodded. The last of the batter was added to the pan. It could’ve made two, but it worked better as one.
“Y’don’t have to be okay.”
“...I know.”
Quentin felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Do you?” Steve asked, though it felt more rhetorical than anything. As if there was no chance in hell Quentin did.
“Not really,” Quentin repeated.
With no preamble, Steve took his hand off Quentin’s shoulder and moved the pan off the element, turning off the stove. “C’mon.”
“‘C’mon’ where?”
“Just c’mon.”
Unwilling to argue it any further, Quentin shrugged and followed Steve back up to his room, still not quite sure what the current plan was. He supposed it didn’t matter, even though the pancakes would probably be getting cold. Hopefully his dad would wake up and get straight to eating them.
Steve opened the door with a flourish, directing Quentin inside before following behind and leaving the door partially open. Quentin stood with uncertainty in the middle of his room before watching Steve drop right down on his bed and reach his arms out.
“I’ll make sure y’don’t sleep. You just need a break.”
Any argument he could think up died in his throat. “Okay,” Quentin quietly spoke after a moment, sitting beside Steve. They both sat there for a moment, unmoving, before Quentin leaned his head on Steve.
“I know it’s hard. Everything feels like it’ll never be the same again.”
“...yeah. It does.”
“I’m not gonna tell you that it will. I don’t even know if it’ll be the same, for you or me. But,” Steve took in a breath, setting his head on top of Quentin’s in a somewhat uncomfortable but still appreciated gesture. “It’ll get better, for both of us. We aren’t helpless against this shit.”
“I just…” Quentin fiddled with the frayed seam of his sweater. “It still feels like I lost. I mean, I didn’t die, but- but everyone else did. Fuck, I don’t even fuckin’ know if Nancy is okay! They won’t let us talk too much ‘cause they think we’ll just make things worse for each other ‘cause of our ‘shared delusions’. It’s bullshit. We’re the only people who get what we went through.”
Steve took hold of Quentin’s hand, stopping him from unthreading his sweater any more than he already had. “It’s not fair. No one believes you no matter how much evidence you have. Doesn’t matter if they believe you, though. You know what happened. You killed that asshole, okay? Nothing’s gonna change that. You survived. That’s what matters.”
Quentin sighed in exasperation, unlatching himself from Steve and dropping back on his bed, his hands covering his face. “You’re right.”
“I know I’m right.”
“Dick.”
“Y’love me.”
“Sure,” Quentin grasped the arm Steve had himself propped up on and pulled him back so they were lying side by side. They both laid still for a moment, staring up at the popcorn ceiling Quentin had adorned with various posters for bands he listened to. He turned to the side then, wrapping his arms around Steve as best he could with him lying on his back. Quentin planted his face on the side of his arm then and muttered, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Quen,” Steve sighed, turning to the side himself then to face Quentin. “Y’can talk to me whenever, y’know that? You have my cell number.”
Quentin nodded. “I do. You can talk t’me too, Steve.”
A smile. “I know. You’re a good listener.”
Another silence met them, something comfortable and familiar. Steve kept his promise, making sure to give Quentin a solid nudge every time his eyes started drooping. Feeling drowsy was a feeling associated with panic for Quentin, but he didn’t feel that then. This moment felt isolated in the best way, as if they were in their own space safe from anything that could hurt them. It wasn’t something that Quentin had felt in a long time, even his most private moments feeling insecure.
“Y’wanna do somethin’ tomorrow? Go out?”
“Sure. Fairfield still at that pizza place in town?”
“Nah, at Phil’s Petrol now,” Quentin sighed. “Sucks not gettin’ the discount anymore.”
“Damn, really?”
“I mean, s’been three years. Guy’s gotta move on eventually.”
“Fair, yeah. Where to then?”
“Could go antiquing.”
Steve scrunched up his nose, “Antiquing? What, did y’age sixty years while I’ve been gone?”
“Shut it,” he gently swatted at Steve’s arm, “Antiquing is fun.”
“How ‘bout a deal?”
“Okay, Howie Mendel. What’s your offer?”
“We catch a movie, get some lunch, and then we go look at some old shit. Sound good?”
Quentin pretended to consider it for a moment with an exaggerated hum before he nodded. “Sounds good.”
“Nice.”
Satisfied with the plans now put in place, the two fell back into their quiet, Quentin figuring Steve appreciated the break just as much as if not more than he did. The franticness Steve had experienced just days before coming out to Springwood must have been more than enough to wear him out, something Quentin kept in mind when considering how hard Steve had worked to make sure he felt safe and understood. It felt nice to know that there was someone willing to do that for him with how alone he had been, and moreover, it made him want to return the favor.
“I love you,” he whispered, breaking the silence.
Steve let out a contented sigh before he replied. “I love you too, Quen.”
“Are you okay?” Quentin asked, mimicking Steve from earlier.
That took a moment for him to reply to, a harsh breath accompanying the beginning. “Not yet,” he started, squeezing Quentin’s hand. “But I will be.”
“You will be,” Quentin confirmed, nodding. “I’m gonna be here while you get there.”
“I know you will,” he ruffled Quentin’s now completely unstyled hair, “Shouldn’t we be getting back down t’the pancakes?”
“Eh,” Quentin thought for a moment, propped up on his elbow and looking out of the crack in the door. “Dad can handle it. ‘m sure he won’t mind gettin’ a few extra.”