Archive of Our Own

1982

Jonathan Byers is thirteen-years-old when he first realizes he isn’t like the other kids at Hawkins Middle School.

It’s not that Jonathan didn’t know he was different before. He had some idea, after years of watching the other kids his age make friends and form cliques during recess between games of hopscotch and tag, making it look effortless in a way it had never felt for Jonathan. But back in elementary school – when friendship was based on arbitrary things like who had the same favorite color as you, when everyone in the class got invited to everyone’s birthday party – things were different. Without a social hierarchy, it had been easy for Jonathan to ignore that he was too quiet and too awkward, in ways the other kids weren’t.

But there was some sort of invisible line between elementary school and middle school, a line Jonathan didn’t know existed until he’d crossed it, and now all the ways that Jonathan sticks out are impossible to ignore. Because Jonathan is still too quiet and awkward, but also, because his backpack comes from Goodwill and not the GAP, because Jonathan wears the same five t-shirts over and over and doesn’t get a brand new outfit for the first day of school every year, because Jonathan lives in a one-story home at the end of a long dirt driveway instead of a white house with a picket fence in the suburbs, because Jonathan’s mom works twelve-hour shifts every day at Melvald’s just so she can put food on the table every night and his dad is a piece-of-shit who can’t hold a job and leaves town for at least three months every time his mother raises her voice at him, and everyone else comes from a picture-perfect family with parents who still love each other or at least pretend to.

And lastly, because everyone else at Hawkins Middle has parents who get to the carpool line early so they can pick their kids up right when school lets out, and today, on the last day of eighth grade, when all Jonathan wants to do is go home and start his summer break, his mom is thirty minutes late.

It’s not like Jonathan isn’t used to it. He knows his mom tries, but she’s almost always running late to something, too busy darting between work or the grocery store before she loses track of time and then suddenly remembers there was somewhere she was supposed to be. Jonathan can’t even count the number of times he’s stood alone in the Hawkins Middle carpool line, watching the other kids get picked up as he waited for his mom to show up. It isn’t unusual for him to be the last kid waiting in the carpool line.

Today, though, he isn’t. Today, Jonathan sits on the bench outside the carpool line, and at the opposite end of the bench sits Steve Harrington.

The thing is, Jonathan doesn’t know Steve, not really. He’s never spoken to him, and he’s pretty sure they’ve never had a class together. But he does know Steve is someone who has a backpack from the GAP and a big house in the suburbs, someone all the guys in their grade want to be friends with and all the girls in their grade want to be with. Jonathan also knows there are two kinds of people in the world: people like Steve, and people like Jonathan, and Steve Harrington is someone that people want, and Jonathan Byers is just finally starting to learn that he isn’t, and so really, Jonathan doesn’t need to know Steve at all to resent him on principle.

It’s this reason why Jonathan hasn’t bothered to attempt to initiate any conversation with him, despite the fact that they’re the only two people still waiting in the carpool line. However, he is curious as to why someone like Steve is waiting out in the carpool line all alone, just like Jonathan. In fact, Jonathan’s pretty sure he’s never seen Steve in the carpool line at all. He’s never really thought about it, but he supposes he always assumed that Steve took the bus, or else hitched a ride with Tommy Hagan or Carol Perkins or one of his other asshole friends. But Jonathan doesn’t quite care enough about the reason why Steve is here to ask, so he doesn’t.

And for a while, Steve doesn’t say anything to him, either, until out of nowhere, he says, “They didn’t forget if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Jonathan glances over. Steve is sitting with his arms crossed, staring determinedly out at the school parking lot, as if that might possibly make his mom’s car appear faster. 

“What?” Jonathan asks.

Steve glances back at Jonathan. “My parents,” he explains. “They didn’t forget to pick me up. They’re just…late.” 

Jonathan blinks.

“So you don’t have to keep looking at me like you feel sorry for me, or anything,” Steve says. “Especially seeing as you’re stuck here, too.”

Jonathan blinks again, then narrows his eyes. “I wasn’t looking at you at all,” he says shortly.

Steve rolls his eyes and scoffs, then opens his mouth, likely to object, but then Jonathan hears the sound of heels clicking on concrete and looks up to see Mrs. Parker, the carpool monitor, approaching their bench.

“Boys,” she says gently. “It’s almost 4:00. Do you think your parents are on their way?”

Jonathan shifts in his seat. “Yes, ma’am. My mom should be here soon. She just…works late.”

In reality, the truth is that his mom probably just forgot, but Jonathan doesn’t say this. His mom will be here sooner or later regardless; she always is. Besides, Mrs. Parker has stood and waited with Jonathan for his mom to arrive in the carpool line so many times that Jonathan is pretty sure she’s used to it.

Mrs. Parker turns to Steve. “Steve? Is your mom or dad on their way, do you think?”

“Yeah.” Steve sits up straighter, his backpack hitching up his back. “Yeah, I’m sure my mom will be here in just a few minutes. She just – she – ”

But before Steve can finish, Jonathan sees his mom’s car pull into the lot and lets out a quiet sigh of relief.

“Bye, Mrs. Parker,” Jonathan calls as he stands, heading towards his mom’s car. “Have a good summer.”

“You too, Jonathan,” says Mrs. Parker.

“Hey!” His mom says as Jonathan slides into the front passenger seat. “Sorry I’m so late. I meant to get here on time today and then I just – ”

“It’s okay,” Jonathan says, because it is, but also because it’s the last day of eighth grade, and the sooner his mom pulls out of the parking lot, the sooner Jonathan will get to watch the school fade away in the distance and know that he never has to go back.

