Work Text:
“You have my shoes.”
That’s all Jonathan Byers says after Steve Harrington opens his back door and finds him standing there.
Steve looks down.
It’s brisk out, borderline cold, and Jonathan is wearing flip-flops. They’re the cheap kind from Melvald’s that his mother must have given him some past summer. The plastic on the sole around the little strap between his toes is probably worn down and Steve bets it pops out every couple of steps. He remembers that’s how the flip-flops from Melvald’s always were.
“Oh.”
Jonathan gives him an uncomfortable look. And it’s probably because he clearly just walked a mile and a half through the woods that border the back of their two houses in shitty flip-flops in 40-degree weather.
“Can I have them back?”
Steve almost asks why Jonathan didn’t just call, wants to say that he could have driven over and dropped the shoes off or something, but then he realizes that with Jonathan’s arrival at the back not the front door that this was something planned and not spontaneous and the fact that he’s on foot and not driving his car probably means he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. Or Steve. Or them both.
“Yeah–uh–yeah, sure. I can go get them.”
Steve opens the door in a way that’s supposed to be inviting, but Jonathan steps to the side and sits down on the back stoop, below the view line of the back of the house.
“I’ll wait.”
Steve doesn’t see them next to the door where shoes are normally kept. After some quick process of elimination, he plods up to his room, shuffles a few things around before finding them shoved under his bed. He vaguely recalls Jonathan kicking them off the night before, once they slammed the door of Steve’s room shut, after both their shirts were already off. Neither had really had the foresight to think about the proper order of clothing removal at that moment. And neither had thought to double-check they had all said clothing when the unexpected sound of the garage opening triggered Jonathan’s flight response and he had all but flown out the back door.
Steve holds the ratty pair of gray Chucks in his hands, never really taking note of just how beat up they actually were. The rubber on the bottom is worn down to the treads, almost smooth, and there’s a crack halfway down each sole where the balls of Jonathan’s feet must rest when he steps. They can’t be the most comfortable things to wear even if the sandals he’s in now are worse. Steve bets water seeps in when it rains. He wonders if Jonathan would let him buy him new ones sometime.
When Steve returns and hands them back to Jonathan, Jonathan just sits there, staring up at Steve for what feels too long. But then the moment passes and Jonathan turns his face downward and shucks the flip-flops off before pulling his shoes on, lacing them up over his bare feet.
๏๏๏
“What are you doing?”
Jonathan asks in a hushed tone, as Steve swings a leg over the chair in front of him and crosses his arms along the backrest.
It’s been a week since the shoe situation.
Two, since Steve had shown up on Jonathan’s doorstep again after everything around them had settled down, but his mind could not and one thing led to another led to another.
Three, since he learned monsters were real and his entire view of the world and Jonathan Byers got turned upside down completely.
Still, Hawkins High was Hawkins High was Hawkins High. Not even real goddamn monsters could tear down the ironclad constructs set in place there. And even if Steve could finally admit there were better things to spend time caring about than the nuances of social hierarchies, Jonathan had shifted the completely other direction.
But maybe that's what happens when your family becomes the punchline to every bad joke and the catchall cause to explain all the weird shit that’s been happening in town. High school had always been it's own distinctive type of survival game and Jonathan was playing on extra hard mode now.
“I slipped Gareth a five to switch partners.”
They only share one class together. A generalized math course that has a spattering of students from all grade levels meant to fill the learning requirement for those not really interested in or particularly good at math. Jonathan often stuck to a spot in the back and never really had to pay attention. Steve always sat somewhere in the middle and often chose not to.
“That’s too much.” Jonathan says as he glances over at the other paired-up students in the room, none of which seem to be paying the two of them any mind. “I’m discount bin, even with the freaks.”
“If so, you’re mislabeled.” Steve quips back, then adds. “You’re one of the smart ones here. Five’s a steal. I should have given him more.”
Jonathan almost looks like he’s about to tell Steve to shut up, but instead he glances downward and his ears go the lightest shade of pink. Steve lets himself smile, just a little. He scooches the chair closer.
“I can tell people you’re definitely going to get me an A, if they ask.”
Steve thinks it’s a particularly good excuse, and he’s quite proud of it. Easily believable, cross-checkable, and incredibly normal. Mismatched people got stuck doing boring school projects together all the time. That was a facet of boring school projects.
