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“Then how about you and me?”
Steve knows the question from Jonathan is only due to Jonathan’s frankly ridiculous idea that Steve is still in love with Nancy, but it still makes his heart jump. Don’t let yourself have hope. He told himself. He hates you, and he should, after everything you did to him. Despite his self-deprecating thoughts, Steve still responds faster than he probably should have.
“Sure, man, that works.” He said, trying to play it cool as if his heart wasn’t beating out of his chest. Jonathan looked at him surprised. Clearly he wasn’t expecting him to agree.
Dustin gave Steve a knowing look out of the corner of his eye. Dustin and Robin were the only people he had told about his crush on Jonathan, and despite how awful their relationship had become recently, Steve knew that Dustin would never out him. Steve was pissed at how Dustin had been acting recently, but it was out of concern for his best friend. But resolving their relationship could come later. He put it out of his head as Jonathan began ascending the steps up to the next floor of the lab, gesturing for Steve to follow.
-
They walked in silence for a bit, shining their flashlights over the vines creeping all over the hallway as they made their way through. To Steve’s surprise, it was Jonathan who broke the silence. “About Nancy…” He began. “I know you like her, and I just want to say-”
Steve cut him off. “Okay, let me clear the air here. I don’t like Nance in that way. I haven’t in a long time. And she doesn’t like me either, so you can get off my back about it.” He said, annoyance in his tone.
Jonathan looked confused. “Then…why have you been competing with me all the time?” He questioned. “Wasn’t it to impress Nancy?”
Steve bit his lip, stopping himself from blurting out the real reason. It was to impress you. The thought went unsaid. Instead he shrugged. “You’re reading too much into it. I was just trying to be helpful.”
Jonathan raised an eyebrow, but didn’t press the issue. “Just so you know, Nancy and I broke up,” He said in a tone far too casual for the significance of it.
“Wait, seriously?!” Steve gasped, flabbergasted. So he’s single… A voice at the back of his mind spoke, but he pushed the thought away. They must have just broken up, so he’s probably not ready for another relationship. Even if he was, he doesn’t like guys, especially not me.
Steve coughed, covering up his shock. “Oh, uh, that’s cool. I mean, that’s too bad. Sorry man.”
Jonathan shook his head. “No, its okay. We’d been growing apart and realized we really had nothing in common other than trauma. We’re still friends and on good terms.”
Steve nodded, ignoring the hope growing in his heart.
They continued on, returning to a silence that was much more comfortable than before. Steve snuck glances at Jonathan as they walked. His face was scrunched up in concentration as they looked for the energy-whatever Dustin had mentioned, and Steve found it very cute.
Steve paused as the light of his flashlight revealed something strange. “What the hell…?” He trailed off. It looked like the environment around them had almost…melted.
“Jon, come look at this,” He called. As soon as he said it, he realized what he had done. Jon? You’re not that familiar with him to call him nicknames you dingus!! Yet Jonathan seemed unfazed by the nickname and simply came to his side to see what he was looking at.
“Ok, thats a new one,” He said, frowning. “We haven’t seen melting in the Upside Down yet. Maybe it’s tied to the shield generator?” Jonathan speculated.
“Maybe…” Steve tried to concentrate on the issue at hand and avert his gaze from where Jonathan’s hair framed his face nicely as he leaned down to peer at the melted doorknob.
“Is it coming from behind the door?” The younger man tried the doorknob, and it seemed almost squishy. When he tried to turn it, it came off in his hand.
“Great,” He sighed, turning to Steve. “Now what?”
Steve felt some of his confidence return at a chance to show off. “I got this Byers,” He grinned, taking a couple steps back before ramming his body against the door. It only took two hits to slam open. Steve smirked, turning to Jonathan. “See?”
Jonathan took a second to respond. He looked almost impressed, the irritation from when he had thought Steve was showing off for Nancy gone. “Alright, lets go,” He finally said.
There was a stairwell hidden behind the door and they went up it, ending up in a hallway that was as melted as the door had been.
“What do you think happened here?” Jonathan asked, glancing at Steve as they made their way down the hallway.
“Maybe some sort of explosion…?” Steve wondered.
“Oh, like Chernoybl?” He paused. “Wait. I just noticed something weird,” He said, turning his flashlight to empty air.
“Uh, Byers? I don’t see anything,” Steve said, confused.
“Thats exactly it. Usually in the Upside Down, there are spores everywhere in the air. But look,” He gestured to the empty air. “No spores.”
“Weird…” Steve trailed off. “Lets look around some more,” He suggested.
Jonathan nodded, but only a few steps forward and Steve’s flashlight shown over a straight up decayed corpse.
He jumped back in surprise and fear, and, without realizing what he was doing, grabbed onto Jonathan’s hand. It took him a second to realize what he had done, and tried to pull his hand away, but to his shock and delight, Jonathan held on.
Steve looked at him, a question in his eyes. Jonathan avoided his gaze, blushing, and that addicting hope rose once again in Steve’s chest. He squeezed his hand, growing bold, and Jonathan’s face grew pinker.
“You doing okay there, Byers?” He teased, confident from the high that holding Jonathan’s hand gave him.
“Shut up,” Jonathan muttered. “Let’s just keep going.”
They made their way through the hallway, up another flight of stairs, and through another door, exiting to the roof of the lab. They were both stunned into silence at what they saw. The sky looked strange, almost as if there was a plastic sheet covering it.
Jonathan broke away from Steve, grabbing a piece of broken pipe. He glanced at Steve, who nodded, before throwing it as hard as he could at the sky. When it hit, jagged lights lit up the sky like horizontal lightning.