But then his mom’s eyes drift away from Jonathan’s and out the window. “Who’s that?” She asks.

Jonathan glances back, where Mrs. Parker is still speaking to Steve, who has uncrossed his arms, his shoulders slumped. If Jonathan had to guess, Mrs. Parker is probably telling Steve to wait with her in her office – that’s where all the kids go to wait for their parents after 4:00. Jonathan knows because he’s had to wait in Mrs. Parker’s office a few times, too.

“Steve Harrington,” Jonathan answers. “His mom forgot to pick him up, or something, I guess.”

“You think he needs a ride?” His mom asks.

Oh, no. No, no, no –

“He’s fine, Mom,” Jonathan says a little too quickly. “He’ll probably just – ”

But she’s already rolling down Jonathan’s window and leaning past him to shout, “Hey!”

Mrs. Parker and Steve both look up.

“Do you need a ride?” His mom asks.

Jonathan closes his eyes, sinks low in his seat, and prays for the ground to open up and swallow him whole.

“Oh,” Steve says. “Um, that’s really nice of you, Mrs. Byers, but — ”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” his mom says, waving a hand. “Seriously, it’s no trouble. So long as I’m not breaking some sort of carpool protocol, or anything.”

Jonathan glances up to see Mrs. Parker look down at Steve. “You know this woman?”

“Um,” Steve says. “Yeah. Kinda.”

“Then that’s good enough for me,” Mrs. Parker says, already walking away. “You have a good summer, Steve. You too, Mrs. Byers.”

“Thanks, Shauna!” His mom shouts.

For a long moment, Steve just sits on the bench, staring between Mrs. Parker’s retreating figure and Jonathan’s mom’s car, still idling at the curb. And then he lets out a heavy breath and stands, hunching his backpack up his shoulders as he approaches the backseat.

Jonathan starts wishing for the ground to swallow him up faster.

“Hey,” his mom says brightly as Steve slides into the car, buckling himself in. “It’s Steve, right?”

Steve blinks at Jonathan’s mom with big eyes, nodding. “Yes, ma’am.”

His mom’s brow furrows. “You know what? I think I actually do know you,” she says. She snaps her fingers. “Wait, your mom is Leslie Harrington, right?” Steve nods again. “Right, that’s it. You were in Jonathan’s third-grade class. God, the red velvet cupcakes your mom made for the school bake sale that year were to die for. Seriously, the PTA moms were literally fighting over the recipe.”

This is news to Jonathan. He doesn’t even remember sharing a class with Steve ever, let alone in third grade, and is half-convinced his mom is just making it up just to make conversation and be polite.

But all Steve says is, “Thanks, Mrs. Byers. I’ll tell my mom you said that.” And then, after a pause, “And, um, thank you for the ride, too. You didn’t have to.”

“Oh, don’t mention it,” his mom says as she puts the car in drive, pulling out of the parking lot. “I just hope this won’t cause any confusion for your parents. When we get home I’ll give them a call and make sure they know where to pick you up.”

Jonathan goes still. Home? 

“We don’t have to take him back to our house,” he mutters quietly. “He doesn’t live that far.”

His mom turns to him sharply. “Jonathan,” she hisses.

“No, really, it’s okay,” Steve pipes up. “Uh, my house is really close to you guys’, actually. It’s just on the other side of the woods. You can drop me off there on your way home and I can get out of your hair.”

Distantly, Jonathan wonders how Steve knows where his house is, but decides not to ask. The problem with being different in a small town where everyone knows everyone is that everyone knows just how different Jonathan really is, and the Byers’ house is so tiny and rundown that people probably can’t help but take notice of it and guess exactly who it belongs to. 

Jonathan’s mom frowns. “Well, sweetie, I would, but I don’t want to drop you off if I’m not sure your parents are home.”

Jonathan wants to tell his mom that Steve is thirteen, not nine. He also wants to mention that she’s never had a problem leaving him and Will at home alone without any adult supervision; in fact, she’s been doing it since Jonathan was ten. But Jonathan supposes it’s one thing to do that with your own kids, and another to do it with someone else’s kid, especially when said kid is almost a complete total stranger.

“Oh,” Steve says meekly. “Well, okay. Thanks, I guess.”

“Like I said: don’t mention it,” says his mom.

“It shouldn’t take too long. I’m sure my mom just…forgot I had school today,” Steve says, and then adds hastily, “Not that she doesn’t know my schedule or anything. Just — well, she probably thought summer break started yesterday or something. And she normally doesn’t even pick me up from school, because I usually go home with Tommy, but he and his family left for the beach today right after school, so…”

And then, suddenly, Steve falls silent, and the rest of the car falls into silence, too, awkward and aching in the aftermath of Steve’s nervous rambling. 

“Anyway,” Steve says after a moment, voice quiet. “Just…thanks again.”

The thing about Steve is that, as far as Jonathan has noticed, he always projects this air of confidence, striding down school hallways like he owns the place. The Steve that sits in his mom’s backseat, awkward and uncomfortable, is a sharp contrast from what Jonathan’s used to seeing at school, a sharp contrast from the Steve who rolled his eyes at Jonathan on the carpool bench just ten minutes ago. Jonathan almost wants to call him out on it just to break the tension, but he doesn’t.

Instead, Jonathan says nothing, and his mom just says, “You’re welcome, Steve. You can stay as long as you need.”