“Maybe I’ll even have to come over sometime this week to work on it.” Steve offers, then adds, “The project.” for clarification.
Jonathan’s face twitches and then he makes a low, grumbly hum.
“Maybe you will.”
Steve has to hold himself back from smiling wider as he feels a warm buzzing rise up inside of his chest.
This feeling is punctuated by Jonathan ripping out a piece of paper from his notebook before reaching down into his messenger bag to pull out a brand new #2 pencil. He offers them both to Steve.
“But if you want an A, you’re going to actually have to do something to get it.”
Their fingers touch then, just a little bit. The buzzing grows warmer. Steve takes both.
“I’ll give it back after class.” He says, twirling the pencil around in his fingers with a flourish.
“Don’t bother.” Jonathan huffs back, flipping through a few pages of his math textbook, trying to find the material they’re supposed to be covering. “In less than five minutes you’re going to bite the eraser off the end, just like you always do.”
๏๏๏
Steve accidentally leaves his jacket behind when he sneaks out the Byers’ back door at 2 am Thursday evening.
He doesn’t even realize it’s gone until he finds it laying haphazardly on a poolside chaise lounge a few days later. Inside the pocket there’s a small note.
Don’t leave your shit at my house.
He throws the jacket on and stomps off into the woods. When he arrives at the Byers’ forty minutes later he slips the same piece of paper under a small crack at the bottom of the window he knows is Jonathan’s, a new note scribbled on the back.
You started it.
๏๏๏
“Fuckin–God– Goddammit.”
It’s a dangerous thing. Doing what they’re doing right now. Where they’re doing it right now. Even if there’s a locked door between them and the outside world, it’s one that far too many other people have the key for.
But it’s been nearly two weeks. Almost an entire eternity. So could Steve really be blamed for being unable to stop himself from taking little bit of a risk after he notices Jonathan slip into the small closet of a darkroom right before the bell rang? Especially when the hallway had cleared out completely moments after and absolutely no one would be able to see him do it?
But maybe he can be blamed for leaving explicit evidence, like the splatter of some liquid chemical across the front of Jonathan’s shirt due to a stray elbow hitting one of the many bottles littered across the table surfaces.
It looks splotchy, and not in the kind of way you’d be able to play off as a small accident. It’s got the just spilled an entire bottle of condiment down your front sort of look. Noticeably messy enough to draw questions because Jonathan is the careful type with these things, after all.
“Aren’t those usually closed? For, like, longevity or whatever?” Steve asks, fumbling around in the half-light looking for a towel or tissue or whatever else might be able to lessen the damage already done.
“I was about to recap it before you decided to rudely interrupt me.”
“It’s…Maybe it’s not super bad in the light.”
They can’t know for sure, because to know that for sure they’d have to open the door and check and that’s the one thing they absolutely won’t be doing, especially together.
“What about…” Steve turns, grabs his backpack, and rummages around a bit before holding something out to Jonathan. “Here, take this.”
The room isn’t the easiest to see in, but Steve can still make out the distinctly distasteful look that settles on Jonathan’s face once he realizes what Steve is offering him.
“You want me to wear your nasty gym shirt.”
“Hey–It–that one is clean! And we all have the same shirt, it wouldn’t be that weird.”
He always brings two school-issued Hawkins High Athletics heathered gray t-shirts with him, one for gym during school and one for practice after. Steve’s had gym already today, but practice was later and he doubts anyone would notice if he happened to double up.
Jonathan hesitates a few more moments before he snatches the shirt out of Steve’s hands and pulls his own now ruined one off.
“I’ll return it tomorrow. Before third period.”
Steve offering Jonathan the shirt was mostly meant as a kindness–the whole situation was kind of his fault, after all. It wasn’t supposed to do anything for him. But there’s something about watching Jonathan pull the shirt down over his head, noticing how it looks slightly big on his smaller frame, where Steve has to admit, it sort of does.
๏๏๏
Steve gets his shirt back rolled up in a brown paper lunch bag that Jonathan shoves at him as they pass in the hallway.
It smells different. Like soap. But there’s a distinct other smell too. Kind of like fresh earth. It reminds him a bit of how the world smells after it rains.
