Chapter Text
New York City
January 1989
Jonathan Byers didn’t shrink at parties anymore. Sure, he still preferred the corners to the center, but now it was a choice rather than a defense. One of the first things New York had taught him (other than to never pause in the middle of the sidewalk) was that there was a power in knowing who you were and refusing to perform it for anyone else.
Not that he had ever been one to put on much of a performance. If anything, he was accustomed to distilling himself down. To focusing more on a task, on a responsibility, than making a show of self expression. Here? He was different. Not dramatically so, underneath he was the same Jonathan he’d always been. Introspective. Gentle. Creative. Stubborn. Wary. But now he felt a different sense of purpose. A confidence not previously ascribed to him. In New York, it was just him. There was no responsibility to care for anyone else or to protect them from harm, be it emotional or physical. No financial responsibility for his entire family. No necessity to stay prepared to fight off demogorgons or break into (or out of) the Upside Down. And to be honest? It was the freedom from those former roles that was the most liberating. Because he had been saddled with adult responsibility at a point so early in his life he didn’t even have the words to explain the anxieties that came with them. His adolescence had been fleeting in a way that robbed him of the chance to really, fully know himself. To realize he could want things, for himself, without weighing how it might inconvenience anyone else. In many ways, he’d frozen in the safety tier of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and been content to live there. The things that life asked of him had been fraught with survival long before Will went missing.
In New York he could just be.
Of course New York was overwhelming at first. It was loud, crowded, and unyielding, a near opposite of the slower paces of both Hawkins and Lenora. But film school surprised him. At Tisch, he fit in. (Please hold for shock and awe) For the first time, the things he noticed, the way he framed the world through a lens, weren’t odd or isolating. They were shared. His classmates talked about light and composition and meaning, conversations he felt adept in, where he didn’t shy away or compress his thoughts. More quickly than he could have imagined, Jonathan found himself included. Invited. Seen. He found himself understood in a way Hawkins never could fulfill.
He made friends the same way he did everything else: quietly and carefully. Late-night edits in dim labs. Conversations over burnt coffee and stale bagels about Lynch and Cronenberg. Sharing skunk weed joints on fire escapes, rain or shine, while debating the burgeoning use of digital effects versus practical. By the time he’d reached winter break that first year, he already had a small, tight knit group of friends that made the city feel more like home than he’d ever felt before.
That mattered more than he realized.
It was an otherwise unremarkable Thursday night when his roommate, Marc, crashed into his bedroom, already smelling like half a bottle of Davidoff Cool Water.
“Put on something other than a Sonic Youth t-shirt,” Marc announced, clapping his hands once. “We’re heading out.”
Jonathan blinked up from his desk, surprised by how little resistance he felt. No negotiations or excuses. Just a brief internal shrug…why not? He didn’t ditch the t-shirt, but he did compromise by adding a flannel and swapping out his sweats for black jeans. Look at him, making an effort. Growth.
Within the hour, they were thrust out into the unforgiving January wind. While he’d been in New York since the prior June, Jonathan was still becoming accustomed to all of the lights and noise, the constant overstimulation like every one of his senses was jockeying for attention. For a kid from middle of nowhere, Indiana, the hum of New York City was both parts intoxicating and overwhelming. It was unrelenting but alive. And all Jonathan really wanted to feel these days was defiantly alive.
Tonight, he found himself enjoying the anticipation. Nerves replaced by curiosity and a sense that something might happen. Just, you know, the good kind of something and not a hellbeast ripping a dimensional hole in his living room ceiling. Progress.
“It’ll be an hour. Tops.” Marc promised as they climbed the narrow staircase of a West Village walk-up, bass already thudding through the walls. “I just need to show my face, say hi, maybe make a mistake…” Even without looking, Jonathan could hear the shit eating grin in his voice. He shook his head, amused.
“Then we can bail,” Marc finished, like a promise neither of them trusted him to keep.
Jonathan had learned that Marc’s tops was a flexible concept at best, but he nodded anyway. An hour felt survivable.
“I can’t say I believe you,” Jonathan said, breathing a little short from the stairs, “but I knew what I was getting myself into.”
They’d met the very first day of orientation and clicked immediately, however antithetical they may have seemed. Gregarious to a fault, Marc typically gave off a lovably manic quality. Which, normally, he would have found exhausting at best. But Marc was nothing if not authentic and Jonathan couldn’t help but appreciate him for that fact alone. Where Marc helped pull Jonathan out into the world, Jonathan kept Marc tethered to reality. Reminded him on a near daily basis to slow down, finish what he started, and occasionally get a full eight hours of sleep.