Ten minutes later, as Steve steps inside the house behind Jonathan, he tries to imagine what Steve is seeing. Yet as Jonathan stares around the house he’s lived in for the past thirteen years, pretending like he’s seeing it for the first time, all Jonathan can focus on is how unbearably small everything looks. He can only focus on how messy everything is, with cigarettes and ashtrays sitting on the coffee table, with school pictures and drawings stuck all over their fridge looking so cluttered it's a wonder none of it has fallen off, Will’s crayons and D&D figurines covering every inch of the kitchen table, dishes from breakfast this morning sitting unwashed in the sink, and that weird stain on the kitchen counter that Jonathan hasn’t figured out how to get rid of yet.

And as Jonathan stares at the tiny, messy house he’s called home for his entire life, pretending to see it through Steve’s eyes, he feels suddenly and abruptly embarrassed of it, and then immediately ashamed for feeling that way.

But Steve doesn’t say anything about how small and messy Jonathan’s house is as he steps through the door. Instead, he just gazes around at it, silently staring.

To Jonathan, this reaction feels somehow worse.

“Sorry about the mess,” says Jonathan’s mom as the three of them enter the house, and though she does sound genuinely apologetic, she doesn’t sound too worried, and Jonathan feels an abrupt flare of irritation.

It isn’t fair, really, that his mom is so interested in taking every child in Hawkins that dares to look remotely lonely under her wing that she didn’t bother to ask her actual son how he might feel about it. It isn’t fair that today was supposed to be the end of middle school and the beginning of a summer spent wandering around Hawkins with his camera and not having to worry about classes or homework or muffled laughter behind his back in the hallways, and now the last person Jonathan would ever willingly invite into his house is standing in his living room. It isn’t fair that Jonathan starts high school in August, and already he’s thinking about the irreparable damage this one afternoon will do to his already abysmal reputation when Steve tells everyone over the summer what a dump the Byers’ house is.

And yet, completely oblivious to Jonathan’s inner turmoil, his mom just searches through the stack of things spread across the kitchen table for pen and paper, before she settles on a piece of construction paper and one of Will’s crayons. “Just write down your house number and I’ll go give your parents a call,” she says, passing the supplies to Steve.

Steve writes the number down, then passes the paper back to Jonathan’s mom. “Thanks,” he says.

“Of course,” his mom says. “Do you boys need anything while you wait? We have snacks in the pantry, I think. And there’s water and maybe some lemonade in the fridge.”

“I’m okay,” Steve insists. “Thanks, Mrs. Byers.”

His mom gives Steve a quick smile and then disappears to dial Steve’s parents’ number, leaving Steve and Jonathan alone and standing in his living room. Steve doesn’t say anything to him after his mom leaves. In fact, he barely even looks at him, still gazing at his surroundings, still staring, wearing his stupid expensive khakis and polo and his backpack from The GAP, and — 

“You don’t have to stare like that, you know,” Jonathan snaps, in a near-perfect imitation of the accusation Steve had aimed at Jonathan in the carpool line.

But Steve just blinks, turning to Jonathan in surprise. “What?” 

Jonathan’s fists clench down at his sides. “Look, I get it, alright? I know it isn’t much, that it isn’t as cool as your big, fancy house with its heated pool, and I’m sure you can’t wait to go home and call Tommy Hagan and tell him all about the shit hole that weird, loner Jonathan Byers lives in.”

Steve frowns, looking genuinely confused. “Byers, what — ”

“Don’t,” Jonathan says coldly. “Like I said, I get it. But you don’t have to — to just stare like that, like this is some kind of freak show exhibit, like you’ve never been in a building that costs less than your parent’s monthly mortgage payment before.”

“Jonathan,” Steve says, still looking horribly, horribly confused. “I wasn’t — ”

“Yeah. You were,” Jonathan cuts in tersely.

He wants to say more. He wants to tell Steve that he knows his house is barely big enough for three people, let alone four whenever his piece-of-shit dad remembers he has a family and decides to show his face in town again, but it’s at least theirs. He wants to tell Steve that he’s never been to Jonathan’s house in the winter or during a storm, when Jonathan, his mom, and Will bundle up in blankets and turn on flashlights and suddenly his house feels not like a shabby one-story but a fortress. He wants to tell Steve he’s never sat out on the porch early in the morning while the sun was still rising and felt the quiet peace and solitude that comes with living on the side of town people are too scared to visit. He wants to tell Steve that Jonathan doesn’t care that he or his family or his house are different if it means they aren’t like people like him.

But before Jonathan can say anything at all, his mom re-enters the room and says, “Steve, I just got off the phone with your mom. She says your dad is gonna pick you up and that he should be here in a few minutes.”

For a long moment, Steve doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even turn away; he just stares at Jonathan, eyebrows drawn and frowning, his eyes scanning across Jonathan’s face as if he thinks that staring at Jonathan will be enough for Steve to figure him out, and it takes everything in Jonathan not to look away first.

But in the end, it’s Steve who looks away, turning to Jonathan’s mom with a thin, fragile smile as he says, “Okay. Thanks, Mrs. Byers.” 

And then Steve turns to sit on the couch, without another glance at Jonathan and without saying anything else at all.

It turns out Jonathan’s mom hadn’t been kidding when she said a few minutes. She barely has time to ask Steve what he wants to drink a second time and fix him a glass of lemonade after he tells her again that he’s fine when there’s a knock on the door.