“Looks like Henderson was right,” Steve conceded. “Thats a shield if I’ve ever seen one.” He turned to Jonathan and grinned. “Ready to destroy it and totally wreck Vecna’s plans?”
Jonathan nodded, smiling back. Steve pulled out a pistol from his back pocket, and Jonathan shot him a questioning look.
“You sure you know how to use that?” He said skeptically, raising an eyebrow.
Steve nodded, smirking. “Don’t worry about it, Nance has been teaching me,” He responded.
Jonathan radioed to Dustin and Nancy on his walkie. “Dustin, Nancy, we’ve found the shield generator, do you copy?”
An answer came, but it was so staticy neither Steve nor Jonathan could make it out. Jonathan looked at Steve, who shrugged and took aim at the shield.
It was only the moment after Steve took the shot that Jonathan heard Dustin clearly. “Don’t- touch- it!” Then there was a crackling, and the sky seemed to break open.
Steve and Jonathan glanced at eachother in fear and realization that they had made a mistake. There was only a moment for Jonathan to grab his hand before a red light pulsed and everything went black.
-
Steve gasped as he sat up. Looking around he found himself in a room that was melting around him. Quickly looking around for Jonathan he found him laying down, still passed out and halfway into the melted stuff. He scrambled over him, sitting him up and holding him in his arms, not caring what it looked like. “Jonathan!” He shook him. “Jon, wake up!” Desperately, he shook him again, and sighed in relief when he opened his eyes, looking around confused.
“We must have fallen,” Jonathan remarked, glancing up. He took a breath as he realized the dire situation they were in.
“We’ll get out of here,” Steve reassured him. “C’mon,” He said, wading through the slowly rising goo, holding tightly to Jonathan’s hand like the world would end if he let go.
They made their way to the door, which was covered in goo. “If we both put our weight against it, maybe we can break it open,” Steve suggested.
Jonathan nodded. “Worth a try.”
“Three, two, one!” Steve called, and the two of them rammed against the door.
It didn’t budge.
They tried a couple more times, and Steve wanted to keep trying, but Jonathan stopped him, holding his hand out.
“The liquids getting too high, and that’s not working,” He was clearly panicking- both of them were- but trying to keep his voice calm. The liquid filling the room had reached their calves.
Steve looked around for another option and spotted a table in the middle of the room. “The table!” He exclaimed. “It’ll buy us some time while we call for help, c’mon!”
They waded back across the room, and Steve helped Jonathan up onto the table first before hopping up after him. Both men cupped their hands, calling up towards the gap in the roof.
“Help! Henderson! Nance!” Steve called.
“Dustin! Nancy!” Jonathan echoed.
They called until their voices were hoarse. Steve turned to Jonathan. “They must’ve heard us by now, right?” He said, trying to reassure Jonathan, although he was beginning to doubt they would make it out of this.
“Right,” Jonathan responded, and grew quiet.
After a pause, “Jon, if we don’t make it-” Steve started, at the same time as Jonathan said, “I have to tell you something.”
They looked at eachother and both laughed, before Steve said, “You first.”
Jonathan took a deep breath, looking like he was readying himself for something.
“I used to think I hated you,” He started, which made Steve’s heart sink before he realized Jonathan had said ‘used to’.
“You always acted like you were the top of the world, and I hated how you treated Nancy. Part of that was because well, you were genuinely a dick back then, but another part of me thought I was jealous. That I liked Nancy, and was jealous you got to be with her when I didn’t.”
Steve was confused as Jonathan looked at him, hesitant. “Were you…not actually jealous?”
Jonathan took a deep breath before continuing. “I was jealous. I just wasn’t jealous of the person I thought,” He let the implication hang in the air for a moment and Steve’s jaw dropped as he connected the dots.
“Wait, so, if you weren’t jealous of me, you were jealous of…Nance?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Jonathan nodded awkwardly. “Yeah, uh, I’m gay. And I’ve had a crush on you since highschool,” He looked away. “I understand if you want to keep your distance, and I didn’t mean to be weird I just-”
He was cut off from the rest of his self-deprecation by Steve’s lips as he spontaneously kissed him, before quickly pulling back.
“Sorry, I-”
Before he could answer Jonathan had grabbed him by his shirt and was kissing him back. Steve couldn’t believe this was happening. His crush on Jonathan Byers, which he had never thought would go anywhere, was actually reciprocated. As soon as his brain stopped short-circuiting he kissed back fiercely, and Jonathan wrapped his arms around his neck.
Jonathan gasped as Steve bit his lip, sliding his tongue into the other man’s mouth. Jonathan climbed into Steve’s lap as they kissed, and Steve felt desire taking over him.
Steve didn’t care anymore. If he was going to die, he was going to die kissing Jonathan Byers.
He broke apart from Jonathan for a second to take his shirt off, tossing it away. He was about to lean back in when Jonathan looked behind him. “Hang on…,” He said, then looked at Steve excited.
“Look! It stopped! It stopped!” Steve whirled around to see his shirt sitting flat on the ground, instead of sunk into the muck like he had expected.
Steve stood up, pulling Jonathan to his feet beside him, and walked off the table. The ground was completely flat.
“Oh my god! We’re gonna live!” Steve gasped in happiness, hugging Jonathan and lifting him off his feet. The two burst out into joyous laughter.
“Steve!” Jonathan exclaimed, laughing. “Let me down!”
Steve complied, and gradually their laughter died down, leaving things a bit awkward.
“So,” Jonathan started. “Do you still wanna kiss me now that our lives aren’t in peril?”
“Definitely,” Steve reassured him, and did just that.