Tonight, it was Marc’s turn to hold up his end of the bargain. Precisely why they’d ended up here, about to enter another NYU party. Yes, you read that right - the word another proceeding party. Jonathan Byers went to parties. Plural. Not always willingly, not always with indiscriminate enthusiasm, but the default had transformed from “no” to “alright fine”.
The party, thrown by Marc’s latest fling, whose name and gender Jonathan couldn’t recall, was already in full swing when they arrived. The apartment was packed wall to wall with Tisch students - film students, drama kids, dancers - all spilling out of rooms and into one another’s conversations. Debates bounced off the walls, about meaning, about aesthetics, about whether sincerity had officially died sometime during the Reagan administration.
It wasn’t all theory and posturing, though. Like any off-campus party, it had all the usual hallmarks: hands clutching Bartleson’s and James bottles, a dented cooler in the corner filled with pink liquid that smelled aggressively like Everclear, and Top 40 music blasting through speakers that had clearly seen better days.
Jonathan winced at the sound immediately. Okay, he thought. Three Milli Vanilli songs and I’m gone. Even new and improved New York Jonathan was pretentious about playlists.
Marc nudged a shoulder against his. “Don’t disappear,” he goaded, already scanning the room. “Actually? Never mind. Disappear if you want. I’ll find you.” And then, quite predictably, Marc vanished into the crowd in pursuit of his flavor of the week.
Jonathan lingered. Over the course of the next hour, only one Milli Vanili song tormented him as he mingled in and out of easy conversations with familiar faces. He gravitated to classmates from the film program, passing the time discussing lenses and pacing and restraint. Eventually even those discussions petered out as alcohol took hold, eyes glazed over, and the bolder party goers headed to a makeshift dance floor on the living room rug.
Yes, Jonathan was evolving (new look, same great Jonathan taste!) but he would still die a gruesome before dancing in public. Much less to a Paula Abdul hit. Instead, he found himself leaning against the kitchen counter, warm beer in hand, surveying the room. Not nervously, not even judgemently, just observing. Taking it all in.
That’s when the light shifted. Not literally, nothing so cinematic. But his attention snagged all the same, pulled across the room without effort or logic. He looked up, beer halfway to his mouth, and saw her. She registered to him as light before anything else. Blonde hair pulled into a high ponytail, skin warm even under the harsh apartment bulbs. She wore a violet NYU sweatshirt that slouched off one shoulder and acid-wash jeans worn soft and fitted in a way that felt lived-in. Casual, but intentional. The kind of person who belonged in rooms like this without trying.
Not his type, he thought immediately. Sunny. Polished. Perky. Too Esprit. Too Debbie Gibson. Too Uptown.
And then she laughed.
That was when he recognized her. Tuesday mornings. Fourth row. Professor Shaw’s Performance Studies lecture. Usually, he was still in a stupor that early in the morning. Only able to focus on his styrofoam to-go cup of bodega coffee and the drone of Professor Shaw’s voice. But he had noticed her, typically sitting one row ahead of him and one seat over. He had seen the way she started each class aggressively writing down every word of the lecture. Noticed how that tapered off mid-way through as she traded notes for doodling in the margins. What really made him pause, though, wasn’t recognition. It was the way she laughed. At first, her head tipped back, loud, unguarded. But then? Then she immediately checked herself, smoothing her expression like she’d revealed too much or taken up too much space. Jonathan recognized that tell. Felt it deeply. The reflexive shrinking, the quiet fear that being seen too clearly would cost you something.
As if sensing him, she glanced his way, eyes landing on him. Their gazes met and held, briefly, but long enough for her to flash a smile. It was polite, automatic, if not almost imperceptibly nervous. As though they’d both caught one another doing something they shouldn’t be. Once she’d looked away, returned to her conversation, Jonathan told himself not to stare. He was mostly successful, but couldn’t stop himself from glancing in her direction far too often. When 10 minutes had passed and he was still replaying the sound of her laugh, he decided to do something about it. Say something, he told himself. Anything. New York Jonathan was capable. Willing to make the first move towards something he wanted. Or, well, something he might want. Someone he could see himself wanting, even if it seemed inexplicable to him so far. Moreover, he was allowed to want things (a fact he still had to remind himself of from time to time). Just because, without any compelling reason or build up.
He didn’t go over to talk about movies, or music, or anything that felt like it might prove he belonged. Instead, he waited until she had moved in his direction and set her half full cup down on the counter beside him.