There’s a man in an expensive-looking suit standing on the other side of it. He spares Jonathan’s mom a quick glance and looks over Jonathan entirely before his gaze lands on Steve. His expression is stern, and he looks like he’s just left work and is annoyed by the inconvenience, and briefly, Jonathan wonders what kind of father would consider picking up their son as an inconvenience.

Steve stands. “Hey, Dad,” he says quietly.

“Steve,” Mr. Harrington says in a neutral tone. He doesn’t even step inside the house, not fully. But he does take a brief look around the living room, and then, under his breath, so quiet Jonathan barely hears him, he mutters, “Jesus.”

And it’s funny, honestly, how much judgment that one word holds – how one singular word reveals more than anything else he could’ve said, and Jonathan feels his shoulders hunch, defensive. His mother doesn’t say anything at all, but Jonathan knows she heard him, given the way her eyebrows lift. It’s an expression his mom usually saves for Jonathan’s father during their arguments, but this time, she doesn’t say anything at all. And Steve, still standing by the couch, ducks his head, his face flushed with embarrassment, and Jonathan isn’t sure if it’s because of what his father said, or because Steve agrees with him.

“C’mon, son,” says Mr. Harrington. “Let’s go home.” And then, to Jonathan’s mom, he says, “Nice to meet you,” his voice flat and overly cordial.

He doesn’t say thank you for letting Steve stay at their place, or for calling him to let him know where his son was. Jonathan’s mom, again, doesn’t say anything at all.

Steve does, though. “Thank you for letting me stay,” he says to Jonathan’s mom as he heads out the door, and Jonathan’s mom gives Steve a smile. And just as Jonathan thinks that’s the end of it, Steve glances back at him. It’s quick – so quick Jonathan almost misses it – but there’s still a moment where Steve’s eyes meet his, a moment where Steve holds his gaze, before he tears his eyes away and steps through Jonathan’s front door with his dad, letting it fall shut behind him.

“Well,” says Jonathan’s mom after a moment. “He seemed like a nice boy, at least.”

Jonathan, in an effort to be polite, does not scoff. 

It’s a near thing, though. 

1986

As it turns out, surviving an apocalypse is a lot of work.

It’s been over a month since the ground split open and the Upside Down infiltrated Hawkins. Maybe longer – the days all seem to run together now, so sometimes it’s hard for Jonathan to keep track. Now, the town Jonathan has known his entire life is a breeding ground for monsters, and sentient vines have overgrown the school, the library, the post office, people’s homes, nearly everything. Most people in Hawkins who hadn’t already evacuated after the earthquake have left since, while the government attempts to get a handle on things. At least, that’s what they’re claiming to do; they’ve all known for a long time that when it comes to the Upside Down, the government only pretends to know what the fuck is going on. Truthfully, Jonathan thinks their only hope in stopping Vecna for good is El, but until they can come up with a real plan, one that actually works, their little group is just focused on surviving.

And it’s this intention to survive that’s resulted in the buddy system.

It was Argyle’s idea, weirdly enough. He stuck around, even though Jonathan told him dozens of times he didn’t have to, that he could just go back to California. But Jonathan can’t deny he’s grateful Argyle is still here, not just because it means he has a friend around, but because it turns out Argyle is surprisingly helpful when he isn’t high all the time. He was the one to point out that there was safety in numbers against sentient vines and Demo-bats and Demogorgons and whatever else the Upside Down might spit out into Hawkins. Not to mention Vecna could strike again at any time, and as Argyle noted, “This whole group has a lot of trauma, man. He could take out any one of you.” So, now, no one ever goes outside alone.

They try to rotate partners when they can. Jonathan has been paired up with both his mom and Will; he was even paired with Murray once, which had been…interesting. But lately, the kids have been keeping to themselves, and Jonathan’s mom, Hopper, and Murray seem to have formed their own group, too, which has left all the gathering for supplies and monster-hunting duties to the teens, who have evidently been left to their own devices. Something Jonathan wouldn’t have a huge problem with if it hadn’t been for Argyle’s insistence that the buddy system needs to be strategic.

The thing is, in an apocalypse, there are really only two kinds of people that matter. There are people who are fighters, like Nancy and Steve, and then there are people like Jonathan and Robin, who aren’t. So, strategically, Jonathan should always be paired with either Nancy or Steve, but Jonathan and Nancy are –

Well, they’re officially over. If Jonathan is being truly honest with himself, he and Nancy have been over for a long time. That was the problem, though – he hadn’t been honest, and when the truth finally came out about Emerson, things between them had ended pretty quickly after that.

It didn’t end with a huge blow-up or anything. There were a few tears here and there, from both sides, but it was a pretty mutual break-up, all things considered. And while things were awkward between the two of them at first, Jonathan thinks they’re on pretty decent terms now. On occasions when Jonathan is feeling particularly optimistic, he’d like to think that he and Nancy are almost friends. Not that Jonathan feels optimistic very often, especially not nowadays, but he does think he and Nancy could be friends eventually, at the very least. Secretly, Jonathan thinks that if they hadn’t listened to Murray all those years ago, they might’ve realized they were always better off that way to begin with. 

But regardless of the fact that Jonathan and Nancy are doing a decent job at peacefully co-existing, the others still shoot them nervous looks and whisper quietly when he and Nancy are in the same room together, in a way that isn’t at all subtle, and it seems to be an unspoken rule amongst everyone else that they should never let Jonathan and Nancy be paired up alone if they can’t help it.

Which leaves only Steve.