It doesn’t exactly smell like Jonathan as far as he can recall, but it’s close.
Close enough to be distracting when he does, in fact, wear it for gym during third period.
Distracting enough that he takes a basketball directly in the face.
๏๏๏
“You know, if anyone was going to have car trouble, I sort of figured it would be me, not you.”
“Life’s weird like that, huh?”
“You’re just lucky I was driving home this way from work.”
The holidays were making things complicated. Well, more complicated than the whole thing was already. Steve’s family had decided to be home more frequently, which gleaned them a greater awareness of when his car was missing and more questions as to his whereabouts when it happened to be gone at odd times. Jonathan’s was being especially tight-knit as well, likely because of the horrors of everything, and all. Family dinners, small outings, requests from his mother or brother he couldn't really shrug off. Between that and his increased work schedule, they hadn’t had a lot of time to run into each other lately. And not for lack of trying, on Steve’s part, anyway.
So yeah, Jonathan being the one to find him on the side of the road after he hit a particularly large pothole and proceeded to get a flat tire did, in a way, feel lucky.
“Wanna go somewhere?”
The suggestion doesn’t really come with much forethought and he asks it before he can stop himself.
“Now?”
Steve raises his eyebrows. Jonathan gives him a flat look.
“You know it’s like 9pm, right?”
“Seems like as good a time as any. Not like I can get anyone to help with the car until tomorrow. Right?”
He fully expects Jonathan to shrug the suggestion off and stay the course back towards to their shared edge of Hawkins. Say something about how he needed to get home, about how it was late, and how surely someone would worry. Instead, he quiets, taps the steering wheel with his fingers, then, after a moment, asks:
“Where would we go?”
It’s a bit of a detour off the main road and then a bit of a hike into the woods from there. Jonathan nearly turns them back around twice before he grabs Steve’s hand and actually halts the advance.
“It’s cold.” He explains and when Steve looks back at Jonathan, he understands why he feels that way. He didn’t exactly dress for an impromptu hike in the middle of winter.
“Here.”
Steve unwraps the scarf he’s had around his neck. It’s a wool one his aunt gifted him last Christmas and he expects he’ll get another similar one this Christmas because that’s just how his aunt is.
“C’mon.” Steve says, and then throws the scarf around Jonathan’s neck before wrapping it haphazardly around his head, covering everything below the other’s eyes. “It’s just a bit farther now.”
Jonathan stands there for a moment before he reaches up and pulls the scarf down out of his face, twisting and tugging it around until it settles into place right below his chin. He lets out an annoyed huff but his feet keep moving forward, nonetheless.
“You said that five minutes ago.”
๏๏๏
“It’s a rock.”
“Yeah, and it looks like a skull. See? Look at it from over here.”
“This is what you wanted to show me?”
“Uh, yes? It’s cool, right?”
Jonathan shoves his hands in his pockets and shakes his head before turning it towards Steve.
“Remind me why I like you again?”
Steve grins at that, throws an arm over his shoulder, and pulls him closer.
๏๏๏
He sees Jonathan wearing the scarf later. He has it folded over and wrapped twice around his neck, ends tucked into the top flaps of his jean jacket over the flannel he always layers up with this time of year. It manages to make him look warm in a way he usually doesn’t.
Steve kind of hopes Jonathan doesn’t give it back.
๏๏๏
“So who are you taking?”
“Tina, I think? Maybe Sarah?” Steve muses, before sighing and rolling over on Jonathan’s bed. “I want to take you.”
It’s actually so easy to sneak back and forth between their houses. Steve wonders why it took him months to figure this out. All it requires is a willingness to take a bit of a walk and a decent sense of direction in the dark. Steve often has both.
He sits up, grabs Jonathan’s hands in his, and looks him directly in the eyes.
“Jonathan Byers, will you go to prom with me?”
It’s not really a serious question. It’s not. And he’s fully expecting Jonathan to brush the whole thing off with one of the disgruntled, dismissive sounds he always makes. But as he looks into Jonathan’s soft brown eyes, which have gone wider than normal, he can’t help but let himself entertain the idea. Just a little.