“Hey,” he acknowledged, voice steady despite his pulse, raised just loud enough to be heard over the chords of a Roxette song. Her eyes once again met his, the same polite smile playing on her lips. She dipped her head slightly towards him, bringing her ear closer so she could hear him clearly. “You look familiar…did you have Performance Studies with Professor Shaw last semester?”
She didn’t answer at first, only looked up at him through her eyelashes until her courteous smile softened into something more curious.
“So you do recognize me.” The words came out easy, teasing, but a flush had already crept across her cheeks. It didn’t match the confidence she wore so effortlessly. Beneath it, he caught something else - a restless, almost self-conscious energy she seemed determined to conceal. He found it unexpectedly endearing. Most people would probably stop at pretty…Jonathan didn’t. He recognized the uncertainty, the vulnerability, tucked underneath, because he’d spent most of his life carrying his own “You usually sat a row or two behind me.”
“And you…” He let the silence linger a beat, like he was holding for a reaction. Ever the director lately. “…were gifted at drawing Professor Shaw’s head on animal bodies,” Jonathan continued, taking a long sip of his beer without breaking eye contact. “I think the flamingo was my personal favorite, but the koala was pretty uncanny too.”
That earned a laugh from her, a real laugh. This time she didn’t check herself afterward, she didn't attempt to deflate.
“Uncanny?” she repeated, eyebrow cocked. “I work really hard on my koalas, thank you for noticing.” She reached past him for her cup, close enough that her shoulder nearly brushed his arm, then settled back against the counter with it held loosely between both hands.
Jonathan felt the grin pull at his mouth before he could stop it. There was something refreshingly easy about this. He wasn’t overthinking what to say (or not to say), wasn’t worried about making a misstep. One thing he’d learned while navigating life in New York was how to be present, how to live in the moment, for the moment. He’d spent so much of his life, particularly the last few years, with blinders on focused solely on duty. Suspended in a constant cycle of fight or flight.
There were the years of his childhood, spent dreading which version of Lonnie was going to walk in the door each night. Whether there’d be yelling and tears and broken dishes to sweep up in the morning. Then there was the time after Lonnie left, which for all intents and purposes should have been easier. Instead, the shouting matches were replaced by Joyce’s depression expanding into every corner of the house. A different set of eggshells to walk on instead of a complete reprieve. His focus then was always on getting them all through the day, the week, the month. He was constantly checking off a task list that never shrank.
Then…then Will went missing. And the immediate implication, not just from his mother but from deep inside himself, was that it was due entirely to his negligence. For his failure to prioritize Will’s bodily safety over their financial safety. It took him far too long to admit to himself that it was never his fault. That belonged to the lab personnel carelessly bent on stretching the limits of the human psyche no matter the body count. Not a sixteen-year-old boy that happened to be working an extra shift to stave off the electricity being shut off (again). It took him that long to accept that his baby brother could have just as easily been taken on the bike ride home.
When, miraculously, Will did come home, the atmosphere of despair lifted but only to be immediately replaced by fear. Ever present and always suffocating. Even then, his task list still included all of the same mundane responsibilities - there were just new horrors added. Fighting literal monsters instead of just the psychological kind. Matters that were truly life or death. And yet at least by then, at least when sci-fi creatures were involved, he was less alone. It just took a tear in dimensions to get there.
But tonight? Tonight Hawkins felt as far away as it ever had. Compartmentalized to a place in his mind where it couldn’t reach him, couldn’t ruin his chance at normalcy. His god given right as a college student to enjoy the buzz of a few cheap beers and the attentions of a pretty girl. Jonathan rarely gave himself enough credit, but somehow, this new life felt well earned. The privilege to live unapologetically in the moment. Right now that happened to be with her.
“I mean,” he replied, a flicker of sheepishness cutting through the confidence he’d managed a moment earlier. “You capture his essence. The judgment, the disappointment, the vague sense that we’re all wasting his time...”
Her eyes lit up at that, delighted at his commiseration. “Exactly! You get it.”
She turned fully toward him now, one foot unconsciously crossing into his space, her body angled toward his as though the rest of the kitchen had ceased to exist. He caught the faint freckle near her collarbone before he caught himself looking but then came the soft citrus of her perfume. Close enough that he became acutely aware of his hands. Where they’d settled, what they were doing. What they could be doing. Forgive him, it had been awhile since he’d…had the attention of a woman, we’ll call it.
“Jonathan,” he supplied.