Jonathan isn’t thrilled about it at first. The most significant interaction he and Steve have had in the past few years is the time Jonathan broke Steve’s face in an alleyway, and they’ve barely spoken since then. For good reason, probably. Jonathan and Steve have never really had much to talk about, because the only thing they’ve ever had in common is Nancy, and now that neither of them has her, Jonathan isn’t sure he and Steve have anything in common at all. 

That’s one of the perks of living in an apocalypse, though; you don’t need to have anything in common with anyone aside from a mutual interest in surviving. And the more Jonathan gets paired up with Steve, the more he finds Steve is surprisingly…tolerable. Steve brought out that bat with the nails again for monster-hunting purposes, and even Jonathan has to admit he does a lot better with it than Jonathan would’ve if he’d kept it like he was supposed to; he’s saved Jonathan’s ass with it more than once since all hell broke loose a month ago. And Jonathan, who is admittedly not as much of a fighter, carries an axe around anyway, and he’d like to think he’s not so bad with it, either, so they make an okay team. Sure, Steve can be annoying, and he talks too much, and makes too many jokes that aren’t even that funny, but sometimes he asks Jonathan about California or Will and El, and sounds like he genuinely cares about Jonathan’s answer. So it really isn’t so bad, being stuck in the buddy system with Steve. It’s actually a decent distraction from all the apocalypse shit, come to think of it.

Well, sometimes, at least.

Other times –

“You know, this never would’ve happened if you hadn’t wandered off.”

Steve, who is hobbling next to Jonathan, leaning heavily onto Jonathan’s side with his arm thrown across Jonathan’s shoulder, shoots Jonathan a look. “Seriously? I’m bleeding out over here and you’re blaming me?”

“You’re not bleeding out,” Jonathan says automatically.

Because Steve isn’t, for now – the Demo-bat took a sizable bite out of Steve’s leg, and Jonathan wrapped his flannel around the wound to effectively stop the blood, but the truth is his ratty, worn flannel is only going to do so much. What Steve really needs is towels, bandages, and running water.

Which they don’t have, of course. Because they’re in the woods, miles away from Hopper’s cabin, the designated spot for these sorts of situations.

“Look,” Steve huffs out. “Just leave me here, alright?”

Jonathan is so surprised he stops walking altogether. “What?”

“You can head back to Hopper’s on your own,” Steve says. “The others will be there, or some of them should be, at least. You guys can come back with bandages, or a tourniquet, or whatever the fuck. But there’s no way I’m going to make it all the way to the cabin like this, so – ”

“Steve,” Jonathan says incredulously. “You got bit while I turned my back for literally five seconds to take a fucking leak, and you think I should leave you out here by yourself alone for hours?”

Steve scoffs. “I’ll be fine, Byers. I have this.” He raises his bat, still hanging limply from the hand that isn’t wrapped tightly around Jonathan’s shoulder.

“You had that before when you still had two working legs, and look how that turned out for you.”

How it had turned out was this: whilst taking said leak, Jonathan heard Steve yell from several feet away and chased after him only to find one of those Demo-bat things latched onto Steve’s leg, and Jonathan had to yank it off him, and then quickly hack at it with his axe while it was lying on the ground. Jonathan is pretty sure he still has dried Demo-bat blood and guts on his jeans, actually, but he’s trying not to focus on that right now. They’re lucky it had just been one of them; the Demo-bats usually like to travel in packs, but with all the monster-hunting the teens have been doing lately, it’s possible they’ve collectively killed enough of them that there aren’t enough to gather in packs anymore.

They’re also lucky Steve hadn’t died, but Jonathan is trying not to think about that, either.

“The Demo-bat caught me off guard,” Steve says to Jonathan now, defensive. Jonathan rolls his eyes. “This time I’ll be ready.”

“Steve – ”

“Jonathan,” Steve interrupts. “Come on. You know I’m right.”

“You’re not,” Jonathan says shortly. “You rarely are, actually.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Jonathan – ”

“Steve, I’m not just leaving you alone out here, alright?” Jonathan snaps.

Steve falls silent, blinking at him with his eyes wide.

Feeling suddenly self-conscious, Jonathan quickly looks away from him. “Look. We’ll figure something else out, alright? We don’t have to go all the way to Hopper’s.”

“Where the hell else are we going to go?” Steve demands. “We don’t even know where we are.”

But that isn’t true. Jonathan knows exactly where they are, has known ever since the trees they’re walking through started looking familiar a few miles back, because maybe it’s been a couple of years, but Jonathan would know these woods anywhere. Which means he knows exactly what’s close by. It’s a long shot, sure, but –

Jonathan tightens his arm around Steve’s side. “Come on.”

Steve sighs. “Byers, I’m not gonna make it to – ”

“We’re not going to Hopper’s,” Jonathan interrupts, and Steve raises his eyebrows at him. “Just – trust me. Okay?”

“Okay,” Steve says. He doesn’t even hesitate. He just says it. As though he actually does trust Jonathan; as though it would never occur to him not to.

Jonathan looks away from him again. “Okay,” he echoes back uselessly, and then on they walk.

It’s surprising how unchanged Jonathan’s old home looks, actually. Aside from the Upside Down vines that are crawling up the side of it – which is, admittedly, a notable difference since the last time Jonathan was here – it looks just as it had when Jonathan left. Same peeling, faded paint, same ratty, dusty folding chairs sitting on the porch, same windows and doors, positioned on the front of his house in a way that Jonathan thought looked like eyes and a mouth when he was younger. A weirdly shaped eyes and mouth, though. Like maybe his house was crying.

“Why are we at your house?” Steve asks, staring ahead at it.

