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Jonathan stood in front of the window looking into the periphery, seemingly lost completely in thought. When Steve entered the room he shifted a little, but didn’t say anything, just kept looking out the window. Steve came to a stop next to Jonathan, thinking about his next words.
„What happened in that room? With Nancy, I mean“, he asked, shifting his gaze towards the boy standing next to him. „I, I saw that ring.“
Jonathan scoffed. „Nothing happened. We broke up“, he shrugged, his gaze still fixed to some point in the landscape outside.
Steve squinted his eyes in confusion. „But the ring?“, he asked.
„I asked Murray to get one for me from the outside“, he laughed, bitterly. „I thought that if I just tried hard enough, if we just fought through the bitterness of our relationship and if I just proposed, we could be good again. A happy couple in between all of this craziness“. A tear ran over his face silently. Steve had to fight the urge to brush it away with his fingers. „It didn’t work, obviously. In that room, we really thought that was it. That we were goners. We couldn’t keep on lying to each other. That’s what we’ve been doing for this whole time. We weren’t deeply and utterly in love, we were just traumatized and found comfort in each other. We were always really just friends. Our love was real, but not in the way we thought it was.“
Steve didn’t know what to say. He thought about what he would have done, if he were in that room with Nancy instead of Jonathan. He didn’t know. Would he have confessed all kinds of feelings just to be with someone in these last few moments of his life? Or would he have wanted to clear away all lies that had mounted up between them both? All he knew was that he felt overwhelmingly relieved about both of them surviving that death trap.
“I’m so happy you survived”, Steve mumbled when Jonathan turned to him. He fell into his arms, not knowing why, all of a sudden, he felt so immensely emotional. He wasn’t his usual coolness, but maybe after what had happened between him and Dustin early today, he just realized that he wasn’t ready to lose any of his friends.
Jonathan whispered something into their embrace, but his voice was muffled by the fabric of Steve’s shirt.
“What did you just say?”, he asked, stepping a few steps away from the other.
“I just said, that Nancy isn’t gonna come running to you now”, he said with a smug grin on his face. “She told me that she really liked you because you are, like, really attractive with your hair and stuff, but that it was just not in the cards for her at the moment.”
A grin crept on Steve’s face and a short laugh escaped his mouth. “She complimented my hair? In that situation? Are you sure that you’re not talking about yourself?”, Steve joked. He really just meant it as a joke, but when he looked into Jonathan’s face, his skin had turned completely red.
“I, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, stumbling over his own words.
For a reason unbeknownst to Steve, he felt something turning in his stomach. It almost felt like butterflies. But why would he feel butterflies while talking to Jonathan? They weren’t even friends. Not really. Their fighting over Nancy was in good humor, sure, but that didn’t all of a sudden make them friends. They were two people that couldn’t be more like polar opposites, forced to work together because of the Upside Down and Vecna. There was really nothing more to it than that. At least he told himself that.
“I’m just joking”, he answered laughing. He tried to bury this inexplicable feeling deep within himself. That was something he should deal with after this. But the feeling kept nagging at him. While they were talking over strategy for their big fight with Vecna and the rescue mission. While they were talking about what they would do right after this whole thing was over. Steve knew, in that moment, what he wanted to do then. But he couldn’t tell Jonathan about that. Not about the fact that right after they would leave the Upside Down, he wanted nothing more than to bury his fingers in Jonathan’s hair and kiss him like his life depended on it.
“What are you thinking about?”, Jonathan asked him, seemingly having seen his gaze wander between his eyes and his lips. Because while he asked, he licked over his bottom lip and kept switching between Steve’s eyes and lips.
Just then he realized, even though right until now that thought seemed like something that he could only ever think about and then bury in the depth of his mind, that he wanted to kiss Jonathan now. Like, right now, to be specific. “Can I kiss you?”, he whispered, still switching between Jonathan’s eyes and his lips, that he could almost taste by just looking at them.
For a second, Jonathan’s expression seemed like it was frozen in time. Then a grin appeared on his lips and with one swift motion, he buried his hand in Steve’s hair and pulled him in. Their lips met and a feeling of pure bliss spread through Steve’s body. That kiss was like nothing he had ever experienced. None of the girls he had kissed before could compare to this feeling, not even Nancy.
“Fuck”, he whispered when they paused to breathe.
Immediately, Jonathan’s face turned white. “What? Didn’t you like it?”, he asked, worried he had misinterpreted Steve’s signals.
“No, no! Definitely not! It was like nothing I have ever experienced,” Steve answered truthfully and smiled at the boy mere inches away from him. “I just didn’t think, it would ever happen. It was amazing.”
He put his forehead against Jonathan’s, trying to calm his breath.
Someone behind them cleared their throat. They stepped apart instantly, but there was no hiding this. Whoever it was had obviously seen them, if not while kissing, definitely just standing this close. Steve turned around and saw Robin standing in the door frame.
“We should load the truck”, she said and winked at me before turning around and leaving them alone.