The name Claire settled into place almost immediately, filed away with surprising certainty. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be associating it with Professor Shaw’s lecture hall for much longer.
“I wasn’t judging,” he clarified. “Mostly I was impressed. You always started out looking like you were going to transcribe the entire lecture, and then about halfway through you’d just…” He mimed setting down a pen. “Give up on expecting him to get to any semblance of a point.”
She laughed again, softer this time. “I start every class with the optimism that I’m going to finally get what the hell he’s talking about. But once he’s said ‘liminality’ for the seventh time I give up and start doodling instead.”
Jonathan nodded, emboldened now, the rhythm of this taking hold of him. He turned fully toward her, closing off what little remained of the kitchen around them. There was nowhere closer to stand without touching, but the angle of his body made the choice clear.
“I almost talked to you once,” he admitted. It was only partially true. He’d thought about it more than once, had imagined stopping her after class, making some joke about the growing menagerie in the margins of her notebook. But each time, he’d hesitated just long enough for her to disappear into the crowd spilling out of the lecture hall. “After class. But you looked busy…in a rush to get out of there.”
Claire’s gaze dropped briefly to his mouth before returning to his eyes. “You should’ve tried anyway.” The words landed warm and sure between them. The part of him that always hesitated fell strangely quiet, replaced by something clean and impulsive and unfamiliar. New Jonathan, apparently, didn’t overthink every possible outcome. Instead, he acted.
“Well,” The playful tone of his voice turned a touch sincere. He set his beer deliberately aside, freeing his hands. “I’m talking to you now.”
“Yeah,” she replied, the blush in her cheeks deepening and spreading to the neckline of her sweatshirt. Nearly giving her away, her ruse of being so pulled together. “You are.”
They stood there for a moment, the space between them charged and humming, the party fading into a blur of sound and motion around them. Jonathan was aware of her closeness, of the calm certainty in her eyes, as though she wasn’t afraid of seeing him too clearly.
“Do you want to get out of the kitchen?” he ventured. It wasn’t an assumption, only a door left open between them.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” she nodded relief washing over her face. The proverbial mask slipping ever so slightly. And when she reached for him, fingers brushing his wrist, Jonathan didn’t hesitate. He followed her, a current of nervous excitement running through him, exhilarated by how simple it felt to choose this. To choose her, to choose himself, to move forward instead of standing fucking still.
Jonathan took the subway home with his hands drawn into the warmth of his coat pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold. The car smelled like cigarettes and a touch of ammonia, the fluorescent lights aggressively bright. He swayed slightly as the train lurched forward, not drunk exactly, but content. Warm with the afterglow of cheap beer and easy laughter and the kind of connection that left his chest buzzing.
One hour “tops” had quickly stretched into three before Jonathan even noticed. Marc had actually sought him out first, prepared to leave, only to be dismissed with a promise that Jonathan would catch up later. He and Claire had found a quieter corner on the balcony, and the conversation kept unfolding like they were in a mutual stream of consciousness. One subject giving way to another until neither of them seemed interested in keeping track of the time. They covered all the cursory topics. They’d both changed their programs of study after the first semester, Claire from the musical theater studio to one that was more drama forward, Jonathan from photography into the film program. They were both children of divorce, but while Lonnie had exited the picture, both Claire’s parents remained locked in a bitter battle for their children's love. She was the misunderstood, forgotten middle child to his overlooked, parentified oldest child. The most obvious coincidence was her hometown of Ojai, just miles away from Lenora Hills. He laughed harder than he expected when she admitted that the Lenora Surfer Boy Pizza had been her go-to because, as she put it, “the dudes there are so high they always pile on an absurd amount of pepperoni and never remember to charge extra.”
For a moment, while it still felt light-hearted talking about hometowns, he considered omitting Hawkins completely and claiming Lenora instead. As easy as that would be, there was still some stubborn part of him resisted. Hawkins had taken enough from him; he wasn’t ready to let it take his history too, didn't want to give it any more power than it already had. When she referenced the quarantine that had made headlines that year, he pivoted smoothly, redirecting them toward safer ground before she could ask anything that required explanation.