“To stop you from bleeding out,” Jonathan tells him.

Jonathan has to use his axe to break through the front window, and then he clears away the glass before he steps inside, carefully pulling Steve in after him, and once they’re inside Jonathan realizes the house does look a lot different, after all.

Though it’s obvious the new owners aren’t home – they probably evacuated with the rest of the town – it’s clear they’ve fully renovated the house’s interior. Jonathan has no idea how the house actually sold in the first place, actually; even without knowing the full truth of Hawkins and just how much this house played a role in it, Jonathan imagines anyone might feel apprehensive about living in a house where a boy had gone missing and then come back to life. Jonathan guesses the realtor his mom hired did a good job sweeping all that under the rug, and clearly the new family had no trouble making themselves at home. The inside now looks a lot cleaner than it did back when the Byers were living here. The couch looks brand new, not old and sunken in, and there aren’t crayons or construction paper or D&D figurines sitting on the kitchen table. The new owners have even replaced the wallpaper in the living room with a fresh, neutral-colored layer of paint.

It looks…different. Not a bad different, not necessarily. Just different.

“What would you have done if the new owners were still here?” Steve asks Jonathan.

“Had a lot of explaining to do, probably,” Jonathan says. He points to one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “Sit.”

Jonathan figures the new owners must have evacuated town without bothering to pack much, because he finds an entire rack of towels in the linen closet. Even better, there are bandages in the medicine cabinet in his mom’s old bathroom, and miraculously, the water still works. Once Jonathan has gathered everything he needs, he crouches on the floor in front of Steve with all his supplies, and then carefully rolls up the bottom of Steve’s jeans, removing the flannel wrapped around his leg.

“Shit,” Jonathan says, staring at the teeth marks carved into Steve’s calf.

“It really isn’t that bad,” Steve tries to insist, and Jonathan looks up at him incredulously. “Seriously. I’ve been bit by one of these things before.”

“Of course you have,” Jonathan sighs exasperatedly. “Look, I’m just gonna use these towels to stop up some of the blood, alright? Let me know if it hurts too much.”

“Okay,” Steve says.

So, carefully, Jonathan lifts a towel and presses it gently against the wound, and Steve hisses.

“Sorry,” Jonathan murmurs apologetically.

“It’s fine,” Steve grits out. “You’re good.”

So Jonathan keeps going, gently dabbing up the blood with a dry towel, and then doing his best to clean the wound with the wet towel, too. Steve doesn’t say much, just watches him, the slightly pained expression on his face fading with time as the bleeding starts to stop, too.

“You know, you’re pretty good at this,” Steve says at one point.

Jonathan looks up. “Am I?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “In another life, you could be a surgeon or something. Remember when you cut open El’s leg in the mall that one time?”

Jonathan grimaces. “I try not to, honestly.”

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Steve admits. He clears his throat. “So…what’s the verdict, doc?”

Jonathan rolls his eyes. “Well, your bleeding’s stopped, at least.”

“So I’ll live?”

“For now, yeah.”

“I’ll take it,” Steve says, and Jonathan snorts, shaking his head as he reaches for the bandage. He’s careful with that, too, wrapping it gently around the wound and then tying it together as he looks back up at Steve. “Is this too tight?”

“No. It’s good,” Steve says, looking back down at Jonathan, and the thing is –

The thing is, Steve looks at Jonathan like that sometimes. Jonathan has noticed it a lot lately on their supply/monster-hunting runs, but he’s noticed it before, too. He used to think it was just jealousy, something having to do with Nancy, but now that Jonathan doesn’t have Nancy, either, he isn’t sure what to make of it.

So instead of trying to make anything of it at all, he clears his throat and says, “You might want to disinfect it when we get back to Hopper’s cabin, but for now, you should be good.”

Steve lifts his eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’ll probably have a pretty nasty scar, though.”

“Hot,” Steve comments. 

Jonathan snorts. “Yeah, I’m sure Nancy will dig it.”

Steve blinks, then frowns. “What?”

And, shit. Jonathan hadn’t meant to say that. 

“Nothing,” Jonathan says, but Steve is still frowning at him, and well, it isn’t really nothing, not if Jonathan is being honest.

The truth is, Jonathan thinks he and Nancy would’ve inevitably broken up even if Steve Harrington had never existed at all, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t half-expecting Nancy to get together with Steve after she broke up with Jonathan, anyway. He’s not an idiot; he knows they got closer over spring break when Jonathan was still in California, and while he knows Nancy would never cheat on him, he knows there had to have been something going on there.

But every time Jonathan has seen Nancy and Steve together these past few weeks, they’ve just seemed…friendly. Just friendly, nothing more. And Jonathan doesn’t know if it’s because they’re trying to be careful in front of him, out of respect for him, or if it’s because Jonathan was wrong, and there was nothing going on between them at all. But it would be wrong to ask Nancy about it, and weird to ask Steve about it, so he’s avoided asking anyone about it at all.

Until now. 

Jonathan looks down, playing with the loose string of his pants just for something to do with his hands. “I just meant…you and Nancy…” He trails off, then takes a deep breath and admits, “I know you still have feelings for her.”

“I don’t,” Steve says. “Not really, anyway. Not anymore.”

Jonathan looks up at him, but Steve looks genuine, holding Jonathan’s gaze with a serious expression.

“But…” Jonathan says. “I thought you guys – I thought over spring break, when I was in California – ”

Steve frowns again. “She didn’t cheat on you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I know,” Jonathan says quickly. “I know she wouldn’t.”

