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“You’re doing so well.”
“Thanks,” says Steve. His heart’s sinking. His stomach’s basically trying to eat itself, even though he had his typical athlete’s lunch: two roast beef sandwiches, three chocolate milks.
He’s never had a packed lunch a day in his life, come to think of it. Cafeteria food is more familiar than his mom’s cooking. Like, way more familiar, because his mom has never cooked anything except some blackened French toast once when he was like—seven.
Weird memory. His brain’s all over the place today, just fucking bunny-rabbiting from one thing to another. He absolutely bombed his physics test this morning, but hey. What else is new.
It’s been three days since his last cigarette, that’s what’s new.
Nancy reaches over and grabs his hand. They’re sitting out on the bleachers, since it’s her free period and he’s—well, he’s skipping European History. He can’t have a smoke-break anymore, so he might as well have a girlfriend break.
She’s the one he quit for, after all.
“You didn’t have to go cold-turkey,” Nancy says, earnestly. If there’s one thing Nancy can be depended on to be, it’s earnest. “I just meant that you should…cut back.”
“Nah,” he says. “You were right. It’s a shit habit. Bad for playing.”
“Bad for kissing your girlfriend,” she teases, leaning in.
She tastes like peppermint chap-stick and like herself, this heady little rush of Nancy, nipping him playfully when he slips her a little tongue. Almost better than the kissing is when she pulls away just so that she can nestle against his shoulder, her hand tucked under his letterman jacket, over his heart.
“I know you’re trying,” she murmurs, so quietly he almost misses it.
Trying. The implication of that word—yeah, see, Steve’s not a total idiot, he knows what implications are—is that he’s falling short.
He doesn’t take up smoking again, even after she’s gone. He thinks about it, when Billy Hargrove practically caves his head in and the pain hits so, so fucking hard in the days that follow the hallucinatory adrenaline rushes and the muzzy, dangerous desire to sleep.
Kid, don’t let me catch you checking yourself out before the doctor gives you the green light, the chief grumbled, when he dumped Steve off at the ER after chasing Hargrove out of the Byers’ with a few choice words, and Steve was too concussed and too dog-tired to do anything but promise.
He isn’t the main player, anyway. He isn’t the girl-hero, or Will Byers coming back from the dead.
And anyway, it isn’t all lonely, the four-day stay. His parents got a call, but they’re in Montreal. His homecoming will coincide with theirs. He isn’t looking forward to it.
Dustin, Lucas, Max: they’re the ones who keep him company. Even Mike stops by, with one of his sour, pointed looks in lieu of sympathy.
Steve tries not to look for lines of Nancy in his face.
He’s not supposed to drink alcohol for a while (he’s not legally supposed to be drinking at all, but that’s been a lost cause since thirteen). He’s not technically given any advice about smoking, but he imagines how good it would feel, to stem the hunger he can’t with food, not when his mouth can’t open more than three-quarters of an inch without blood running from three different places on his lip.
Still, he doesn't give in. He made a promise.
“You look better.”
Not an observation Steve was expecting from Jonathan Byers, but he supposes he has no choice but to take it. To take whatever Jonathan dishes out, honestly. That’s been proven time and time again. He shrugs.
“Nowhere to go but up, I guess.”
Jonathan squints at him, like he’s thinking about something else. “Hargrove still…bothering you?”
“Nope.” Steve’s benched for two more games, and he’s already missed one, and at this point, his season’s a bust. That must be enough for Billy. Whatever it is, the distance between them has been welcome. The rest of his life is in shambles as it is—not having to deal with Billy’s violent…attentions…is the least he can ask for. “Nope, I’m Mr. Invisible. If you hadn’t noticed.”
“I noticed.” Jonathan’s never been one to pull a punch. “Anyway. Just checking in. Party rules.”
Of course. Will’s brother would be pretty well entrenched in the nerd shit that the little monsters get up to, and Steve is…pretty well entrenched in the real shit, with the real monsters.
They both are. That’s why they’re here, in the high-school parking lot, Jonathan going to shoot some film in the waning light, Steve eating a late lunch the only place he can choose to be alone, instead of being made to feel alone by the people he used to call friends.
The camera around Jonathan’s neck was a peace offering, sent via Nancy.
Steve has the feeling that the platitudes he’s just been offered are something of the same, just in the opposite direction.
He feels so cold, and not just because he wore a jacket too light for December.
It's not his letterman.
“I should be going,” Jonathan says, when the silence gets awkward, which it always does. No matter which one of them is dating Nancy, Jonathan always gets the upper hand in conversations, simply because he’s not afraid to end them first.
“OK,” says Steve.
“Hold on—” And Jonathan’s rummaging in his pocket now, the pocket of a jacket that also looks too light for December, but of course that’s because Jonathan’s poor, not because he’s a weather-blind dumbass. “Want one?”
It’s a cigarette.
“You smoke?” Steve asks, bewildered. It’s hard to imagine Jonathan “the Freak” Byers, with his long-time categorical refusal to appear at parties (except the one that mattered) partaking in anything. Even nicotine.
God, Steve used to think he looked so cool. Lighting up. Taking drags he’d trained himself not to cough through. It was a whole…thing. Part of the parade of stupidity that all felt worth it the first time someone called him King Steve.
Another tense-shouldered shrug is the only answer he gets, now. “Sometimes,” Jonathan says. “Nancy gives me a little shit for it, but you know. Not too much.”
He smirks, then, like it’s their secret—his and Steve’s. Like Nancy giving you a little shit is something you can endure without changing your whole life to look like what she wants it to.
“I’m good,” Steve says. “I don’t do that anymore.”