He thinks about them dancing. Thinks about resting a hand on Jonathan’s waist as he leads the two of them around to a song he’s sure Jonathan would have strong opinions about. Thinks about how Jonathan might very well have two left feet but that’s okay because Steve has two right ones, so that probably evens out somehow. Thinks about spinning around until their legs wobble and they can’t stand up anymore and they’re forced to fall down into a tangle of each other. Thinks about how he wants to hold Jonathan’s hand as they fall asleep together for once, instead of tromping back home in the AM hours to a cold bed.
But then Jonathan’s nose scrunches up and Steve is pulled back into reality when he hears the response he knew was coming:
“Yeah, no. I don’t think so.”
“Bummer.” Steve deflates, in showy, mock disappointment. “Tina it is then.”
He pushes down a feeling of very real disappointment as he hops up to his feet, walks over to Jonathan’s closet, and sticks his head in.
“Looking for something?”
A few months ago, this action would have gotten him a curt get out of there, but Jonathan’s tone is more curious than anything.
“Was just wondering if… Ah. Found ‘em.”
There’s five or six ties of varying colors and patterns. Archaic in style, distinctly 60’s fashion.
“Those were my dad’s.” Jonathan explains, like he needs to.
“And they’re yours now, right?” Steve asks, like he already decided on the answer.
“I guess.” Jonathan shrugs. “Kind of forgot I had them. I don’t even really know how to tie one.”
Steve raises an eyebrow.
“No? For real? C’mere.”
In a way that only happens when they’re alone, Jonathan rises to his feet and gives into Steve’s request without resistance, without a look over his shoulder, without a single bit of worry. Even still, he stops a step short. They’re close, facing each other, but not exactly touching.
Steve holds two ties up, comparing them.
“Alright, well you’re definitely more of a warm color guy sooo…”
He slings an orange patterned one around Jonathan’s neck, pulls it down so the two tails are slightly uneven. In a quick motion, he folds one over the other before pulling it around into a loop, then flips them and pulls again, finally tugging down until the whole thing becomes a very basic knot.
Steve looks up to see Jonathan’s eyes looking downward, mouth hanging open. He’s concentrating on Steve’s hands, seemingly awestruck by what was just happening with them.
Steve grips the tie and tugs it tentatively. The action forces Jonathan to take a step forward. His eyes snap back up.
Steve moves his free hand, trailing fingers up Jonathan’s arm, his neck, before cupping his face. He leans forward, bumping their noses together for just a moment before tilting his head and connecting their lips, finally closing the remainder of the small gap between them.
There’s something about kissing Jonathan Byers that Steve is convinced he’ll never get tired of. He’s lost track of how many times it’s happened at this point, but it always sort of feels like the first. Jonathan never kisses back right away, somehow consistently taken aback by the fact he’s even being kissed at all, but as soon as he does, he kisses like he’s trying to push all the things he never manages to say with words out with action instead.
It’s so earnest and endearing and enthusiastic and hot and–
Steve deepens the kiss and, with much less hesitation, Jonathan reciprocates, leaning into Steve more, bringing his arms up around his head and resting them on Steve’s shoulders, tangling fingers into his hair. The weight feels incredibly grounding in a way few other things still do in Steve’s life. One of the many reasons he thinks he likes this so much.
Steve wants to dress Jonathan up in his shirts, his scarves, his gloves; wants to wrap him up in small pieces of himself until he feels safe and warm and content and alive in the same way Jonathan makes him feel without even trying. He wants to leave pieces of himself in Jonathan’s life so he has to come back for them later, wants to squirrel away things of Jonathan’s in his, so Jonathan has an excuse to do the same.
Steve thinks they could love each other like that. In a series of back and forths. Forever, maybe.
But he also thinks that’s a bigger conversation. One he doesn't even really have the correct words for right now, anyway. So, instead of grand declarations, Steve simply pulls back, rests his forehead against Jonathan’s, and breathes air back into his lungs.
“So, yeah. That’s how you do it.”
“I… see.” Jonathan sighs, even though his face is far too close to Steve’s to see much of anything.
Steve gives the tie another tug. He feels Jonathan’s body shift, surrendering to the pull, hears the sharp intake of air as Jonathan’s breath hitches.
“Yeah,” Steve says, smiling against Jonathan’s mouth, “I’m definitely borrowing this one.”