Steve doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he sighs out a heavy breath, leaning back against the kitchen chair before he admits, “I thought there might have been something, too. Over spring break. Between me and Nance, I mean.” He chews on his lip. “But…”

He trails off.

“But?” Jonathan prompts.

“But I think we both wanted different things,” Steve says finally, and he holds Jonathan’s gaze meaningfully as he says it, and so Jonathan does what he does every other time he finds Steve looking at him like that – he looks away, turning to the bandages lying on the floor next to him and beginning to roll them back up so they can take them with them back to Hopper’s.

“What about you?” Steve asks after a moment.

Jonathan still doesn’t look up. “What?”

“Do you still have feelings for Nancy?”

Jonathan pauses. “I still love her,” he says eventually, then he glances up at Steve. “But…no. Not like that.”

And he’s almost surprised when he realizes he means it.

Steve just hums, and Jonathan wonders if Steve will ask him why, if he’ll ask what happened between them, why they broke up in the first place, but he doesn’t. Instead, Steve glances around the kitchen and the living room and says, “Do you remember that first time I came to your house?”

Jonathan scoffs, turning back to rolling up the bandages. “You mean the time a monster burst through my ceiling and you swung at it with that bat? Uh, yeah. That’d be pretty hard to forget.”

“Not that time,” Steve says. “The time your Mom brought me home from school.”

Jonathan stops rolling up the bandage. “I thought you’d forgotten that,” he says after a moment.

Because Jonathan had thought that, even if Jonathan himself had never forgotten it. Steve certainly never brought it up to Jonathan again, although he must not have told anyone else, either, because the teasing Jonathan expected about his shitty, tiny house never came. That doesn’t mean Steve didn’t make Jonathan’s life a living hell in other ways, and even if it was really Tommy and Carol who always instigated it, it wasn’t like Steve ever did anything to stop them. So no, Jonathan hadn’t thought Steve had remembered it at all. 

Then again – it had never escaped Jonathan’s notice that Steve had known exactly how to get to the Byers’ house that night they fought the Demogorgon, when he’d shown up on Jonathan’s doorstep to give an apology he never actually got the opportunity to say.

“No,” Steve says now. “I remembered.”

“Huh,” Jonathan says, because he isn’t sure what else to say.

“That day I came over,” Steve says. “You acted like…like you thought you knew every possible thing I was thinking about you, or your house, or whatever.”

Jonathan doesn’t say anything.

“Do you want to know what I actually thought?” Steve says.

At last, Jonathan looks up. “What?”

“That day when I walked into your house and saw your kitchen table with Will’s drawings and the school pictures of you and your brother your Mom had hanging on the fridge,” Steve says. “I thought, Oh. This is what a home looks like.”

Jonathan blinks at him.

“My house was always spotless, growing up,” Steve says. “Partly because my mom had a maid come in twice a week to keep it clean, but also because there was never anyone there to make a mess. We never had any of my handmade school projects sitting on the kitchen table, or my school pictures hanging on the fridge. Hell, I don’t think my parents ever once looked at a single one of my school pictures after I turned five. The only decorations we had were the priceless paintings my mom hung up around the house. Even in my bedroom, the only decorations I had until I started working and buying my own stuff were things like photos of model cars, just stuff my mom saw in an L.L. Bean catalog and ordered without asking me. We never kept anything in my house that had anything of sentimental value. It was like living in a museum.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jonathan says quietly, after a long moment.

But the thing is…Jonathan could’ve guessed. Despite the few interactions Jonathan has had with Steve over the years, it’s pretty obvious how absent his parents have been in his life. Sure, Nancy’s parents never knew anything about the Upside Down until now, and neither did Dustin’s or Max’s or Lucas and Erica’s, but that’s different. Jonathan’s pretty sure Steve’s parents evacuated Hawkins the second they could. What kind of parents would leave their only son behind in a place like this?

Probably, Jonathan thinks, the same kind of parents that would forget to pick their son up from school on the last day before summer.

“Your house felt…lived-in,” Steve continues. “Like, sure, maybe it was a mess. But there were like, signs of life, you know? The three of you…you’d taken that space and carved something into it, and made it yours. It felt…safe. You could tell it was a place for a family. For people who loved each other.”

“It didn’t always feel like that,” Jonathan says, because it didn’t. Steve was lucky enough to have been there when Lonnie was out of town; hell, if Lonnie had been around, Jonathan’s mom probably wouldn’t have offered to bring Steve home at all. Nothing felt safe when Lonnie was there, and things rarely felt easy even when he was gone. They never had enough money, his mom was always working, and then when Jonathan was old enough, he was working all the time, too. It wasn’t until this past year in California, when all the things he was used to worrying about seemingly disappeared, that he realized he spent all that time stepping up in the ways Lonnie failed to and never got the chance to have the normal childhood he was so desperate to make sure Will got. There are a lot of things Jonathan has gained in the past three years, apocalypse be damned, but he’s lost a lot of things, too, all in the same house that had inexplicably seemed like a home to Steve all those years ago, the same house that Jonathan knows now wasn’t always the home it should’ve been.

“I know,” Steve tells Jonathan, and he doesn’t, but he almost sounds like he knows all of the things Jonathan is thinking but not saying, anyway. “But that’s what it felt like, at the time. To me, at least.”