Instead, they moved on to basic likes and dislikes and that’s where many of their similarities stalled. Her tastes were anything but angsty - Madonna, George Michael, St. Elmo’s Fire, Family Ties, VC Andrews. And yet it all fit the energy she gave off, at least the version she presented to the world. Even in those early moments, it was clear to him that there was the Claire she wanted everyone to see, to love, and the real Claire underneath. There was the Claire she offered up first, magnetic, quick witted, the one who made people feel chosen just by focusing on them. The young woman who knew how to tilt her head just so, who instinctively filled silence before it grew uncomfortable. Then there was the person who gradually emerged as the night grew later and the drinks loosened her resolve. The one who admitted that she felt like a complete imposter in New York. That she was always bracing for someone to expose her as a fraud. That she was terrified of what would happen if she ever stopped being agreeable, bright, and easy. Where Jonathan refused to perform, Claire didn’t know how not to. He understood that in a way that settled deep in his chest. What it felt like to be assigned a role before you’re old enough to question it. To resist it. The expectation that you grow with until it becomes your entire personality.
Out there on the balcony, under the glow of city lights and the dulled sound of traffic, she wasn’t playing to an audience. Her posture relaxed, her laugh was no longer measured, she stopped avoiding silences. Underneath the cool-girl act was someone softer. A theater kid who’d once worn headgear and practiced monologues in her bedroom mirror. Someone more comfortable disappearing into characters than laid bare as herself. When Jonathan first noticed her that night, it was the shine - the blonde ponytail, the violet sweatshirt slipping off one shoulder, the way the room seemed to bend towards her. But what held him there for three hours wasn’t the shine. It was the actual person underneath it. The way she dropped the act for him, admitted to being scared without hiding it in a joke. The way she looked at him like she wasn’t trying to impress him, just to be understood. At first glance he’d thought she was all light. But what endeared her to him was realizing how hard he’d worked to become it.
As the subway lurched towards his stop, her laugh replayed in his head. The tilt of her cheek as she listened intently to his film ideas (even the cannibal consumerist one). The warmth of her fingers as she wrote her number on his palm, deliberate and lingering, like she wasn’t in a hurry to let go. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and turned it over, studying it beneath the harsh subway lights. The ink had smudged a little, her handwriting soft and looping, the numbers pressed into his skin. And beneath it, through it, was the scar. Jonathan’s thumb traced it reflexively. The thin, pale line that cut across his palm, old and familiar. A mirror of Nancy’s. Matching marks carved into them both by fear and blood and something that still felt like fate. Something they’d survived together. Everything they’d survived together.
The buzz in his chest wavered, replaced by a tight, unwelcomed knot. Of course it was there. Of course her number had landed right on top of it. He let out a quiet breath, pressing his palm flat against his thigh like he could erase it. Like he could compartmentalize the feeling the way he always had. With responsibility, with restraint. It wasn’t that he thought he was doing something wrong, not really. Intellectually, he knew that. Nancy wasn’t his girlfriend anymore. They’d said the words and they’d meant them, at least at the time. Life had moved them apart in ways that felt too big to resist. He reminded himself then that wanting something else…someone else…wasn’t a betrayal. The guilt crept in anyway, insidious and unrelenting. As if that part of him that had loved Nancy, deeply and irrevocably, was watching him now. Wounded and disappointed.
He closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the window. Willing away those thoughts and the pressure they brought to his chest. But with his eyelids shut, the only image his mind could conjure was Nancy’s face. The way she had looked at him when she thought he wasn’t paying attention. The way she saw him so fucking clearly even when he tried to hide. How she had always known when he was lying to himself, even when he’d had no clue. That was the problem. That part of him that felt so disloyal now, the part that would always be in love with her, had become hardwired into him. Theirs was a love that hadn’t simply burned hot and fast, in the way most young romances did. No, they had loved in a quiet, enduring way. The kind of love that didn’t just retreat with the passage of time or changing circumstances.
So what did that mean now? Did loving Nancy forever mean he wasn’t allowed to love anyone else? Or did it mean he had to carry that love carefully, like the scar? Something that while healed, was still permanent. That didn’t hurt as badly as it once had but still never disappeared.
When the train finally lumbered to a stop, his stop, Jonathan sighed, exhaling a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Pulled back into the present. He looked down at his palm again, at Claire’s number marked over the scar. New ink over old pain, not erasing anything, just layered over the top. Maybe that was the answer, even if it was far from simple. He slipped his hand back into his pocket and stood as the doors opened, stepping out into the cold night. The buzz was gone now, replaced by something heavier and uncertain. But beneath it, still fighting for attention, was the memory of Claire’s smile. The way she’d looked at him like he was worth noticing.
He didn’t know what the future held. He only knew that part of him wanted to call her at first light, while another part of him wasn’t ready to let go of what he’d once had. Caught between the past and possibility.
And it scared the living shit out of him.