It makes sense when Jonathan thinks about it. He still remembers how small Steve had looked sitting in his mom’s backseat, how he kept alternating between thanking Jonathan’s mom and apologizing to her, his insistence she could just drop him off, that he didn’t want to be a bother. Steve does that kind of thing a lot, Jonathan realizes; makes himself smaller, waves away people’s concerns, plays everything off as not a big deal. He’s done it tonight, by asking Jonathan to leave him behind in the woods, by insisting the chunk of flesh the Demo-bot took out of his skin was nothing. As though him bleeding out is just a minor inconvenience.

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan says suddenly, without thinking about it.

Steve looks surprised. “Why are you sorry?”

“Because that day you came over, I assumed you were…being judgmental, or something,” Jonathan explains. “Because I keep thinking the worst of you.”

“In fairness,” Steve says. “I kinda was the worst.”

“You were,” Jonathan agrees. “But you’re not, really, anymore.”

Steve grins. “Yeah? You think so?”

Jonathan rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t go getting a big head about it, or whatever.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Steve says, and Jonathan snorts. “And for what it’s worth…I’m sorry, too. I never actually got to apologize that day I came over and the Demogorgon ripped through your ceiling.”

“Yeah, but you also saved my life,” Jonathan points out. “So I’ll consider us even. Besides, you never would’ve even gotten wrapped up in all of this if you hadn’t come over that night. Who knows, maybe you would’ve evacuated a month ago back when everyone thought this was all just an earthquake. You could be sipping a margarita at Palm Springs right now, living in blissful ignorance, or something. Maybe I should be the one apologizing to you.”

“Huh,” Steve says thoughtfully. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

Jonathan raises his eyebrows. “Really?”

“Really,” Steve says. And then, “I don’t think I’d change anything, though.”

Jonathan blinks. “You wouldn’t?”

“No,” Steve says. He hesitates. “Well, like, maybe parts of it. Could’ve done without that time I got tortured by Russian guards and all that. You know.”

Jonathan laughs, and Steve laughs, too, and when their laughter fades, Jonathan realizes Steve is staring at him again, his eyes tracking across Jonathan’s face. It’s the same way Steve looks at him sometimes when they’re walking in the woods alone together, when Jonathan looks over to find Steve already looking back; the same way Steve looked at Jonathan that night Will came home from the Upside Down, when Jonathan had left Will’s hospital bed and walked out into the waiting room and been surprised to realize Steve was still here; the same way Steve has glanced at Jonathan over the years when he thought Jonathan didn't notice; the same way Steve looked at Jonathan, he realizes suddenly, when he had walked out the front door of Jonathan’s house that first time he’d come over, all those years ago.

Steve is staring at Jonathan the same way he does every time Jonathan looks away, except before Jonathan can do anything at all, Steve suddenly leans down and presses his mouth against Jonathan’s. 

Steve’s mouth, Jonathan finds, is very soft. Almost like he uses Chapstick dozens of times a day. He probably does, Jonathan thinks, though he has no idea where Steve would’ve gotten some in times like these. Perhaps he’s been hoarding it this whole time, just in case he ever found himself in the middle of an apocalypse. Or perhaps Steve’s mouth is just naturally soft, and firm, almost insistent as he slots it against Jonathan’s, raising a hesitant hand to Jonathan’s jaw, and when Steve’s nose bumps gently into his, Jonathan feels his own lips part, and —

“Fuck,” Steve says, pulling away to stand abruptly, only his wound must still have him unsteady on his feet, because he almost immediately falls back into his seat. “Shit, fuck, I’m sorry.”

Jonathan feels something cold settle over him, as though he’s just been doused with cold water. Because of course Steve is sorry. Of course Steve kissed him out of nowhere as a mistake, maybe as a joke, maybe just to see if he could.

But Steve doesn’t look like it was a joke. He looks truly apologetic; more than that, he looks stricken. He’s hardly looking at Jonathan at all, as though he’s scared to see how Jonathan will react.

And it occurs to Jonathan that though the kiss felt out of nowhere to him, it might not have felt that way for Steve. It occurs to him that in the past four years — when Steve showed up at his house in the middle of the night to apologize and stayed behind even after a monster broke through his roof, when Steve took nearly every pre-teen he knew in town under his wing, when Jonathan brought home a brand new camera for Christmas and had known it was really from Steve even if he’d never once taken credit for it — Jonathan has watched every assumption he made about Steve Harrington that one afternoon unravel. 

It occurs to Jonathan that maybe he’s tired of thinking the worst of Steve and nearly always being wrong.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says again, staring determinedly down at his knees. “I shouldn’t have — ”

“It’s okay,” Jonathan says.

Steve looks up. He looks hesitant. “It is?”

Maybe it isn’t, not completely. Maybe Steve is still someone Jonathan doesn’t have anything in common with, and someone he hardly knows. But maybe none of that matters in an apocalypse. Maybe Jonathan already likes the pieces of Steve that he’s just starting to offer to Jonathan. Maybe, if they both survive all of this, Jonathan will realize he likes all the other pieces of Steve he has yet to give away, too. 

For now, though, Jonathan just nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s okay.”

And this time, Jonathan is the one who leans forward to kiss Steve.

Outside, where it’s dark, vines shift through the trees and monsters lurk, waiting. They don’t have all the time in the world; it’s possible they don’t have much time at all. But as cliché as it sounds, they have right now. On occasions when Jonathan is feeling particularly optimistic, he likes to think that has to count for something. 

Inside, in Jonathan’s old childhood home, Steve cradles Jonathan’s jaw in his palm and kisses him back, and Jonathan secretly thinks that he might feel more optimistic than he has in a long time.